Carton Digger: a salute to session beer innovation

One of the common complaints I hear about session beers is that they're all the same. 'I don't want another bitter/mild/golden!' people tell me (ignoring the fact that there still aren't a lot of milds out there on the American beer market...). On the other end of the spectrum, sometimes I think that myself when I see all the "session IPA" labels out there; everyone wants to take a 450 hp V8 and stuff it into the back of a VW.

Well...there's all that, and then there's the new Digger, from Carton Brewing in Atlantic Highlands, NJ. I'll let them tell you about it. I wanna try this!

Digger

Gose with Clams and Lemongrass
ABV: 4% | IBU: 20 | SRM: 2

"Sure, there are oyster stouts, but we are a clam town. Are there any clam beers?"
"Not that I've ever heard of."
"Stout wouldn't make sense. Let's make it super pale. We can lean on the stoniness of our water to show the clams."
"We could make it a Gose, the salt would help push the clam idea even further."
"Nice. How should we hop it?"
"Something very simple but pretty, like Green Bullet."
"Let's add something to the boil to make it more like a pot of steamed clams, something like lemongrass."
"Okay. So a simple Gose dressed up with Cherrystone clams with a touch of Green Bullet hops, tied together with lemongrass."
"It should be cool when it gets nice and hot in July, like a day at a clam shack in a shaker pint."
Drink Digger because that happened.

"Dry-heathering"

Scott Smith is making it work in Pittsburgh. His incredible Session Beer Series just keeps knocking out really interesting session strength beers. Witness the latest:

Session Ale #52 "Drayman's Heather Ale" is a long-boil Scottish ale that's been cool fermented, and has 3 separate heather additions. One for flavor, one for aroma, and another "dry-heathering" done in the fermenter. This beer is 4.2% abv, fitting nicely into our "Under 4.5%" Session Ale guidelines, that we follow... most of the time.
Some history: You may already know that hops don't grow well in the Scottish climate, so rather than pay the high prices for the hops imported from their "friends" in England, the Scottish crafted their beers to have very low hopping rates... certainly very little hops were used for such frivolities as flavor and aroma hop additions. At those prices, hops were just used for bitterness, and even then as few as possible. (Don't let Ron hear you say that...) Local plants were often used as a substitute bitterness source, and since Heather was in abundance, it seemed the likely choice. So we thought we'd give it a try here.
The long boil used to brew these beers develops more carmelization in the kettle which carries through to the glass.  And the cool fermentation temps give them a bright clear malt profile without all the esters you'll find in an English Ale.

The Scottish hopping theory aside (and I'll admit, I used to repeat it), this sounds like a truly interesting beer. Again. Cheers, Scott!

Extreme Session Beer, Part II

After that last post about the Alström's Extreme Session Beer Project, it was interesting to see this post on The Notch blog. Chris Lohring is brewing a grodziskie, a mostly extinct Polish style of beer he described as "a beer made from 100% smoked wheat malt, very low ABV, very high hop character, fermented with an ale yeast, and served unfiltered yet with out yeast turbidity...True Grodziskie involves oak smoking green wheat (steeped and germinated wheat) while being dried and kilned."

I've had a shot at a (I guess non-traditional) grodziskie made at Yards, and it was really interesting and bold -- bacony, really, but refreshing.When I read that Chris was brewing one for The Notch, well, that's kind of exciting.

I was let down to read this, though:

"...the email came regarding Extreme Beer Fest. I was not on the invite list for participating brewers, as invites go to “brewers known for brewing extreme beers.” And it didn’t surprise me, as I understand I am the new kid on the block (at the same time being from the old school). We built our reputation at the Tremont Brewery on well balanced beers and were quick to call out extreme beers as gimmicks. So I had this coming to me.

Quite phlegmatic, Chris; tip of the hat to you for being mature about it. Why invites wouldn't go to both brewers known for extreme beers and session beers, I'm not so sure, but it is the Extreme Beer Festival, and the "Extreme Session Beer Project" is a subset within that, so... Anyway, the cool thing is Chris's reaction to suddenly not having an automatically appreciative audience for this quirky beer:

"I was too far down the path to Grodziskie to turn back."

Atta boy! He got the smoked green wheat malt (at Valley Malt, in Hadley, Mass., a very small husband-and-wife-run custom maltings) and went ahead and brewed a pilot batch. And now he's waiting on, as he put it, maybe the most important question:

how does Grodziskie taste? Is it in the dustbin of history for a reason? Well, it’s been one week in the fermenter, and I should have some sense of what this beer tastes like in another week. And then I can make the decision if this beer can scale to a commercial brewery, with commercial potential. With no captive audience to rely on at EBF, this beer will need to be sold to bars, and willingly purchased by craft beer fans. Something to ponder while I  gear up for the bottle release of Session Ale and Pils later this month. Sleepless nights are becoming common.

That's ballsy. Session beers are not for the faint of heart when it comes to brewing and selling them; at least, not yet. Tom Baker tells me that the session beers are a tough sell at Earth + Bread and Brewery (and they don't have one on, currently), only Victory seems to have no problem selling bitter at their pub (or maybe they just always have Uncle Teddy's on because Ron likes it, I dunno). All I ask: if you see a session-strength beer on at your local brewpub or bar, try it. And if it's good, tell me -- and I'll help get the word out, here, on Twitter, and on Facebook -- and most importantly, have another. 

Cheers! 

For Those of you Against the Conn-O-Session...

There have been a number of complaints about the Kennett Square BrewFest Connoisseur Session going all session beer this year. The easy response would be, "Bummer, dude. Open your damned mind a little." But that's not right: people are used to the idea of "extreme" beers being where the innovation is taking place in American craft brewing.

So take a look at this -- Shaun Hill, hardly a shrinking violet when it comes to extreme beer -- is returning to the U.S. (to open a new craft brewery) and returning to the Kennett Connoisseur Session...with the following: "I'll bring along some one offs - like a 2 year old Flemish Red, Fresh/Wet Hopped IPA, Smoked Sour Wheat beer (loosely based on a Lichtenhainer - a suggestion by Loren (aka Venom)) - 50% home smoked malt, fermented with Brettanomyces and conditioned with Lacto)." That last one's going to be at the Conn-O-Session, weighing in around 3.9% ABV.

Yeah. Session beers are dull, just bitters and milds. See you at Kennett!