Oskar Blues Beer Dinner | Hudson Valley Beer Events

Oskar Blues Beer Dinner
Friday January 21st, 2011  7pm
$49 per person
www.aromathymebistro.com

RSVP 845 647 3000

Grilled Skewered Shrimp, Sautéed Mustard Greens, Cilantro Pesto
Mama's Little Yellow Pils
Their new canned good is a delicious, small-batch version of the beer that made Pilsen, Czechoslovakia famous. Mama’s is made with hearty amounts of pale malt, German specialty malts, and traditional (Saaz) and 21st century Bavarian hops.

Roasted Beet, Honey Goat Cheese & Spinach Salad
Dale’s Pale Ale
Dale's Pale Ale is their flagship beer and America's first hand-canned craft beer. It's an assertive but deftly balanced beer (somewhere between an American pale ale and an India Pale Ale) brewed with hefty amounts of European malts and American hops.

Skirt Steak, Creamed Davenport Corn & Lime Mojo
Old Chub
Old Chub is a Scottish strong ale brewed with hearty amounts of seven different malts, including crystal and chocolate malts, and a smidge of US and UK hops. Old Chub also gets a dash of beechwood-smoked grains imported from Bamburg, Germany, home of the world's greatest smoked beers. Old Chub is 8% alcohol by volume.

Creamy Porcini and Raw Cheddar Polenta
GUBNA
Emphasizing that complexity of character can arise from simple elements, this ale is made with three malts and one hop. Its light amber color and slightly spicy malt character are derived from the use of German Dark Munich Malt and Rye Malt respectively. North American 2-row barley combines with the other grains to lay the foundation for the hop onslaught to come. Summit hops are used exclusively in the boil for bitterness, flavor and aroma but it doesn’t end there. Post-fermentation dry hopping allows the 10% ABV monstrosity to gently coax the citrus rind and grapefruit aroma to join the 100 IBUs already present. This beer should greet you with a pungent citrus blast, provide a spicy yet round middle and finish with a brisk, clean bitterness.

Ten Fidy Raspberry Ice Cream
Ten Fidy
This beer is equivalent of decadently rich milkshake made with malted-milk balls and Heaven’s best chocolate ice cream. Ten FIDY is about 10% ABV and is made with enormous amounts of two-row malts, chocolate malts, roasted barley, flaked oats and hops. Its huge-but-comforting flavors hide a whopping 98 IBUs that are deftly tucked underneath the beer’s mountains of malty goodness.

Sierra Nevada 30th anniversary beers on Tap | Hudson Valley

Sierra Nevada has brewed four beers in celebration of their past 30 years. All four beers have been brewed and are now in distribution. Aroma Thyme Bistro, the Hudson Valley's best beer & wine restaurant, has all four of Sierra Nevada's 30th anniversary beers in stock and ready to drink. Checkout the reviews of the four exciting variants below.


Fritz and Ken's Ale

The first in this series, Fritz and Ken's Ale, is an imperial stout (9.2% ABV) and was brewed by Fritz Maytag (Anchor Brewing) & Ken Grossman (Sierra Nevada Brewing).  It is opaque, capped nicely at the top with a thick chunky head that comes strong and dense with the swirl of a glass. 

It tastes as full flavored as can be; roast bomb on the front with dark chocolate and coffee beans, followed by a surprising amount of hops – although it is indicative to the Sierra Nevada style. The finish starts off with drying bakers chocolate, and progresses to a black coffee ending. It looks thick, creamy, and viscous. A nice level of carbonation keeps the aroma pouring out of the beer and lively on the palate. This has been around in Michiana for a while and probably most beer stores are out by now. 


Charlie, Fred and Ken’s Lager

The second release from the series, Charlie, Fred and Ken’s Lager, is an ‘Imperial Helles’ named  for its collaborators- Charlie Papazian (American Home brewer’s Association), Fred Eckhardt (Award Winning Beer Author) & Ken Grossman. 

This Imperial Helles Lager is a testament to the ever-evolving brewer’s art. Bold yet balanced with distinct toasted malt character, moderate sweetness and clean and floral hops. In appearance it looks light amber, large pillowy head, and good lacing. The beer smells slight citrus, some hops, and slight grassiness.
This one weighs in at 8.3% and pours a golden orange color with a thick head of slightly off white foam. Fruity esters, honey, roasted malts, peaches, and savory spices. The mouth feel is medium bodied, a little more than slightly sweet on the palate. Honey, fruits, with a mild bitter hop finish. Peaches, sweet malts, caramel, maybe even a bit of butterscotch.


Jack & Ken’s Ale

Sierra Nevada’s Jack and Ken’s Ale is the third of the brewery’s four 30th Anniversary releases. As with all the beers in the limited series, this brew is another collaboration. This time Ken Grossman gets together with legendary microbrewer Jack McAuliffe in an attempt to capture the revolutionary beers that were being created at Jack’s New Albion Brewery during the formative years of American craft beer history.
Weighing in at 10.2% ABV, this big beer is billed as a black barley wine and brewed with 100% American Cascade hops. The result of this collaboration is a complex brew with a good roasted character and an aggressive hop presence.

This “black barley wine” certainly fits the moniker Sierra Nevada has given it. It pours a dark, dark brown with ruby highlights when held up to the light. The late forming head was creamy and light tan in color, holding together nicely through the life of the beer. It is dark, roasty and full like a porter, but with the more aggressive hop profile of Sierra Nevada’s Bigfoot Barley wine, this third anniversary release is a special beer indeed. It’s well balanced for as complex as it is and should prove to age nicely.


Our Brewer’s Reserve: Oak Aged Ale

Brewer’s reserve is a special ale highlighting Sierra Nevada’s pioneering history and the innovative spirit that has carried them through all these years. It is a marriage of their three most acclaimed ales: Oak aged Bigfoot, Celebration Ale, and fresh Pale Ale blended together and generously dry-hopped. Drink it now, or save it for a future anniversary of your own.
Well for starters, this beer just looks sensational.  It has a deep copper color, almost light brown, with a thick creamy head of foam.  There are copious amounts of lacing that stick to the inside of the glass that are hanging around to the very last gulp. In terms of appearances, you couldn't ask for much more out of a beer.

There's a faint pine resin aroma that's pleasant; though perhaps a bit understated; and lots of clean grassy and herbal notes. On the palate, there's an initial sensation of sweetness that's no doubt derived from the oak.  A definite vanilla flavor comes first and blends nicely with the citrusy hop flavors.  The balance of the hops and oak lends a bit of a bright orange quality that slowly fades into a dry, bitter grapefruit/orange peel. All in all, it's very nicely balanced and there are loads of interesting flavors that keep us wanting more. There's a lot of nuance here and as it warms, more flavors are opening up. The finish becomes slightly more earthy and pine-like over time and we can taste a bit more of a toasty oak characteristic.

Great Divide Titan IPA in Cask at Aroma Thyme Bistro | Hudson Valley

Cask Beer night Friday January 14th from 3pm at Aroma Thyme in Ellenville.   Join us for our monthly cask beer night.  Call 845 647 3000 for more details or to make a reservation.  This cask, just like others, will go fast. 

Great Divide Titan IPA

Great Divide Titan IPA weighs in at 7.1% ABV and packs quite a bite. The tastes of the various hops added are distinctive, adding both citrus and woodsy notes to the brew. This one pours a hazy golden orange with a two-finger bubbly head that dissipates quickly but leaves a lot of lace. Titan IPA is a big, aggressively hopped India Pale Ale brewed for hop disciples. It starts out with piney hop aromas and citrus hop flavors, and finishes with a nice rich, malty sweetness that is balanced with crisp hop bitterness. It can be enjoyed with Grilled halibut, Thai curry and Strong/ soft cow’s milk cheeses.

Great Divide makes some of the best beers on the planet!

These beers have landed an impressive amount of acclaim: Great Divide beers have earned 17 Great American Beer Festival medals and 5 World Beer Cup awards. Great Divide was also ranked 8th in Ratebeer.com’s 2010 “The Best Brewers in the World” and was ranked 7th in Beer Advocate’s 2010 “All-Time Top Breweries on Planet Earth.”

CASK-CONDITIONED BEER ('REAL ALE') IN THE U.S.A.
What exactly is real ale?
Cask-conditioned beer, often referred to as 'real ale', is brewed from only traditional ingredients and allowed to mature naturally.

The unfiltered, unpasteurized beer still contains live yeast, which continues conditioning the beer in the cask (known as 'secondary fermentation'); this process creates a gentle, natural CO2 carbonation and allows malt and hop flavors to develop, resulting in a richer tasting drink with more character than standard keg ('brewery-conditioned') beers.

Real ale is always served without any extraneous gas, usually by manually pulling it up from the cellar with a handpump (also known as a 'beer engine'). This is the traditional way of brewing and serving beer; only a few decades ago did filtered, pasteurized, chilled beer served by gas become normal.

The only place in the world where cask-conditioned beer is still commonly available is Britain.
Is there much difference to keg beer?
Keg beers are generally sterile filtered and pasteurized as part of the brewing process. This kills the yeast, preventing any further conditioning, and the beer is then racked into sealed, gas-pressurized kegs. Such beers generally taste blander than their cask-conditioned counterparts, and the use of flash-chillers or cold rooms (*very* cold!) is standard as part of the serving process. That said, some microbrewers rack cask beer into kegs - though these are usually served with extraneous gas.

In many common brands of keg beer, cheap ingredients ('adjuncts') such as rice or maize are mixed with the malt to cut costs, but resulting in a 'light' beer with hardly any aroma or flavor. Chilling and the absorption of extraneous gas jointly mask the lack of flavor - with carbon dioxide you get an unnaturally fizzy pint; with nitrogen (or mixed gas with a larger nitrogen ratio) you get a pint with an unnaturally smooth and creamy head - either way these beers are always refreshing but usually taste of very little. Micro-breweries generally avoid the use of cheap adjuncts, so their keg products usually taste far superior to the nationally available brands. Also, all beers imported from Germany are required by that country's laws to be free of non-traditional ingredients.

I'm not criticizing all keg beers, simply outlining the often little-known qualities of real ale by comparison. There are many really tasty ales which are 'keg' (but plenty more which aren't tasty!), though well-kept cask versions of the same brands would undoubtedly be found to be even more flavorsome if compared side-by-side.
But keg beer is 'normal' -
what's it got that real ale hasn't?
Keg beers have a much longer shelf life, especially when compared to a partially full cask. Real ales have to be manually vented and tapped, and left to settle (or the customer gets a cloudy pint due to the presence of yeast and protein - though harmless if drunk like this). Also, real ale will start to taste of vinegar (known as 'oxidising') if left in a part-full cask for too long. This is caused by acetic acid forming from a reaction with oxygen in the atmosphere.