Three-putting was the name of the game for me today—nine out of 18!– and yet I don’t think I was putting too badly on this classic Bill Coore-Ben Crenshaw design. The mostly massive and slick greens were just that tough, with the wind playing its significant role.

The eighth at the Plantation Course. Getting on in reg is only the beginning.

Fellow Warrior Brian McCallen and I were playing in an agreeable foursome with Scott Robison, director of sales and marketing for our hosts at the Ritz-Carlton, and Ben Hongo, the director of instruction at the Kapalua Golf Academy. Both were able to give us useful local knowledge, and one can use all the help available on this course.

It’s nice to know during the round that the grounds have been well-trodden by many a winner of the PGA Tour, which plays its opening tournament here each year.

The Hyundai Tournament of Champions is open only to winners from the previous season, but is a wide-open resort course the rest of the year. However, only amateurs with a death wish would play from the 7,411-yard Championship tees.

We wisely chose the Regular and Resort Combo tees—an up and back teeing pattern easy to figure out on the useful scorecard. (The course is managed by Troon Golf.) It worked out to a 6,330-yard march to a still-hefty 132 slope, all the challenge we needed and then some.

On the very first hole I hit a decent drive that went over a slight rise, but when I arrived at my ball found it had rolled hard right and just inches from some hazardous cabbage. And so it goes throughout, the land heaves mimicking the ocean swells of the nearby Pacific, and the target rarely the middle of the fairway or the flag. It’s all about following the flow of the holes and trying to figure out which way the approaches will take your shots.

I didn’t know how lucky I was two-putting on the first hole, until three-putting from three feet on the second.

That’s because a round here is also all about the wind, to be sure. I was amazed, and a little appalled, on the ninth hole, a par-5 of a mere 490 yards but playing directly into the wind today. I crushed a driver, crushed a three-wood, and still didn’t make up onto a plateau that gives a level approach to the green. (The consolation is that nine is the No. 1 handicap hole.)

“Yeah, this is about average,” Ben said, when I asked him if the wind was always this strong.

Getting ready to blast one onto the eighteenth green for an eagle putt.

What the wind taketh away, it also giveth. I almost drove the green on the 328-yard par-4 twelfth (if only that pesky bunker 273 yards out hadn’t gotten in the way). But the big payoff came on the home hole, the notorious par-5 eighteenth, which plays from 663 yards for the pros, who are regularly gunning for the green in two anyway.

That’s because the hole normally plays downwind, and if the drive makes it over the crest of a hill it will roll a long ways and down to the left. Then one merely need negotiate a downhill, side hill lie and sail over deep vegetation to have a shot at hitting the green.

We teed it up from 538 yards and I nutted the drive. Then I nutted a three-wood that landed about 25 yards right of the green and tacked due left onto the surface. Easy three-putt par from there.

View from a Plantation House window

There’s a lot to contend with at the Plantation, and it can wear you out. But it’s a fair blend of endurance and exhilaration. Even while the golf tests and teases, the scenery is a big-sky panorama of unfolding island splendor.

There’s truth in saying that the courses in Maui play among such beautiful settings that how you’re playing becomes almost secondary. That seems particularly true at the Plantation Course. But the “almost” sure makes me want to have at it again.

My sole complaint was that I was too tired after the round to take advantage of the optional round on the Plantation Course’s predecessor, the Arnold Palmer-Francis Duane-designed Bay Course, an easier but also ingratiating track.

Five rounds in four days may have played a part as well, so I settled for the leisurely lunch at the Plantation House Restaurant, taking in a couple more Big Swell IPAs as well as views of Maui’s north shore and the islands of Lanai and Molokai. A day in full. But next time–Bay Course, without fail.

The ninth hole on the Bay Course, Kapalua

This time I ran across it in its natural habitat, and was lucky enough to be in The Terrace Restaurant at the Ritz-Carlton Kapalua. For starters, the weather was a lot better.

Drinking the beer with a thick blanket of Vermont snow visible through the window was enough to put visions of grass skirts in my head; the flavor sealed the deal.

Made with six different malts, Cascade and Columbus hops and hand-toasted coconut, the beer gives off a mild roasted quality with coffee and chocolate notes.

The coconut is actually fairly subtle; it doesn’t fall out of a tree and knock you on the head, but it’s more apparent if you let the beer warm slightly.

Ritz-Carlton Kapalua executive chef John Zaner

Why the capital letters in the CoCoNut PorTeR name? “Just being weird one day,” Garrett W. Marrero, the brewery kahuna told me.

I expected him to tell me more the next night, when we planned to visit the company’s brewpub not far from the hotel. Meanwhile, this time I enjoyed the view of palms, pool, blue sky and beach, while savoring the new menu at The Terrace.

Formerly strictly a breakfast venue, The Terrace is in the process of becoming the premier restaurant at the property, under the aegis of executive chef John Zaner.

Confronting our usual hardships, the Golf Road Warriors had packed up in the morning and driven from Wailea in south Maui (which is sort of west) and headed to west Maui (which is sort of north), with a stop at the King Kamehameha Golf Club. What the heck, here’s a map:

Leaving the Fairmont Kea Lani and landing in the Ritz-Carlton, Kapalua is akin to abandoning the castle for the palace. It’s a no-lose situation. The Ritz is a 54-acre luxury playground within the 23,000-acre Kapalua Resort. (And where, I hear, one spa treatment includes soaking in a beer bath with Maui Brewing Co. brew.)

It wasn’t until we reached the Ritz that I found time to do some soaking myself in one of the property’s outdoor whirlpools and had a chance to walk along the beach and put my feet in the Pacific.

A small wedding was underway right on the beach—a man and a woman with two young girls, the officiant and a photographer.

Later, as though ordered up by the Maui Visitors Bureau, a world class sunset unfolded right off my balcony—a cerulean blue base with vibrant streaks of brilliant red, mounds of cottony clouds and the sound of pounding surf. Kind of what I’d imagined with that first sip of CoCoNut PorTeR.

Name: CoCoNut PorTeR
Brewer: Maui Brewing Company, Hawaii
Style: Porter, plus
ABV: 6%
Availability: Year-round, nine western states and Virginia and Maryland
For More Information: www.mauibrewingco.com

Aerial shot of the Ritz-Carlton, Kapalua

The latter would be Ted Robinson, Sr., who laid out this unique track in 1991: “The golfer attacks; the designer defends. Such is the adversarial relationship that defines the creation of a golf course.”

The home hole at the King Kamehameha Golf Club from the clubhouse

The Golf Road Warriors attacked the King Kamehameha course on a beautiful day, with fairly mild winds. Such is not often the case said director of golf Rick Castillo: “This course was built for the wind.” Robinson defended par by running almost every other hole directly into or with the winds. Only the downhill par-3 tenth hole plays into cross winds. It makes for an interesting day of club selection.

The course fascinates anyway. It’s location in Wailuku, off the Honoapiilani Highway between our last destination (Wailea) and our next (Kapalua), makes for a different experience from the seaside courses. Yet with what Castillo calls its “bi-coastal view” the course does offer a ubiquitous ocean vista with the dominant Haleakala volcano, as well as the panorama of the central Maui valley below the course and the West Maui Mountain above.

Indeed, the course moves terrace-like up the mountain on both nines, affording views of zip lines traversing some peaks, while higher up ethereal mists play among the sensuous folds.

There’s not a coconut tree to be found, but plenty of the unique Cook Island pines. The airy branches give the tree a look we easterners associate with camouflaged cell phone towers.

The Red-crested Cardinal

I should add that the flora and fauna of Maui was constantly intriguing; I was especially struck here by the Nene Geese and the Red-crested Cardinal. Apparently the latter is actually in the Tanager family, but is also known as the Brazilian Cardinal, since it was introduced to the islands from South America around 1930.

That predates golf in Hawaii, and certainly the King Kamehameha Golf Club, which began life as the Waikapu Valley Country Club, morphed into the Grand Waikapu Golf & Spa Resort, and then closed in 1999. Nature took over, and when Japanese businessman Makoto Kaneko purchased the property in 2004 he had to call in the designer’s son, Ted Robinson, Jr., to reclaim the course.

He did a good job, and the course remains a pure golf experience, with no housing or resorts to impede one’s sense of solitude on this private course—which is nonetheless open to “Guest for a day” tee times. There’s also the public Kahili Golf Course on site for daily fee play.

With its hill-climbing landscaping, it’s important to keep the ball in play in the fairways, as Castillo warned us. While Maui greens average 9,000 square feet, the dance floors here work out to 6,600 square feet, many of them double or triple-tiered.

Some holes are semi-blind, so member knowledge is useful. The short par-4 sixth is a good example, where a straight or right shot leaves a blind approach over a falling stream to a three-tiered green. But hit driver left and you’re in a pond. I drew a three wood and wound up only a few yards from the water, but with a good view of the green. I walked off with a par and admiration for the hole, while my mates were grumbling.

I was grumbling around the sixteenth hole, when both partner Jim Frank and I hit shots that seemed only mildly right, but which had bounced, lost, into an ornamental hedge adjoining the thirteenth. (Where Brian McCallen made some kind of Golf Road Warrior history, as noted here.)

The grumbling was mainly over the match we were having with Brian and Jeff Wallach, then as lost as our golf balls.

The King Kamehameha Golf Club clubhouse from the first tee

Where Have You Gone, Frank Lloyd Wright?

So, what does Joe Dimaggio have to do with the King Kamehameha Golf Club?

Nothing.

Joltin’ Joe’s name keeps popping up because Marilyn Monroe’s keeps popping up in regard to the remarkable clubhouse on the site, that with some reason. But Joe was not in the picture with Marilyn at the time. So strike him from the record here and don’t ask about him, which will make Rick Castillo happy.

Director of Golf Rick Castillo

Castillo is a pretty happy fellow anyway, since he not only attends to his golf director duties, but he gets to act as a docent for the artistic work of art that is the clubhouse, inside and out. And he’s pretty good at it, too.

But he has a lot to work with with the clubhouse, a Frank Lloyd Wright design that was almost built a number of times as a private house. One of those times was to be a home in Roxbury, Connecticut for Marilyn Monroe and her then-husband, Arthur Miller. The original design called for a 7,000 square-foot structure. The Monroe-Miller version was expanded to 14,000 square-feet.

But the couple divorced in 1958, Wright died in 1959, and the plans weren’t revisited until they emerged as the clubhouse in 1993, enlarged to three levels, 74,000 square-feet, and completed at a cost of $35 million. “It would probably take $90 million today,” said Castillo.

To put it simply, it’s an astonishing building. And as the quote from Wright on the scorecard puts it: “No house should ever be on a hill or on anything. It should be of the hill. Belonging to it. Hill and house should live together each the happier for the other.”

The men's championship trophy

Aside from the structure itself are all the interior design elements based on Wright’s works. (Granted, he may not have recognized the Japanese-style sit-down showers in the locker room. And he might have wondered about the TV in the sauna, too.)

Makoto Kaneko, whose locker is no more prominent than member Clint Eastwood’s, is perhaps better known as the owner of the racehorse Deep Impact, winner of the Japanese Triple Crown in 2005. When he reopened the property in 2006 as the King Kamehameha Golf Club, Kaneko also commissioned a remarkable collection of artworks based on Hawaiian culture and history. This even extends to the club’s championship trophies, hewn from local Koa wood.

It all makes the location museum-visit worthy, and Castillo is fine with that, even for those who arrive without a set of golf clubs: “We’re a private club, but it’s not a gated enclave. Anyone interested in Hawaiian history and art or the work of Frank Lloyd Wright is welcome to visit.”

Tough lie

Only time for a quick post this evening, but since I know all the fellow Golf Road Warriors will be wanting to put this one up, I thought I’d try to sneak it in. This is an actual golf shot played by Brian McCallen, after his drive on the twelfth hole of the King Kamehameha Golf Club in Wailuku, Maui this morning.

Displaying the sternest play-it-as-it-lies approach, Brian scrambled onto the lava rock wall and had at it. If the result was not particularly stunning, full plaudits for the mere attempt.

I quickly suggested a title of “Brian on the Rocks” but fellow Road Warrior Jim Frank, displaying his own wise editorial judgment, aptly altered it to “McCallen on the Rocks.” So all credit to Jim, too. Mostly we were all standing around laughing. More on the course and the club to come, but for now, this one’s in the books.

Oh well....

]]> http://theaposition.com/tombedell/golf/4221/mccallen-on-the-rocks/feed 0 http://theaposition.com/tombedell/golf/lifestyle/4302/tap-beer-of-the-day-big-swell-ipa http://theaposition.com/tombedell/golf/lifestyle/4302/tap-beer-of-the-day-big-swell-ipa#comments Wed, 24 Apr 2013 05:55:02 +0000 Tom Bedell http://tombedell.com/?p=4302 Read more »]]> I suppose it’s as good a time as any to talk about the Kona Brewing Company. Somewhere along the line I overruled my better judgment and had a Longboard Lager. I pretty much got what I expected— a bellywash lawnmower beer with little character beyond a disagreeable vegetal note.

I grant you, I was prejudiced going in, since I know Kona is part of the Craft Brew Alliance, which includes Widmer Brothers Brewing, Redhook Ale Brewery, and the gluten-free Omission Beer. And that A-B InBev owns 32% of CBA, mainly in a distribution deal.

Not everyone knows this, however, and there’s no way to really figure it out by looking at the packaging of the bottles, cans or six-packs. And it’s this lack of information that has been driving the recent “craft versus crafty” debate in the beer world.

Longboard label flipped to make it easier to read the brewery locations

The big boys claim that there should be no need to know—that it’s what’s in the glass that counts. I can sympathize with this to a point; just because the King of Beers producer is involved doesn’t mean these breweries necessarily churn out lousy beer. The last time I had a Widmer Hefeweizen it was pretty tasty. Same with a Blackhook Porter from Redhook.

But that time was actually quite a while ago, probably while stuck in an airport. Because I choose not to throw my money A-B’s way.

And that’s the craft brewers’ contention—that the conglomerates are being crafty by not divulging information to consumers that will allow them to make such an informed choice. So we have Shock Top from A-B InBev or Blue Moon and Third Shift from SABMiller, and you’d never know it to look at the labels.

Kona did start on the Big Island and still has a brewery there. But a look at the Longboard Lager label doesn’t indicate at which of four locations—Hawaii, Oregon, Washington or New Hampshire—the beer is actually being brewed at.

And one source tells me that even many drinking Kona beer in Hawaii are actually imbibing suds made on the mainland and transported here.

Does it even matter? Maui Brewing Co. owner Garrett Marrero thinks so, as does Thomas Kerns of the Big Island Brewhaus, also serving as president of the Hawaiian Craft Brewers Guild. Both are working with the state legislature on a bill that would require labeling indicating the origin of a beer’s brewing and packaging.

I think so, too. So when in Maui, I’ll stick to the Maui Brewing Co. beers, all brewed right on the island.

Having had all of the regular line of MBC’s canned beers, I have to say Big Swell is my favorite, although the 6.8% ABV is a little daunting. Have a couple of these with lunch and it’s time for a nap. That might not be so bad for the general visitor to Maui, but a Golf Road Warrior is always on the go, and it’s better if the going isn’t too blurry.

The beer is alluringly drinkable, however. It has a citrus and tropical fruit nose thanks to a wild mixture of hops–Columbus, Chinook, Centennial, Citra, Simcoe and the Falconer’s Flight blend.

And yet with a strong malt bill the overall impression leans more toward a sweet and filling body rather than a highly bitter west coast or northwest hop bomb.

This may raise the old question of whether Hawaii is actually west coast or not. As I understand it, it’s not considered so in general parlance, west coast referring to California, Oregon and Washington. But in official geographic circles, Hawaii and Alaska are considered West Coast, Pacific Coast or Pacific Region.

In any case, on the east coast there is no Big Swell beer, and that’s why we drink it here.

Name: Big Swell IPA
Brewer: Maui Brewing Company, Hawaii
Style: IPA
ABV: 6.8%
Availability: Year-round, nine western states and Virginia and Maryland
For More Information: www.mauibrewingco.com

Answer below, but for now I’ll say it can be found right outside the pro shop at the Wailea Old Blue Golf Club in Maui, part of the Wailea trio that includes the Gold and Emerald Courses we played yesterday.

We continued our lessons in reading the grain on the Arthur Jack Snyder course. I didn’t think too much of the opening holes, which seemed a little tame and scruffy, not much different from anything you’d find on a residential Florida course.

Then we came to the fourth hole, a 538-yard three-shotter. This may well be where the old saw originated to beware the distracting scenery, lest one foul up the golf at hand. Distracted I was, but who can blame me?:

Fourth hole at Wailea Old Blue

It looks like the original picture postcard, but for me it played like the No. 3 handicap hole it is. With the massive, looming, 10,000-foot plus Haleakala Volcano in the background, I blew up sure enough, managing to lose a ball and adding a three-jack indignity on my way to an eight.

Hello, Arthur Jack Snyder. I was barely aware of Snyder (1917-2005) before tackling Old Blue, and subsequent research showed I’d barely touched any of his courses other than in Arizona, where he mainly lived.

Arthur Jack Snyder

Jack, as he was mostly known, was the son of a greenkeeper (the family was of Scottish descent) and he and two younger brothers carried on the family trade. He often said, “I learned to walk on a golf course.” He studied landscape architecture at Penn State University and designed his first nine-hole layout in 1941, the no-longer existing Harmony Farm Golf Club in Jane Lew, West Virginia.

Snyder served as superintendent at Oakmont for two years prior to the 1953 U.S. Open there, but then moved his family to Arizona where he firmly established his course design career, totaling more than 60 projects, serving a term as president of the American Society of Golf Course Architects, and mentoring younger designers, in particular Forrest Richardson, with whom he collaborated toward the end of his life.

Richardson has several moving tributes to Snyder in words and video on his website, all of which suggest that he was a generous and ingratiating man, proud of his work but generally self-effacing. (Geoff Cornish comes to mind.) In short, the kind of guy you wished you knew.

It was in 1965 that Snyder was asked to relocate to Hawaii to help with the emerging Ka’anapali Resort. Before he left the islands he had left his stamp on six 18-hole courses and has to be considered a pioneer in establishing Hawaii as a must-visit golf destination.

The Old Blue is said to be the third-oldest course in Hawaii after Mauna Kea and Royal Ka’anapali, which is on our dance card for later in the week. It put the Wailea Resort on the map after the first nine opened in December, 1971.

A luau to celebrate the opening of the first nine holes of the Old Blue in December, 1971. That's probably Snyder second from the right on the left side of the table.

The course shows its age a bit. The two ponds on the ninth hole reminded me of something out of early motel architecture—“the cee-ment ponds” Jeff called them—though I note I walked off with a double bogey.

Old Blue could probably use some updating, a project already drawn up by Forrest Richardson, to restore bunkers and features to their original intent while installing new tees and expanding greens.

The Rainbow Eucalyptus

But the course is still a classic with accumulating beauty and an ever-present sense of fun, one of Snyder’s fundamental principles. “Golf is a game,” he would say. “It’s supposed to be fun.” Amen.

We had had plenty of fun by the time we rolled off the Old Blue, back to the clubhouse and under the ample shade of the Rainbow Eucalyptus tree (Eucalyptus deglupta for the scientifically minded). It’s also called the Mindanao Gum, as it’s more common in the Philippine rainforests of Mindanao.

The tree is the only Eucalyptus species found in the northern hemisphere. It may lack the oils and aroma normally associated with Eucalyptus, but it plays its trumps with the wild multi-hued bark. I like to think the colors represent a bit of the Tartan pattern favored by the ASGCA in the jackets its members wear, and a bit of the spirit of Arthur Jack Snyder.

It’s not too far-fetched. Old Blue was Snyder’s favorite design, and he drove around in a car with WAILEA license plates. I hit the green on the one-shot finisher and two-putted for par. Had I known that after his death Snyder’s ashes were scattered in the bunker behind the eighteenth hole I might have over-clubbed, just to pay Jack a visit. But I guess I had anyway.

I had two such earworms battling for supremacy on this trip, both remaining on the pleasing side of the divide, if nonetheless a bit obsessive. The first was a song by the late, great Warren Zevon, “The Hula Hula Boys,” here in a YouTube version useful as a soundtrack for the next few paragraphs (keeping in mind that not all of the imagery is G-rated).

The song appeared on Zevon’s 1982 The Envoy album, and apparently grew out of a vacation on Maui. In the liner notes to his anthology, I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead, Zevon noted that the chorus has no particular meaning beyond “Sing the chorus” or “Get to the point,” and yet it’s lovely, and seems to embody some kind of Hawaiian spirit in a way the lyrics do not. They’re about a hapless lover, comic with an edge, almost a precursor to the film “Forgetting Sarah Marshall.”

Apparently Hunter Thompson quoted the lyrics in his book, The Curse of Lono, hence some of the Thompson imagery in the YouTube video. Anyway, I’ve always loved the song, although I think it became lodged in my cranium this time around when I read about the potential difficulty of some of the golf courses we’d be playing. One line in particular kept shooting between the synapses: “I didn’t have to come to Maui to be treated like a jerk….”

Well, so far so good–no great betrayals going on out at the courses.

The second tune, “Rolling Down to Old Maui,” is a traditional whaling song perhaps best known in a version by the late, great Stan Rogers.

The tune, particularly the chorus, couldn’t have been more appropriate than this morning, when the Golf Road Warriors took to the sea. True, we weren’t going whaling, but we were on the Hina, a good ship, taut and free, piloted by Captain Sage Spalding of Hawaiian Sailing Canoe Adventures.

The sea was a bit angry this day, my friends, so the snorkeling we had planned as part of the morning was scuttled. But the cruise out from Polo Beach, the southern shoreline right off the Fairmont Kea Lani property, was pure refreshment for the soul.

The Hina is a traditional Hawaiian outrigger sailing canoe, or wa’apea, which Spalding sails in around-the-island races when not carrying passengers and passing on his considerable knowledge of Hawaiian history and culture. He’s native-born, descended from missionaries who arrived on a Boston whaling ship in the mid-1800s.

Captain Spalding and the blue Pacific

The views were nonpareil as we soared over the blue Pacific, and we had a new perspective on the blazing white Spanish-influenced architecture of our home for a few days. As we drew closer back to shore we could see the teeming activity at the Fairmont, where there are endless programs afoot for the active or culturally curious.

Detail from the Fairmont Kea Lani outrigger

A full-time Cultural Coach, Jonelle Kamai, is on hand for those after a better understanding of traditional Hawaii. The hotel offers its own outrigger experience, but land-based tours might center around native or non-native plants, the Hawaiian language, or spinning local myths and legends during storytelling evenings. There are monthly day-long celebrations that encompass music (ukuleles down by the sea?), seminars and dining. (Yes, they still pound poi here.)

All too soon we had to drag the Hina back on shore, but it was a fine short ride in a fast machine, captured here in the video of our jaunt.

I can be seen paddling in this documentary, and I can attest that my exertions contributed absolutely no progress to the effort. But it was fun anyway, since in my mind I was rolling down to old Maui.

Bedell at the oar. No idea what Brian McCallen is up to.

The term refers to that period after work when one relaxes, and it’s almost onomatopoeic, isn’t it? My work of the day had consisted of playing 36 at the Wailea Golf Course, so clearly I needed some pau hana time.

So in the early evening we wandered from the main building at the Fairmont down toward the beach, past the evening yoga practitioners, and into one of the 37 two-and three-bedroom luxury villas that are part of the property, obviously ideal for families or golf groups. (The main hotel includes 413 one-bedroom suites.)

We sat out on the villa’s veranda enjoying the start of another in a regular series of stunning Hawaiian sunsets, as Charles elucidated some of the Fairmont’s qualities since opening in 1991 and undergoing a $28 million revitalization over the last three years.

Enjoying an enviable 80% occupancy rate, the resort does have a relative bargain period in September, when more couples arrive and golfers might look to book some group trips.

Activity abounds at any time, including the outrigger experience we were to attempt the next morning, and depicted in serendipitous fashion on the label of the Hapa Brown Ale bottles I was successfully attempting to empty.

Hapa literally means “half,” and generally refers to the mixed blood inhabitants of the islands, which outnumber native Hawaiians (said to make up under ten percent of the population), but in any case result in what the Urban Dictionary defines as: “Damn good-looking people.”

Hawai’i Nui suggests the Hapa Brown is a blend of beers to create a unique brew, in this case a strong and pretty good-looking American Brown Ale clocking in at 6.4% ABV.

If the races on Hawaii are an intriguing blend, the history of the Hawai’i Nui company is a complex and currently murky one, the brewery begun in 2007 by former Kona Brewing employees. It later merged with the Mehana Brewing Co. and was, pretty much as I was draining a glass, embroiled in bankruptcy proceedings.

Too bad, since the beer is quite good. It’s a dark, rich, sweet and tangy brown with some roasted notes and a hint of tangerine from the Amarillo hops, certainly more to be sipped than gulped. One can only hope it survives the legal imbroglio and escapes the endangered list.

Regardless of our heritage, we felt like damn good-looking people when we finally meandered to the Fairmont’s signature restaurant, Kō. The Hapa Brown wasn’t available there, so I didn’t actually take a break from the Maui Brewing beers–three of them were on tap.

There’s still one working sugarcane factory on Maui, and the menu at Kō, which means “sugarcane,” is an homage to the culinary influence of the sugarcane plantation era.

An ethnically diverse menu includes family recipes from the kitchen’s equally diverse staff, hapa and otherwise, all under the wing of executive chef Tylun Pang. A local legend as well-known for his generous community involvement as his culinary skills, Pang is the author of the award-winning 2010 cookbook What Maui Likes to Eat, giving 100% of the book’s proceeds to the Maui Culinary Academy.

Tylun Pang

Pang stopped by our table as we were working through one marvelous dish after another, and if self-effacing, he was clearly proud of the staff and restaurant, as well he might be. The Fairmont poured $5.5 million into creating Kō, which opened a year ago April and it has already been named the 2013 Maui Restaurant of The Year.

I was ready to stuff the ballot box after sailing through a Kobe Beef Poke, a Portuguese Bean Soup, and Monchong in a Macadamia Nut Crust. And if the main menu is diverse, it goes still further in creating special menus for about every known dining predilection—Dash/Heart Healthy, Sugar Balanced, Vegan, Macrobiotic Meal, Gluten-Free and Raw.

If you can’t eat well here, you can’t eat.

Name: Hapa Brown Ale
Brewer: Hawai’i Nui Brewing, Hilo, Hawaii
Style: Brown Ale
ABV: 6.4%
Availability: Uncertain
For More Information: www.hawaiinuibrewing.com

Our Kō Restaurant table by day, minus ravenous Golf Road Wariors

About to tee off on the Wailea Golf Club Gold Course

On Earth Day I was quite a bit removed from my usual portion of the planet. After a long, endlessly snowy winter in Vermont, standing on the first tee of Gold Course at the Wailea Golf Club in Maui was a near revelation. It was a little like going to my first baseball game as a kid–walking into the huge edifice, negotiating the concrete byways, climbing a ramp and then being wonderstruck by the marvelous and dazzling greensward.

No wonder I’m smiling here, ready to tee off with the broad Pacific as a backdrop to the opener on this Robert Trent Jones II layout from 1994. I’m probably looking at the majestic Mount Haleakala, the 10,000-foot plus volcano that was constantly wreathed in what looked like a rainy mist during our round.

Not visible in the photo is my thought process, which rationally told me I had just traveled about 20 hours to arrive at this spot, I wasn’t getting any younger, and that to entertain the thought of playing 36—an optional 18 on the sister Emerald Course in the afternoon—would be close to insane.

But how often do you get to Hawaii? asked one of the other voices I listen to. Besides, it’s Earth Day, and you should try to cover as much of it as possible.

I decided to just see how it went, but the second voice grew more insistent after I sunk about a 25-foot putt for birdie on the first hole, undoubtedly a Hawaiian makana (gift).

Chales Head (left) and GRW Jeff Wallach

I played the Gold Course once before almost exactly seven years ago, and I confess it looked brand new to me. There was much to relearn about it. Luckily fellow Golf Road Warrior Jeff Wallach and I were playing with Charles Head, general manager of the Fairmont Kea Lani where we’re staying, and a stick familiar with the layout.

Charles gave us our first lesson in reading the grain, an essential tool to putting halfway decently on Maui’s Bermuda greens, since the grain seems to contribute more to the break than incline. (The easiest way for the uninitiated to do this is to look at the cup. The cut of the grass will be a bit unruly and brown on one side of the cup, and this is the direction the grain is moving in. The ball will break toward the grain with greater speed. Putting against the grain will require more oomph. Either direction requires nerve.)

Something’s Happening Isn’t It, Mr. Jones?

Another valuable lesson came when I hooked my ball on the second hole and kept playing down the left side. “It’s actually a better way to approach the green from there,” said Charles. “You have a clear shot to the green, whereas we [Charles and Jeff] have to play over that right side bunker.” The lesson applied to the course as a whole, and the strategic mind of RTJ II. He usually gives one logical way to approach the putting service without undue hazard, of which there were plenty otherwise.

And having played with Jones last year at the Navarino Bay Course he had recently completed in Greece, I knew that flag-seeking wasn’t really an option, either. Jones loves to put a lot of movement into his greens, so that some balls can travel quite a distance from the landing spot. Your job—figure out what direction they’re heading in. (If you’re not playing with Charles Head the course guide will help.)

Having read up on the Gold before arriving in Hawaii I thought it was going to be a beast for a mid-handicapper like me. But both the fairways and greens are huge, and we made our own smart strategic decision—we played from the 6,152-yard white tees, which at a 127 slope seemed enough to chew on.

Lava rocks framing the fifth hole of the Gold Course

So, aside from the opening birdie, I played my mid-handicap game with less trouble than anticipated from the many bunkers and lava rock areas at my disposal. Granted, the 544-yard seventh, the number one handicap hole, turned into a disaster for me, making its name, Huaka’i Loihi (Long Journey) painfully apt.

Going Green

The Gold Course was built as a championship layout, and indeed it hosted the Senior Skins Game for seven years. But as long-time head pro Rusty Hathaway said, “The Emerald is a fine course, too, carved out of the same lava and scrub land by RTJ II, and from the back tees it will give you all the shot-making you require.

“The Emerald greens add a difficulty level with more potential hole locations. But you have some drivable par-4s, some par-5s reachable in two.”

Sounded good to me. So, after 18 golden holes, I decided to press on with Jeff, to see what RTJ II had wrought at the Emerald, which also opened in 1994.

I expected to wilt at some point, and indeed I threw up two dreaded eights on the incoming nine. But I also had three birdies–my four on the day some kind of personal record. (With the exception of the time I had over-hastily agreed to play 108 holes in one day for a fund-raiser.) I also thought it was a neat parley that I notched par-4s on holes ten and 17, which share a double green.

Emerald Course tenth hole, sharing a double green with seventeen.

In short, I played a little better than my mid-handicap game, and promptly fell in love with the Emerald Course. Though we had gained some yardage by moving back to the blue tees (6,407 yards), the slope had dipped to 124.

As Rusty had suggested, the action on the Emerald is largely on the greens, as the terrain offers a somewhat softer, shapelier aspect than the Gold. And it’s bedecked in more floral finery as well, as well as a profusion of unique birds and not a few scurrying mongooses.

After 36 holes, and maybe a Bikini Blonde or two, I felt like I’d given Earth Day a pretty good run. I can only hope it’s not seven lean years before I return once more to Wailea.

I think we’ll hold up quite well.

The golf shirt I'll be wearing tomorrow

Granted, tonight I’m half dead from a twenty-hour travel day and three different flights to get to Maui, but here I am, and when I wandered into my deluxe room here at the Fairmont, what was waiting for me but an ice bucket with some Maui Brewing Company cans in it. Off to a good start! I had a Bikini Blond Lager out of the bucket, into a glass, and out on my balcony faster than you can unbuckle an airplane seatbelt.

Remember last December? Not only did we survive Mayan Doomsday, heading over the Fiscal Cliff, and the NHL lockout, but another PGA Tour season was set to debut, in Maui as usual. Life was good, especially for the winners teeing it up at the Hyundai Classic over at the Plantation Course at Kapalua.

Visitors lucky enough to be on the island had a chance to head over to the Maui Brewing Company brewpub in Kahana to tee up a taste of the limited release Aloha B’ak’tun, which more or less translates as “hello and goodbye” and was actually brewed December 21, the day the end of the world was supposed to be upon us. (The participants who failed to gain a card at Q-School know better.)

The MBC’s brewing optimism led to a 7% ABV Belgian-style Stout concocted with chocolate, cinnamon and locally-grown chipotle peppers. A limited amount found its way to cans, the brewery’s preferred method of packaging.

That’s good news for the rest of us, since the year-round products actually find their way into local golf course beverage carts and are shipped to nine western states as well as Virginia and Maryland.

I didn’t get a chance to try the Aloha B’ak’tun, but we’re visiting the brewery on Thursday night, so we’ll see what turns up. Meanwhile, there are other MBC beers to try, and we might as well start, as with most beer tastings, at the lighter end of the spectrum.

Besides, Maui’s Bikini Blonde Lager is stocked on the beverage carts at the Wailea Golf Club, where we’ll be teeing it up tomorrow.

Sheila Eoff at the Wailea Golf Club

Marla Fowler at the Wailea Golf Club

This Helles style lager is suitably light (which is what Helles means in German), a pretty blonde in the glass, with a candy-like sweetness in the nose and a surprising hint of apricot, which I can only guess come from the use of Liberty, Sterling and Hersbruker hops.

The brisk carbonation gives a crisp and tangy feel to the beer, making it a pleasing thirst-quencher and likely a strong contender as a gateway beer to the craft brew uninitiated. It’s not all that far removed from typical American lagers downed by the hoi polloi (a Greek term, actually, not Hawaiian).

Yet there’s an understated elegance to the beer that raises it far above the ranks of mass market bellywash. Looking forward to tomorrow’s round!

Name: Bikini Blonde Lager
Brewer: Maui Brewing Company, Hawaii
Style: Helles Lager
ABV: 5.1%
Availability: Year-round, nine western states and Virginia and Maryland
For More Information: www.mauibrewingco.com

But now I’m heading back, seven years later almost to the week, with our hearty band of Golf Road Warriors. We all land on Sunday, but the three of us arriving from the east probably won’t come to our senses until Monday. That’s assuming we ever do, trying to assimilate Pacific wonders after a tough eastern winter.

I note the golf itinerary is similar to my last visit, and I’m curious to see if I remember any of the holes at Wailea Gold, Royal Ka’anapali or the Plantation Course at Kapalua.

The addition to the roster will be a round at the private King Kamehameha Golf Club (although there is a Guest for a Day experience available). The subtraction is play at Makena, which will undergo a year-long renovation and re-open at some point in the first quarter of 2014.

Robert Trent Jones Jr. designed the two tracks at Makena, but whether he’ll be involved in the redesign is unclear. An initial report in The Maui News suggested he would not be, but once the Golf Road Warriors hit the ground we’ll see if we can find out more.

Wonder which bunker I'll be in on Monday. Wailea Gold tenth hole. (Photo by Michael French)

Jones will be well-represented on this trip anyway, having designed Royal Ka’anapali and Wailea Gold and Emerald–the latter the first of several optional rounds on this trip, depending upon our stamina. Knowing the other Golf Road Warriors as I do, I suspect we’ll be restraining Jeff Wallach from playing 36 a day, while Jim Frank, Brian McCallen and I rub our backs and dream about poolside chaises.

The father and son design team of Ted Robinson Sr. and Jr. attended to the King Kamehameha course, and Ben Crenshaw and Bill Coore laid out the well-known Plantation Course, site of the Hyundai Championship at the beginning of each PGA Tour season.

It sounds like a healthy test of golf ahead, a little daunting since I’m right in the middle of a swing change. Luck? I’m going to need it.

Makena Golf Course is not on the menu this time around as it undergoes renovation.

Might as well warm up with this one, however, chosen for obvious reasons.

I was in Sea Island, Georgia in late October for the finish of the McGladrey Classic, as Jim Furyk and Davis Love III failed to catch Tommy “Two Gloves” Gainey, who had seized the day with a sizzling final round 60.

Gainey was awkward but ingratiating in his first PGA Tour win trophy presentation. By the time the private Champion’s Toast rolled around in the clubhouse he had turned on his own southern charm, although he briefly held up proceedings until his beer arrived, a Miller 64. All the pictures I have of him look like product placements.

Tommy "Two Gloves" Gainey and his victory beer of choice

Cheers to Gainey for his victory, but I certainly can’t endorse Miller 64, which barely deserves the designation of near-beer. It vies with Budweiser Select 55 for the dubious Most Watery Beer title.

Luckily, for anyone in six southeastern states, there’s plenty of SweetWater 420 on hand. The Atlanta-based brewery must get tired of answering questions about the beer’s name. As I snuck in one more at the Atlanta airport before heading home a server told me it was a doper’s term.

There’s some truth to this, although there are various stories that swirl about. Some say the 420 moniker came about because a police radio call of 420 means a drug bust. There’s actually no truth to this whatsoever.

Another version suggests the term arose from kids deciding 4:20 p.m. is the best time of day to smoke, since school is out, the folks aren’t home yet, the coast is clear. And out of all this arose (or is still in the process of arising) the notion that 4/20 is now an undeclared National Weed Day, or a good day to smoke ‘em if you got ‘em.

An actual glance at the beer label logo suggests it might have been named after route 420, an interstate connector near Atlanta that was never built.

Well, take it any way you like, but the April 20 date is actually significant—it was the day the beer was first brewed in 1997, two months after the brewery officially opened.

It’s still the flagship brew, called a west coast-style pale ale, though I found it less hop aggressive than my conception of a left coast beer. Lightly copper in the glass, the beer’s nose is more bready and malt-accented than hoppy/flowery, though it’s nicely dry in the finish, a crisp and refreshing brew overall.

While I didn’t actually get to hoist one with him, I suspect SweetWater 420 is a brew even Tommy Gainey might like to get his gloves on.

Name: 420 Extra Pale Ale
Brewer: SweetWater Brewing Company, Atlanta, Georgia
Style: Pale Ale
ABV: 5.4%
Availability: Year-round, six southeastern states
For More Information: http://sweetwaterbrew.com

Gleaming tanks take the chill out at the Crop Bistro & Brewery in Stowe

In my recent review of The World Atlas of Beer I noted that Vermont had 24 breweries, the most of any state per capita. Change that to 27 operating breweries and five in the planning or soon-to-open stages.

Brattleboro’s Whetstone Station is in the latter category, the restaurant up and running but brewing still a few months away. And presumably coming on line later this year will be the Burlington Beer Company and the Queen City Brewery in Burlington, Freight House Brewing in South Royalton and Lost Nation Brewing at the old Rock Art site in Morrisville.

It’s become tough to keep up with the news, much less the brews. Software engineer James Welch of Burlington helps, with the lively VTBeer.org website he established and maintains, seemingly with links to all known social media.

But knowing about the breweries doesn’t put beer into one’s glass; many of the new offerings are tough or downright impossible to find outside the brewhouse–though the same is true of what now qualify as Vermont veterans–the Bobcat Café & Brewery in Bristol (which began brewing in 2003), Lawson’s Finest Liquids of Warren (2008), or Hill Farmstead Brewery of Greensboro (2010).

I need to hit the road to really do it up right, but for now, here are the new pins in the map:

The Fiddlehead Brewing Company is the veteran of this list, its grand opening on New Year’s Eve, 2011-2012. Matt Cohen, whose brewing chops include 14 years as head brewer at Magic Hat, presides over a 15-barrel system in Shelburne.

Michael Shoudt, who works in the tasting room, said, “We’re distributing kegs as far south as Rutland at the moment, hoping to be throughout Vermont by next year.”

The flagship beer is the sturdy Fiddlehead IPA, at 6.2% ABV, with other draft offerings at the brewery for growler fills.

Kingdom Brewing also opened in January, 2012, just outside of Newport. Brian Cook does most of the recipe formulation, but his wife, Jennifer Cook, helps with the brewing on the 4.5-barrel system.

The pair make a hearty IPA, Out-of-Bounds, clocking in at 6% ABV, and on the other end of the spectrum a light session ale named after their bloodhound, Skinny Bitch, that is a mere 3.1% ABV and 98 calories.

The beers recently went into statewide circulation, so keep an eye open. Otherwise, the tasting room is open on Thursday through Saturday afternoons.

The tasting room, or barn, at Foley Brothers Brewing in Brandon

Foley Brothers Brewing of Brandon opened on November 24, the first brewery in Rutland County. Daniel Foley is doing the brewing; but brother Patrick is on hand, as is sister Christine. The whole family is a spirited bunch, since parents Rhonda and Robert Foley are the founders of the Neshobe River Winery in Brandon.

I found the two current Foley Brothers beers at the Brattleboro Coop, a Ginger Wheat and a Brown Ale, both suggesting the brothers know what they’re doing.

Daniel said, “We’ll have a couple more beers in the spring in the tasting room, a Pale Ale and an Imperial Red Ale.”

Steve Gagner, a member of the Vermont National Guard, wrote out a business plan for his 14th Star Brewing Company while deployed in Afghanistan. “It was more of a mental exercise than anything. But when I returned home I eventually thought, What am I waiting for?”

Gagner produced one barrel of beer when the doors opened last June in St. Albans. In March he expects to do 30 barrels of various recipes on his 3.5-barrel system fashioned from maple sap collection tanks, including Harvest Brown, 1493 Pale Ale, Valor Ale, Golden Wheat, Roasted Porter.

The Covered Bridge Craft Brewery opened in Lyndonville in July, producing one beer on a one-barrel system, Lucky Me, which owner Curt Cuccia says could apply to him. “So far so good, anyway; I have no complaints yet.”

Cuccia said, “Lucky Me is a bit of hybrid between a blonde and a pale ale, dry-hopped and finishing at 6% ABV.”

Plans are to construct a growler bar and tasting room this summer, and then start brewing a Pale Ale and an IPA.

The Drop-In Brewing Company is an outgrowth of the American Brewers Guild Brewing School in Middlebury, presided over by a microbrewery veteran, Steve Parkes (including a stint as brewmaster at Otter Creek Brewing). (I think that sets the record for the use of the word ”brew” and derivatives in one sentence.)

Housed in a former plumbing warehouse, the facility serves as the hand-on finishing school for students taking the otherwise six-month correspondence course.

But since August it’s also a commercial brewery, distributing six beers throughout the state, including Sunshine and Hoppiness, Heart of Lothian, Red Dwarf and Black Hole Stout.

Making it four new breweries in four months, Grateful Hands Brewing debuted in September. “We specialize in small batch dark ales,” said owner Ricky McLain. “Our flagship beer is a black IPA called Common Sense, and we also have a robust porter (Spare Change), a stout (Courage), a regular IPA (Peak of the Galaxy) and a few others.”

By small batch McLain means about 20 gallons, which is less than one barrel (31.5 gallons). Bottles are being distributed only to a few stores near the Cabot brewery and tours are by appointment only until early summer, when McLain expects to begin regular tastings.

The Crop Bistro & Brewery is the new kid on the block, though it’s taken up residence in the old brewing haunts of the Shed Restaurant in Stowe.

The bistro has been open a year, but the brewing pieces fell into place only last month, as in an eight-barrel system used to produce the initial Munich-style Helles Lager, Bavarian Weizen and a Brown Ale, under brewmaster Will Gilson.

Right now all the production is for on premise. But in about six months look for growler fills, and then possibly kegging for other locations.

* * *

In somewhat different form this piece first appeared in the March 6, 2013 issue of The Commons, an independent non-profit weekly newspaper covering Brattleboro and the towns of Windham County, Vermont.

I asked for a Yea or Nay vote, and said I’d throw up a Tweet before TW’s 1:45 third round tee time. But since a few intriguing comments rolled in as well, here’s the thread:

Casey Alexander: No, the player is NEVER responsible for the ruling. See Arnold Palmer playing a second ball after he has already holed out on 12 and going on to win.

John Torsiello: Why should he withdraw, he’s going to win the thing.

Michael Patrick Shiels: MPS says the committee has ruled. It’s technically out of his hands if he respects the committee.

Roberto Borgatti: No.

Herb Gould: No. A four-shot penalty for hitting a perfect shot is sufficient. Besides, between the people who love TW, and those who love to hate him, nobody would be left to watch the tournament.

Ken Van Vechten: He should either pull out or be disqualified. He admitted to cheating, bottom line, and I don’t care if it was initially reviewed and cleared by the committee.

John Strawn: Yea. New approach to bifurcation–one set of rules for Tiger, another for everyone else.

Emily Kay: TW’s tweets answer that question. [Tiger’s Tweets over at @TigerWoods today included the statement, “I understand and accept the penalty and respect the Committees’ decision.”]

Ken Van Vechten: I guess there is now precedent NOT to kick Vijay out for his PED violation.

Emily Kay: Right — since he didn’t know he was in violation? Unfortunately, no HDTV rule covers ingesting l’eau de Bambi

James Mason: He should withdraw, he knows he was improving the line, distance and lie, if he had any integrity he would disqualify himself. Do you think we would be having this conversation if this was Jack Nicklaus? No, because he would have already DQed himself.

Peter Kessler: You mean Nicklaus would tell the rules folks they weren’t being harsh enough and he’d therefore overrule them with a self-imposed dq? “That’ll show me,” Jack would say? Uh, no.

James Mason: Firstly I don’t think Nicklaus would have tried to improve the line and lie, but I also know/think Nicklaus wouldn’t let the rules be bent the way they have to keep him in. It wouldn’t have been “his people talking to, their people to see how we can ‘resolve’ this issue.”

Dennis Silvers: Kessler is the only one I know of that would have been smart enough to have asked a rules official if the drop was okay rather then just assuming! He got a “pass” from the committee so why not play!

Ken Van Vechten: What Fred Ridley is missing isn’t the safety-valve rationalization he’s continually beating on. The issue is that Tiger KNEW he’d done something wrong. He purposely as he stated to ESPN changed the yardage to give him a better shot opportunity.

Janina Jacobs: This is what happens when you do not think things through. He was mad and acted hastily. The rules officials won’t interfere unless you ask for their help and had Tiger done that he would be OK. Clearly he knew what he was doing but didn’t think it was wrong at the time. He now knows if is and should be DQ’d for signing an incorrect scorecard. If Masters officials choose to allow him to remain under some ‘local’ rule,Tiger may certainly accept it; however, should he win, the victory will be tainted. If he can live with it, so be it. Personally, it would be hard for me to play knowing I should have been disqualified. I think Tiger would begin to repair his image mightily if he offered to WD.

Tom Harack: No. Absurd to have him withdraw. The rule was sensibly devised to cover this situation. The system works, for a change.

Peter Kessler: Tainted, shmainted. Only an idiot would DQ themselves. He didn’t act in anger and he didn’t act hastily. Not one player who ever lived would have overruled the committee and said hurt me more sir, it’s not enough. Your thoughts on his image are sadly out of place.

Casey Alexander: Having played competitive for years the reality is no player overrules the committee. If the committee makes a a bad ruling so be it. It is never the players responsibility to overrule the committee.

Jeff Neuman: Yea — he should WD. No matter what the committee says, HE knows what he did was improper under the rules. This is NOT an “exceptional individual circumstance” under the discretionary Rule 33-7. It is a garden-variety, “I didn’t know the Rules” violation…There never should have been an issue for a committee. When Tiger heard what had happened — or any self-respecting golfer with understanding of the rules and the notions behind them — the only proper thing for him to do was to tell the committee not to bother with a ruling, he would be withdrawing from the tournament. The ONLY proper thing. Not that I’m holding my breath for him to do something like that. Would Jack have waited for a committee to rule? Would Byron? Would Bobby Freakin’ Jones? Golf is not supposed to be a game of “Just win, baby” and let the umpires sort things out. Not even on the pro level. What the Committee did today was to neuter the DQ penalty for signing a card with a too-low score. Maybe it should be neutered — maybe it’s always been too severe, and there should be more room for common sense. But that’s a matter for the USGA and the R&A to take up, not ANGC’s Tournament Committee. And it’s particularly absurd a day after Guan’s slow-play penalty (a penalty I agreed with).

James Mason: Everyone is flirting round the issue. I understand he wouldn’t over rule the committee etc, he’s a professional sportsman it’s his job. But is this good for the game of Golf? No it is not. Golf and the masters have now sold their soul for TV money. Golf was the one game that still held high the principles of sportsmanship and integrity, today my friends Golf just become like any other sport, where winning at all costs is now the mantra. I for one think its a very sad day for the game.

Jeff Wallach: Whatever you think I can guarantee you this: he will blame the media….

<<>>

My own feeling is that Tiger is clearly within his right to play, as his response suggests. There was a ruling, he’s abiding by it, and let’s move on. But whether it would have been better for him to fall on his sword and withdraw? Probably one for the ages.

I went off to a wedding yesterday afternoon, missing most of the third round while comments kept piling up in my inbox. Tempers rose, but I’ll spare you the blood-letting, beyond a final comment from colleague Jay Stuller. But I would also direct readers to fellow TAPster David DeSmith’s long piece on the issue, “DropGate — Did Golf Drop a Shot at Augusta Today?“

Jay Stuller: My oh my: Tiger Woods and his latest development turns The A Position stable into an insanely divided Red State–Blue State confederation about to rupture like a neoplastic spleen. On one hand we have incendiary critics caterwauling against Woods and the ANGC decision with the intensity and conviction of a Fox News personality, only to earn themselves approbation from Judge Kessler, who with the other hand issues right-uppercut opinions with the gentility of a young Mike Tyson. Ah, the passion, as the young folks like to call it. Well-played, fellow TAPsters, well-played. However, no matter whether you dislike Tiger Woods or Barry Bonds–to draw a parallel–there are no “asterisks” in golf or baseball records; an asterisk is in reality merely a fiction in the mind of an observer who has an audience in print or other media, and with his or her like-minded followers. A win by Woods would be a win, and all other interpretation is merely lather, freely and thickly applied, but nonetheless lather. Otherwise, my opinion on the entire affair is largely agnostic, which probably says more about me than the issue at hand, which is why I’ve not previously entered the blood-soaked TAP Coliseum. Enjoy tomorrow’s bread and circuses fireworks you golf-writing gladiators, and definitely re-engage if the outcome is personally displeasing. I will read in shock and awe from a safe distance.

So I don’t really know what kind of beer this is. I can say it’s a pleasant one, pouring out with a rocky white head and deep tan. It’s a malt-accented brew, with a caramel nose and palate, with lightly fruity and floral notes, a whiff of nutty roast, and a moderately dry finish. It tastes German to the core.

I was wading through material and wasting time on the internet because it’s tough to find a lot out about the beer from the living. I made three different calls to people with the U.S. importer, Binding Brauerei USA in Norwalk, Connecticut, and still don’t know precisely where the beer is distributed.

I do know that it’s not in New England, though it may be by the fall of 2013. A few listings on Untappd.com suggest it’s in Minnesota and Florida. And it’s most certainly in New York, because that’s where my bottle arrived from–in a six-pack donated by my visiting son.

The best that I can piece together is that relatives Wilhelm von Hövel and Gustav Thier began brewing at the present-day Hausbrauerei location in 1854. In 1893 they developed the recipe for what in Dortmund was long called their Bitterbier, but now Hövels Original. They also developed a special mashing process (details vague beyond a reference to mixing ground malt with brewing water at a “specially defined temperature sequence,” which doesn’t sound very special at all).

The malts include pale and dark barley, wheat and some roasted malt. The hops are a mystery (Spalt, Tettnanger, Saaz?).

The beer went out of production due to war-time interruptions, but the kettles fired up again in 1984. Hövels is now part of the Radeberger Gruppe, or corporately as the Binding Brauerei, the largest German-run beer marketer in the country.

From all I can determine the Hausbrauerei is still a lively place, conducting various seminars and tastings along with the usual business of a German restaurant and brewery. If your German is sharp, you can follow on Facebook. But if you make it to Dortmund, look for an entrance resembling a giant brewing vessel, shown in this brief video:

I’m certainly open to more information. And if you’ve been over-dosing on hop bombs lately, open up a Hövels Original. It should be an agreeable change of pace.

Name: Hövels Original
Brewer: Hövels Hausbrauerei, Dortmund, Germany
Style: Sort of an Altbier
ABV: 5.5%
Availability: Year-round, not sure where.
For More Information: Radeberger Gruppe

How often have we heard “balance” applied to a glass of beer, with a goal of of some near-mystical equilibrium between malt and hops? The analogy seems to hold even considering Matisse’s full quote:

What I dream of is an art of balance, of purity and serenity, devoid of troubling or depressing subject matter, an art which could be for every mental worker, for the businessman as well as the man of letters, for example, a soothing, calming influence on the mind, something like a good armchair which provides relaxation from physical fatigue.

Many brewers would be happy to produce a beer with similar characteristics.

But I don’t think balance in a beer was really what Bryan Roth of This Is Why I’m Drunk was looking for in The Session #74, as much as how we balance beer in our lives.

To me, it feels pretty easy. Others, like my wife (to pick the most obvious candidate), might suggest otherwise, especially when I press another beer on her to taste, when she’d rather just drink her martini, thank you very much. Or when she hears me request yet another non-frosted glass in a restaurant, or suggest to the waitress that there really should be a beer list as well as the wine carte.

Henri Matisse, who claimed that the best remedy for insomnia was beer and chips.

I began my writing life as a generalist, crafting nonfiction articles for magazines about anything and seemingly everything. My curiosity about beer always extended beyond the mere drinking of it, so as the craft brewing industry took its first tentative steps in New York City I wrote my first article about beer in 1985. It gradually became my specialty.

And while I’ve never really stopped, something went out of me after 1999, when I finally wrote a piece I’d yearned to do, about a tour of all the Belgian Trappist brewers then extant. I sort of felt I’d climbed all the hills I’d wanted to climb.

I was wrong, of course, but also under the influence of a new passion, a return to the world of golf. My wife (again) says I pick up and discard passions easily but while in the throes, I’m all in. There’s evidence to support this. There is the unused enlarger and notebooks of photographic negatives. There sits the dust-laden guitar. There are the antique running logs. There is even, closeted, my long-dormant homebrew gear. (But some passions never fade—for books, music, film, baseball, beer itself.)

I figured if following my passion had worked for beer it should for golf, and so I started writing about that. What I didn’t know was that golf would pretty much take over the professional landscape. There were even a few years in there where I didn’t write about beer at all.

My remedy for insomnia is beer and chipping.

But I missed it, and had been doing diligent field research all along. I had downed many a brew with golf editors, so more beer stories starting showing up back on the schedule, frequently for golf publications. I’d come around in an odd full circle, and these days serve both masters happily enough.

Beer is a central part of my life, no question. I often joke that if I lose my liver they might as well put a bullet through my head. It is a joke; but life would lose quite a bit of its luster if I couldn’t continue to revel in the many and varied pleasures of beer. Life without beer? It would be a life out of balance.

The Session is a monthly effort where beer writers around the interwebs respond to a topic question. This is the 74th installment, so it’s been going on for quite a while. The list of responses this month can be accessed at This Is Why I’m Drunk.

So rather than call their small-batch Saison-style beers farmhouse ales, voilà, the Entrepôt series. Go further to translate the style of Phobos & Deimos–a Bière de Mars–as a beer for March and you’re getting closer to defining the historical provenance of the style.

Belgium has its Saisons; its bordering neighbor, the northeast of France, has its Bière de gardes, similar styles though the French beers tend to be somewhat stronger and maltier than Saisons. Bière de Mars is a subset of Bière de garde, brewed to be consumed more quickly, during the month of March. Extra points for those who can accurately tell the difference between any of them.

The farmhouse beers were traditionally brewed in early spring to last rural workers through the warmer months. While ales, they were fermented at cool temperatures with lengthy cool conditioning, sometimes exhibiting some yeasty cellar funkiness.

The Rising Tide take was limited to 1,200 12.7-ounce corked bottles distributed only in Maine and New Hampshire. (The brewery’s regular rotation normally extends as well to Vermont and Massachusetts.) I was lucky we had a dinner party last week and some guests brought a bottle.

If you can find one, do. It’s a delicious brew, a blend of American ale yeast and Saison yeast, all Nelson Sauvin hops, left in a conditioning tank for eight weeks. The New Zealand hop leads the beer somewhat out of character, since it’s wildly fruity, dominating the malt. You won’t care.

“I think the Nelson Sauvin hops are particularly delicious,” said Heather Sandborn. “They’re named after the Sauvignon Blanc grape. They do have a white wine character to them and the beer really highlights that.” Crushed gooseberry is a common descriptor. Beguiling is mine.

A former corporate securities lawyer, Sandborn gave that up last year to devote full time to the brewery along with her husband, a graphic designer and stay-at-home dad before deciding he was ready to go pro with his brewing skills, in 2010.

Brewing one barrel at a time, Rising Tide produced a total of 149 barrels in 2011. Now brewing 30 barrel batches, the company projects about 1,200 barrels in 2013, still micro by any definition.

The usual lineup includes Zephyr IPA, Atlantis Black Ale, Ishmael Copper Ale, Daymark Pale Ale. I haven’t had them all, but I haven’t have a bad one yet. A particularly tasty Ursa Minor, a Weizen Stout, served as a winter beer, and may still be on some shelves.

The seafaring, mythological or astrological names attached to the beers extends to the Bière de Mars, though perhaps somewhat inaccurately in this case. Phobos and Deimos are the orbiting moons of the planet Mars. They are named after the Greek gods of panic and dread, twin brothers born of Aphrodite and Ares, the god of war–or Mars, in Roman nomenclature.

The only panic and dread attendant here is the thought that Rising Tide may never again make this beer, which clearly takes more after Mom.

Name: Phobos & Deimos
Brewer: Rising Tide Brewing Company, Portland, Maine
Style: Bière de Mars
ABV: 7.9%
Availability: Maine and New Hampshire, while it lasts
For More Information: www.RisingTideBrewing.com

There is no problem finding banal beer at many places in the airport as well. But, as usual, why bother?

I first ran into the Carolina Beer Co. bar area months ago, and once stranded on this trip I sought it out again. It’s practically hidden at the end of Concourse D, but was nonetheless fairly lively last Thursday evening. But there’s also a spot on Concourse B called A Taste of Carolina that serves the same state-produced craft beers, available in samplers.

I opted for the less hectic Concourse D area, where there are ample tables if spotty wifi. And I opted for a sampler, trying beers from the Carolina Beer Company, The Olde Mecklenburg Brewery and Foothills Brewing.

The Carolina Beer Company began in the Charlotte area in 1997; its brands were taken over by Foothills Brewing in 2011. (Foothills also acquired the Cottonwood brand.) A big seller was (and is) Carolina Blonde, a 5% ABV golden ale with aggressive carbonation, a lightly sweet and medium-bodied palate. It’s good, if nothing special, although it’s easy to imagine it as ground-breaking in the Carolinas in 1997.

It was preferable to either offering from The Olde Mecklenburg Brewery, established in 2009. This was a bit of a surprise, since many OMB beers have received high scores on beer rating sites. They wouldn’t have this evening. Both the Copper (“an authentic Düsseldorf-style Altbier”) and the seasonal Dunkel suggested that someone had dropped a stale washcloth into the fermenters. The Copper had a faint impression of caraway poking through, but was mainly sour, and not in a good way. The Dunkel was equally unpleasant.

Hoppyum was the clear winner, but it’s more than the best of a bad lot. It’s a rollicking and fragrant American IPA, citrusy, herbal, dominated by Simcoe hops, with an appealing earthy sweetness and puckering dryness to the finish. Quite scrumptious.

According to the brewery’s marketing director, Ray Goodrich, “Hoppyum is one of our core brands, our bestseller, and the favorite beer of our president and brewmaster Jamie Bartholomaus.”

The company began in 2004 as a Winston-Salem brewpub, and has obviously been going strong ever since, adding a production brewery in late 2011 that should increase annual production to 40,000 barrels.

Outside the area it is probably best known for the semi-notorious Sexual Chocolate, an annual limited release Imperial Stout difficult to obtain. (Not available at the airport, alas, so I’ve still never had it.)

Bartholomaus is clearly an eclectic brewer. He produces more than a score of year-round and seasonal beers and has fistfuls of Great American Beer Festival and World Cup Beer medals in the trophy case. If Hoppyum is indicative, then I could wish Foothills would also take over a few more tap handles with their People’s Porter, Torch Pilsner or India-Style Brown Ale.

It would add even more upside, and might make a delay at CLT downright desirable.

Name: Hoppyum IPA
Brewer: Foothills Brewing, Winston-Salem, North Carolina
Style: American IPA
ABV: 6.2%
Availability: Year-round, NC, SC, VA and TN.
For More Information: www.foothillsbrewing.com

In Concourse D at CLT

But when Sierra Nevada’s Ruthless Rye showed up on local shelves I thought it was a good time to take these two to the mat in the occasional “versus” series.

I honestly didn’t think it would be much of a contest. In my experience Sierra Nevada pretty much walks on brewing water, while I’ve had an equivocal history with Magic Hat (last seen here wearing a Wooly sweater for Christmas).

And in truth, I prefer the Ruthless Rye, but only because it’s hoppier than Ticket to Rye. The Magic Hat is a tasty beer, too, and certainly a bolder effort than I’ve come to expect from them. At 7.1% ABV it’s a tad stronger of the two brews, and the strongest in its rotating “I.P.A. on Tour” series of four seasonal IPAs.

Ticket to Rye follows Encore, which was an agreeable wheat IPA, and should remain on the shelves until the end of the month, when Blind Faith will return.

Rye malt

In general rye malt can be expected to add some spicy and peppery notes to beers, along with a crisp, dry quality, and that’s certainly the case here.

These two are barely distinguishable in the glass, though Ticket to Ride is a shade darker. The similarities end there. Ticket to Ride leans toward malt, its bouquet swirling notes of toffee, biscuit, grass, hay. The malt bill includes pale, rye, wheat, caramel and chocolate, leading to a sweet and lightly viscous sensation, not unpleasant.

The finish is fairly mild but it seems to me that this where the rye is most noticeable, combining with Apollo and Nugget hops to contribute a light spiciness that lingers nicely. The beer seemed to flatten out as it warmed up, so I’d dispatch this one while still cool.

The brewing notes say a California Ale yeast was used. Hmm.

The beers are virtually indistinguishable in the glass. Ticket to Rye (left) is marginally darker.

The Sierra Nevada notes allude only to an “ale yeast,” but it may well be a similar strain. Ruthless Rye is also a seasonal, having replaced the no-longer brewed Glissade.

Ruthless does without any wheat malt, using pale, rye, caramel and chocolate. It’s bittered with Bravo hops, while Chinook, Citra and an experimental hop called X-366 are used for finishing and dry-hopping.

Predictably, the nose is wildly floral, quite citrusy, which follows through in the flavor. There are bready notes, and a tangy, mildly puckering finish. There’s definitely more of a peppery, almost briny edge than in the Ticket to Rye. Call it more ruthless if you like. It’s certainly delicious.

Name: Ticket to Rye
Brewer: Magic Hat
Style: Rye IPA
ABV: 7.1%
Availability: Through March in about a dozen states
For More Information: www.magichat.net

Name: Ruthless Rye
Brewer: Sierra Nevada Brewing Co., Chico, California
Style: Rye IPA
ABV: 6.6%
Availability: Through March, nationwide
For More Information: www.sierranevada.com

As before, it appears to be all for fun, as well as a charitable undertaking, this time benefiting charity:water, which aims to provide clean, safe drinking water to people in developing countries. Don’t ask what pummeling drivers through watermelons or sticking one’s head in a fountain of foaming cola has to do with this. The answer is surely nothing. But if it helps, well all righty then.

It’s probably pointless to sit in a critic’s seat in the face of “2.Oh” and all too easy to say that this one, though clearly professionally done, lacks some of the originality and rough-around-the-edges appeal of “Oh Oh Oh,” as well as having a less memorable tune. So I won’t do that. Nor will I deconstruct the lyrics, though it would be curious to enumerate how many PGA Tour pros are alluded to in the song.

The members of the Golf Boys don’t appear to be overly distracted by making goofy music videos as far their day jobs go. They had some notable successes on tour last year, particularly Mr. Watson, here bravely appearing in a baby bonnet as well as his hillbilly overalls. Now if he’s only show up in that outfit at the Masters Champions Dinner this year….

Clean drinking water is the goal

Related post: Ah, Ah, Ah!

If PGA Tour pros start to quiver approaching the three-hole stretch called The Bear Trap at the Champion Course at PGA National, what prayer did I have? I’d shown up in Palm Beach Gardens with a bad back and a worse game to confront one of the toughest gauntlets in golf, where even the These-Guys-Are-Good brigade makes a hash of holes fifteen through seventeen each March.

At least I had no money on the line. A strong field of pros heads to Palm Beach Gardens each spring for the Honda Classic, the first stop on the Tour’s Florida swing, since its temptingly bulging purse makes it worth risking embarrassment or a round’s death by drowning at the notorious Bear Trap.

It takes playing them to understand how tough the watery three holes really are, but the number crunchers of the PGA Tour had concluded that, heading into the 2011 tilt, only one player had navigated the terrible trifecta under par in the four years the tournament had been held at PGA National: Luke Donald, at -1.

In 2011, the entire field went around in +1. Rory Sabbatini managed to do it in -1, and won the tournament. Meanwhile, 60 balls went in the water at hole fifteen, 25 at sixteen, 65 at seventeen, hence the joke that more balls are lost at the Bear Trap in one tournament than in an entire year at a sex-reassignment clinic.

It was not always thus. Putts starting flying across PGA National’s greens over 30 years ago, but the Champion course, originally a George and Tom Fazio design, was re-done by Jack Nicklaus in 1990 and again in 2002. The Bear Trap nickname derived from his Golden Bear moniker.

Nicklaus put more teeth into the Champion, but there was already plenty of golf history to chew on here, plus plenty to play with 90 total holes at PGA National Resort & Spa. The smorgasbord includes two other George and Tom Fazio tracks (the Haig, after Walter Hagan*, and the Squire, after Gene Sarazen), one by the King (the Palmer Course), and one by Karl Litton (the Estates). A PGA National Club Fitting Lab will put the right sticks into players’ hands, while a David Leadbetter Academy and a Dave Pelz Scoring Game School will show how to use them.

(*Tom Fazio II did a complete renovation of The Haig course, which reopened last November 1 as The Fazio Course.)

Eighteenth hole on The Palmer Course

The 379-room resort and communities nestled within the 2,300 acre sprawl includes a full-service spa, tennis courts, nine pools, one of the largest croquet courts in the hemisphere and meeting facilities all fresh off a $100-million revitalization. Seven dining options overseen by executive chef Gordon Maybury of Dublin are topped by the contemporary Ironwood Steak & Seafood. The iBAR watering hole right off the main lobby is enlivened by guests and locals at all hours–particularly so at tournament time–and where I was happy to see a nice selection of local craft brews on tap.

Back in the Day

Golf remains the beating heart at PGA National. Though there’s no strict relationship between the two, the PGA of America offices are here and some of its finest tournaments have played out over the Champion.

In this Ryder Cup year [2012] it’s worth recalling one of the most exciting, the 1983 thriller, pivotal in the history of the biennial competition. It capped a 26-year domination by the U.S. teams; after 1983 the European squad mounted a three-Cup win streak and took the trophy home nine out of the next 13 matches.

The 1983 U.S. squad was captained by none other than Jack Nicklaus, and by the time it was over he was brought to his knees–in a good way. Golf Hall of Famer Lanny Wadkins remembers it well, since the outcome hinged on a single shot in his penultimate singles match:

Lanny Wadkins

“It came down to the last two groups. I was playing Jose Maria Canizares and Tom Watson was playing Bernard Gallacher. And Watson was going to win.” Which meant it was up to Wadkins.

“The strange thing was that I felt I had outplayed Jose all day, but had nothing to show for it. It started right from the first hole, when he drove into the woods but wound up making a 60-footer while I missed a six-footer, so we tie the hole. On the eighth I had a 12-footer for birdie while he’s off the green with an impossible chip–but in it goes.”

Wadkins was down one at the par-5 last, needing to win the hole, halve the match and secure the Cup, with all his teammates watching. Canizares left his third shot short, leaving Wadkins to deal with an 82-yard wedge shot:

1983 Ryder Cup captains Nicklaus and Jacklin

“It was huge, but I hit it a foot from the hole, and that was that. Tom Kite ran up and slapped me on the back; I turned to say something and nothing came out. That’s probably the most nervous I’ve ever been.”

Everyone else on the American side was jubilant. Nicklaus fell to his knees in the eighteenth fairway and kissed Wadkins’ divot.

Wadkins couldn’t, or wouldn’t, confirm the quote David Feherty attributed to him in his Totally Subjective History of the Ryder Cup. Supposedly Wadkins called his wife and said, “Wait a minute, Ethel, Jack Nicklaus is kissing a hole in the ground. The next thing you know it will be my ass.”

One of the more remarkable Hall of Fame careers belongs to Larry Nelson, who never even swung a stick in his youth. In August, when given the PGA Distinguished Service Award, Nelson reflected that, “I thought golf was a sissy sport.”

He changed his mind while serving in Vietnam, listening to incessant chatter about golf from fellow soldiers in the foxholes. Toward the end of his tour, he thought when he returned home he might start playing golf. Did he ever, relying on Ben Hogan’s Five Lessons: The Modern Fundamentals of Golf, and winding up with ten PGA Tour wins and three majors.

It’s 25 years since his 1987 PGA Championship win at PGA National, his victory coming on the first playoff hole–against Lanny Wadkins.

“It was deju vu all over again,” said Wadkins. “I was playing in the last group and if I birdie eighteen I win. I thought if I hit the same shot I did in ‘83 it would be perfect. But it was really, really hot that August, the greens were hard, and I left myself a 20-footer that slid past the hole.”

On the first playoff hole Nelson drilled in a six-foot par putt for the win, as Wadkins ran a four-footer past the cup.

Larry Nelson (left) with the Wanamaker Trophy

Rearing Its Head

Both Nelson and Wadkins would go on to compete on the senior circuit and return to PGA National, home to the Senior PGA Championship from 1982 to 2000. Wandering the halls of the resort down toward the pro shop is a museum-like stroll with posters attesting to some of these memorable matches, and victories by the likes of Palmer, Player, Nicklaus, Trevino, Irwin.

The most light-hearted might be the 1987 win by Chi Chi Rodriguez. Trailing by six before the final round, Chi Chi strolled into the pro shop, bought a new set of clubs, and won by a stroke.

Raymond Floyd

Trevino’s 1994 win came at the grisly (or grizzly) expense of Raymond Floyd, who had a four stroke lead in the final nine holes. Then he came to the Bear Trap. He rinsed two balls at fifteen for a quadruple bogey, and plunked another at seventeen for a double.

On the scorecard the Bear Trap doesn’t look that omnivorous–two par-3s around an average-length par 4. But approaching the fifteenth tee a player first sees an upright ursine statue, arms outstretched, mouth open. A plaque proclaims, “You are now entering The Bear Trap,” leaving the mind to supply the implied “Abandon all hope.” There’s also a prescient quote from Nicklaus: “It should be won or lost right here.”

Choosing the right tee box usually mitigates matters. The holes measure 179 yards, 434, and 172 from the back tees (I played them from 153, 391 and 155). But as Nicklaus says, distance isn’t the key factor:

“I don’t care if they make golf balls that go 5,000 yards. The Bear Trap will stand the test no matter what the equipment is, because they’re not holes you can overpower. It’s not about length, it’s about precision, and guts.”

For me, it was a case of nothing to lose: I’d already littered the opening nine with a string of double bogeys, but I heated up just as the course did. I wrassled the Bear Trap to the ground with a bogey and two pars, and felt triumphant enough to light a cigar.

No matter the tee, a player has a forced carry on fifteen. “When we put the water there it became a monster because of the awkward wind,” said Nicklaus, of a wind usually blowing right to left from the northeast. In 2010, this was statistically the toughest par-3 hole on the entire PGA Tour.

There’s water all along the right of the par-4 sixteenth as well, although it’s a greater factor on the second shot. A bold tee ball right can cut the distance to the green while flirting with a bunker. A safer shot left leaves a longer watery span to the dance floor.

The seventeenth is another pure carry with a yawning bunker left and nothing but water right. The bunker is hardly safe, since an aggressive explosion can fire a ball right into the drink. It’s pretty much hit the green here, take your medicine, or reload.

The seventeenth hole at the Champion Course during the Honda Classic

Fail or succeed here, the Bear Trap beckons for another go-round; isn’t hope one of golf’s redeeming qualities?

Ray Floyd found that out after his 1994 debacle, waltzing away with a five stroke win in the 1995 Senior PGA Championship. If terrorized by the Bear Trap the year before, Floyd had returned to tame it, turning it into a harmless cub.

Shouldn't be too many golf balls in the PGA National pool

Still, I think I put my money on Steve anyway. The young Canadian clearly had a passion for beer, an ambition to make writing about it his life’s work, and the drive to succeed by, for example, rigorously training his palate to be able to discern all sorts of flavors.

I’m sure neither of us expected Jackson to pass away as young (65) and unexpectedly as he did in 2007. But Beaumont hadn’t let any grass grow under his feet anyway, authoring seven books on (mainly) beer and involving himself in various aspects of the drinks industry.

Likewise, across the pond, Tim Webb was establishing himself as one of Britain’s most accomplished beer writers, specializing in Belgian beers through eight editions of the Good Beer Guide Belgium and taking a leading role in CAMRA (Campaign for Real Ale).

Stephen Beaumont

While I’ve had more than a few pints with Steve through the years at various points along the beer trail, I’ve never hoisted one with Tim, at least as far as I know or remember. But good on the pair of them anyway, for co-authoring The World Atlas of Beer: The Essential Guide to Beers of the World (Sterling Epicure, 2012, $30).

The pair acknowledges the debt to Jackson, and indeed the new book is very much modeled on his pioneering 1977 opus The World Guide to Beer. That’s not a bad thing, because there’s something here for everyone, from beer novice to jaded expert. Preliminary chapters dutifully go through the basics of what beer is, its origins, various ingredients, how it’s made.

But it expands on Jackson’s work in discussing beer and food affinities, and ponders the beverage in terms of buying, storing, serving, pouring and tasting.

The regional chapters make up the heart of the volume, surveying the brewing scene in traditional brewing countries like Belgium, the Czech Republic, Germany, Great Britain and Ireland, and showing how the craft brewing movement has erupted from the Americas and now reaches into virtually every corner of earth.

The authors estimate that in the 21st Century there will be 10,000 breweries worldwide producing some 60,000 regularly-produced beers (which basically means I’ll never catch up).

Tim Webb

Indeed, that’s one of the distinctions between the old and new guides. As Webb notes in a preface, Jackson’s book describes a world of beer at a low ebb—when many regional styles and specialties were on the brink of extinction or already into the abyss. It was a world of consolidation and contraction, with one type of beer—watery, pale yellow lager—having flooded the marketplace.

Jackson’s work was a major finger in the dike. Though there were certainly other factors leading to what amounts to a beer revolution in the last 30 years, if a Nobel Prize for beer existed, Jackson would have waltzed off with it, helping to revive what was in danger of expiring.

Webb and Beaumont confronted an entirely different situation, one reason they’re not to be faulted for having some facts overtake them the moment they handed in the manuscript. For example, a page with a map of the U.S. and statistics with the number of breweries and per capita breweries was outdated before the ink dried at the printing plant. But that’s only because U.S. brewing is now not only a moving target, it’s a runaway train.

Well, the chart is accurate as of 2010, in any case, when Vermont had 21 breweries, making it No. 1 on the per capita hit list—one brewery for every 29,797 residents. In this it edged out Oregon (31,662), with Mississippi a parched dead last (1,483,649).

(Latest stats from the Brewers Association show Vermont still in the lead—24 breweries, or one for every 26,073 souls. Things are looking up.)

Care for a little perspective? Vermont’s 24 breweries is just under half the total number of U.S. brewing companies as late as 1983. It had sunk to that. Now we’re up to some 2,126 breweries nationwide, the highest number since the 1880’s.

The increase does not come from what the authors term “simplistic” brewing, meaning mass market lagers with little flavor profile, and advertised to be served ice cold to mask that fact. They pay little heed here to the commonplace brands that are frankly beginning to lumber like dinosaurs. (And which may explain nostalgic fads–passing, no doubt–for retro beers like Pabst Blue Ribbon.)

All the growth in the beer world these days comes from “ambitious brewing,” and the authors select caseloads of brews to note as evidence. I don’t envy them the selection process they must have undergone, since they limit themselves to one beer per brewery, and only so many breweries for a country, region or state.

The drinking of the beers, yes, that I envy. The travel to different countries to drink them en place, yes. But it was nice to discover that I’m not yet jaded. A wealth of beers I hadn’t even heard of yet, much less tasted, are here revealed.

Looking forward to trying a Negev Porter from Israel, a Hopwired IPA from New Zealand, a Grosa from Argentina or even a barrel-aged Temptation from California makes the Atlas into as much of a wish book as a reference work.

I imagine I’ll happily peruse its pages, and probably spill a little beer onto them, for some time to come.

* * *

In somewhat different form this piece first appeared in the August 1, 2012 issue of The Commons, an independent non-profit weekly newspaper covering Brattleboro and the towns of Windham County, Vermont.

While normally reviewing books for “The Goods” page in

What few golfers don’t enjoy a beer at the nineteenth hole? Or, it must be admitted, those who find that it helps to have a little swing oil during the round? Personally, I’m not much of a drink and drive man, preferring to reach the clubhouse at the end of the round for a glass of beer that often seems like a reward (especially if I won the match and the other guy is paying).

But, as a certified beer snob who long ago gave up drinking the bland yellow fizzy water gushing forth from mass market brewers, I seldom found anything to rouse my interest when the beverage cart rolled around. Most of the flavorful craft beers were bottled, and bottles weren’t usually allowed out on the course.

Times change: just as the tides of beer increasingly flow toward offerings with more taste and character, so too has the prejudice given way about putting good beer in cans.

When California’s Sierra Nevada Brewing announced it would begin putting its near-iconic Pale Ale into cans, the battle was pretty much over. And it now leaves little excuse for golf course beverage managers: it’s time to step up your game and offer players a wider and better choice than the usual bellywash.

Numerous Oklahoma courses are on the bandwagon. Jared Keith, the head bartender at the Rose Creek Golf Club, said, “We’ve carried Washita Wheat and Golden Ale from the Mustang Brewing Company on the beverage carts since last summer, as well as their Session 33,” a lower alcohol brew. The beers are also on tap at the club’s Trellis Bar, and Keith said they are easily the best sellers over other brews.

Chris Watkins, clubhouse manager, said the Gaillardia Country Club has brews from both Mustang and COOP Ale Works on the beverage carts and on tap. “Craft beers are starting to move here. We added some to our offerings about five years ago and it just didn’t work then. But the fad is definitely picking up now. People want to try different beers and drink local. We had an outing not long ago where we had a specific request to stock different beers for the players to try.”

There’s no better place to start broadening one’s drinking horizons than with local brews. That gives Oklahoma golfers four choices in cans at the moment. More will surely be on the way, though the state has not exactly been a pioneer in the microbrewery movement–or any brewing movement. The latest statistics from the Brewers Association put Oklahoma’s nine breweries 41st in the U.S. for per capita breweries. But still ahead of Texas and Arkansas!

To Can or Not to Can

The Huebert Brewing Company opened its doors in Oklahoma City in 2003, making it the oldest official microbrewery in the state, notwithstanding the long presence of Choc Beer from Krebs.

Owner Rick Huebert was instrumental in helping to change the prohibition era laws that inhibited small scale brewing in Oklahoma, and he’s not shy about experimenting, turning out about 19 different styles of beer, including such regulars as Wild Pony Wheat, Deep Deuce Porter and Tucker Pale Ale. (During the election season he let his leanings show with a NoBama Brew.)

But it’s his versatility that has prevented him from canning his beers. “It’s mainly a storage problem; if you had six different beers you’d need six truckloads of cans. Contrast that with one truckload of bottles with six different labels.”

The Mustang Brewing Company gets around the storage problem by actually brewing most of its beer out of state, after developing recipes at the pilot brewery in Oklahoma City.

Although the first pilot brewery was a five-gallon turkey cooker in Tim and Carmen Schoelen’s garage. But once they decided to take the plunge into the beer business, the couple served up their first pints of Mustang Golden Ale in July of 2009 at James E. McNellie’s Public House.

The Golden Ale is one of the two brews in cans, Washita Wheat the other. Seasonals and big beer specialties from brewmaster Gary Shellman (the “Saddlebag Series”) are produced at the pilot plant. But the canned beers are made at the Stevens Point Brewery in Wisconsin.

(Stevens Point also contract brews a new elixir for the Slammin’ Sam Beer Company of North Carolina, a lager named after Sam Snead and alluding to his swing in the tagline, “Smoothest Beer in Golf.” Not yet available in Oklahoma, however.)

“The Golden Ale is a 5.3% ABV beer,” said Eric Pennell, marketing director for the company. “The Washita Wheat comes in at 5.6%, and it’s our number one seller. We sell the small batch Saddleback Series just in Oklahoma, but the other beers are in Kansas, Arkansas, and Missouri in a few months. Tennessee and Georgia are in the works.”

Mustang will probably produce 5,500 barrels of beer in 2012, still a micro by any definition.

The Golden Ale pours out hazy, apricot in color, with a bit of tinned pineapple in the nose, a vague suggestion of strawberry Twizzlers, and a hint of caramel. For a sturdy 5.3% ABV beer, it seemed a little thin in flavor and light on the palate.

I much preferred the Washita Wheat—made with Oklahoma red wheat, but actually lighter in color in the glass than the Golden Ale, more peach than apricot. Also hazy in the glass, it has fruity, lemon grass aromas, and a more pronounced malt sweetness coming through on the palate. But the overall impression is of a refreshing lemony tang; there’s no clove character at all, as one would expect in a Bavarian weissbier–this is an American wheat beer all the way, clean and refreshing, and well-suited to cutting a golf round-induced thirst.

Approach Shots

Neither of the Mustang canned beers are world-beaters in the flavor arena, though as Jared Keith noted, either can give the mass market suds a run for their money, “because they’re very approachable beers,” and light on hop bittering.

That’s not to say the COOP Ale Works beers aren’t approachable; but they are just a bit more complex, up a rung on the craft brew stylistic ladder, with hefty ABV levels as well, particular the Belgian-style golden ale that finishes at a whopping 10% ABV, and appropriately named DNR.

“We’re located 51 blocks north of downtown Oklahoma City,” said JD Merryweather,” a co-founder of the brewery. “We’re selling only in Oklahoma, working in a seven-barrel brewhouse, producing about 2,000 barrels last year. But we’re doubling our capacity, getting ready to expand to a 30-barrel system.”

The company launched in January of 2009 after about five years of research. It’s F5 IPA is the best-selling of six year-round beers, although available only on draft.

The two canned beers are the Horny Toad Cerveza and Native Amber. The former, though made with pilsner malts, is really a top-fermented ale, hence some of the fruity esters in the nose, along with a biscuity sweetness. Pouring a clear, light gold in the glass, Horny Toad is a 5.3% ABV brew, crisp on the palate, with a nice mouth feel and a bracing hop bite at the finish, with a hint of chalk in the aftertaste.

Put the two golden ales together and I’d say Horny Toad leapfrogs over the Mustang. The COOP beer also rates a mention in “The World Atlas of Beer” (had to get a book in here somewhere), newly out from Sterling Publishing. The only Oklahoma brew mentioned by authors Tim Webb and Stephen Beaumont, the Horny Toad is dubbed, “A satisfying quaff for the Southern heat.”

On aroma alone, the Native Amber (6.3% ABV) gets my winning vote of the four beers. But then I’m a hophead, and the perfumy Cascade and Cluster hop bouquet of the beer is downright seductive. There’s a deep caramel aroma at play as well, which complements the mahogany appearance.

At 6.3% ABV, this is a fairly big beer, with a firm caramel malt attack and a balancing, almost tannic hop finish that lingers on quite nicely. I’m not sure Native Amber would improve my stroke out on the course, but it would easily be my first pick when contemplating the choices in the clubhouse.

“Is that you talking, or the beer?” the wife asks.

He answers, “It’s me, talking to my beer.”

Couldn’t resist the joke, which came immediately to mind when I read The Session #72 topic. Ryan Newhouse of Montana Beer Finder wanted to know not why we love beer, but how.

Well. In my case, pretty passionately. I’ve been enraptured with beer in just about any manifestation you can name, and for a long time. Let’s say close to a half-century, and I was probably intrigued by print and (black and white) television ads for beer long before deciding to sneak my first bottle.

I’ve often noted that the momentous cross-country van trip a friend and I took in the early ‘70s—ostensibly a search for America, a big notion then—was more accurately a search for America’s beers (plus places to take a shower). And boy, did we find them, what turned out to be America’s vanishing regional beers.

Back then, rolling into some dusty Texas town, spotting the beckoning neon and shuffling up to the bar to slug down a Pearl was like finding a nugget of gold in your prospecting pan. Never mind that the beer wasn’t very good. It was unique, not found anywhere else we’d ever been, and couldn’t have been more satisfying for that reason alone.

I’m unsure of the modern equivalent. Out in Denver recently I agreeably savored a pint of Pliny the Elder on tap. A traveler from the west might be as excited to roam east and land a cache of Heady Topper. Maybe those who won the recent Westvleteren lottery were similarly swept away. I hope so. Sad will be the day when the sense of romance and discovery surrounding beer evaporates.

Seven years after I left a newspaper job to become a freelance writer I did my first piece about beer: breaking the seal, so to speak, for many more to come.

But writing about beer has never dwindled into just a job. Along with my (now long suspended) homebrewing efforts, it’s only deepened my appreciation for the small miracle that winds up in my glass each day.

I start out being favorably disposed toward brewers. Theirs is, I think, a noble profession, even if the business of beer can accumulate its share of dross. I’m not sure where I would be without them.

For me a day without a beer is pretty much unthinkable. In my world, being struck down with a prohibitive liver disease would be almost as cataclysmic as entombment. Though if the former developed, the latter might prove less horrifying.

Certainly, more and richer threads than beer weave through the warp and woof of my life. But, to be sure, it’s inextricably in there, and with its own luster.

***

The Session is a monthly effort where beer writers around the interwebs respond to a topic question. This is the 72nd installment, so it’s been going on for quite a while. The list of responses this month can be accessed at Montana Beer Finder.

From the ever-popular Women Drinking Beer website

Basic Beer Imbibing #1: Never drink beer out of the bottle. It may look Urban Cowboy cool (or not), but you’re missing an awful lot of the beer drinking experience by not pouring it into a glass. Start with the color and foamy appearance of the brew, the way it comes alive when you pour it into a glass. (Which also releases some of the gases that will otherwise tumble and bloat in your stomach.) A glass will also give you the full aromatic experience of the beer, mostly lost in trying to sniff a bottleneck, which looks a little funky besides. And that goes double for cans.

Think of it this way–would you order a fine cabernet and swill it out of the bottle? Does a fine beer deserve any less respect and appreciation?

***

Basic Beer Imbibing #2: Make sure your glass isn’t frosted or frozen. Contrary to mass market advertising, the coldest beer in town isn’t really a worthwhile goal. Beer that is too cold is masking its flavor. (Okay, with some mass market beers that might be a sensible achievement.)

Different beers are actually best drunk at different temperatures. And while the color of a beer can be misleading in other ways (darker beers are not necessarily stronger, for example), it’s a reasonable guide to serving temperatures. Generally speaking, pilsners, wheat beers or lighter ales should be cold, but only about 40 to 45 degrees, not at an arctic chill.

Pale ales, amber ales and many darker beers should merely be cool, 45 to 54 degrees or so. India pale ales, Belgian strong ales, Scotch ales could go as high as 57, while barleywines, Imperial stouts, doppelbocks could be served at up to 61 degrees.

I’ve taken to heading off having beer served in ice-encrusted glassware by requesting non-frosted ones to begin with. Yes, I get a few strange looks from the wait staff. I can deal with it. Ice cream sodas are good in a frosted glass. Not beer.

***

Basic Beer Imbibing #3: Take your time. Assuming your college beer-chugging days are behind you, what’s the rush? A good beer, and particularly a good strong beer, will be one to savor for the short period it is part of your life. Once you’ve poured it out of the bottle and into your non-frosted glass, spend a few useful moments to ponder it–its sight, its smell and, some say, its sound. (Well, it’s mostly writer Fred Eckhardt who says that.)

Linger with a beer long enough and it will change character before you even empty the glass, as it warms, as it reacts to food you may be eating, or to your own changing mood.

I’m not advocating obsessive attention to one’s beer here, although there’s a time and a place for that, too. I am urging at least a beat of awareness, an appreciation for the small natural miracle in front of you. Almost enough to want to raise your glass in a toast, isn’t it?

John Mills and cast of "Ice Cold in Alex" or "Desert Attack" in the U.S.

In different form this material first appeared in the September 5, 2012 issue of The Commons, an independent non-profit weekly newspaper covering Brattleboro and the towns of Windham County, Vermont.

Oregon Silverspot Butterfly on a beer bottle, and thereby hangs a tale (Photo courtesy Ryan Hawk/Woodland Park Zoo)

Maybe we should start a regular feature here—Drink Beer, Save an Animal From Extinction. Or Charity Beers. Most recently we had gorillas on the mind (King Titus), but further back we had beers to help victims of Hurricane Irene (Good Night Irene, More Brown Than Black) and those suffering with Myeloma (Reunion).

One might well say every bottle of Trappist ale purchased is a fund-raiser, since any profits are poured back into the respective monasteries or their own charitable endeavors.

Well, why not? If drinking beer can do good out in the world in addition to all it does for us personally, then all we need worry about are attacks of excessive altruism.

Early blue violet

Now we have the newish Silverspot IPA, introduced last summer by the Pelican Pub & Brewery of Pacific City, Oregon. Downing one of these English-style IPAs will help efforts to increase populations of the threatened Oregon Silverspot Butterfly.

Once fairly common in northwest grasslands, the OSB (Speyeria zerene Hippolyta) became the victim of lost habitat, in terms of the early blue violet plant, also known as the dog violet (Viola adunca). It’s the great chain of ecological being—muck with this species here, and that species over there suffers as well.

The butterfly lays its eggs near the plant, which then serves as the sole source of food for the growing caterpillars.

The plant has dwindled due to encroaching development and competition from invasive species, leading to the butterfly being declared a federally threatened species in 1980, its range shrunken to five protected areas, one in California, four in Oregon.

One of these, happily, is the Cascade Head Preserve, visible from the Pelican Pub & Brewery patio, and where part of the Oregon Silverspot Butterfly recovery program takes place under the aegis of a consortium of conservation partners.

Pelican Pub & Brewery

None of these beery charitable efforts would amount to much if the brew involved was a stinker. Luckily that hasn’t been the case with any of those mentioned above, and the Silverspot IPA is solid, too, as well as a new year-round addition to Pelican’s regular line. (We recently added the brewery’s Tsunami Stout to a Hurricane Sandy survival six-pack.)

Fresh out of the box, so to speak, the beer racked up a silver medal at the 2012 Great American Beer Festival in the English-style IPA category.

That would be good for northwest hopheads to note, because while the beer is a northwest IPA, it’s not a Northwest IPA, in terms of a hop presence that will blow you over. (The brewery’s India Pelican Ale serves that purpose.) It’s a good representation of an English-style IPA, meaning the typical American aroma hops (Cascade, Centennial) here give way to Fuggle, as well as Sterling and the relatively new Meridian.

The beer pours out a bright orange gold, and while there’s still a citrus nose, it’s more lemon than grapefruit, more herbal, spicy, with a pleasing mélange of light fruit and toffee flavors. There’s a decent hop bite at the finish, but it won’t have you puckering up. It’s a smooth, flavorful and highly drinkable beer. All good news for the Oregon Silverspot Butterfly.

Those of us on the east side of the country are about as likely to see the beer as the butterfly. But it’s nice to know they’re both around.

Name: Silverspot IPA
Brewer: Pelican Pub & Brewery
Style: English-style IPA
ABV: 6%
Availability: Year-round, Oregon (from Eugene north) and Washington only
For More Information: www.yourlittlebeachtown.com/pelican

Basho composing a haiku

How often do you get haiku with your beer? And haiku from that beer’s brewer to boot, right on the label?

Add a bottle of El Triunfo to the stash and there you have it, seventeen syllables from Harpoon brewer Jesse Brenneman:

The coffee porter
A blend of “brews”, in balance
Keeps an even keel

Since school has started up again, let’s explicate, overlooking the misplaced comma. Beyond the obvious reference to the type of beer, there’s allusion here to the great mode of transporting goods, shipping, both in terms of the “even keel” and of the porters who carried the cargo off the ships.

It was the river porters, or Fellowship porters, who shouldered the loads from the ships docked in the Thames in London in the eighteenth century, when the beer called porter was acquiring its name. And among the cargoes were those essential ingredients for “brews”—sacks of grain for beers, sacks of beans for coffee, both found in this particular porter.

And this particular porter is the 44th entry in Harpoon’s 100 Barrel Series. Coincidence that our newly reelected U.S. President, whose second inaugural takes place in two weeks, is the 44th?

We already know President Obama is a beer drinker, and there are those among us who actually believe he is trying to strike a political balance in the halls of power, in hopes of keeping the country on an even keel.

Or perhaps even the world; the coffee used in the beer is from the fair trade Equal Exchange organization, specifically from the mountainous El Triunfo biosphere in Mexico.

Granted, all this may be reading a bit too much into three lines of verse, which admittedly won’t go down in the annals of great poetry. Brenneman is no Basho.

But he is good brewer, and it is a pleasure to note that the beer goes down just fine. According to Brenneman a variety of coffees were tasted and tried before settling on the El Triunfo: “We wanted the coffee to be very present in the profile, but we also wanted to make sure it tasted like a beer; we didn’t want to overwhelm one or the other in either direction.”

There is a nice balance here–the malt bill of chocolate and caramel malts makes for a sweet and ingratiating porter, but there’s no doubt about the coffee, since 3,600 pounds of roasted beans were used to make a concentrate of 550 gallons blended into the beer during filtration. Tea drinkers need not apply.

Well, maybe strong tea drinkers; although I think the beer thins out a bit in the middle, it’s still a bracing quaff at 6% ABV. With licorice and chocolate notes along with the java, it’s the easy-drinking brew Brenneman appears to have been aiming for.

And in a final grace note, the farmers who grew the coffee beans used in the brewing are planning to visit the Equal Exchange offices in Boston in April. They’re not visiting specifically to drink the beer, though drink the beer they will. Strikes me about as even as keels ever get.

Name: El Triunfo Coffee Porter
Brewer: Harpoon Brewery
Style: Porter
ABV: 6%
Availability: Limited release in December, as long as it lasts in 25 states
For More Information: www.harpoonbrewery.com

Related post: Harpoon 100-Barrel Island Creek Oyster Stout

I don’t really mind paying attention to each beer I drink. But sometimes it’s nice to be able to just throw one back. Writing about a beer every day, however, is simply too demanding if one if trying to do any kind of decent job. Most of the blogs I’ve seen which attempt to do this are often poorly done, or cursory at best, and now I can well understand why.

And that said, my final pick turned out to be a doozy, on the New Year’s Eve that couldn’t shoot straight. And that’s why I didn’t get around to writing this post until today.

We had firm plans in hand with friends Jerry Carbone and Kathy Maisto—an early dinner at Fireworks Restaurant in Brattleboro, followed by a showing of “Lincoln” at the Latchis Theatre. But Jerry, who had been suffering with a cold, took a downward turn.

Thus ensued that awkward interregnum when with parries and thrusts one tries to figure out the next move. Finally, we decided to stick to the original plan and Kathy decided to join us. All well there, until we wandered over to the theatre across the street, only to find out that “Lincoln” was sold out.

Plenty of seats for “The Hobbit,” so off we went, though this was a movie that Lynn would never have chosen to see. And she hated it. (Well, I didn’t love it; it’s more amped up than the book as I remember it, presumably aiming at “The Lord of the Rings” audience. It has its moments, but the action sequences become a lot like watching someone else play a video game.)

We went into the Den of Illness later—Jerry was upright by this point—and toasted in the new year. The beer, from the small brewing company housed in the former Millers Falls post office, is exceptional.

Element wraps its large label-less bottles in thin paper, drapes neck tags around them, and charges quite a bit for them. This one was about $15. So much for the days when you could say that the very best bottle of beer was still less expensive than a bottle of wine.

But I can well imagine this was a costly beer to produce. With malt and spices common to a Belgian Wit beer (orange peel and coriander), Element adds cocoa powder to the boil. Then the beer is dry-hopped, so to speak, with additional coriander seeds and cocoa nibs. The end result, suggests the brewery, is a “bière blanc au chocolat.”

To be honest, I’m not sure how to characterize the flavor, especially from the distance of the next day. But I remember loving it. There was indeed some spicy character to the beer, even the slightest suggestion of funk, but also a well-controlled sweetness and a touch of licorice that makes the package quite alluring.

At this point Element makes only three year-round beers, Extra Special Oak (7.75% ABV), Red Giant (8.1%) and Dark Element (8.95%), supplemented by three seasonal Interval beers like Winter Ion. Other specials come along and are quickly snatched up at the brewery.

Or so I hear. I haven’t actually visited yet, though Millers Falls is only about 35 miles down the road. Something to look forward to in 2013.

Name: Winter Ion
Brewer: Element Brewing Company, Millers Falls, Massachusetts
Style: Spiced ale
ABV: 9.1%
Availability: Limited seasonal release; MA, VT, RI, CT, NY, AL, IA
For More Information: http://elementbeer.com

>Twelve Beers of Christmas 11: Magic Hat Wooly

I probably should have picked one of the others. Except No. 9, which I’ve never liked.

I’ve had a weird relationship with Magic Hat beers. I stopped buying them a long time ago after they stopped producing the Blind Faith IPA, the only beer they made I really enjoyed. The rest seemed bland, thin, highly underachieving and some, like the summer Wacko made with beet juice, downright hideous. There was some kind of house character that didn’t appeal to me, and the whole act seemed more about marketing its Deadhead sensibility than making exciting beer.

And that was before the company became part of the North American Breweries group, which as a whole seems even more driven by marketing and underachieving beers (if not sales).

On the plus side, the brewery was willing to push stylistic boundaries and experiment a little, even if I didn’t particularly care for the experiments. Then they started brewing Blind Faith again, part of a rotating IPA series which also seemed like a good idea. And now I notice, though have yet to try, a new Humdinger series of higher ABV seasonals.

So along came Wooly which is, as intimated in yesterday’s post, the lowest percentage ABV beer in our 12-day survey, coming in at 4.5%. That’s also on the low side for an ESB, but it would make the beer more drinkable in multiples if the spruce thing works for you, which it certainly might.

It’s a drinkable beer—not a Wacko—but it didn’t really work for me. To the pale, caramel and Munich malts the brewery went with Apollo and Northern Brewer hops before adding spruce flavoring toward the end of the boil. But the spruce dominates the aroma and flavor, without ever feeling fully integrated into a smooth whole as, say, Anchor’s Christmas Ale.

Stick with the other outliers of the Winterland Pak, the intriguing Encore, an American Wheat IPA (6.4% ABV), or the Heart of Darkness (5.7%), a nice roasty stout that we had at the tasting last night and which could work quite well in a winter warmer role.

Name: Magic Hat Wooly
Brewer: Magic Hat Brewing Company, South Burlington, Vermont
Style: Spiced/Herbed ale
ABV: 4.5%
Availability: Mid-October to mid-January, part of the Winterland Variety Pak
For More Information: www.magichat.net

<Twelve Beers of Christmas 10: Otter Creek Winter Red Ale
Twelve Beers of Christmas 12: Element Winter Ion>

The only real problem was going to be getting there, since the snows returned this afternoon. And it’s still snowing. But I made it there and back, so here’s the tale.

Innkeepers Tim and Amy Brady, briefly profiled here, recently handed over the keys and are off to concentrate on their Whetstone Station venture in Brattleboro. The new mother and daughter team of Rhonda and Brittany Calhoun, fresh from Florida, are getting their boots wet in a hurry.

Nice to hear they’re continuing the tastings, a chance to showcase mainly Vermont beers to the mainly out-of-towners who visit the inn.

In keeping with the season, we threw in a couple of agreeable surprises, a Westmalle Tripel and a new Kentucky Bourbon Barrel Stout from the Alltech Brewing and Distilling Co. in Lexington.

Otherwise it was Vermont beers all the way (giving Harpoon a pass because of their Windsor facility): Harpoon UFO White, Wolaver’s Brown Ale, McNeill’s ESB, Magic Hat Heart of Darkness Stout, Rock Art Ridge Runner Barley Wine, and the Otter Creek Winter Red Ale.

We had a full house of a dozen tasters, and one of the marvels of the new world of beer diversity is how favorites were all over the map. Several said the Winter Red was their top pick, others shrugged their shoulders.

I’m somewhere in-between. It’s a good beer, with a nice hoppy nose (Nugget, Centennial and Calypso hops) and the malts (Caramel, wheat and roasted barley among them) lending an almost cotton candy sweetness to the palate. It packs a medium mouthfeel, and a refreshing tang at the finish. Along with the Newcastle Winter IPA (5.2%) and the Anchor Our Special Ale (5.5%) the Otter Creek is among the lower of the ABV offerings in my Twelve Beers of Christmas series. (Until tomorrow, anyway.) That may be why I kind of wish I had another right now.

But I don’t, and I don’t imagine I’ll rush out and buy some more for myself. The main reason is that I’ll be looking for Otter Creek’s new offering, a Russian Imperial Stout that’s clocking in at 10% ABV.

On the other hand, the Winter Red is a beer I would quite likely buy for guests, who don’t always share my proclivity for sorta weird beers or those that can lay you out in a hurry if not careful. It’s a good, slightly different Vermont beer, easy to drink and easy to enjoy. And if there’s some left over for me, it’s not a problem.

Name: Winter Red Ale
Brewer: Otter Creek, Middlebury, Vermont
Style: Red Ale, Amber Ale
ABV: 5.5%
Availability: Winter seasonal
For More Information: www.ottercreekbrewing.com

<Twelve Beers of Christmas 9: Gouden Carolus Noël
Twelve Beers of Christmas 11: Magic Hat Wooly>

I’ve been serving some excellent beers in the past few days. But this is my favorite so far. It’s a veritable Christmas banquet of beers, teeming with lively aromas and flavors, a veritable punchbowl of pleasure.

The brewery has been in production since 1471, with a few abeyances for various world upheavals. The Leclef family has been in charge since 1873, now into the fifth generation and easily qualifying for entry into the Belgian Family Brewers trade association.

The family is a little tight-lipped about the Gouden Carolus Noël ingredients, beyond saying there are six various herbs and spices and three different hops. The beer has been in production since 2002, usually brewed in August, matured for a few months and refermented in the bottle. It’s brought into the U.S. by Wetten Importers.

The mahogany brew gives off plenty of warming vapors, along with a boozy plum pudding of aromas—touches of coconut, leather, licorice, cardamom and who knows what else. The flavor is equally rich and mysterious, with coating waves of toffee and lashings of licorice. It’s sweet, but not cloying, with a surprising tang at the finish rather than an alcoholic burn.

I’m going to stop tasting it now and commence to simply enjoying the last snifter fill. This wouldn’t have been an option with others on hand. But I would have shared anyway.

Name: Gouden Carolus Noël
Brewer: Het Anker, Mechelen, Belgium
Style: Belgian Strong Dark Ale
ABV: 10.5%
Availability: Seasonal, 35 states
For More Information: www.hetanker.be

<Twelve Beers of Christmas 8: Jolly Pumpkin Noel de Calabaza
Twelve Beers of Christmas 10: Otter Creek Winter Red Ale>

And there you have it, folks, the dividing line between those who can take some lactic sourness in their brews, and those who would just as soon forego the pleasure.

Lynn didn’t much care for it either, but she did detect the wildly fruity aroma put out by this dark reddish brown brew–cranberries, currents, cherries, though there’s a rill of caramel sweetness running through as well. The palate is like a high sour tartness, puckering and refreshing if you’re up for it, and I was, after a long day in the snow.

We awoke to a good eight inches of fine packing snow, and Mike and I labored for quite a while in the morning unearthing cars and clearing paths on the deck. After a not-long-enough interregnum we had to get the kids outside to pack down sledding paths on the front hill, and we kept at it until their hands were numb or exhaustion from walking back up the slope did them in. We were sort of beyond exhaustion ourselves.

We actually had a Harpoon Winter Warmer just to start things off and in keeping with the theme of late, the always agreeable 5.9% spiced ale from the Boston and Vermont brewery.

The Jolly Pumpkin, like all of that brewery’s offerings, is a different animal. (See a bit about the De Viento brew in the Stocking Up for Sandy sixpack.) With all of his beers fermented in oak barrels, and then reconditioned in the bottle, Ron Jeffries continues to turn out wild and earthy brews that one needs to be prepared for, or they may just be too over the top to process.

There’s no lack of sour brewing going on in the U.S. right now; it may be the last frontier for those trying to push the envelope and still a total novelty for many.

I enjoyed this beer, although I probably admired it more than loved it. The dank funk is pretty startling, and I have to confess part of my pleasure in it is in seeing how others are vaguely repelled by it. I’m not sure that’s quite in keeping with the sentiments of the season. But I think the sharing of it was.

Name: Noel de Calabaza
Brewer: Jolly Pumpkin Artisan Ales, Dexter, Michigan
Style: Belgian-style Strong Dark Ale
ABV: 9%
Availability: Seasonally, about 21 states
For More Information: www.JollyPumpkin.com

<Twelve Beers of Christmas 7: Newcastle Winter IPA
Twelve Beers of Christmas 9: Gouden Carolus Noël>

A limited edition beer that was distributed in limited fashion last year, this year’s vintage went nationwide last month, much the way previous Newcastle seasonal releases have—Summer Ale, Werewolf and Founders’ Ale. I wasn’t bedazzled by the Founders’ Ale when I tried it this spring. It was, as I said, certainly drinkable, but didn’t appear to be aiming very high.

But I also traced the history of Newcastle ownership through the hands of Caledonian, Scottish & Newcastle, and now Heineken UK. One would expect the company to be aiming at the widest spectrum of beer drinkers (and it is reasonably priced accordingly), and that most offerings would receive a tepid response from beer geeks. At best.

Further complicating matters, but sensibly emphasized by the company on the label matter, is that this is a British-style IPA, fashioned after “18th century India pale ales, which were subtly higher hopped than British pale ales.”

It’s decidedly not a west-coast style hop bomb that many younger American drinkers have come to expect and demand from their IPAs. And at 5.2% ABV it’s almost a session beer here these days.

So while this one turned out pretty much as I expected, I found it much more ingratiating than the Founders’ Ale. And my son, Mike, who’s pretty much a mainstream drinker, liked it far more than last night’s Delirium Tremens.

It’s a copper brown beer with toffee and honey notes in the nose, a sweet caramel follow-through in the palate and hearty enough mouthfeel. “It’s very filling,” said Mike. But there’s an effervescently tart finish, the hopping with Super Styrian and Styrian Goldings hops. My sample vanished far too quickly.

I would think the Downstairs folks might be pleased to receive some of the Winter IPA from the Upstairs folks, if that is indeed the origin of the Boxing Day tradition. Since servants frequently worked on Christmas Day, they frequently took December 26 off, receiving Christmas gift boxes from the lords and ladies of the manor. Fans of “Downton Abbey” may know about this better than I.

But December 26 is also St. Stephen’s Day, frequently when church poor boxes are opened up and distributed to the needy. Either way, it’s a legal holiday in England, and the stores are packed.

The Christmas connection works out nicely, since “Good King Wenceslas” is one of my favorite carols, and in it the good king is looking out (presumably of the royal window) “on the Feast of Stephen” or December 26. And he then heads out into the harsh winter weather to distribute alms.

At the moment, it’s looking pretty harsh here out of our royal window. But if the weather reports are to believed, by tomorrow morning there should be plenty of snow laying round about, deep and crisp and even. Luckily, we have more beers on hand.

Name: Newcastle Winter IPA
Brewer: Heineken UK
Style: English IPA
ABV: 5.2%
Availability: Nationwide through January
For More Information: www.newcastlebrown.com

<Twelve Beers of Christmas 6: Delirium Noël
Twelve Beers of Christmas 8: Jolly Pumpkin Noel de Calabaza>

With three pre-teen grandchildren and ten of us altogether ripping into Christmas gifts this morning, there was ample delirium on hand. Now that two Furbies have been freed from their packaging and are even now speaking Furbish to each other, the time seems about right to begin the day’s imbibing.

As I indicate in an earlier post about the Huyghe Brewery, Delirium Tremens began life as a Christmas beer in 1989, but proved so popular—partially, no doubt, to its clever packaging in ceramic bottles with pink elephant designs—that it went to year-round production. Two siblings came along, Delirium Nocturnum and Delirium Noël. And now there’s a fourth, an 8.5% ABV fruit beer called Delirium Red.

My son, Mike, and son-in-law, Glenn joined me in tasting the Delirium Noël, and then my wife had a go, too. Like yesterday, our sensory impressions were all over the map.

Highly effervescent, the beer pours out a ruby brown. To me it had a huge caramel nose, which Glenn and Lynn thought smelled like clover honey. But there are also estery fruit notes, citrus and ginger. As the beer warmed I picked up more alcohol vapors, but in general the beer seemed less warming than the lower ABV St. Feuillien Cuvée de Noël we had yesterday.

But Glenn said, “It’s almost like drinking something stronger than beer.”

Mike said, “It’s a little too yeasty for me.”

The beer was a bit sweet for me, but for such a potent one, the mouthfeel seemed a tad on the thin side.

“But in spite of all our complaints,” said Glenn, “I’ve drunk all of mine.”

Mike: “Me too.”

Well, me three.

Not unlike the three wise men. Or the three something. The label shows Santa driving his sleigh carried by three pink elephants, and in the foreground a pink elephant on skis. Drinking a bottle of Delirium Noël by oneself would make these hallucinations seem as understandable as Furbish.

Name: Delirium Tremens
Brewer: Huyghe Brewery, Melle/Ghent, Belgium
Style: Strong Dark Ale
ABV: 10%
Availability: Seasonal, 35 states
For More Information: www.delirium.be/en

Mike Bedell (left), Glenn Brunetti (right) and Christmas Father

<Twelve Beers of Christmas 5: St. Feuillien Cuvée de Noël
Twelve Beers of Christmas 7: Newcastle Winter IPA>

His followers erected a chapel on the spot where he was murdered and decapitated, which became the Abbey of Prémontrés in 1125, but later became known as the Abbaye St-Feuillien du Roeulx. The monks presumably brewed there from the early days, as monks did, but the modern brewing activity dates back to 1873 through four generations of the Friart family.

Following some recapitalization in 2000 the Brasserie Friart became known as the Brasserie St. Feuillien, and some proceeds from sales still head the abbey’s way.

Artisanal Imports of Texas brings in the St. Feuillien line, and we’re all the better for it. The Triple and Saison are fairly familiar, and the brewery did two well-regarded collaborations with Green Flash Brewing of San Diego, the spiced Bière De L’Amitié, followed by Friendship Brew.

***

Well, the rest of the crew arrived (ten in all this Christmas), we finally cracked the Cuvée de Noël open before dinner, and among four of us the aroma and taste sensations were all over the map. I take it as a good thing, especially since everyone seemed to be enjoying it. I did, and as the bottle level diminished, wished I’d bought another. There was a crop of yeast floaties in the glass by the time I’d poured the third, but it didn’t seem to infect the taste.

The nose of this ruddy brown ale is a spiced fruit basket—orange, lemon, a hint of coconut, raisins—along with toffee, chocolate, vanilla. The slightly roasty taste is equally as stimulating, a swirling complexity of flavors that finishes with an appropriate bite and a light alcoholic burn. It’s enough to make you lose your head.

***

I finished a reading of Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” today, so forgive the floridity. But dinner’s done, a grandchild’s gingerbread house unveiled, the tree trimmed, the young ones in bed. There are some presents still to be wrapped, others to scatter under the tree, stockings to be filled. The night may yet stretch on for quite some time ere the midnight chimes give way to Christmas.

This could well call for another refresher. But our work here is done until tomorrow. So a Merry Christmas to one and all–“…and so, as Tiny Tim observed, God bless us, Every one!”

Name: Cuvée de Noël
Brewer: St. Feuillien, Le Roeulx, Belgium
Style: Strong ale
ABV: 9%
Availability: Seasonal, nationwide
For More Information: www.st-feuillien.com

<Twelve Beers of Christmas 4: 2XMAS
Twelve Beers of Christmas 6: Delirium Noël>

Glögg is a mulled wine—a warmed concoction of wine, brandy, fruits and spices, more or less the same mix used here—ginger, cloves, cinnamon, orange peel, cardamom and crushed figs. Southern Tier adds four varieties of malts, and two kinds of hops (not sure what kind and I can’t call on a Sunday). But the brewery suggests the beer would be better chilled than warmed.

“Mint!” my wife cried when I had her take a whiff. While I don’t think there’s any Mentha involved, the aroma is a little like heading into the resort spa for a eucalyptus treatment. Probably a heavy hand with the cardamom, though it’s appealing to me.

Those I was assuring yesterday about the barely noticeable spicing in Samuel Adams Winter Lager should run the other way today. This one’s all about the spicing, and you’re liable to turn your thumb up or down accordingly.

It’s thumbs up from me. The spicing mix strikes me as unique, and having had plenty of beers with all the ingredients save the figs, I’m giving all credit to the figs. While the exotic spicing remains the predominant flavor characteristic throughout, it’s amply carried along by the honeyish malts, and all in all makes for a stunning Christmas package.

Southern Tier is only ten years old, but has grown by leaps and bounds since its modest 2002 beginning. Radiating from brewery headquarters in Lakewood, New York, south of Buffalo near Lake Erie, the beers are now in more than half of the U.S. states, heading out to the Dakotas and leapfrogging to Oregon, Washington and Alaska.

The 2XMAS is new this year, maybe because the brewery needed to get its spicing act on. Since 2003 it has annually produced Old Man Winter Ale, a 7% ABV warmer without any extras–a beer now definitely on my must-try list.

But the annual Imperial Pumking already proved Southern Tier was not timid about opening wide the spice chest. It’s not only one of those pumpkin pie spices beer, it’s one of those pumpkin pie spices beer with the whipped cream on top. (Actually, some vanilla, buttery crust and roasted pecans.) I’m not normally a big fan of the style, but Pumking was so over the top it seduced me pretty handily.

Maybe Nat King Cole works for you. Since you get Nat singing a Christmas carol with it, here’s a fun video from the brewery’s website about the making of the 2XMAS beer:

Since that seems to sum it up, let’s end with our Scandinavian toast once again: Skål! God Jul!

Name: 2XMAS
Brewer: Southern Tier Brewing Company, Lakewood, New York
Style: Spiced Winter Ale
ABV: 8%
Availability: From late autumn, in about half the U.S. states.
For More Information: www.stbcbeer.com

Related post: Southern Tier Imperial Choklat Stout

<Twelve Beers of Christmas 3: Samuel Adams Winter Lager
Twelve Beers of Christmas 5: St. Feuillien Cuvée de Noël>

Not to say this isn’t a warming potion at 5.6%, a wheat bock with added spices—an aromatic cinnamon blend called Saigon Cinnamon, orange zest and ginger. But it’s certainly more mainstream than our first two picks.

The spices are similar, if more subtle, to what can found in Old Fezziwig Ale, another brew from the Samuel Adams crew that could also have served our purposes here. But then so could have the Holiday Porter, the White Christmas or the Chocolate Bock, all part of the Winter Classics Variety Pack.

It’s a curiosity to me that, until now, I’ve never reviewed one of brewery’s beers (other than adding Infinium to a 2010 Christmas six-pack). Maybe because of the sheer ubiquity of Samuel Adams products?

I sometimes wonder if this is a Boston Beer Company problem—brewing too many damn beers! I can’t imagine saying this in a general sense, but in terms of a single brewing company it does get a little bewildering about what beer is out at what time and when. One could make a small career out of drinking nothing but Samuel Adams beers:

There’s the flagship Boston Lager, Sam Adams Light, and about 14 other year-round beers in the Brewmaster’s Collection, 20 seasonal brews, a Barrel Room Collection, an Imperial series, a Single Batch series, and then the off-the-charts brews like the 29% ABV Utopias. Drink one Samuel Adams product a week and you wouldn’t make it through the entire list in a year.

Well, love the one you’re with. The Winter Lager won’t blow you out of the water, but it’s a solid bit of brewing that would probably be a delight to drink any time of the year, and it’s nice to see anyone crafting a bock these days. The style seems a bit neglected of late. (Sierra Nevada gave it a tasty shot with their introduction of Glissade early in 2010, but the beer is already out of production.)

But this one, actually a weizenbock, is as perennial as a Christmas cactus since its introduction in 1989. A clear, dark ruby pour releases some of the spicy aromatics, but barely, so those who shy away from spiced beers needn’t flinch. The caramel malt backbone is in the carriage driver’s seat here, as befits the style. The wheat malt may lighten the mouthfeel a tad, but this is still a chewy beer with a mild roasted quality, finished off crisply with Hallertau Mittelfrueh hops. As I say, not one to knock you off your barstool, but quite agreeable.

It could work quite well with any portion of a meal, even dessert. Or, as dessert.

Name: Samuel Adams Winter Lager
Brewer: Boston Beer Co., Massachusetts
Style: Spiced Wheat Bock
ABV: 5.6%
Availability: Nationwide, November-January
For More Information: http://www.samueladams.com

<Twelve Beers of Christmas 2: Nogne Ø Winter Ale
Twelve Beers of Christmas 4: 2XMAS>

I finally made up to Meulemans’ Craft Drafts in Rawsonville, Vermont, and taking the odds that the world would still exist a bit longer plucked this one off the shelf, along with a few others I’ll talk about in the next few days.

Next to the snow shovel, the Nogne Ø Winter Ale may be the most valuable implement on hand to see us through to spring. This opaque brown elixir comes to warm us up from folks who should know something about winter, Norwegians.

Kjetil Jikiun

Specifically, it comes from a small brewery in Grimstad on Norway’s southern coast, where numerous “naked islands” (Nonge Ø) as Henrik Ibsen called them, are visible in the North Sea. Former commercial airline pilot Kjetil Jikiun was an avid homebrewer who investigated breweries worldwide in his travels, but he was particularly enamored of innovative U.S. craft brewing.

He kept flying for a while after opening the brewery in 2002, but now attends to Nogne Ø full time, and has become a European, if not world-wide superstar of craft brewing, a virtual pioneer of new styles in Norway. “Although he still flies around the world to do collaborations,” said Robert Merryman, export manager for Shelton Brothers, which has been bringing Nogne Ø beers into the U.S. for about five years.

The company also hopes to eventually bring in some of the sake Jikiun brews, as it already has some of the beer-sake fusions he has made, like Red Horizon, a 17% ABV lid-lifter made with a traditional wort but put through a long, slow fermentation with sake yeast at low temperatures.

The Winter Ale, called God Jul in the home country, is one of a series of winter beers Jikiun brews, Merryman said. “One that comes in at 6.5% ABV is highly spiced. But this 8.5% version is not; it’s strictly a blend of different malts–chocolate, black, caramel, Munich–as well as a nice blend of hops to give it a crisp finish. It’s not overly sweet, which some believe the Belgian Christmas beers can be. This is a full-bodied dark ale, highly malted, with that balancing finish of Centennial and Columbus hops.”

Couldn’t have said it better myself; I’m merely wondering why I haven’t had any Nogne Ø beers before if they’ve been around for five years and the Winter Ale is an example of the usual quality. It is all Merryman suggests, and perhaps a bit more, a strong brew with its coffeish, husky grain aromas mixing with alcoholic vapors. But it’s smooth, aptly called a warmer, and the finish is subtly and agreeably tannic. Pour this one into a snifter, put your feet up by the fire and contently watch the snow fall. Skål!

Name: Winter Ale
Brewer: Nogne Ø, Grimstad, Norway
Style: Strong Ale
ABV: 8.5%
Availability: Shelton Brothers beers are in 42 states, though not every beer reaches every locale.
For More Information: www.nogne-o.com

<Twelve Beers of Christmas 1: Anchor Our Special Ale 2012
Twelve Beers of Christmas 3: Samuel Adams Winter Lager>

I have a bit of a head start, since over on the Back9Network.com I’ve been doing beer-of-the-week picks under the “Mug Shots” heading. There I’ve already touted Harpoon’s Grateful Harvest Ale, Sierra Nevada’s Celebration Ale, Shmaltz Brewing’s Jewbelation Sweet 16, and Boulevard’s Nutcracker Ale.

But the mother of them all, of course, at least in the United States, is Anchor Brewing’s Our Special Ale. I gave ample history about the San Francisco’s brewery’s Yuletide practices in a post about the 2011 Our Special Ale, so no need to repeat all that here.

All we really need to know is 1) how the 38th rendition tastes and 2) what tree is on the label?

As for the latter, it’s a Norfolk Island Pine, Araucaria heterophylla, and this year’s video from Anchor is a nice little portrait of the artist behind all of the annual labels, Jim Stitt:

The Anchor Christmas Beer, as it is sometimes inaccurately called to no one’s dismay, usually shows up just prior to Thanksgiving and hangs out until mid-January. It was a little late arriving in these parts this year, which gave me the willies when I heard a rumor that this might be the last year it was to be brewed.

But then I also heard a rumor it was the last year it would be brewed as a dark spiced ale, which is more credible and would negate the first rumor.

Rest easy. “The rumor is not true at all,” said Candice Uyloan, with Anchor’s public relations firm. “At this time, we couldn’t tell you what the 2013 Christmas Ale will be like, but we have no reason to believe that it won’t be a rich, dark spiced ale.”

For many years now the beer has been like a trip into the mahogany forest, a dense brown ale with a spruce-like character, with hints of clove and nutmeg. A gingerbread house of a beer, perhaps, but never cloying.

The brewers keep the ingredients to themselves, and no doubt have a good laugh when they hear or read about some of the ingredients folks think are in there. I’ll wade willingly into this trap right now.

The spruce character seems dialed back another notch this year, but there’s a compensating fruity tartness that suggests cranberries to me. Adding to the impression is a more reddish tinge to the beer’s color, which would certainly be in keeping with the season.

In any case, it’s a treat once again, and a case seems about the right proportion for purchase.

Name: Our Special Ale 2012
Brewer: Anchor Brewing Co., San Francisco, California
Style: Spice/Herb/Specialty Beer
ABV: 5.5%
Availability: Nov-Feb, nationwide
For More Information: www.anchorbrewing.com

Twelve Beers of Christmas 2: Nogne Ø Winter Ale>

If limited to one beer for the rest of time–but not limited as to how many I could have–I wouldn’t choose anything overly potent, for example. I wouldn’t want a challenge every time I lifted a glass.

But I would want something with enough agreeable depth of flavor that it would have a chance of holding my interest. Though the premise is actually horrifying in this day and age of so many beer possibilities out there, I’m pretty sure I could make do the rest of the way with Anchor’s Liberty Ale.

However, when it comes down to the last beer–the final roundup–two things are certain: I’d make it a strong one, and I’d make sure it comes in a big bottle. Which immediately rules out the choice of Orval, the Trappist-brewed beer from Belgium that is one of my all-time favorites, but comes only in 11.2-ounce bottles.

Other Trappist Ales would do nicely, and have a notion of divinity clinging to them, which could prove useful in the end time: Chimay Blue, Westmalle Trippel, Rochefort 10 or, if there was any easy way to get one’s hands on it, Westvleteren 12. Any would suffice if the end is still far off.

(Westvleteren 12 did make a recent appearance on these shores, but in limited supply to about 20 states, with boxes of six bottles and two glasses going for $85. I was in Provisions today, a classy food and spirits shop in Northampton, Massachusetts, one of four places in the state to nab some of the allocation (there were two in Vermont north of me). On the day the beer became available, December 12, there was a line out the door and the shop ran through its provisions in five minutes.)

The Mayan calendar is also in the news, suggesting that the end of the world will be arriving at midnight, Dec. 21. That’s tomorrow night, folks. The logical beer pick might be Unibroue’s La Fin du Monde (literally, “the end of the world”). And I recently enjoyed another Quebecois brew that might serve, Dernière Volonté (“Last Will”) from the Brasserie Dieu du Ciel in Montreal.

If I feel the earth starting to move under my feet, however, I’ll try to make it down to my beer cellar (i.e., the garage), where I’ve been aging a few bottles of the Sierra Nevada Our Brewers Reserve Grand Cru.

It was brewed in 2010 to celebrate the Chico, California brewery’s 30th anniversary and released last year. The beer is probably no longer in the marketing pipeline, so I figure I’m better off than all those folks who were waiting in line for the Westvleteren 12.

The Grand Cru is a strong beer lover’s dream at 9.2% ABV, but with all the depth and complexity one can hope for in a beer. It’s actually a blend of three beers–Sierra Nevada’s flagship Pale Ale; its annual holiday hopfest, Celebration Ale, and its lid-lifting Bigfoot Barleywine-Style Ale. An added fillip is that the Bigfoot was aged in oak before the blending.

The commingling end result of rich malt, hops and wood would help in facing the end result with a smile–and going out with a bang instead of a whimper.

* * *

(I made mention of this is in an earlier post about local options for buying good beer. To the shops cited there, I would certainly add Provisions in Northampton, Massachusetts, and TruBeer just a bit further south in Easthampton. The former also has an extensive wine department and gourmet food choices; the latter is a smaller, but purely beer operation. The breadth of the selections in both are downright staggering, and that’s before you even drink any of the beers.)

One man’s truth is another man’s fiction. Ramp it up to the political level and you have some real worries, like the fiction of weapons of mass destruction leading to the fatal truths of the Iraq war. Beyond a few hangovers, I doubt this has ever created any severe problems in the world of beer.

Hype we will always have with us, whether we define it as over-zealous advertising and public relations or just the amplified outpourings of eager fans infused with uncritical devotion.

As for Westvleteren 12, what beer can possibly live up to the reputation of being the best in the world? It was the (mild) disappointment with the beer in relation to its reputation that led David J. Bascombe of the Good Morning… blog to suggest this Session #70 topic in the first place.

A rarely seen label from the Westvleteren brewery

Equally, what to make of the long lines that precede the appearance of some beers? In these New England parts there was the annual kerfuffle over Kate the Great, the Imperial Stout from the Portsmouth Brewery in New Hampshire. (Not likely to happen in 2013 as brewmaster Tod Mott left, while retaining rights to the recipe.)

There are ample stories about spending time or money to get one’s mitts on a particular beer, and I’ve certainly frittered both away in the past.

I’ve written about this before, but early in my beery career I drove from New York to Vermont just to try a rare beer, all at the urging of the late Alan Eames, who was a Jedi Master of hype, and indeed was paid to be one. The beer was a Ballantine Burton Ale said to have been brewed only twice in Ballantine’s history, this one from 1946 and then barrel-aged for twenty years before bottling.

After a three and a half-hour trip from New York to Brattleboro, I found out from Eames that the tasting was in Stowe, another two and a half hours north, and that he didn’t drive. The carrot of the Burton Ale kept me going, not to mention Eames’ non-stop talking, and we eventually plowed through numerous bottles of the stuff.

Amazingly, it was still pretty decent. And I still have a bottle that I haven’t opened, now another quarter-century down the road. I wouldn’t have missed this experience for anything, and not only for the perspective it shed.

I’ve been to the Westvleteren monastery, and have had the 12. Would I like some more? Sure. Would I have liked to have had a taste of BrewDog’s The End of History? Sure. Would I like to have easy access to Pliny the Elder, or Younger? Sure.

But beyond the journalistic, the only real reason to track down certain beers now is to satisfy my curiosity and to be able to say I had it, the latter point mostly vanity. Although I’d be happy to be proven wrong, I doubt that there are any beers out there that are going to change my life. I’ve had those already.

I know there are plenty of great drinking experiences ahead, and I’m eager to have them. I’m just not going to get too worked up about them beforehand.

So I guess I’m here today to say that I don’t believe there is a beer, anywhere, or of any kind, that is worth spending hours on a line or shelling over a big wad of cash for. There is no beer flavor in the world that is going to lift the scales from your eyes, give you a glimpse into heaven, set you to roam in the firmament. Not even that one, over there.

So if you can’t get that one over there, try this one over here. It’s pretty good, too.

***

The Session is a monthly effort where beer writers around the interwebs respond to a topic question. This is the 70th installment, so it’s been going on for quite a while. The list of responses this month can be accessed at Good Morning…

I started my celebration on Wednesday. It was Malcolm Duck’s birthday and I noted on Facebook that I would have a Belhaven in his honor that evening, and so I did: the Scottish Stout from the Belhaven Brewery in Dunbar.

Dunbar is in East Lothian, Scotland, and so is Mr. Duck, who plays a solid game of golf and runs one of my favorite places in the world, Ducks at Kilspindie House in Aberlady where I’ve downed more than several pints.

It’s been awhile though, and I do pine for the place. East Lothian is a treasure trove of great golf courses, from North Berwick to Gullane to the site of next year’s Open Championship, Muirfield. But until I finally managed to best it this year, my lowest round ever was on the Dunbar Golf Club layout, which understandably remains one of my favorites of all time.

I recall the round fondly as my introduction to links golf in the area, on a blissfully sunny and virtually windless day, with the good company of Allan Minto and Rob Steadman. We had planned to visit the nearby Belhaven Brewery as well, but our timing was off for some reason and I had to content myself with mere tippling of the beer.

The brewery was one of the last independent Scottish breweries at that time and one of the oldest operating breweries in the U.K., dating back to at least 1719, if not before. It has since been purchased by Greene King of Suffolk, in 2005.

The historic Belhaven Brewery

Though Greene King consumed other breweries it purchased in the past, it has expanded operations in Dunbar, installing a new brewhouse last year and introducing some new products. The Scottish Stout debuted in 2007, solely for export, whereas Belhaven Black, launched last year, is a different brew.

Belhaven senior brewer Alan McLaren sorted it out for me, since the brewery actually produces a number of stouts. “The Belhaven Black is a 4.2% ABV stout, mainly for the U.K. The Scottish Stout is 7%, although there is a 5% version for Russia. And we also make a McCallum’s Stout at 4.1%, mainly for Russia.”

The company makes a 4.6% St. Andrews Ale which would have been perfect for today, but it isn’t currently being imported to the U.S. The 5.2% Scottish Ale is, however, as is the 6.5% Wee Heavy, which I’ll be cracking open later this evening as part of my own St. Andrews Day celebration.

“The Scottish Stout is a strong one at 7%, but doesn’t give the impression of such,” said McLaren, which is a sensible heads up, because the beer is seductively smooth and delicious, somewhere between a dry Irish stout and a sweeter English stout.

Malcolm Duck and a certain Mr. Watson out on the links.

The beer pours out dark with a rocky tan head. There’s crystal, chocolate and pale malts in the mix, along with roast barley. It’s not overly hopped and goes down easy, as McLaren suggested. One 16.9-ounce bottle should take you quite a ways.

Maybe not all the way to Scotland, but near enough for now.

Name: Scottish Stout
Brewer: Belhaven Brewery, Dunbar, Scotland
Style: Strong stout
ABV: 7%
Availability: 38 states nationwide
For More Information: www.Belhaven.co.uk

Related post: Jefferson Davis Goes to St. Andrews

King Titus

The first Peeper Ale from the Maine Beer Company rolled out of the brewery in the summer of 2009. If brothers David and Daniel Kleban were pacing nervously waiting for the reviews of their opening production to roll in, they must have been as relieved as pleased to find out they had a hit on their hands.

Peeper Ale, a 5.5% ABV golden ale was the sole offering from the Portland brewery until the new year, when Zoe debuted, a 7.2% amber ale named after David’s daughter.

A slightly aggressive pour of King Titus

At the beginning of last month King Titus Porter arrived, now giving the company six regular beers. The others are Mo, an American Pale Ale (6%); Lunch, a west coast-style IPA (7%), and one of my favorites, Mean Old Tom, a stout (6%).

Aside from some collaboration brews with the likes of Lawson’s Finest Liquids of Vermont and closer-to-home Allagash and Rising Tide, MBC will concentrate on the regular line for now. “The porter kind of rounds out our portfolio,” David said. “We’re intending all of these to be year-round beers.”

And the brewery has a big move on its hands. Currently producing about 3,000 barrels a year in an industrial area about a football field’s length away from the pioneering D.L. Geary Brewing Company, Maine Beer is heading toward L.L. Bean country in the spring, south of U.S. 1 in Freeport.

Which suggests things are going well. “It’s working out great, better than we expected,” said David, 41, who is credited with talking his younger brother Daniel, 35, into switching careers from the law to brewing.

“Daniel’s in charge of making good beer and I’m in charge of selling good beer,” David said, and the reception so far suggests both are doing just that.

No question that King Titus is one smooth brew, dark as night, pouring with a bounteous head like the foam on a hot chocolate. It gives off equally chocolaty aromas with a touch of smoke (unless that’s a contribution from my wood stove). The palate has some mocha, brown licorice and hazelnut flavors. There’s a velvety mouthfeel but the close has a mildly puckering, drying bite of semi-sweet chocolate. It’s said to be generously hopped with Columbus and Centennial, though their presence is felt mainly in the even keel of the beer. (Since I’m craving some all of a sudden, I think this might go splendidly with a big hunk of chocolate cake.)

It’s a chest beater, so the beer is aptly named after a gorilla, not something you run across every day. It was the late Dian Fossey and Kelly Stewart who first saw the newborn silverback gorilla in Rwanda in 1974, and Stewart (daughter of film actor Jimmy) who named him after a book she was reading, Titus Groan, the first in a fantasy trilogy by Mervyn Peake.

Titus was tracked throughout much of his life and was the subject of a PBS Nature documentary, “The Gorilla King,” that aired a year before his death in 2009 at the ripe old gorilla age of 35.

“Do what’s right” it says on the bottom of every understated Maine Brewing Company bottle label. And as long as we’re in the Thanksgiving season of gratitude, it’s nice to know that from the start MBC has subscribed to the notion of 1% for the Planet to give one percent of sales to environmental groups around the world.

In the case of King Titus Porter, the monies will go toward the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund. In some sweet timing, the organization had its annual luncheon in New York City last month, and David Kleban was there, with some fresh bottles of King Titus to pass around.

Name: King Titus Porter
Brewer: Maine Beer Co., Portland, Maine
Style: Robust Porter
ABV: 7.5%
Availability: Seven states (ME, VT, MA, NH, NJ, VA, MD) as well as NYC, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C.
For More Information: www.mainebeercompany.com

Photo © Robert Kaufman

I took away three quick lessons from today’s round at the Desert Pines Golf Club, our last in this whirlwind Golf Road Warriors extravaganza:
1) The three courses in the Walters Golf Las Vegas portfolio couldn’t be more different from one another;
2) I need to work on my sand game;
3) I need to work on my mower technique.

Let’s review. Our opening round in the Walters Golf whirligig was at Royal Links, a wide-open affair in the style of the Open Championship rota holes it replicates. The second tilt was at Bali Hai, a bounteous, fecund, palm-laden track that was a tropical joyride.

Desert Pines is a third animal, a Perry Dye effort that seemingly transports a low country golf experience into Nevada–the pines of Vegas. (Roughly 3,000 pines were transplanted here before the course opened in 1997.)

All of the Walters Golf courses are geared more toward the traveling player than locals, with plenty of packages available*, and we showed up right before the tournament shotgun sounded for a large group of South Korean golfers.

Nonetheless, our group took off in a large caravan—a sixsome to start—the four Golf Road Warriors joined by Walters Golf sales directors Brennan Blednick and Jimmy Schwarz, both of them sticks. And we had a gallery of other Walters reps, including general manager Joe Dahlstrom, director of marketing Josh Hill and superintendent Erik Ostlund. Talk about an entourage!

Part of the reasoning for this—other than getting the staff out of the office for a while—were the skills challenges to come. In light of fellow Warrior Aubrey McCormick’s experience on the Golf Channel’s “Big Break Atlantis” our hosts had set up a few competitions for us. This wasn’t outside their ken—“Big Break II” was contested here.

So we set out on the third hole, jumped around the course a bit, and frankly never got back around to playing the opening holes. But it wasn’t hard to get a feel for Perry Dye’s skill in laying out a course on a relatively small plot, threading tight fairways through the pines with ample mounding between holes to shield players from hubbub elsewhere, and maintaining ample length, 6,810 yards from the tips, 6,464 from the middle tees.

Nothing that can't be handled with a little strength and muscle and bunker work

Ostlund said conditioning on the course had gone through a ragged period, leading to a complete renovation toward the close of the 2007 season. Mission accomplished, down to the all-new bent grass greens rolling like rockets.

I had put a brilliant three shots together on the par-5 seventh hole when the first skill shot challenge came up. Okay, though it was a little like having the blackjack dealer drawing five cards to 21 while sitting there with two kings; my reasonable shot at birdie was swept off the table.

We pegged up on the back sixth tee, but turned around to fire between the seventh and ninth greens over a pond toward the distant eighth green. I frankly forget who took the closest to the pin honors here, I just felt lucky to stay on dry land.

Playing down the brawny 425-yard twelfth hole it dawned on us that there were concentric circles on the green surrounding the hole. Time for the next challenge, a total of five shots from the many bunkers guarding the hole, from short to long, downhill to uphill.

I was tied for the lead after three shots. But anyone betting on me would have tanked, as I did on the last two swings. The short odds going in were on Aubrey, but Jeff Wallach upset the field, running from the back of the pack to take the honors.

Jeff Wallach practices his dance steps, while I take a little nap. (Photo © Robert Kaufman)

I finally did get that birdie on the short par-4 fifteenth, called “Little Poison” because it bends around a huge pond hugging the right side. But the last skill challenge didn’t involve any clubs at all.

The curious can check this out in Jamie McWilliams’ “Desert Pines Overview” video here on the Golf Road Warriors site. I did, and now I’m thinking of filing a protest. It can clearly be seen, in the critical putting green mower race between Robert Kaufman and me, that someone jumps in and adjusts Robert’s throttle, helping him overcome what should have been my insurmountable lead.

I’m pretty sure there’s something about “outside agents” in the rulebook, albeit the rulebook doesn’t really cover mower races. (To answer the burning question on everyone’s mind, the mower blades weren’t spinning.)

Maybe I should have said something then and there, but our whirling dervish of a Golf Road Warriors trip was spinning to a close. We went directly from the course to the airport to head our separate ways home. But to the question golf writers often ask, “Don’t they know who we think we are?” the Walters Golf team had the answer: “Yes we do, Golf Road Warriors, yes we do.”

Out front was a stretch limousine about as long as the Colorado River. So we stretched out, feeling like we’d drawn to an inside straight, the kings of Las Vegas. Well, not the King, of course.

Birdie hole! No. 15 at Desert Pines

*Speaking of deals, Walters Golf is holding a Black Friday/Cyber Monday 72-hour sale that is cutting prices at least in half for play on any of their courses from December 3 to March 31. Check here for details. But only 500 rounds will be sold, and last I checked they were already rapidity approaching the 400 mark.

Luxor (Photo courtesy Las Vegas News Bureau)

There are pros and cons with everything, including being a Golf Road Warrior. On the plus side, we get to travel to exotic locales, play on great golf courses, stay in luxury hotels and eat and drink at terrific restaurants and bars.

Is there a down side to this, one might reasonably ask? Yes, in the sense that all this keeps us very busy, we try to post about it real time, but we often wind up nodding off while poised over our computers. Yet we still can’t squeeze in all that is available to us.

Three nights in Las Vegas, and I sat down at a blackjack table only once? Stayed at the Luxor, but didn’t have time to take in “Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition”? Or, for that matter, “Fantasy,” said to be one of the top topless shows in Vegas? (Missing Carrot Top seemed less dire.)

But we did get to sit down for a meal at the Public House at Luxor, an expansive sports bar and restaurant, with Walters Golf sales director Brennan Blednick. Brennan was fairly expansive himself, telling tales of Las Vegas that can’t be repeated here. (They’re staying in Vegas.)

The backdrop was the bulging beer list, with 20 mostly craft beers on tap, another 20 in the bottle, as well as about 20 bottles of the usual bellywash. It raised the question of why one would want to spend $6 for a bottle of Bud Light when for a couple of bucks more you could dive into a Ballast Point Calico Amber, a Death Valley Pale Ale or a Rogue Dead Guy Ale?

Even better, for $7, there was the one local beer on tap, Tenaya Creek Gold Medal Pilsner. As I found out from Tenaya’s head brewer Anthony Gibson, “We’ve been making the Pilsner since Day One,” that being in 1999. “It’s changed a bit over the years, but it’s still a flavorful 5.5% ABV Czech-style lager with a Czech yeast strain, and Czech and German hops for bittering. We let it condition for four weeks.”

It was in good condition before we polished it off and decided to roam over the rest of the list. For some reason—our day’s endeavors at Bali Hai?—Jeff Wallach, Robert Kaufman and I were a mite thirsty. (Our younger counterpart, Aubrey McCormick, ate and ran off to meet up with some friends.)

So the swap and share parade began—a Petrus Blond Ale from Belgium (6.6%); a Stone Ruination IPA from San Diego (7.7%); an Ommegang Hennepin from Cooperstown, New York (7.7%), and then back to Belgium for that most bravely named beer, Delirium Tremens (8.5%),which features pink elephants on its label.

This escalation ensured that we wouldn’t nod off over our computers, since we would lucky to even find the power switch. But it did mean we forgot all about the finals of the 2012 National Beard and Moustache Championships.

Lyle Wengler of Sioux Falls, SD (left) and Andy Kisner of Temucula, CA, contestants in the 2012 National Beard and Moustache Championships.

While wandering around Fremont Street on Friday night, we had noticed there seemed to be an unusually large number of unusually hirsute men in the crowd. With due journalistic diligence we discovered 1) that there was such a championship, 2) that it was the third annual and 3) that almost 350 contestants from all over the world were putting their best fuzz forward.

I felt like a real piker among these bushman, though I suppose if I wanted to work on it I could enter 4) the 2013 Championship, September 7 in New Orleans.

In the What Goes Around Comes Around Department, a beer is being made from yeast cells culled and cultured from the beard of Rogue brewmaster John Maier. It should be a golden ale released as New Crustacean (a play on the brewery’s barleywine, Old Crustacean) sometime next spring. We can hope it will make the Public House beer list, if only by a whisker.

Jeffrey Moustache of Los Angeles (yes, Moustache is his name) won best of the full beards in the Verdi category, one of 18 categories. (Photo by Frederic J. Brown / AFP / Getty Images)

We met Jared Lemon, the veteran playing in our group, swinging the sticks with his remaining left arm. (See my related post on the Golf Road Warriors site, “Veterans Day.”)

Aubrey McCormick and Jared Lemon share a laugh at Bali Hai Golf Club (© Robert Kaufman)

We were also playing with one of the newest members of The A Position team, Aubrey McCormick, undergoing trial by fire with an immediate immersion into the Golf Road Warriors experience. But Aubrey had poise from playing professionally on the Sun Coast, Moon Light and Futures Tours, as well as an appearance on the Golf Channel’s “Big Break Atlantis.”

Our first hole in the tournament scramble was the fourth, which pretty much parallels the flight path for passenger jets departing from the very near McCarran Airport. To a long-time Mets fan like me, the low-flying jets made me positively nostalgic for good old Shea Stadium.

Sunk that one! (©Robert Kaufman)

So I belted one that would have easily cleared the fences at Shea, and it landed distantly in the fairway as well. But Aubrey had been cleared to play the forward tees, a 255-yard shot today. She put it right on the green, and we cruised to our first of four straight birdies. Very interesting.

The course was compelling, too. Our second taste of a Walters Golf track couldn’t have been more different than our first, at Royal Links, which was wide open in a replication of links-style play.

Bali Hai is a Brian Curley and Lee Schmidt expedition into the dreamscapes of Indonesia. You won’t need a machete to work your way through, but the course is lush with tropical flora, countless palm trees, sinuous lagoons and lavish water features.

Few are as well-versed in such sultry design as Schmidt and Curley, who have offices in China and are the team behind the massive Mission Hills endeavors there. (How many have, like this firm, bilingual websites in English and Chinese?)

But for this course, opened in 2000, the pair were mindful of its locale—Las Vegas—and its namesake inspiration—James Michener’s Tales of the South Pacific, which became the classic Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, South Pacific. So a little showmanship, and maybe a Bloody Mary, is not out of order. Fellow warrior Jeff Wallach may have said it best, when we came to the eighth tee: “This is the hole that cries VEGAS!”

Fifteenth at Bali Hai looking toward The Strip

Indeed, in a city that has proven expert at geographical artifice, here it all was dead in front of us—a 464-yard par-4 from an elevated tee, with the backdrop of the entire recreated world—the Luxor pyramid, THEhotel, the twin monoliths of Mandaley Bay and the tip of the Chrysler Building. No wonder we stumbled to a mere par.

The length of the par-4 might have had something to do with it, too. Though there are drivable par-4s on holes one and four (at least for Aubrey McCormick), many of the two-shotters here are monsters (440 yards, 464, 423, 458, 456, 466), at least from the gold tees we were playing–6,601 yards total to a par of 71. Indeed, we were only one-under on these five holes, and that probably cost us the tournament.

The course is rated 70.2 with a slope of 125 from the golds, and the reason is the reasonable chance of reaching each par-5 in two. (We birdied three of the four).

The par-3 fourteenth is a 224-yard monster, but the other four par-3s are of moderate length—if not moderate complexity. There’s plenty of blazingly white sand on the course, but nowhere more so than on the 165-yard eleventh, called the Lagoon hole because of beckoning water left of the green. But the startling feature here is the sand that literally surrounds the hole.

Behind the eleventh green, Bali Hai

As I mentioned in my other post, this is where Jared banged in a monster putt for a birdie and we all went berserk. It was easily the high point of the day, though we enjoyed ourselves throughout, and at the post-round buffet at the clubhouse’s touted Cili Restaurant, which fuses American cuisine with Asian influences.

The clubhouse maintains the Indonesian feel with a spacious panache, and indeed as we made our way out for the day a wedding reception was making its way in. No telling what the slope rating is on any particular relationship, but we can hope the twosome avoids the hazards, and makes it around as well we did at Bali Hai.

Looking toward the tenth green, Bai Hai

Brown was at the course to take part in the third annual Harmon’s Heroes tournament, organized by instructor Butch Harmon and sponsored in large part by JMA Services. Butch puts the veterans involved—many severally injured in the OID or OED conflicts—through his school for a couple of days, and then lets them loose in a fund-raising golf tournament that assists wounded vets in acquiring their own homes.

Butch Harmon (left) watches Sam Brown take a swing at Harmon's Heroes 2012 (Photos courtesy @Robert Kaufman)

It was Veterans Day. And looking at Brown, it was plain that he must have undergone intense pain and mental anguish in his long recovery from the explosion. But once he related his story he asked me, “Are you a veteran?”

“Yes. I was in the Army during the Vietnam era.”

“Thank you for your service,” Sam said.

I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. My stint seemed like a joke next to Brown’s ordeal. But he meant it in all sincerity. So all I could do was reply in kind, “Thank you for your service.”

As Butch Harmon put it, after introducing all the participating vets and letting them take a crack at the par-3 sixteenth hole before the tournament proper, “These kids have done everything they can do for all of us—given up their lives or parts of their bodies…. We can’t do enough for them….”

He’s sure got that right. I spoke to Matt Anderson, who had blown his right foot apart in Afghanistan and now had it encased in a wired contraption that was, he admitted, “Every bit as painful as it looks.”

Matt Anderson in the practice barn

Yet Matt holed a 40-foot eagle putt to take his team to the -17 winning margin.

We thought we were doing pretty well battling to -10 on the day, us being the four Golf Road Warriors and the real warrior, Jared Lemon.
We use our moniker with tongue firmly in cheek, of course. About all Golf Road Warriors have to complain about is shaky wireless service in the hotels, a missed wakeup call, a scarcity of booze in the stretch limos we’re provided with.

Jared, a natural righty, lost his right arm to a land mine explosion during his second tour of duty in Afghanistan. Now 31, he’s going at golf from the left side, swinging with his remaining left arm.

He had mixed results in our round, smacking some shots on the screws, but hitting the occasional worm-burner as well. “It’s not as easy as it looks,” he said, after GRWs Jeff Wallach, Aubrey McCormick, Robert Kaufman and I gave it a try with one hand. We all foozled shots. I should say I foozled a shot after whiffing completely. Robert finally knocked one out there after also whiffing, but yes, we confirmed that it wasn’t easy.

It made Jared’s persistence, patience and good humor even more impressive. And the Harmon’s Heroes initiative speaks well to the therapeutic nature of golf. Both Jeff and Aubrey were not long back from ten days of traveling and playing with wounded vets on some of the great courses of Ireland. And near her home in Washington, D. C., Aubrey volunteers as an instructor with the Salute Military Golf Association.

We all contributed to our good (if insufficient) tournament score. But the excitement level ramped up on the eleventh hole, when Jared lined up about a 45-foot putt and stroked it right into the jar for a birdie.

Jared Lemon lets a long putt fly while Aubrey and I watch...

Maybe....

With a beaming smile, Jared admitted, “That just makes me feel so good.” Well, we were all ecstatic. Say it was only a putt, and then only the memory of a putt, but it’s always worth being reminded that there are some things that can never be taken away from us, particularly on this memorable Veterans Day.

Yes sir!

I’d been in Las Vegas two nights, but this was the first time I’d been able to feed my inner hophead, so I was immediately feeling well-disposed toward the Tenaya Creek Brewery, located a bit north of Las Vegas proper.

We were a bit south of Las Vegas proper, in the Green Valley Ranch Resort & Spa, seated on a cushioned bench in the Station Casino. We’d shown up for a Harmon’s Heroes reception, in anticipation of the tournament for the cause on Sunday, and made the rounds of the sponsors, participants, players and the wounded vets, most of whom would also play.

I made do, nicely, with some bottled Gordon Biersch Märzen at the reception, but like last night’s Sin City Amber, this was a malt-accented brew.

Aubrey McCormick asking Butch Harmon if he's 21 or older, before rolling the bones at Green Valley Resort

Following the reception a crowd moved to the casino floor and hit the craps table, at which point I peeled off to play some blackjack. It didn’t go well. Normally I can while away hours and hold my own at the blackjack table, but I plowed through my modest stake in alarming rapidity this evening and thereafter opted for discretion.

While fellow Golf Road Warriors Jeff Wallach and Aubrey McCormick were issuing winning squeals from the craps table I went in search of a decent beer. As Sin City’s Richard Johnson had warned me, not much of interest was to be found on the casino floor. But not far off it was Quinn’s Irish Pub, which looked to have a pretty decent selection, though I didn’t look too closely after I found the local brew on tap.

Quinn's Irish Pub at the Green Valley Ranch Resort

Lupulin lovers will enjoy this ride; others can hop off the bus, which drives through five different hop additions in the boil (Magnum, Summit, Columbus, Cascade and Chinook), with two separate dry hopping additions with Chinook, Columbus and Summit.

The result is a floral and citrus nose, a brisk hop attack (hence the rattler on the label?) through a hearty mouthfeel (Hop Ride finishes at 7.2% ABV), and a zesty dry finish as well. Most satisfactory!

I learned all this later from brewer Anthony Gibson, who told me the brewery was founded in 1999 by Tim Etter and family, originally as a brewpub. “But things changed as the city grew out toward us. When we started distributing around town the demand for the beer led us to discontinuing the food operation, taking over the kitchen to expand the brewery operation.”

While still small, at about 2,000 annual barrels, Tenaya Creek is adding an additional tank, and may go up to 3,500 barrels. The company’s beers are currently being distributed throughout Nevada, as well as in Arizona, Utah, Ohio and British Columbia.

My pockets were a little lighter, true, but when Jeff and Aubrey finished up their successful stint at the craps table, we all went away satisfied.

Name: Hop Ride IPA
Brewer: Tenaya Creek Brewery, Las Vegas, Nevada
Style: West coast IPA
ABV: 7.2%
Availability: Year-round in Nevada, Arizona, Utah, Ohio, British Columbia
For More Information: www.tenayacreek.com

2) Replica holes for those who have played the classic courses in the Open Championship rota.

3) The chance to watch a foursome member wreak havoc on the course.

4) and 5) ParMates.

Royal Links 15, based on Turnberry's fifth.

1) Replica holes for those who have never played in Scotland or England.

Las Vegas is expert in creating parallel universes that sort of look like real life but skirt alternative realities just enough to make sure you know you’re on vacation. Witness the New York-New York skyline, the Eiffel Tower at Paris Las Vegas, the gigantic pyramid that is The Luxor hotel and casino.

A little more than eight miles from The Strip is just such an alternate reality for golfers, the Royal Links Golf Club. The “Royal” refers to those English and Scottish courses that have served as venues for the Open Championship. Players who have never had a taste of links golf can get a feel for it here.

There’s the firm and fast rolling terrain, sometimes feeding into previously invisible pot bunkers; the bunkers themselves, sometimes so deep that stairs lead down to the bottom; the large and memorably contoured greens, and–if lucky the way the Golf Road Warriors were–a brisk wind to play in, adding to the strategic mix. (Though granted, far more comfortable temperatures are the norm.)

2) Replica holes for those who have played the classic courses in the Open Championship rota.

Of our “fivesome”—four players and videographer Jamie McWilliams—only Jeff Wallach and I have played any of the original holes—11 in Jeff’s case, ten in mine. Jamie will soon have a video up on the Golf Road Warriors Vegas site where Jeff and I discuss our impressions of the course, but it’s safe to say we both enjoyed trying to match up our memories of the original holes with those on the ground here.

Eleven courses contribute, so to speak, to the Royal Links layout: Royal Lytham, Royal Troon, Prestwick, Royal Liverpool, the Old Course at St. Andrews, Royal Birkdale, Royal St. George, Muirfield, Royal Cinque Ports, Turnberry and Carnoustie.

I’d be lying if I said I was immediately struck by the authenticity of the replicas—and that’s because my memory of the originals is faulty. I may have played them, but clearly not enough. And truth be told, while Pete and Perry Dye measured out the originals to the inch, it’s impossible to recreate the context for every hole.

The overall sense memory of the links golf holes is strong, however, and I certainly recognized the eighth hole, which mirrored the eighth hole at Royal Troon, the very first course I ever played in Scotland. Also known as the Postage Stamp hole, Troon’s eighth is one of the most famous par-3 holes in the world.

Alas, I botched the hole when I first played it at Troon. But here? Damned if I didn’t botch it again! So as far as I can testify, the holes are exactly the same.

3) The chance to watch a foursome member wreak havoc on the course.

"We don't need no stinkin' yardage markers!"

Okay, this isn’t really a legitimate reason to want to play Royal Links, but it certainly was attention-getting today when our noble leader Wallach, who has been playing some splendid golf lately, ripped a mighty three wood in the fifteenth fairway. It might have been a good shot, except that it rocketed into the yardage marker a few feet ahead of him and sheared off the top, while the ball shot off on some unrecoverable angle we never could determine, probably because we were laughing so hard.

Anyway, we’ll go with thematic consistency as an actual reason. Royal Links is jammed with memorabilia that add to the overall feel of a links experience, inside a clubhouse resembling a small castle. There’s a giant replica of the Claret Jug out front, a statue of Old Tom Morris and even a stand-in for the Swilcan Bridge at St. Andrews, where we all struck Jack Nicklaus-like poses.

What look like giant storybooks adorn each tee, with information about the replica hole’s importance in Open Championship history. (These books are made of stone, though that didn’t stop two of our number from trying to turn the pages.)

Both the scorecard and a yardage book add to the information about each hole, and are as much fun to read after the round as during. And maybe safer, if one is dodging flying yardage marker debris during play.

4) and 5) ParMates

Royal Links is the first of three courses we’re going to play in the Walters Golf repertoire, with Bali Hai up tomorrow and Desert Pines on Monday. But at any of the three courses, the ParMates are ready and willing to serve you.

Golf Road Warrior Robert Kaufman flanked by ParMates Katie Keeney (left) and Crystal Ann Marshall

Well, willing for $225 per ParMate, that is. For the expenditure players will be supplied with a forecaddie who will perform all the typical forecaddie duties, except this particular forecaddie will be a beautiful girl, fetchingly dressed, who will also bring an outgoing personality to bear on making one’s golf round something out of the ordinary.

I don’t know if we had the all-stars of the ParMates team for our round, but I would have to think Katie Keeney and Crystal Ann Marshall are piling up substantial votes. The pair added a spark to the day that made the round more about having fun than about any serious attempts to conquer the course, and have fun we did.

Hard to say what Old Tom Morris would think about this. But his statue appears to display a bit of a twinkle, as though the golfing sage were putting a hesitant at ease and reminding him of the prevailing, essential fact–This is Vegas, baby!

Old Tom and the Swilcan Bridge

The city that never sleeps is still no beacon of great beer, but armed with suggestions I had solicited on reddit there was a reasonable chance I wouldn’t go thirsty. And thanks to Johnson–and his Sin City Brewing Company–I managed to down a couple of Sin City Ambers my first night in town.

“The city is starting to catch on,” said Johnson. “It’s still a little slow on the Strip, but it’s getting better and getting better quickly, for the simple reason that tourists are asking for better beers. So now most casinos are supplying more diverse beer styles and beer programs are being added. But you have to get off the actual casino floor and go looking for it, because you’re not going to find anything of interest there.”

Sin City Amber

Johnson has been involved in brewing since 1989, notably as the Director of Brewing Operations for the Gordon Biersch Brewery Restaurants. He and a few partners started up Sin City in 2003. “We’re served only on tap at casinos and bars around town, and in three tasting bars on the Strip in the Flamingo, Planet Hollywood and the Venetian.” (Free suggestion–start serving it at golf courses.)

I found some of the Amber downtown. It’s the most popular of Sin City’s five standard beers (adding a light lager, a Weiss beer, a Stout and an IPA). A seasonal lineup will debut next year. The Amber is a traditional Oktoberfest or Märzen beer (a Gordon Biersch specialty), very much a malt-accented lager with a crisp Hallertauer hop finish and a respectable 5.75% ABV heft. Hop heads won’t be charmed (except perhaps by the logo), but the hop wary will likely be back for another.

Name: Sin City Amber
Brewer: Sin City Brewing Co., Las Vegas, Nevada
Style: Amber ale
ABV: 5.75%
Availability: Las Vegas, baby
For More Information: www.sincitybeer.com