Well, it’s been awhile since I have posted and sorry for that. Things have been relatively quiet but the last week or two has ushered in some exciting beer news!

New Belgian Beers Make the Charleston Scene – Several new Belgian beers are now on the shelves at both the Wine & Cheese shop and The Liquor Company. Leading the pack is the famous Belgian dark strong ale “Gulden Draak”. This fire breather delivers 10.5% alcohol by volume along with a rich, complex and dark malt profile. Piraat, a strong golden ale is no slouch either also a 10.5% abv beer with some hoppy bitterness to balance it out. Wittekerke (brewed by Bavik) is a fairly straight forward Belgian white ale (Witbier) and Bavik is a typical Belgian brewed Euro-Pils the likes of Maes, Jupiler and Stella.

Harpoon Belgian Pale Ale earns a BTY Thumbs-Up- This beer-blogger has been enjoying Harpoon’s newest year-round release. Although HBPA weigh-in at 5.8%abv, the beer is surprisingly sessionable. I joked with a guy earlier today that Harpoon should have put a bottle opener on the bottom of the bottle so you can easily open the next one! HBPA is a good balance of the malty/caramel flavors of the classic Belgian Pale Ale De Koninck and the hoppy aroma and flavor of Poperinge’s Hommel Bier. The classic Belgian clove/phenolic flavor is apparent all the way through but never overpowering.

The Wine and Cheese Shop is Expanding- Many of you may have already heard the news that Wine, Beer and Cheese shop will be moving from the cramped little space to a much larger floor-plan in the Capitol Market. Owner Ted Armbrecht told me that the move will allow him to double his beer space and add a double wide beer cooler allowing him to sell cold beer. BTY wishes them luck with the move!

Well Folks! I will be off to Bavaria with some thirsty travelers. Be sure to tune into the blog as we keep you up to date on our beery adventures!

last night I stopped in to check out “Tops Off”, a new male-centric salon and spa on hale street. located in what was recently the Vault, the formerly pretentious supposedly hip urban club. fortunately Tops Off seems not to take itself as seriously, except when one of the guys is holding a straight razor millimeters from your jugular vein.

I was the recipient of a free quickie chair massage and I was treated to a good old fashioned straight razor shave. (Gulp… I just realized that I didn’t even ask if Jason (not a good name for a razor wielding barber) had been imbibing himself at the open taps before he put that razor to my neck!)

My favorite feature of the place is the bar! Tops Off will serve draft beer and has cleverly managed to convert part of the Vault bar into a draft dispensing pedestal.

I wish them well and hope they keep at least one or two decent beers on tap; last night they were serving Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, which is a good sign.

I wonder if they have discounted rates for bald guys like me?

Every now and then I am asked to plan or to conduct beer tastings for private parties. I do this to spread the good word of craft beer and usually to earn a few bucks for a charity of my choice; it’s a win-win!

I recently was asked back to a private party held by a professional firm in Charleston. I worked with the same folks last summer, and I guess they liked the beer and cheese tasting. This year we decided to select craft beers to pair with desserts.

You don’t have to invite me to your party to pull this kind of thing off. All it takes is a little research (like reading this article, for example), a little motivation and a good selection of craft beer.

Let’s start with a beer and cheese pairing. This is easy because there is so much written and published on the Internet about this wonderful (newly?) discovered fact — craft beer and cheese actually pair better than wine and cheese!

Charleston is fortunate to have specialty retailers like The Wine Shop at the Capitol Market that have both craft beer and craft cheese, along with a knowledgeable staff to help you with some pairings. Kroger at Ashton Place can be a good choice for cheese and beer, especially for those in the know or who have done their homework and have pre-selected the pairings.

If you already have a few favorite cheeses, you could drop me a note at my blog and I can give you some suggestions for beers to pair with them. Don’t go overboard on the first attempt; keep it to a maximum of four pairings and keep in mind there are often beers on the menu that will pair well with more than one cheese.

For a guaranteed “sweet time,” go for a beer and dessert pairing. Sure, some of your elite wine-snob friends might wince at the idea, but any intellectually honest foodie will come around to enjoy their beer and dessert when paired correctly.

A good first try is to stick with the sure things like dark, malty beers (doppelbocks or bold amber lagers) with relatively rich chocolate desserts. The key word is “relatively.” Don’t pair the light amber Negra Modelo lager with a “Death by Chocolate” cake or you will lose the lager completely.

Try pairing Sam Adams Double-Bock with some nice Holl’s caramel or raisin-filled truffles; dark or milk chocolate will work very well. On the flip side you can really mix it up by using a raspberry-ale like Lindemans Framboise or Harpoon’s Raspberry UFO with chocolate-filled truffles or raspberry cheesecake.

One of my favorite things to do (especially to see the look on the faces of those wine snobs) is to serve a “beer float.” At the party I mentioned above, we floated some Ellen’s vanilla ice cream on top of Rogue’s Mocha Porter. Boy, was it good! You could be adventurous and try other ice cream flavors that will complement or contrast with the mild mocha and coffee flavors of the beer.

"Spezial Keller" in Bamberg Germany

Did you know that in addition to my day job, blogging and being a beer columnist I also have a paper route? It’s true! Every eight weeks or so, I receive a box of freshly printed Mid-Atlantic Brewing News newspapers to distribute to a few of the beery venues here in Charleston. I do it out of love of craft-beer…

The cover story of the latest MABN made me smile – and write! Many of you know I love biergarten culture; beer aside, it’s the pleasure of being able to sit and enjoy a beer in the open air in a civilized way. It happens all over Germany, Austria and the Czech Republic on every good-weather day. The biergarten is an integral part of every gentrified neighborhood or town square. Imagine a real-estate listing in the USA pointing out as a plus, the fact that the house for sale is near the local biergarten!

The biergarten became virtually extinct in America thanks to anti-German sentiment during the First World War being cleverly used by temperance activists to eventually close them and usher in the dark days of prohibition. A friend of mine is just starting to research this fact, citing the fact that Cincinnati was chock-full of biergartens to serve the many German immigrants that settled the area during the industrial revolution. I wonder if the folks of Bavaria’s state-owned Hofbraü brewery were aware of this fact when they decided to open the USA’s first Hofbraühaus near Cincinnati in 2003? The success of that location spawned additional Hofbraühauses in Pittsburgh and Las Vegas. HB serves authentic Hofbraü beer along with real German food and of course a big dose of Gemütlichkeit (good cheer).

The Biergarten at Zeppelin Hall in NJ

The Craft-Beer Revolution has also had a hand in bringing German drinking culture to the USA. Stoudt’s Brewing Company in Adamstown, PA brews world-class German style beer and their brewery restaurant feature a large outdoor biergarten. The Bier-Garden in Portsmouth, VA is an awesome little bar with a small outdoor area and is a great place to find a wide-selection of craft-beer as well as being the largest U.S. Outlet for Schneider beers. A very unlikely spot for a biergarten can be found in the shadows of the skyscrapers of the NYC metro area at the Zeppelin Beer Hall in Jersey City, NJ. The Zeppelin’s humongous beer hall is graced by a biergarten with large picnic tables and pea-gravel on the ground.

According to the MABN article, three additional “garten” projects are underway in our region. Philadelphia will be the home of two of the projects; one will be a 250-seat biergarten and the other will be a revamp of a closed-down venue and will be named “The Hop Angel Brauhaus”. The most interesting project to me is the planned 15000-sqft lager house that is going to be built on Cincinnati’s Riverfront Park. Expected to open in March 2012, the biergarten is a partnership between Christian Moerlein Brewing and the Park Board of Cincinnati ushering in a little “Gub’mint Approved drinking” German Style!

Imagine if we could convince the Kanawha County Commission to add a biergarten to the little playground area at Coonskin Park! If it were in Bavaria, the biergarten would already be there!