Hey, wait, where's the guests. This is Beer in Front, part
of the Odd Pods Media network. Sometimes the beer in front of you is
the best one yet. I'll talk about some old school beers that maybe you've
forgotten about, some new beers that have the potential to be a classic.
I'll also talk to various people around the beer world and get their stories all
about beer. That's Beer in Front and it's coming up now. Welcome to
the August twenty second edition of Beer in Front. I'm your host, Dave's
Alatoris and Beer in Front is a proud member of the Odd Pods Media Network.
This week is a quick show, no guest, no nothing. You
just have to listen to me. I want to thank you for listening,
and I want to thank those that support the show over on patreon dot com.
If you'd like to help the show out, you could go to patreon
dot com slash beer in Front for more information. You could subscribe for as
little as a dollar a month, and I do appreciate it. I do
have a question and I'd like some feedback from you, the listener. I
was thinking the other day that is the national craft beer brand. It's not
dead, but it's dying, and I was thinking about that with Anchor Steam
going and I mean twenty years ago you had your bigger national brands out there
like Anchor Steam, Sierra Nevada, Sam Adams, and a couple of others.
And Sam Adams is now selling more truly than they are and twisted tea
than they are. Beer and Sierra Nevada is still going strong, but it
looks like they're putting all of their eggs in the hazy little thing basket.
You have New Belgium that had to reduce fat tire, but the Voodoo Ranger
and all of their variants are definitely keeping the lights on over at New Belgium.
So I wonder about your drinking habits and your purchasing habits. For me,
mostly when I'm not grabbing an old school beer for the show, I
mostly gravitate towards local or regional craft beers. And I'm wondering if the national
brand is dead or dying. So if you have any opinions on that,
please get a hold of me. I'd like to come up with the show
about that in the near future. If you're interested in a beer in Front
T shirt, I have some new designs. I have a merch store over
on the usual tea Public Tea Spring, but I've come up with my own
design and i found a way to make them a little cheaper and ballpark figure.
It's going to be about twenty bucks including shipping. That'll be the shirt
decals that I'm putting on them and shipping. So if you're interested in a
beer in Front T shirt, please let me know and we could work something
out. I've had some test runs done for shirts that I've worn myself and
then I've given away to a few people and no complaints yet. The details
last good. I picked them up from a company called Ninja Transferred and put
them on myself and they look great. They wear nice, they don't come
apart and wash, So once again, if you're interested, please get a
hold of me. In beer news this week, big news from the Illinois
Craft Brewers Guild. They announced the return of North America's largest barrel aged beer
festival. This is the Festival of Wood and Barrel Aged Beer, otherwise known
as Faux Bab. This is going to be November third and fourth at the
UC Credit Union One Arena on the West side of Chicago. You could pick
up tickets starting this Friday, so pick it up. It's a good time,
a lot of great barrel aged beers. I'm going to be there this
year, so please this Friday grab you some tickets for Faux Bab. Speaking
of beer festivals, the Great American Beer Festival is next month in Denver,
and I'm going to have a special correspondent that's going Dt from Space Castle Podcast.
He's going to be there. I'm going to talk to him once he
gets back and we'll recap the Great American Beer Festival. There's a new gallop
pole that asks what is America's drink of choice? And beer is still number
one. That was thirty seven percent of people that responded, compared to thirty
one percent for liquor and twenty nine percent for wine. The hop harvest in
the Pacific Northwest, the crop for this year is expected to decline by as
much as eleven percent in Oregon. So I don't know if we're going to
see as many hoppy beers fresh hop beers, but the Oregon crop harvest has
declined by eleven percent. And you're saying to yourself, Dave, it's not
pronounced Oregon. But if you've ever watched The Scent of a Woman. I
could only say Oregon like that. There was a good article over on The
Guardian's website and they're talking about there's over one hundred breweries in the UK that
have gone under and there's a lot of factors COVID, but Brexit was a
big factor in this. Check Out that article over on the Guardian. Stone
Brewing in the University of Southern California. They're collaborating for a new PALEAO called
Stones Fight On. You could pick this up in Southern California only or at
usc football games. And finally, over on brew Bound, I read that
Sierra Nevada is planning to go big on their Imperial Hazy IPAs as well as
a non alcoholic line in the year twenty twenty four. They're gonna have new
Hazy IPAs in their little thing series, like a Cosmic Double IPA. They've
got some Hazy mixed packs. They also have a non alcoholic Trail Pass line
that's going to be in an IPA and a Golden Beer. And also they're
gonna have their Hop Bullets coming back, a Hop Splash Hop Water. And
finally, they're having a thing called Strange beast. It's a they call it
a day drink, and this is a white sangria. So this is going
to be interesting like a mosa maybe, So look for that next year From
Sierra Nevada. Hi, I'm Tina Hodmo and I'm Hilary Dougherty and we host
The Muck Podcast where we discussed the dark and sometimes we are true stories in
American politics. Tina, did you know that Elvis crashed the Nixon White House
for the sole purpose of getting a DA badge and it worked? Or how
a gun control advocate senator out of California engaged in gun trafficking with Notoria's gang
leader, shrimp Boy Boy I remember him, Okay, So you know we
cover all of that and more from Malady's madness, mischief and murder in US
politics, and we also host a biweekly interview segment called Little Muck. We
interview politicians, journalists, activists, and others who share their experiences in politics.
Find The Muck Podcast wherever you listen to podcasts, and check us out
on social media at the Muck Podcast. All Right, the beer that's in
front of me this week is Breckinridge Breweries Vanilla Porter Breckinridge has been around since
nineteen ninety. In two thousand and sixteen, they were bought out by Anheuser
Busch INBEB, so they're now part of the AB family. But Vanilla Porter
has been around for a long time. I know, I've seen this out
and about got to be at least ten years now. I haven't had this
in a long time. The Vanilla Porter is five point four percent alcohol.
It has notes of vanilla with roasted malts according to the label here. So
let's crack this bottle open and have a little Breckinridge Vanilla Porter. The Vanilla
Porter pours very nice, good. It's a little lighter. I was expecting
something a little darker. I mean it's dark, but you hold it up
to the light, you get that nice ruby red color shining through really nice
foam. Here, I get a combination of both. I get the malt
and the vanilla coming from the aroma. It smells very nice. No,
that's good. I get the vanilla more upfront, but the notes of the
malt are there. Finishes a little thin for me. Maybe I'm so used
to drinking barrel aged stouts that this kind of like set me back a little
bit, but no, it's a tasty beer. Yeah, there's a little
bitterness on the end that I'm not sure if that's hot bitterness or like bitterness
from the malt. It's got a kind of an odd after taste. It's
not bad, but it's something that I just wasn't expecting. Right now,
let me have another sip of this. No, that's a pretty decent beer.
They have a couple of very and said come out. They have one
that's aged in rum barrels, and then they also have a nitro. It's
in a can with the widgets like you see with Guinness and other type of
beers like that. But this one I picked up in a mixed pack over
at the grocery store. I'm like, I haven't had that in year.
So the old school beer of the week is Breckinridge Brewery's Vanilla Porter. If
you haven't had it in a while, put it in the cart, give
it a try. The Chicago area beer in front this week I've talked about
before. This is from Pipe Works in JP. Grazianod great sandwich company.
Here. This is Allah's Salute. This is an Italian style pillsner five percent
alcohol. Huge fan of this big fan of the Italian pilsner style. If
you're not familiar with this style, it's a regular pillsner, but they're dry
hopped with your traditional noble hops that gives it more of a hop aroma.
I'm a big fan of Italian pills nerves and this is one of my favorite
local ones. So let's crack open. Alah salute, Ala salute. I
don't even have this close to my nose and I get this huge whiff of
hops. It smells great. It's a nice light color, good foam.
Couple fingers of foam here. Yeah, that just smells so good. I
get mostly hops. I get a little malt from the aroma, but it
smells phenomenal. Yeah, that's outstanding. Big hop flavors here. That kind
of overpowers for me the malt that comes in kind of at the back.
But this is just so good. I'm a big fan. Whenever this comes
out. I think it came out was it last year or two years ago?
So it's not a year round offering. So when I see it,
I definitely have to grab some because I feel it's that good. If you're
a fan of pills nurse, I definitely suggest you seek out some Italian style
pills nerves, and if you're in the Chicago area, by all means you
need to go to Pipeworks that you could pick it up there at the brewery,
or it's distributed all around. I picked this up at a bottle shop,
so I'm assuming you could get it at all the places you can get
Pipeworks beer. Ala Salute is definitely a winner. If you see it,
put it in the cart. Coming up on YouTube in the next couple of
weeks. I do have a lot of good beers that are in the fridge
that I'm gonna have, so please follow me over on YouTube. I usually
put some of the shorter episodes or the short video clips up on Instagram and
TikTok as well. If you could do me a favor follow me over there.
The more follows and likes you get that helps the show out. So
if you want more weekly beer stuff and you want to just hear my opinions
on various beers, please follow me over on YouTube and TikTok and Instagram and
all of that. I do appreciate it. When I did the pizza episode
back in March, I did some clips on various pizzas, and I've kind
of stopped doing that and incorporated some food stuff into a little series I have
called Chicago Eating, and that's gonna spotlight different restaurants here. But I also
when I went to the store today to pick up the breck and Ridge,
and I didn't know what I was going to have. I had, like
I drew a blank. So I'm like, I gotta run to the store
and find an old school beer to talk about. I saw Jack's Frozen Pizza.
I grew up on Tombstone and Jack's, like I'm assuming many people did
when they were young and poor. So I have a Jacks. During the
week, I'm going to shoot a video and have the Jack's Pizza. So
follow me over on YouTube look for that, and I'm gonna go back to
when I was like sixteen or seventeen years old and had no money and was
eating Jack's pizza. I do have some Chicago spots. I have a list
of places that I want to go over the next few months and try out
for this Chicago Eating segment, and some of the places like Lems Barbecue is
super highly rated. I definitely need to get to Lems. I want to
go back to Rico Benny's. Their steak sandwich is absolutely killer, and I
hear they have pizza with this breaded steak. So that's a place that's on
my list. If you have an idea in the Chicago area of a restaurant
or food itself you want me to try, by all means, get a
hold of me. You know me. I like to eat, so I'm
on it. So if you think of a place you know locally here in
the Chicago area, please let me know. I'd love to feature that place
on Chicago Eating. I also have my new tooth. So if you have
been watching the videos over on YouTube the past couple of weeks and you're like
two, you look like a clown. I now have my new tooth,
so future episodes I will look normal. I have shocked. Maybe I think
I have four or five more videos to put out that I did record,
so there will be some mixed together. But fear not, I have my
new tooth, and I look like a million dollars. I know many of
you don't listen to podcasts as much in the summertime, people, especially in
the Midwest. We're out, We're enjoying the few months of nice weather.
We have in what is poor planning on my part. This summer, Beer
in Front has really hitted stride with some great interviews. If you didn't get
a chance to listen over the summer, check out some past shows. I
had guests on from great breweries like Monucky Cold Snacks, Crooked Hammock, Second
City Metery, Great Lakes Brewing, Go Brewing, and others. Plus I
had talks with folks over at the Cisterne program, Fresh Air Friendship, and
other people in the podcasting world. There has been also plenty of quick video
reviews over on YouTube. That's going to wrap things up for this edition of
Beer in Front. I thank you for listening. If you want to get
a hold of me, you could email me Dave at beer infront dot com
or on all the social media channels at beer in Front. Next week I'll
be doing the Shower Beer again for twenty twenty three, so look for that.
Have a great week, and remember sometimes the beer in front of you
is the best one yet.