Super Shelton Brothers Tasting - Tuesday 15 July

Join Brother Joel for a Super Serious Shelton Brothers Tasting at Jimmy's No. 43 on Tuesday, 15 July.

Starting at 7pm, Joel will be leading you through a tasting of 10 of our beers. The beers will be serious; the stories - not so much. DJ Bocky will be spinning tunes to pair with the beers.

The beers:

• Thiriez Extra
• Cervesera del Montseny Malta Cuvée
• De la Senne Taras Boulba
• Het Nest Ace of Spades
• Naparbier Sai Saison
• The Monarchy Grodziskie
• Freigeist Geisterzug Gose
• Brouwerij West Tripel
• Trois Dames Grande Dame
• Amager Pride Imperial Stout

The host:

The tasting is starts at 7pm and costs $20 for the 10 beers. Jimmy's No. 43 is located at 43 E. 7th Street.

Belgian Beers at Alewife Queens

When:  Monday, 20 May - Friday, 24 May
Where:  Alewife Queens, 5-14 51st Avenue, Long Island City 

What: pay-as-you-go

Alewife will be featuring Belgian beers all week long. They understand that just because a beer is from Belgium doesn't mean that it's good. But their selection is amazing and reflects the small breweries that are putting out some truly unique and interesting beers.

Here is a list of just some of the beers being poured this week:

• Blaugies Saison d'Epeautre - spelt saison  
• Blaugies La Moneuse - earthy saison 
• De Ranke Saison de Dottignies - hoppy saison  
• De Ranke Noir de Dottignies - stout  
• De Ranke XX Bitter - hoppy ale with pleasant brett funkiness  
• De Ranke Guldenberg - strong blonde ale  
• Drie Fonteinen Zwet.be - dark ale fermented with Beersel Blond yeast and brettanomyces
• Kerkom Bink Bloesem - brewed with local pears and honey
• Kerkom Bink Blond - sessionable and dry-hopped 
• De Struise Pannepot -  subtly spiced strong dark ale
• De Struise X - blonde ale  
• De Struise XX - dubbel
• De la Senne Jambe de Bois - tripel 
• De la Senne Band of Brothers - collaboration with Brussels bar Moeder Lambic   
• De la Senne Taras Boulba - hoppy blonde ale 
• De la Senne Zinnebir - refreshing blonde ale with yeasty complexity 
• Geants Saison Voisin - rustic saison

Tap Takeover at Proletariat

On Tuesday, 26 February, Proletariat will be featuring all Shelton Brothers drafts plus some bottles. There will be a mix of classics and new beers and we guarantee that all will be delicious!

The list:

• Baird Red Rose Amber - inspired by steam beers but instead of being a lager fermented at ale temperatures, it's an ale fermented at lower temperatures (Japan)
• Beer Here Kama Citra - brown ale brewed with British malts and American Citra hops (Denmark)
• Blaugies Darbyste - a saison brewed with wheat and fermented with fig juice. Named for John Darby, a temperance preacher whose followers enjoyed a "soft drink" made from fig juice (Belgium)
• De la Senne Zwarte Piet - a dark, 8.2% Belgian ale, formerly known as Equinoxe (Belgium)
• De Struise Svea - IPA brewed with barley, wheat, oats, and rye. To Sweden with Love (Belgium)
• Dieu du Ciel! Aphrodite - cocoa and vanilla stout. Called "Aphodisiaque" in Canada but our government says that that name is misleading. Is it? (Québec)
• Haandbryggeriet Dark Force - imperial double wheat stout? Yes! (Norway)
• Jolly Pumpkin Maracaibo Especial - a brown ale inspired by the Trappist ales of Belgium. Brewed with cacao, cinnamon, and sweet orange peel (Dexter, Michigan)
• Mahr's Ungespundet - unfiltered lager/kellerbier. An all-time Shelton Brothers favorite (Germany)
• Mikkeller Yeast Series 2.0: Brettanomyces Lambicus - round 2 of the yeast series. All of the beers are 6.4% pale ale but fermented with a different yeast strain. This one uses the Lambicus (lambic) strain of Brettanomyces (Denmark)
• Thiriez Extra - extra hoppy saison brewed with Bramling Cross hops (France)
• Trou du Diable Schieve Tabarnak - golden ale brewed with rye and Nelson Sauvin hops. A collaboration with Yvan from De la Senne (Québec)

Proletariat is located at 102 St. Mark's Place in Manhattan. They open at 5pm and Joel and I will give a brief talk about the beers around 6pm. Special flights will be available for purchase.

Collaboration Beers

Brewing your own beer is no longer enough. Now, everyone wants to brew with friends and get in on the collaboration game.  Tonight, Tuesday, Spuyten Duyvil will be hosting the first of a 2-part series featuring collaborations. Since they say it so well, let them tell you what it's all about:  "Collaboration Beers. You know, when two big shot brewers get together and one picks the malt and the other picks the hops and then they get some lowly assistant to brew it for them while they go out back and smoke some weed and talk about yeast."

They'll have several Mikkeller collaborations on draft and in bottle, including ones with Stillwater and Three Floyds, plus bottles of Nøgne Ø/Bridge Road Brewers (Australia) India Style Saison and De la Senne/Allagash Very Speciale Belge.

When:  Tuesday, 25 September, 6pm onwards
Where:  Spuyten Duyvil, 359 Metropolitan Avenue, Brooklyn
What:  pay-as-you-go for 6 drafts and 12 bottles

Thursday Tap - De la Senne Zinnebir

The selection for this week's Thursday Tap (May 17) at Jimmy's No. 43 is one of our favorite beers, Zinnebir from Brussel's Brasserie De la Senne.

De la Senne is one of only 2 breweries within the city limits of Brussels (perhaps you've heard of the other one? Cantillon?). Brewers Yvan De Baets and Bernard Leboucq are fiercely principled and are leading the charge to a return to the way things used to be, before big Belgian breweries started over-sugaring, over-spicing, and under-hopping their beers.

The Zinnebir, originally created by Bernard when he worked at the Sint Pieters brewery along the Zenne River (or Senne, in French), evolved from a strong, malt-focused, 8% beer to its current incarnation as a lighter, brighter 6% beer with the same yeasty complexity, malt backdrop, and refreshing hop bitterness.

The name comes from the Belgian slang word "zinneke" or "little bastards" which refers to the mixed-breed wild mutts that used to be found in the poorer sections of Brussels but now more often is used to refer to boys living in those same poor parts of town who have one Flemish-speaking and one French-speaking parent.

Zinnebir will be tapped at 5 pm. Jimmy's No. 43 is located at 43 E. 7th Street.

What's This I Keep Hearing About Session Beers?

Triple-hopped, barrel-aged, imperial, sour - there always seems to be a new buzzword around beer. Lately, it appears that "session beers" are all the rage. We've been lauding the virtues of these low abv beers for quite some time but now, finally, some others are catching on. See Brother Dan's article in June's issue of Food & Wine.

There is no hard and fast definition of a session beer but the concept originated in England and the general consensus is that they are beers below 4.5% abv that are light in body yet still flavorful. Beers, in other words, that you'd be able to drink a few pints of in one session and still be coherent and, just as importantly, beers that you'd want to drink a few pints of.

We certainly have no problem with the bigger beers when the occasion warrants but are happy to see that others are realizing that that's not all there is to drink. Bigger is not always better. When you drink as often as we do, it's nice to be able to sit for a spell over these "smaller" beers. And summer is the perfect season for exploring session beers. Why not start tomorrow?

At this Tuesday's weekly $10 Tasting event at Jimmy's No. 43, Union Beer's Mike Lovullo will be pouring samples of 6 different British beers. One of the beers will be Coniston Old Man Ale, a 4.4% bottle-conditioned brown ale.  Remarkably complex for its strength, it is brewed with Marris Otter malt plus a bit of crystal malt and roasted barley and is hopped with Challenger hops. Chocolately up front, it finishes dry and roasty, balanced with hop bitterness. A lovely ale fruitiness is found throughout the beer.  The "Old Man" is not a person but a mountain in the Lake District that can be seen from the brewery.

Jimmy's is located at 43 E. 7th Street and the tastings start at 7:30 pm.

Next Tuesday's tasting will feature ciders, in anticipation of Cider Appreciation Day at Jimmy's on Thursday 23 June.

And while we're on the topic of session-style beers, look out for a new batch of kegs of Taras Boulba from Belgium's Brasserie de la Senne, arriving in town this week. This 4.5% ale is all you could ask for in a summery beer - loaded with complex Belgian yeast flavors and hopped to refreshing perfection.  Ok - now I'm thirsty.