On a Saturday afternoon in late March I gathered in the tasting room at Craft Beer Cellar in Belmont with a group of local beer enthusiasts to do a blind tasting of local stouts. This tasting was organized by the Mass Brew Brothers, and was the second in a series of tastings sampling a particular style of local beers. The first highlighted New England style IPAs and ended with some surprising results where some less heralded beers held there own against a few of the heavy weights of the local beer scene. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to attend that tasting, I was planning to and then I got sick, so I was excited to make up for it by tasting some stouts. I have been a big proponent of blind tasting, but haven’t participated in anything this organized and comprehensive before.

All of the beers we tasted were from Massachusetts, and they were all non-imperial (8% ABV or less) and non-barrel aged stouts. A few had adjunct ingredients, but the idea was to focus on standard dry, sweet and oatmeal stouts. You can read a full run down of the event and results on the Mass Brew Bros website HERE, but I thought I would pass along a few thoughts of my own. First and foremost, it was difficult to judge these beers. A couple had defined off flavors or quality control issues, but the rest were tasty and fit well into the flavor profile you would expect from a stout. None of the three rounds had a unanimous winner, and in the final all three beers had votes for best beer of the group. My personal favorite ended up being the Oatmeal Stout from Mayflower, it had great body and the rich roasted malt flavor I love from a quality stout. I thought Idle Hands Check Raise was in a virtual tie, and wasn’t surprised it won. The biggest disparity in opinions was around Bennington from Night Shift, which had the most obvious addition of adjunct ingredients. It was a great day tasting amazing beers and chatting with other enthusiasts and I can’t wait to do another blind tasting.

Here are a few reasons why I think everyone who is passionate about beer should try to do an occasional blind tasting:

1. Tasting blind removes any preconceptions.  We all have breweries that we have enjoyed in the past and others that we tend to avoid. Sometimes a brewery that disappointed you before has made strides and you’ll find that you actually really enjoy one of their beers. On the other hand sometimes a brewery that people wait in line for has some beers that are no better than offerings you can find at any local bottle shop.
2. It forces you to think about what you are drinking. It’s easy to crack a beer take a few swigs and decide that you enjoy it. Having to taste a series of similar beers makes you think about the characteristics that lead you to enjoy beers in that style. What makes one beer preferable to another? Even if you have no desire to drink that critically on a regular basis it’s interesting to go through the process on occasion.
3. You might discover new beers or breweries. There were a number of beers in this panel that I’d never tasted before, including a few that I really enjoyed. I was reminded how much I like Mayflower Oatmeal Stout and I will definitely seek out Idle Hands Check Raise again. Another good beer that just missed the finals was Sam Adams Cream Stout, a quality offering from a brewery that takes a significant amount of flak from some beer geeks.
4. It’s fun to chat about beer with others who are passionate about it. While the tasting was fun, it was even more interesting hearing what the other panelists thought about the beers, and chatting with them about everything that is happening in the local beer scene. We had tasters from very different backgrounds and it led to some diverse opinions.

You don’t need to go to great lengths to do a blind tasting, get a group of friends who like beer, a few bottles/cans of a selection of beers of a similar style, and put one person in charge of pouring and keeping track of which beers are in each round. I think everyone will learn a lot and have a good time (and feel free to invite your favorite local beer blogger too). If you do give blind tasting a try please let me know how it goes!

My article today is a somewhat tongue-in-cheek rundown of the beers you should stock to please all of the characters at your Super Bowl party this weekend. I wrote a similar article two years ago, and then this happened:

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via GIPHY

I am not a superstitious person per se, but there was a 100% chance I would write an updated version of this article with the Patriots headed back to the Super Bowl. So without further ado, here are the beers you need to have on hand for your party this Sunday.

Notch Infinite Jest and Cerne Pivo: For the early arrivers and day drinkers. Kickoff isn’t until 6:30ish, it’s a long day and most of us need to get up for work on Monday, so pace is the key. Session beers are a huge help here, you can drink more than a couple without feeling too much of the effect.

Mayflower Porter and Wormtown Be Hoppy: For game time. Two of my go-to house beers, one hoppy and one dark and malty. No beer fan will argue with having these on hand.

Boulevard Tank 7: To celebrate the fact that the Patriots are in their seventh Super Bowl in the Brady/Belichick Era. It’s hard to overstate how impossible a run like this seemed when I was growing up with the late 80’s/early 90’s Pats teams that routinely finished in the cellar.

Anything left in the your cellar from Pretty Things: For Gronk (not literally, I assume he will be in Houston). It is such an exciting time in local beer, there are more high quality options than ever, but I still miss the departed Pretty Things. Same idea with the game, you never complain about being in the Super Bowl, but it sucks that a generational player like Rob Gronkowski is sitting in the owners box.

Water: For anyone who defends the job Roger Goodell is doing as commissioner. They have clearly had too much to drink.

Goose Island Bourbon Country Brand Stout: For the elephant in the room for many Pats fans. I love BCBS and other Goose Island beers, but disagree with many of the business practices of their parent company AB InBev. Similarly, I’m a lifelong Patriots fan, but it’s a little disappointing seeing some of the political statements made by the owner and coach this year. A boozy beer like BCBS will help me forget and focus on the game.

Jack’s Abby Framinghammer: For the person who can’t stop talking about politics during the game (don’t tell them the ABV). Look, I get it, there is a lot going on right now and people have strong opinions. I do too. I just need a break from the constant political talk for a few hours so I can watch football. This beer is so easy to drink that the political commentator at your party probably won’t notice the booze and will be out cold before halftime.

A box of Franzia: For anyone who brings up deflated footballs or filming signals. Hand them a plastic cup fresh from the plastic bladder and then ask them if they would like some cheese with all that whine.

A bottle of whiskey: Regardless of your guests, you can bet that the network announcing team will repeatedly bring up deflated footballs. I’m sure they will also “forget” to mention the Falcons getting punished to pumping artificial crowd noise into the Georgia Dome. By the fourth quarter you might need something stronger than beer. Also handy in the unlikely event that a 2008 or 2012 type game happens.

Allagash Fluxus and Curieux: To celebrate a win. I wrote recently that Allagash makes some of the best special occasion beers, the Patriots winning the Super Bowl definitely counts as a special occasion worthy of a great beer!

Enjoy the game and GO PATS!

Now that the calendar has turned to 2017 I thought it would be fun to do a recap of some of my favorite and/or most popular articles of the year, along with a rundown of some of the best beers I reviewed this year. It was a crazy year personally with buying a house, changing jobs and moving to the suburbs, I even needed to take a month-long hiatus from the blog, but I am still having a blast writing about local beer and chatting with other beer enthusiasts. Here are a few of the top posts from 2016:

The most read non-review article of 2016 was Hoppy Boston’s House Beers, a list of the beers I try to keep in my fridge at all times. I love this concept, it’s fun to try new things but I try to keep a seasonally relevant stash of staple beers on hand too.

A close runner up was my thoughts on the Craft Beer Cellar Blacklist. This was one of the biggest local beer stories this year, and more details continue to come out.

Close behind, and one of the most bittersweet articles I wrote, was my Definitive Ranking of Pretty Things Beers. I really miss this brewery and it was fun to do an overview of their beers, even though I wrote it knowing I wouldn’t enjoy many of them again.

The most read beer review of the year was Bog Iron Devil’s Footprint, their braggot aged in Mezcal barrels. In addition to being a unique beer, this was the first beer that Bog Iron bottled, so there was clearly a lot of interest.

I drank and reviewed a number of amazing beers this year, but a few of my favorites (in no particular order include:

My two favorite beers from Trillium (at least of their hop forward releases) are Fort Point Pale Ale and Melcher Street IPA.

I don’t think I’ve ever had a beer from Notch Brewing that I didn’t like, but my new favorite is Infinite Jest, a sessionable hoppy wheat beer. If you haven’t visited the new taproom in Salem you really need to make the trip.

I love seeing more variety in barrel aged beers, beyond the ubiquitous bourbon-barrel aged imperial stouts. Two great examples are the Barrel Aged Farmhouse Pale Ale from Oxbow Brewing and Tennessee Prinse, a quadruple aged in Tennessee whiskey barrels from Brewmaster Jack.

A few classic beers made the list, like Berkshire Brewing Oktoberfest and Maine Beer Company Mo. There were also a couple amazing new releases (both brewed to benefit charitable causes) that I hope aren’t one-off releases, like Medusa Brewing Black Ale Project and Ipswich Riverbend Pils.

I’m sure I missed a few, but these were all delicious beers that are highly recommended.

Looking ahead to 2017, I am planning to keep plugging away with a combination of beer reviews, news and opinion pieces on everything happening in local beer. I started writing a monthly random thoughts/links article in September that I will definitely keep up with, it’s fun to write and people seem to enjoy it (you can find them all HERE). You might have also noticed that my focus has moved almost entirely to New England beers, a trend that will continue. I realize that there are amazing beers brewed all over the country, and that local doesn’t mean great, but it is hard to keep pace with just the new breweries and beers being produced locally (and impossible nationally). My goal for this blog was to identify top notch local beers, especially one’s that are readily available, and that will continue to be my mission.

Thank you all for reading, Happy New Years, and feel free to provide any feedback/suggestions here or on social media. Just a quick reminder that you can follow Hoppy Boston on Twitter (@HoppyBoston), Facebook (facebook.com/hoppyboston) and now on Instagram (HoppyBoston). Cheers!

This last Friday and Saturday were an interesting time for people who follow the Boston area beer scene on Twitter. It started with a back-and-forth between Hopsters owner, Lee Cooper and Craft Beer Cellar owner, Suzanne Schalow. Lee made a number of accusations including trashing the CBC business model, and Suzanne responded by trashing Hopsters. It was pretty ugly, and as a few people said, it was totally inappropriate that the grievences were aired on social media to an audience of mostly customers at one or both businesses. Lee insisted that the reason for his anger was forthcoming (earning some well-deserved comparisons to a certain reality TV star turned political figure). Sure enough later that day Good Beer Hunting published this article, letting readers know that CBC is establishing a set of purchasing guidelines for their franchises, including breweries they are required to stock and others that are forbidden. Another article today from Brewbound does a good job of interviewing people with differing opinions related to this argument as well as pointing out some potential legal issues with the blacklist.

The blacklist revelation is creating the most buzz and strongest reactions. The idea that every CBC should carry brands like Sierra Nevada and Firestone Walker isn’t news to anyone, those breweries are in the sweet spot of wide distribution and high levels of respect. The idea that CBC will prevent it’s stores from selling beer from certain breweries is much more problematic, and seems to be the source of significant consternation in the local beer community. An added complication involved the memo sent to the stores, which was posted on Twitter and cites specific examples of breweries that are on this blacklist. I have a number of thoughts on this, best presented in bullet point form:

-I understand the stated motive here, you want a consumer to walk into any Craft Beer Cellar and know that any bottle they buy will be amongst the highest quality beers available in the area. The franchisees are paying to be part of the Craft Beer Cellar brand, and this brand can be tarnished if some stores are stocking a substantial number of subpar beers.

-The major problem is, who makes these decisions? We can all agree that national/international breweries like Boulevard or Orval make high quality beers. Anyone reading this will probably also agree that Milwaukee’s Best and King Cobra aren’t fit for consumption once you get past the college kegger phase of your life. The problem is that there is a huge grey area in between, and people will disagree on quality of specific beers/breweries that fall into this grey area.

-I am glad that none of the lists are set in stone. It seems that inconsistency is a big issue with some of the breweries cited, and that is much easier to correct than poorly conceived beers. I know a few highly regarded local breweries that had issues with inconsistent batch quality and QC problems in the early days or as they scaled up. Ideally this will act as a wake up call to some of the mediocre breweries and they use it as an opportunity to produce higher quality and more consistent beer.

-I would like to see an additional requirement that all beers carried in the stores have bottled on dates, it’s inexcusable how many still don’t and freshness is so important with many beer styles. They could also do a better job making sure the beers carried at each store were all fresh. They do better than most places, but I’ve seen old beer on the shelves at multiple CBC locations.

-Lee accused the CBC owners of being on the take, deriving some type of profit from the breweries on the must-carry list. I haven’t seen him present any evidence of this (further earning the comparison to said TV personality/political figure), and I don’t believe it to be true. The problem is that it opens the door for these accusations, especially if the lists were to become public.

-Is this policy only for Massachusetts/New England locations? I write a beer blog and still have a hard time keeping track of all of the local breweries, there are many that I’ve barely tried. Unless a brewery is a complete disaster you need to try multiple beers over multiple batches to even start to make a decision on quality. I can imagine that a few people have developed opinions on most of the breweries in MA, but CBC now has stores in 13 states. It would be nearly impossible to judge the quality of every brewery available in each of those locations.

-The leaked memo is problematic, it specifically calls out three breweries, all of which are local, small and relatively new. In fairness, it was an internal memo, and it was Lee Cooper, owner of one of the breweries on the blacklist, who posted it on Twitter. I won’t mention the breweries here, you can find the document easily enough if you’re curious, but I was surprised the names listed. I’ve had beers that I’ve really enjoyed from some of them. Now that everything is out in the open it really sucks for their businesses. With so much competition in the marketplace reputation is key, and bad PR like this can be a huge blow.

-And please stop reminding me that small and local doesn’t mean good. I realize that a beer being local doesn’t make it better, and being small doesn’t excuse producing a poor product. The point I was trying to make on twitter last night was that the negative publicity is a lot more damaging to a small business than it would be to a national brewery or a subsidiary of big beer.

-It is clear that some of the franchisees are unhappy about this new policy and/or the way this was all handled. One mentioned it to Brewbound on condition of anonymity. It was also clear that while this argument was going down on twitter, and the details of the memo were being released, a couple of the CBC franchises posted on social media that they had beers from the effected breweries in stock. One was even hosting a tasting from one of the blacklist breweries this weekend. This could have been a coincidence, but it seemed like a not-so-subtle dig at the new policy.

-I understand the frustration too, these franchisees are businesses that are trying to make money, they don’t want to be told to stock beers that won’t sell or told they can’t stock beers that sell well. I think they are also worried about potentially alienating customers who have relationships with effected brands. There is clearly also some disagreement about the quality of some of these breweries, and you have to wonder how much the owners of the franchisees were consulted before these lists were made.

-To wrap up (because this is already kind of long), I’ve always been a big fan of Craft Beer Cellar. I can safely say that the vast majority of beers reviewed on Hoppy Boston have been purchased at CBC stores, the flagship store in Belmont and the Newton store were near my old apartment, now I usually go to Framingham. This policy won’t effect my patronage of the stores, I am glad they are doing everything they can to be the premier craft beer store locally and nationally. I will be very interested to see how this all plays out though.