The War Is On at Pratt Street Ale House

As promised, the two competing versions of the War of 1812 IPAs are now on tap, dueling it out at the Pratt Street Ale House (and elsewhere--see below), as well as the fifth version of the joint Stillwater/Oliver Channel Crossing:

Will your rallying cry be "Rule Brittania" or "God Bless America"? Come to The Pratt Street Ale House and decide, cast your vote for the War Of 1812 IPAs! We'll be taking the battle to Liam Flynn's Ale House on Tuesday 5th with casks of each War Of 1812 IPA and Max's Taphouse on Wednesday 13th with casks and draft. Your vote counts, use it wisely!

(Photo from Oliver Ales)

Heavy Seas Alehouse Beer Dinner with Hugh Sisson June 13th

$60 a head; details, menu, and reservation form here.

Resurrection resurrected at Resurrection Ale House for Philly Beer Week

As mentioned to me over a beer at Of Love & Regret yesterday and now highlighted further by Lew Bryson, Brewer's Art Resurrection will now be legally sold in Pennsylvania (where it is also contract-brewed for distribution at Sly Fox in Phoenixville), with a debut at a place certain to be making it a "house ale," the Resurrection Ale House in Philadelphia.  Brewery co-owner Volker Stewart will be in attendance.  This isn't the first time it's appeared, but they try not to talk too much about the first time.

This seems as good a time to make a token mention that Philly Beer Week starts tomorrow as well, though for the moment their web site appears to be repeatedly crashing from overload.  Try their Facebook page, or the Philadelphia Weekly's guide, or Philly.com's write-up.

Stillwater's Of Love & Regret opens

Well, come on, with a lunch opening on a Wednesday, were you expecting a line around the block?

 The bar itself, at least for now, exudes the shininess and glamor of a new car--richly shellacked and varnished tabletops crafted from old timbers.  At the moment, it's what many would call "cozy" or "intimate"--if you've crammed yourself into Mahaffey's or Ale Mary's during a dinner rush, you'll get the idea, although the ceilings are higher.  For the time being, there's overflow space in the as-yet-uncompleted store space on the second floor.


Stillwater Ales owner Brian Strumke had a firkin of his latest "Channel Crossing" collaboration ale with Oliver Breweries, the fifth in the series, with the firkin seasoned with rosehips.  Unfortunately, he needs a little more experience tapping firkins; this writer ultimately had to do the honors, driving home the tap with two well-placed hits.

If you're reading this blog regularly, you probably need no introduction to the "cult" of Stillwater and its esoteric ales.  So what you should want to know about is the place.

Disregard the ironic placement across the street from the old National Brewing building and its newly-iconic "Boh" winking eye sign.  The location is slightly off the "beaten path," wedged between Highlandtown and Canton on Brewers Hill, and the neighborhood is blessed with free (albeit competitive) parking, as well as direct service to the bar by the MTA Route 7 bus route and indirect service by Route 13 a block away.

The bar currently has 20 beer taps, two wine taps, and a house specialty of Strumke's, iced cold-press coffee aged on French oak.  The beer selections are, naturally, dominated by Stillwater specialties (oddly, the bar's namesake beer is not available yet!), and quite obviously the bar will get first dibs on any Stillwater product issued, making it the place to go to find it all for the "completist.".  A number of guest taps were offering such complementary offerings as Pub Dog Wild Cherry (a funky offering from "gypsy brewer" Stillwater's most-brewed-at local brewery), Hopfenstark Lou Lou Porter, Victory Prima Pils, and Schneider Edel-Weisse.  About two dozen bottles are offered, dominated by Evil Twin products and larger Stillwater bottles.  Bottles are available for takeout purchase, though at prices likely to discourage impulse purchases.  Beer prices, and serving sizes, are listed on the menu and adjusted according to the beer's strength and cost, from $6 for a 16-ounce serving of Channel Crossing to $9 for a ten-ounce glass of barrel-aged Debauched.

The food menu, at least for starts, stays restrained in selection yet long on ambition.  The lunch menu offers a soup of the day, a beer and cheese soup; salads; a mac-and-cheese with smoked pork butt, four cheeses, scallions, and Stillwater Premium beer (not to be confused with National Premium!); and crispy pig ears and grilled duck tongues as appetizers.  The sandwiches include half-pound burgers served on multi-grain croissant buns with various garnishes such as Moroccan spice rub and goat cheese with wilted arugula and a "smoke" burger (pork, bacon, and gouda), a buffalo-chicken-and-bleu-cheese open-face sandwich, grilled cheese (cheddar, smoked gouda, and brie), the seemingly-mandatory vegan burger (chickpea-and-lentil), and oddest of all, a quarter-pound beef hot dog with rock shrimp salad and arugula, as well as the mandatory-for-Baltimore crab cake sandwich and a grilled salmon sandwich.  Sandwiches are generally in the $9-$12 range, with the salmon topping out at $17; appetizers are in the $7.50-$10 range.

Dinner entrees, at $14-$20, include spicy Singapore-style poached chicken and rice served cold, salmon, steak, fried chicken two ways (traditional and tempura), and a Moroccan green lentil vegetarian dish.

Not to be missed, for the drinker seeking unique experiences, are a range of beer cocktails.  Yes, yes, beer cocktails are suddenly the "flavor of the month" in craft beer circles, but the combination of truly esoteric blends of liqueurs, spirits, spices, and adjuncts topped off with Stillwater ales make these $10 cocktails a cut above the rest.  And if you insist, they'll gladly serve you a glass of Premium with a shot of Pikesville Rye, though the spirits rack behind the bar is, as would be expected for a Stillwater-led production, resplendent with far more interesting possibilities.

Although plans are in the works for far more to the experience, including the planned charcuterie and food shop on the second floor, Of Love & Regret at least initially manages to bridge somewhere between the local corner beer bar/bistro experience and the high-end restaurant experience of The Brewer's Art and Heavy Seas Alehouse.  If you're comfortable with the bar-food experiences of The Brewer's Art, you'll fit right in at OL&R.

Of Love & Regret Opens May 30th

As per "The Man" himself, Brian Strumke of Stillwater Artisanal Ales:

The crew has been working hard, licenses have been secured, and supplies are rolling in.. With that said, I would like to announce the opening of our newest venture, 'of Love & Regret - Pub & Provisions'.

On Wednesday, May 30th we will open the doors starting with lunch at 11am with a full menu and 20 esoteric beers on draught (with more then 10 being Stillwater) as well as select bottle menu, cocktails, and 2 draught wines.

Also, please note that the previously mentioned Provisions shop on the second floor will open later this year.

1028 S. Conkling Street (NW corner Conkling and O'Donnell)
410-327-0760
http://www.ofloveandregret.com/

The Race Is On......

Who will be the next craft-beer project to open in Baltimore?  At the moment, it's an informal race.

For beer bar, it's most likely to be Stillwater's Of Love and Regret across Conkling Street from the old National Brewery in Highlandtown/Brewer's Hill.  It's anticipated that they may open sometime in the next two weeks.

Brewery?  Looks like Union Craft Brewing, which received its Maryland Class 5 brewing license on May 23rd, will be next; they were hoping to actually commence brewing by the end of the month and have its first beers ready in a week or two afterwards.  They've inked a distribution deal with local craft beer distributors Legends Limited.

Brew at the Maryland Zoo This Weekend

Many of you probably made up your minds the instant you saw the first notice for this, but a reminder that this weekend features the Maryland Zoo's annual Brew at the Zoo (and Wine Too) fundraiser.  Both Saturday and Sunday.

Of course, your first priority is "what beers are available?"  Here's the planned list, subject to change.

And here is their FAQ list.  Note that this is a much more laid-back festival than most; you are cheerfully invited to bring your own food, water bottles, chairs, and the like (but no additional booze), and your ticket includes admission to the zoo to visit with the birds and animals from opening at 10 AM to normal zoo close at 4 PM.  And the proceeds go to a good cause.  Tickets are $45 for drinkers, $25 for designated drivers, with discounts for Maryland Zoo members.

National Premium spotted........

For those who can't rest until they refresh their memories and palates with a dose of the revived National Premium brand lager, two bars in Fells Point have just reported deliveries of 12-ounce bottles, and that presumably means more will be out there "on the streets."

(Photo from Ale Mary's)

The Other "Oriole"-Related Brewery in Virginia

The Columbus (Oh.) Dispatch has an article on former Orioles player Chris Ray's beer-related projects, one charity-related:

“I’ve been home-brewing for about four years,” he said. “I’ve kind of wanted to brew on a larger scale. My brother (Phil) and I are opening a brewery in Ashland, Va., this winter. We signed a lease a few weeks ago on a place and ordered our equipment.”
Ray, 30, broached the subject last week not because he wanted a plug for his Center of the Universe Brewing Co., but for charitable reasons.
While pitching for the Seattle Mariners last season, Ray helped create an India pale ale beer with Seattle-based Fremont Brewing Co. to benefit Operation Homefront, a charity that offers emergency financial and other assistance to the families of U.S. service members and to wounded veterans.
“Through some connections with the stadium (Safeco Field), I was able to get a hold of Matt Lincecum of Fremont Brewing. We pushed the idea of doing a charity beer with all the proceeds going to the charity, and he agreed to it.”
Ray checked with a friend in the Army.
“Operation Homefront is what he suggested,” he said. “We also came up with the idea of using unused Louisville Slugger (maple) bats. We age the beer on the bats after it ferments for about a week. Then we dry the bats out and auction them off. We ended up doing 30 barrels.”
The beer, Homefront IPA, made its debut in Safeco Field last year and raised over $10,000 for the charity, Ray said.
After Ray signed as a free agent with the Cleveland Indians in January, he hoped to connect with an independent brewery in Cleveland or Columbus to continue his hands-on charity work this season. It didn’t work out.
“I reached out to a couple of breweries in Cleveland and Columbus,” Ray said. “But it’s difficult to do a one-off batch because they have their schedules out months and months in advance.”
This is not to say Homefront IPA was a one-and-done affair.
“We had five other breweries around the country sign up for it this year,” Ray said. “So we’re doing over 11 times more than last year. One brewery — Saint Arnold in Houston — is doing 240 barrels. They’re hoping to raise about $100,000. So it’s going to be a pretty big donation.” The beer will be sold in the six markets where the participating breweries are located: Houston, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Seattle, St. Louis, and Tampa, Fla.

 The "Philadelphia" brewery is Sly Fox, which isn't distributing to Maryland bars or shelves of late.  More information here.

Gordon Biersch Coming to Harbor East?

A report from Jess Blumberg, blogging at Baltimore Magazine's On the Town blog, says that Gordon Biersch is finally making its long-rumored entry into the Baltimore market with a location in the 1000 block of Lancaster Street in Harbor East, between the Charleston restaurant and the just-announced Townhouse Kitchen + Bar (with a parking lot in the 1100 block, mind you).  Opening is targeted for mid-October--just in time, maybe, for Baltimore Beer Week.

Things are getting interesting here.