Grape Moments Born From Grape Opportunity
Gun Hill celebrates Barrel-Aged beers and missives from the Lisbon beer scene
Hello, and welcome to December, where the mood is festive and the days and beer are both darker. I’m back from an adventure last week in Lisbon, Portugal, a place not known for its beer scene, but one that definitely sees opportunity for beer. The handful of breweries I visited were hardly of the cookie-cutter American variety — some were tiny outposts nestled into storefronts on busy streets, some were in industrial neighborhoods but had the vibe of a warehouse party, some were simply comfortable places to sip on beer.
What’s fascinating to me about overseas beer is how much American influence can drive craft beer. In Lisbon, for example, it wasn’t just a case of emulating the beer styles from over here — the brewery that other brewers consistently cited as the best in town, Dois Corvos, is helmed by an American. It’s not surprising that the Creature, an American IPA, was the best IPA I had the whole trip. But in addition to mirroring the success of the best brewery in town, breweries were carving out their own niches. Cerveja Lince was specializing in Belgian-style beers and their barrel-aged Quad was a lovely warmer after a brisk walk. Cerveja Musa was a music-focused brewery, playing it loud and proud in their taproom while serving beers with names like Born in the IPA and Red Zeppelin. Oitava Colina was hosting live music in their taproom after a day when the staff was assembling beer advent calendars full of the broad spectrum of their own beers (I also managed to watch the first half of the Bears-Lions game on Thanksgiving Day there).
And the bars featured plenty of local beer, too, if you knew where to look. The Queen Ale, Outro Lado, and Debru were some of my favorite places to drink while in Lisbon, the latter a storefront for a tenant brewer in town.
I was simply happy to be back on the outside again — in a place beyond my comfort zone, in a place seemingly foreign to me, where a common language of good beer can form bonds.
Gun Hill Barrel-Aged Beer Fest returns in January
Time to start planning your 2022. Screw dry January — it’s time to make up for missed events from 2020 and 2021. Gun Hill Brewing Company’s annual Barrel-Aged Beer Fest is back after last year’s pause, scheduled for Saturday, January 15th at their brewery in the Bronx. The celebration of beer by the barrel will run three hours on a Saturday afternoon and feature twenty breweries from New York and elsewhere up and down the East Coast, including Fifth Hammer, KCBC, Wild East, Captain Lawrence, Prison City, Icarus, and Jack’s Abby, just to name a few. The dead of winter is a great time for these lovely, warming beers — and a beer fest is just the trick to lift your spirits during a dark, cold month.
Food and music will be available to accompany these beers, which include a stellar lineup of rarities from the host brewery, like their Void of Light stout aged in Four Roses barrels and their Spirit ‘76 pilsner with short contact in Sauvignon Blanc barrels. They’ll also have four different versions of their Fort Ticonderoga barleywine.
A general admission ticket ($70) not only gets you access to all-you-care-to-sample beer and a glass to keep, but also a 375mL bottle of the 2021 vintage of Gun Hill’s own Proprietor's Reserve Fort Ticonderoga Rum-Barrel Aged Barleywine. A VIP ticket for $20 more gets you an extra hour at the event and an additional limited-edition bottle to be named later.
Tickets are on sale now through Eventbrite. With the holidays in between, this could make a good gift for the beer lover in your life.
Brewery Tracker
Total brewery count: 2,490
New breweries in 2021: 416
Breweries visited in Portugal: 6
Brewery Visit of the Week
Brewery #2489, A.M.O. Brewery, Lisbon, Portugal (Visited 23-Nov-2021)
It was Thanksgiving back in the states, but on my last day of a whirlwind trip through Lisbon, I was thankful for making plans to visit the most charming brewery I’ve come across in 2021. A.M.O., which references both the Portuguese word for love and the initials of the brewery’s founder, Canadian ex-pat Margaret Orlowski, is a nanobrewery tucked away on a mostly residential street just north of Lisbon’s city center. And when I say it’s a nanobrewery, I’m not kidding. Rodney, who was working behind the pint-sized taproom bar, showed me the 200L (approximately 1.7bbl, or 53 gallons) brewhouse tucked away in a side room in the back of the building.
I enjoyed the beers, but I enjoyed the conversation and honesty from Margaret even more. She is clearly her beer’s biggest critic, and after five years running A.M.O., she’s still making tweaks to her recipes and asking for feedback about what she served me. She candidly admitted the Most Wanted IPA was made simply to appease those who seek IPAs when they visit a craft brewery. I still enjoyed it, but it was clear where the excitement was: beers like the Gato Bravo, an amber ale with Brettanomyces and Arabica Coffee that tickled the tongue with coffee bitterness and Brett funkiness. The Javali Porter was a rich but not decadent brew with some roasty bitterness and a touch of chocolatey sweetness. Another coffee beer, the Raposinha, used a light roast to provide a touch of sweetness and subtle coffee flavor in a very clean and crisp pale ale.
There’s something about a cozy, friendly taproom with personality. A.M.O. had authenticity that’s hard to find at even the smallest of small breweries buried in industrial spaces. When you’re this close to beer brewed in such small batches in a setting that would most likely result in NIMBY complaints on day one in most American cities, it almost feels illegal to be drinking here. It’s a good thing it wasn’t, or else I still might not be home.
Social Post of the Week
Beer of the Week
Aldeana de Cacho Branco
Cerveja Artesanal Aldeana (Montijo, Portugal)
Saison with Grape Must
7.5% ABV
“Portuguese Grape Ale.” When I asked the handful of brewers in Portugal what was new and exciting about beer there, that was their answer. Naturally, I had follow up questions, like, “what?,” “who?,” and “how?” This beer was highly recommended by Enrique at Debru, who pointed this out in the beer cooler when I wanted to take a beer back to my hotel room to finish the evening.
Aldeana’s beer was, by the accounts of members of the Lisbon Beer Department, a core group of brewers in Portugal’s capital city, setting the standard for the style. It’s defined, loosely, by a beer aged on grapes or grape must sourced from within the country — a country that very much prides itself on its wine. This particular beer was a collaboration with Adela de Palmela, a winery on the outskirts of Lisbon, and is fermented with Moscatel grape must — a popular varietal that originated in the Middle East and flourishes in Portugal.
I don’t know if Portuguese beer will be defined by wine influence in the long term, but this beer, a celebration of straw, hay, funk, honey, and raisin notes, is by far the most unique beer I had in Portugal. If this is setting a trend for what’s to come in a country with a very young beer scene, I’d love to see how this style evolves.
Long Read of the Week
A few years ago, I went to Scandinavia during the run-up to winter (do not recommend if you don’t like cold and darkness), and I discovered the joy of juleøl, the region’s Christmas beer. I came across a great reader on juleøl’s long history on Norway Today that’s worth a read about an obscure beer tradition.
One Last Thing
I finally stopped by the newly-renovated Big aLICe taproom in Long Island City over the weekend. They knocked out a wall! It’s incredibly disorienting but there’s so much room for activities! (And beer drinking, of course.)
Cheers,
Chris