What beer are you drinking now? #1614

Back from the park. Going in a different beer direction this morning:



Wife was "fixing" my iPhone last night. Now I can't text and Photobucket isn't working...let's see if Imgur still works...

Cheers and have a great hump day!

 

Good morning BAs! Today's New Breakfast Beer:



OK, but like most of the vanilla beers I have tried, I can't smell or taste any vanilla.

 

Upright • Six [R.I.P.]

I’m bummed they discontinued this beer…

 

A bagel and an oatmeal stout to start the day.
Cold front moving through. High winds and falling temperatures for the day, below zero wind chills tonight. Happy spring!

 

Pour Judgement, Grey Sail Brewing compliments of @tasterschoice62
Cheers

 

They say "you can travel the world over, and never find a better beer" -- Special Export

 

But what do "you" say?

 

Haircut done, now heading off to a lecture on autism that a doctor from Mass General is giving.
Should be interesting.

 

BB Black Maple & BB Dark Apparition! Cheers!

 

I'm glad that you asked!

If it seems like I didn't exert much effort with this review, that's right, I didn't. Suffice to say that Special Ex is an old favorite of mine, which I've enjoyed since the 1980s, when it was considered a "local" brand (as it was brewed at the "Schmidt" brewery. This is before Alan Bond and later the S&P eras.

Today, Special Export is (at best) an average American pale lager, but it was once considered exceptional, and is even a 'legendary' brew -- of sorts.

I visited La Crosse for a beer can show in 2011, excited to finally see the Heileman brewery.

The local breweriana club had arranged for a tour in advance, and City Brewery's longtime brewmaster Randy Hughes took a group of us into every area of this large scale (6 million barrels / year capacity, but nowadays operating at maybe 2/3rd capacity) brewery. It was among the best tours I've been on, and that wasn't just the Krausening getting to me.

We sampled various beers straight from the finishing cellars, saw the "Rainbow Line" in action, visited the Mariner's Return room, and drank a good amount of fresh La Crosse Lager at Kramer's, next door to the brewery.

Randy Hughes is himself a breweriana collector and historian, and ably-recalled the history of the brewery's brands. Special Export had its origin as a batch of Old Style which had been given preferential treatment by the brewers of the time -- and pay attention, 'cuz this here's the legend got its start. This being the era immediately following Prohibition, this particular batch was "gussied-up" with the addition of more fermentables (dextrose or corn syrup, it's not known which, and that was the original secret) and the brewmaster of the time caught wind of this batch, which had also been aged a while longer than was standard. As it turns out, when the word of the special batch broke-wide at the brewery, the employees had a lot of "enthusiasm" for the longer-lagered, smoother beer with an extra bit of "oomph".

After a few such batches passed the company's internal taste evaluation board, the brand was developed first as a seasonal draught offering (effectively a stronger variation of Heileman's flagship, Old Style), and this in turn proved popular enough to add it a few years later as a line extension of the Old Style family, in bottles and later cans.

(Note: In his office, randy has an old case of "Heileman's Old Style Special Export" pony bottles; If I hadn't seen that in his office, I wouldn't have believed it was ever called that!)

Now, a few years earlier (2004) I'd been told a story by a two senior regional sales reps from La Crosse City Brewery. They were making sales calls in the Minneapolis market for their new thirty packs of La Crosse Lager and La Crosse Light.

When I told them I was a "Special Ex" fan, they mentioned that it was now an "all-malt beer", and at that moment I must've appeared to them as a deer caught in headlights; An all-malt beer sold as a "Price" beer in a thirty pack? What on earth . . . ?!? But I remembered what they'd said, and would mention it from time-to-time in discussion on the "local" (c.f. Midwest forum) discussion board -- most thought I was crazy: Why would a cheap brand be all-malt?

Recalling what I'd heard seven years earlier, I took my chance to ask Randy about it on the way back to Kramer's.

I asked him about the Special Export recipe, told him that I'd been told that it was at one point post-Pabst acquisition brewed once again at its original home -- Heileman Brewing, now "La Crosse City Brewery", around 2004. Mr. Hughes couldn't recall the exact recipe. He believed that it had been brewed to a slightly higher strength (Note: In 1992 it was 5.5%) using 70 to 30% malt-to-corn grain bill, and Krausened (naturally.)

He couldn't recall the 2004 brewing / packaging run that Pabst had made at the facility, and to be fair I was picking his brain a bit too-hard after a two hour, sample-filled tour!

The mystery would haunt me until several years later, when @jesskidden managed to unearth a Certificate of Label Approval from 2004 -- you guessed it, Special Export at La Crosse!

Here are two images from that COLA:



Finally, here's the latest piece of related breweriana I've added to my collection:



Flipside looks like this:



"Aloha, Mr. Hand!"

 

Cheers you all!

 

God, I can only imagine how long it took to type and load all those pics...

 

Trying to find my personal beach today....

 

13.3% ABV
Weyerbacher Cinnsanity
Same insanity but with cinnamon

I was scared this was going to be like fireball but it tastes like a straight up cinnamon roll. And I feel zero alcohol heat at 13% I don't know how I feel about this

Cheers.

 

I had both the photos and the spiel archived for a later date.

 

Slickster...

 

Unseasonably chilli day and my favorite Local Craft beer Bar is freezing after not being open the last 2 days. Tall Clown Shoes Space Cake should warm me up, I hope.