Zoe's Beer

So happy you could join us once again. We are joined as always by Greg Engert, beer director for the Neighborhood Restaurant Group, a food and wine sommelier of the year. The group includes, among other places, Rooste Co, two locations in Boston and Alexandria. Thanks for your time as always. What's on tap this week? So this week I figured we should taste something from Maine Beer Company because we just launched them in DC, I guess it was last week at this point, and they make wonderful beers. Now these guys have only been around since 2009. They are in Portland, Maine, Allie Gash producing great Belgian style beers of course. Maine Beer Company is kind of a cult brewery that I've been following for a very long time to the point where I've been kind of traveling to Philly, which is where You see I used to run up to Philly just to grab it, that's how much I And one of the things. . . Beer stalker. Yeah, exactly. It's Philly does get some beers that we don't get down here Yeah. So and Maine once was So one of the things I loved about Maine Beer Company right from the start is that they don't make crazy wild weird beers. They don't make sours and they don't make 12% Imperial IPAs and stouts. They set out to make fresh, hoppy, balanced, delicious American craft beer and really haven't strayed from that at all. They just put their heads on and said this is what we want to do. And they've been doing it since 2009. Brothers Dan and Dave Cleveland started it up back in 2009 and if you look at their beers on the rating websites and Maine Beer, it's just astounding the scores that these guys get for beers that are one of many of this style. For instance, we're drinking today, this is a beer called Zoey. It is named after a daughter of theirs, Zoey. And it is a 7. 2% hoppy amber ale. Most breweries in the United States have one of these and yet this is one of the best you're ever going to taste. Okay. Yeah. I mean amber ales, I don't want to knock amber ales. I mean, how do I say, I mean, it just, they tend to overwhelm me a bit. I don't know why. Maybe it's just my personal taste buds. I don't know. I don't want to knock the style. Well, it's a good point though. It's a good point because I think some of us have to remember that once upon a time craft breweries, when they first started, they were kind of brewing to color. So when you, when you went to a brew pub, many of which aren't even around anymore back in the early 90s or mid 90s, everybody would have a, a blonde, an amber and a brown, They're So amber's been that kind of style. But see, amber can mean a million different things. So many beers are amber in color stylistically, like Belgian style doubles or sometimes Ambers, but they taste nothing like, So it's kind of a misnomer. When I say amber, what I'm referring to is the, the hoppy American amber style, which is often seen in, in, in other great ones are Troeg's hopback amber, a hoppier red ale. You have a red rocket from Bear Republic, founders Reds Rye PA. So these are the kind of beers in which to kind of categorize Zoey for me and Bear Company. Well, it smells good. It smells good. Give it that. Good interplay of malt and hop in the nose. No, I That's good. That's different. It's good. And it's hoppy and it's cool. Not real clear. No, no, totally unfiltered. They do not filter any of their products. And what's great about this beer, what I love is in the nose, you get this kind of peppery spice and pine cone quality, resident sap. Then you get a little bit of caramelization coming through from the malts that they use. They use some caramelized malt. They use even some chocolate malt in this beer, some Munich malt for kind of toasty note as well. And even some Marisata from England, which is known for giving you this great biscuit-y quality in English ale. So it's a pretty complex malt base. And then it just hit big time with some Pacific Northwest hops. Simcoe, grapefruit and pine quality, Centennial like sweet fruit and floral and Col And on the palate, it's cool because it kind of starts off malty, not sweet, but malty, ready. Then it gets real bitter and then it kind of finishes with some more sweetness. So it comes in waves. So what would you pair this with? So I think that this would be great with all manner of things seared. When you're tasting it, you get that seared quality, this kind of toasted sweetness. It's not caramel-y.