Jason:

The Buffalo Brews Podcast. Ladies and gentlemen, you are listening to Barely Getting Started 10.2 live from 799 Seneca Street here in Larkinville. I am Jason Edinger, the host of the Buffalo Brews Podcast, and we are sitting down with Craig Altabello, owner and curator of the Magic Bear Beer Cellar.

How'd you like my radio voice, sir?

Craig:

That was a very, very good lead-in to, uh, I just feel like, you know, we should just end it now. Just end it on a high note. And, uh, you know, hopefully the beer lives up to, uh, this has been episode 10.2 of 10.2. All right, cool. There's something, something about the 10, you know, the big 10, uh, you know, this is a special series and, I mean, it's called Perfect Pairings. So we gotta be, you know, that was pretty good.

Jason:

Perfect 10. Yeah.

Craig:

Yeah. That's it. Perfect 10.

So yes, to, uh, kind of recap the perfect pairings and what we're doing and not to spend too much time on recapping, but anyone knows me, they know I like to talk and recap. So here we go. We are looking at beers that within themselves present somewhat of a perfect pairing, whether it be what we just tried, a very soft, easy drinking American wheat with the subtle fruitiness of raspberry without it being too tart, too sweet, all of the, uh, you know, things that would break the first prong of my three pronged approach to pairing, uh, which would be to align intensities.

So this episode we'll talk a little bit more about the other prongs, but let's recap what we're looking at. We are looking at, uh, pairing. So pairing just, uh, in general with your food and beverage, whether it's beer, wine or a cocktail, you want to look at things holistically.

So that's what we talked about with the wheat beer and what we'll talk about here. Cause we are now jumping to a brown ale and it is from our friends over at Olean, New York's Four Mile Brewing Company. Uh, we are going to be drinking their maple brown ale.

So we are trying four different beers that have basically a simple, uh, adjunct and I didn't really talk about adjunct and what that means. And usually the more, um, appropriate definition of like an adjunct in beer means it's a fermentable sugar that is in beer outside of grain or, uh, you know, a malted cereal grain. That's a perfect way of saying it.

Yes. And, um, you know, traditionally it would be outside of barley, right? So wheat could have been considered an adjunct grain and now adjuncts kind of just mean what like sweet stuff are you adding?

So, you know, people want to see stouts with more adjuncts please. And that's basically like strawberry, banana, marshmallow, all of these things that we add to it, but they're not, they're not being utilized to really be fermented. They're utilized for their flavor.

So we're kind of using adjunct in the idea of what was added. So we can also say like a flavor addition. So don't want to get too in depth, but also don't want to confuse, uh, incorrect, uh, beer vocabulary, so to speak.

So we're talking about beers where the base style and the flavor addition are a perfect pairing or they go very well together. In this episode, we will be putting that theory into practice with maple and a brown ale. So we'll talk a little bit about the base brown ale and we'll talk about some, um, principles of pairing, but let's do the recap.

So we wanted to think about things holistically and I'll get into that when we talk about the brown ale. So holistically, let's look at food and I will, why don't we pick the fish fry as our example and I'll just keep bringing it up throughout each episode. Fish fry selected.

There you go. Boom. All right.

So fish fry. I'm not going to say from where that's for you to decide, but typically if you're thinking of a Western New York fish fry, you know what you're getting. You're getting a deep fried beer battered deep fried headache.

And if I told you, you know, when that waitress or waiter or the server comes around and says, would you like that broiled? And you know, that's what my wife looks at me like, you can get a broiled today. I'm like, no, we went out for fish fries.

I mean, I want that puffy fish fry hanging off the plate. I want to, um, have two and a half inches of crunch before I even hit that flaky fish cheap.

Jason:

So it's a little beer in there.

Craig:

Yeah. You'll go fluff it up. But there's a big difference between beer battering and deep frying that headache.

And then just squirting some lemon and a little tomato and, you know, doing like the Italian a version, you know, I, I hear so often of, you know, a broiled headache and then there's the breaded, you know, the, the, you know, almost comes across like a fish fillet, but there's that breaded version where it's got a crunch to it, but it's not like that puffy battered crunch. So all of those things change the intensity and change the overall profile of a piece of headache. Now, is it served with coleslaw?

Is it served with max sale? Does that serve with both? Yeah.

Are your French fries? Are you putting malt vinegar on it? Are you dipping your beer battered fish fry in ketchup?

Are you dipping it in tartar sauce? You know, kind of like chicken wings. You got to use blue cheese.

I feel if you're dipping your fish fry in ketchup, it's like, come on now. That's why the tub of tartar is there.

Jason:

So dip your fish sticks in ketchup if you want, but leave that, leave that, leave that deer, that deep fried headache fillet alone.

Craig:

I like, I like watching, you know, different people that I see first time eating a fish fry. I'm like, are you a person that puts tartar sauce on the fish fry and then cuts and eats it? Or, you know, get your bite ready and enjoys it?

Or are you someone that sticks a fork full of fish fry into the tartar sauce? Because I, I sometimes am both. I think once I get towards the end, I like to use my knife and get some tartar sauce out and spread it on the fish fry and then eat it versus, you know, trying to, you just can't really dunk it very much towards the end there.

And same thing, I've seen people that will take their chicken wing and like hold it out horizontally and dump some blue cheese on it versus dunking the chicken, the chicken wing into the last dab on, on hot ones or something like that. You know, it's just, uh, it's interesting to see how people approach and, um, you know, we're not here to judge, but we're also barely getting started and I'm already on a three to five minute tangent here. So holistically we would think about that piece of fish and then we talked about the first principle.

I call them the three pronged approach. Here I'm as ABCs. We talked about the a, which was to align intensities.

So the B and I kind of alluded to it, think last episode was bridging the gap, but I also like to put on this tier or this prong, uh, flavor affinities, meaning they might not. So bridging the gap means flavors in the food or flavors in one thing bridge into flavors of the other. So very simply, if you have a salad where, you know, we'll go with that raspberry vinaigrette, there's a raspberry vinaigrette.

If I put raspberries in my salad, it will pair because I'm bridging the gap. But it's also kind of boring sometimes. It's like, yes, raspberry with raspberry.

You know, when you have chocolate, obvious, right? Yeah. Little obvious, little, uh, elementary, but it's a subtle, I mean, not subtle, but a simple go to, right?

There's no, it's fail proof. It's um, you know, but if I'm going to have chocolate ice cream, I'd rather have vanilla ice cream with chocolate sauce than chocolate ice cream with chocolate sauce, right? The chocolate ice cream.

It's usually like, Ooh, I'd like to add some sort of fruit to it or chocolate with peanut butter or, you know, chocolate with that marshmallow whipped topping. Those are more flavor affinities. Ending on that chocolate with marshmallow, if you take it in my classes, I always talk about s'mores because graham cracker, marshmallow, chocolate bar, none of them tastes like each other.

Put all three together. Perfect pairing. There it's perfect pairing.

Not so, so much so that we've named it s'more. I need s'more of it. It's so good.

So that's the flavor affinity, right? And that, and that could be grilled cheese and tomato soup. That's peanut butter jelly.

That's, that's all of your things that your brain naturally says, I like these together versus bridging the gap where it's like, they are the same flavor. They just echo one of, you know, one of each other through one to the other with an echo. Sorry, it sounded so much better in my brain and then I couldn't get it out right.

But the, uh, hopefully this maple echoes from the actual maple syrup into the brown ale. So that's our, uh, second principle and we'll go in depth into the third principle in our next episode. Um, but that is to cut and contrast.

So I'll, I'll talk a little bit about that as I, uh, dissect this beer, but, um, let's start talking about the beer, unless you have any questions or I have no questions to add.

Jason:

We had a little powwow, uh, before we hit the record button about four mile brewing and, uh, they, uh, they're very self-explanatory. They've been there since 2015. So this is their 10th anniversary and they, uh, they make some, they make some fine, some fine beer.

Craig:

Yeah. And this, um, you know, maple brown ale, you know, it's not a fancy name like, you know, leather face mask or, and then you can be like, well, what the heck is that? It's, it's literally its name is it's descriptors.

They are out of Olean, New York. This is a 7% beer. So let's talk a little bit holistically.

What a brown ale is. Okay. So as you go up SRM scale of color and, uh, you know, that's usually indicative of what, uh, you know, roast level is in your grains.

We're going to start seeing some darker roast malts here to get a brown base beer. Um, and brown ale is one that I always like to, uh, use to segue into like Porter and stout categories, uh, or styles. And that's, uh, you know, going to be a great segue because those are our next two beers are Porter and a stout, but the, um, yes, the, the brown ale, the way I look at it is you have golden and your loggers and the light colored, and then there's your pale ales, which are a little bit more multi, a little darker, darker, and I'm talking more like West coast, American pale ales, like a Sierra Nevada pal. And then you've got your ambers, which start to go into the red and copper and slightly darker, but we're not quite too Brown yet. And those red ales, uh, they can be very multi and kind of like bread crust and toasted bread type vibes.

Then you get to the brown ale and I feel like, okay, now we've introduced a little level of like roast and, um, now that toast on the bread and the malt is starting to get a little darker. Okay. It's, it's definitely going to be a little bread crusty and, um, it, it has some notes of chocolate.

It has some notes of coffee, but to me it's slight, you know, and these are just flavors that come from the grains, nothing that's added additionally on top of it, but it's got those subtle notes of chocolate hint of like toffee caramel, you know, very light, but you know, also some sort of like nuttiness in there, a hint of sweetness because you know, the, the malted, the darker malts tend to bring out a little bit more sweetness. And then, you know, you, you have this touch of like coffee roast to it and some, some people's brown ale versus the, some people's porters, they could kind of like overlap quite a bit because you know, it's at the interpretation of the brewer and how they want to market their beer.

But styles are mainly to just let people know what to expect as a consumer of the brewers intention. Uh, but then you step up to like a porter and porter, you know, you get those chocolate and vanilla and some nuttiness, but you start to add a little bit of roast, still some chocolate, but it's a little less chocolate, a little bit more roasty and, um, stout. You kind of keep going towards that roast and we'll get more into that as we get into those beers.

So when I think of a brown ale, I'm thinking of something that's still very drinkable, but now it's got that malted, slightly toasted, nutty vibe to it that we're not going to get with a pale ale. It's still going to have potentially some bitterness to it, but when I start thinking of like toast and, uh, those maltier, crustier flavors, crusty isn't like a nice toasted bread and, uh, you know, maple, I just think of French toast. And I started thinking of, you know, I talked about a perfect pairing, uh, food wise for that raspberry wheat last episode, and I was talking about breakfast foods, but when, you know, to me, when you think of maple to me, it's maple sausage, it's bacon, it's eggs, it's breakfast, it's pancakes.

Um, but you see a lot of bourbons that are paired well with maple and you've got a lot of, uh, maple barrel age stuff for there's maple syrup that's in bourbon barrels. And then there's beer that's in second use barrel, all sorts of stuff that maple can lend itself, but it's got kind of a, a darker and a somewhat smokier undertone. And those are like the natural to me, like affinities, right?

Like maple goes well with like a smoke characteristic. Maple goes well with a, um, you know, kind of a breakfast and that that's more of an affinity than bridging the gap. Um, so to align intensities, maple is a little bit more of an intense flavor and taste, you know, usually when maple's in something like, oh yeah, there's got some maple in there and it might, you know, depending on the grade of honey that you have, if it's a very dark honey or even something like molasses, like those like sweeteners and thick, viscous, uh, sweet liquids, like all of those, sometimes there's some overlapping. Usually, you know, to me, molasses has a characteristic honey has got kind of as herbal earthy characteristic.

And then maple, there's just not much like maple usually is the base flavor that we're like, this thing tastes like maple because it just is what it is. It's one of those axioms in itself. It's just got that maple flavor that lends itself to a lot of affinities, but in the end it is singularly maple flavored.

So let's see how it pairs with this brown ale in concept. And in theory, I see it pairing nicely because those roasty chocolatey nutty tones all would go nice with a little drizzle of maple on it. And, uh, you know, I'm hoping, cause actually I don't think I've ever tried this beer.

I might've at one point, but it doesn't jump out at me. I'm hoping that it's not a maple bomb. Okay.

I've had some beers that have maple in it and it's like, yeah, you know, it's good. I mean, I like maple syrup, but I, you know, I'm not going to chug a bottle of maple syrup. Um, you know, at least not for, uh, for free college days are behind us.

Jason:

Yeah. Um, they, you know, again, open in 2015 and little known fact is that the sugar maple is the state tree of New York and it contains what they consider to be the sweetest sap of all the maple trees. So that's usually one of the best that they use in beer production across New York state.

Craig:

Yeah, that is a nice tip. I did not know that the sugar maple is the tree of New York. Yeah.

And, uh, I would have thought it would be some sort of apple tree.

Jason:

And, uh, well, you know, usually harvested, uh, in the fall. So I, I found it interesting. One of the things I looked up cause I had a fleeting thought while we were talking here was that the Western New York Maple Festival is actually at the end of April.

Fair enough. So, you know, you've got that spring season and you have that fall season.

Craig:

So very nice head to this beer. Um, it's slightly beige, definitely off white, but not quite a tan. That's a nice pour right there.

There you go. Thank you, sir. Um, I'll make sure that the, if the camera's still going, then it can see that.

So, you know, first thing off the bat with that raspberry versus now this maple, I don't get a huge waft of maple, which no. Yeah. And hopefully to me, if I could smell the maple, then most likely it's either an extract or an artificial flavor, or it's, there's too much maple.

So I think this is a good sign. Um, you know, I was with that raspberry jam and it smelled like it could have been a very sweet raspberry and it didn't, which was nice.

Jason:

And it was same distance from that raspberry. And I was picking up the raspberry. I'm not picking up the maple yet.

Craig:

And, um, you know, I have a very nice rocky thick head of foam. So that is a, uh, a good way that's going to kind of transmit some aromas. So take a couple of whiffs and yeah, there it is.

Yep. It's a, it's subtle though. It's still subtle.

It's not an in your face maple. It's like, yeah, there there's maple in this beer. Um, you know, the fact that it's a maple brown ale, your brain's already going to be, you know, trying to pick up on those maple notes.

Cause if you know, you have anybody, you know, I just actually last weekend or two weekends ago, not this past one, but the one before that I was at the New York state Brewer's Association competition. It's like, I don't like people really saying much. And I don't like saying much until everyone's had a chance to try it and come up with their thoughts on something.

Cause if I just go, Oh, are you getting a such and such in this? Like it's hard not to focus on that now. So to me, if you didn't tell me this was a maple brown ale, I would smell and be like, Oh, I'm getting some notes of maple, uh, off of the Roma, but I wouldn't be able to just immediately by, uh, wafting over it going and saying this is maple brown, but, uh, yeah, definitely, definitely a touch.

Um, doesn't, uh, smell like a stack of pancakes. It's not miss bother Butterworth just, you know, hanging out by the side. So there you go.

Looking at it a little quick cheers. We'll take a sip and then we'll take about a few moments to talk about what it looks like and all the good stuff. So 7%.

Okay. And, um, I'm getting a little bit of that. This is definitely a beer that I feel, uh, is punching above its weight class a little bit because it, it has kind of a, I don't want to say stout vibe, but some of those, not that it's like a pastry style, but some of those barely stouts or whatnot, it has, this has a little bit of a boozy taste to it, a little bit.

Nothing, nothing overpowering.

Jason:

Roastier than I would expect too.

Craig:

And you know, that's, that's people's take on a brown ale. Like I said, I'm expecting some roast. I wasn't expecting it to be as, um, it's got a big flavor to it.

And the big is not coming necessarily from the maple.

Jason:

No.

Craig:

So it's nice balance. It's got sweet as well as roasty, but I'm not getting a ton of maple.

Jason:

No more biscuity light chocolate. I mean, subtle maple. It's not, it's not overpowering by any means.

Craig:

But it's one of those where like we tried the raspberry wheat. Yes. It's raspberry.

Like as soon as you try it, you're like, this is a raspberry beer. Yeah. Um, and I like it and this, I like the beer, but again, I mean, you know, if I didn't know this was a maple brown ale, I might, I wouldn't be surprised if you told me it was maple and I get some notes of maple, but it's not as evident.

It tastes more of like a roasty brown and I wanted it to be, you know, a little on the roasty nutty side. Okay. Definitely very good.

I mean, as I swirl this, you know, I'm kicking up a full new layer of foam. Um, so let me take another little whiff. And it kicks up nice.

Yeah. You got a nice little, uh, almost a pinky there. And that, that aroma does finish with a little sweet maple.

So it does carry throughout the beer. So let's talk a little bit about the base brown. The, the brown ale in this definitely has a ton of roast to it.

Nothing where I'm thinking that I'm drinking a stout and you know, but this is one of those ones where it's roasty enough where if you told me this was a porter, I wouldn't be surprised. But then that's where we take a look at the color. So looking at the color of this, um, you know, the only thing that I drink a lot of that I can compare to is the whale brown ale.

The whale brown ale is actually a little bit darker than this. I mean, this is a brown, it's a, it's a darker brown, but it's not black. It's definitely quasi opaque.

I did turn the light on the, the chandelier light instead of just the can lights because that chandelier lights a little closer and it helps me look through my glass. So it definitely lightens up, but it's another like hazy murky, um, opaque beer, but it gets much, much lighter. You know, it's got, uh, some notes of cocoa.

You know, I wouldn't really say like a ton of chocolatey notes, but a hint of like cocoa. And it has slight vanilla, not really any caramel or like toffee notes to it, but it's got like that, Ooh, you know, you just put a teaspoon of vanilla into like a chocolate cake and you wouldn't be able to pick out that it's vanilla,

Jason:

but it's almost like the, I mean, besides the roast, I mean, it's a little biscuity to me, um, almost like a, like a red ale and you can almost put the, I mean, to me, the vanilla is not non-existent.

I don't taste that, um, very light chocolate, light, uh, light maple.

Craig:

Yeah. This is one that, um, you know, I know that raspberry weed is dangerous where you're going to drink a bunch of them. This, I would have more, I would order another one of these, but this isn't, I mean, just brown ale by its nature, you know, this, this does lend itself to like the colder months.

Like I can see, you know, a nice, like a brisk 35 to 45 degree day, even temperatures like we see today in the upper fifties, if you're at like, you know, a sugar tapping or whatever, like a SAP tapping festival, this, this is perfect. This is like an outdoor hiking beer, you know, brown ales to me. I had a granola brown ale here once.

And it was like, they're, they're kind of very good outdoor beers. They're not quite like the winter, you know, warmer winter beers that we were talking about last series, where it's going to kind of just, you know, warm you, warm you down to the core, but it's got that, it just has that colder weather vibe to it. I mean, drinking a brown ale in the summer, I can see depending on what we're eating and what we're enjoying.

But, uh, you know, overall, I think the raspberry wheat, uh, paired within itself better than the maple pairs with this brown. And mainly because I don't get a ton of maple and that might be because it's, it's very well paired. It's just enough hint to it that, um, I know it's there, but I know it's there more because it's slapped across the can.

Then if you just handed this to me, I'd say, yeah, cause I mean, brown ales are typically standard ABV around, you know, five, five and a half. So having a 7% beer, you know, this isn't by any means an imperial anything, but it drinks with a little bit of, of booze to it. The slight sweetness that I think we're getting from that maple gives me this almost like barrel aged aspect.

But then again, when I talked about maple and when you think of it, like sometimes I do think of bourbon and I do think of those things. So I think that's, you know, kind of just like a nice bit of different, um, affinities that come together that are, you know, more formulated in our brain than it is, you know, the palates telling our brain what to think versus, Hey, this maple is also a flavor of a brown ale, like brown ale doesn't, it's not going to just have a maple flavor to it on its own. And I think I would like a little bit more maple, especially the fact that there's, you know, maple leaf, it's, I would do maple's the largest word on here.

Jason:

It's you would expect it.

Craig:

Yeah.

Jason:

You know, you know, obviously you want to judge the punch in the face from the maple, but, uh, yeah, this is, I mean, it's super subtle.

Craig:

Yeah. So. I'm not disappointed with too much maple and I'm not disappointed with too little maple.

I'm just thinking if you want to, if you want to kick it up a little bit, this is that going back to the, what I told you was the most important principle is that aligning the intensities. I think the intensity of their base brown ale is just a smidge higher than the maple they used. So now that maple is, you know, it is, it's kind of just bobbing and weaving, trying to just be known and they get, it'll get a swing off here or there, and you smell a little bit of it, or there's a little bit of lingering on the palate.

But to me, I'd want to balance it slightly more. So where in concept, um, this is a perfect pairing. I would say this is a good pairing in, uh, execution, but, uh, for mile, I would say amp up the maple slightly.

Don't, she's at a five, maybe turn the dial up to a six or a seven. Yeah. Does, does not need much more.

I don't want to be sitting there going like, all right, yeah, this is a maple syrup beer, but I do want a little bit more than what I have at the current moment.

Jason:

Maple. I enjoy maple conditioning myself. Um, one of the, one of the things I picked up last year, I went over to, to, uh, our friends up north and while I was at Wayne Gretzky's winery up there, it's a, there's a distillery and that's part of that operation too.

I got a maple cask, um, whiskey, Canadian whiskey that, uh, I enjoy. I'd say it's a, it's a really nice sipper. Um, I drink it neat because I don't, I don't want to water down that.

Um, I don't want to water down that, that maple flavor it gives, but it's, it's nicely cask and I think it provides a really great even tone flavor. So I know maple has its place. Beer, you know, spirits.

Craig:

So yeah, no, it's, uh, maple is one of those, again, I'll get more into it next episode, but with maple being such a sweet, um, uh, item itself, it needs something to kind of cut it. And, you know, whiskey being all sorts of alcoholic beverages sometimes, uh, can come across sharp or, you know, they have the ability to cut and contrast. So it's, it's like, Hey, how do we cut and tone down that sweet maple flavor?

We'll give it something that's got a little bit of, you know, sharp alcohol and, uh, you know, just kind of smooth and balances things out. And, uh, where I do get a nice smooth balanced beer here, uh, it just, um, needs a little bit more. Um, so maybe the little bit more would come from, you know, a food item that you would pair from this.

So, you know, the, the easy thing to do is to just, uh, you know, bridge the gap. And in this case I would want to, cause I want to accentuate that maple. So, you know, I, I don't think that this is a good brunch beer, mainly because it's 7% and, uh, you know, we just did that with the raspberry wheat, you know, but to me, you know, can we do some roasty meats on this?

Like, yeah, I mean, a lot of times, you know, barbecue comes to mind a lot with pairing, cause you can just go a lot of different ways with barbecue. But to me, you know, maple does go well with smokier flavors. So a nice smoked barbecue, um, you know, I would do this more with again, like ribs and like, this would be really good with some barbecued chicken wings.

Um, anything where, you know, that, that barbecue sauce that you would naturally put on it would have a little bit of sweetness to it. And I just, I do think that smoke and barbecue pair nicely. So, you know, I'm not thinking like smoked prime rib by any means, but I can also see like, um, maybe, maybe break out the smoked Gouda for this one.

Yeah. A little smoked Gouda. You think about like candied pecans that would go on top of maybe like a brie.

So I could see this really being like, I'm glad you bring that up. It's a very good beer to pair with cheese. You know, if you think maple, you think Vermont, you know, Vermont cheddar.

Um, something like a nice white aged cheddar, maple syrup would, that sweetness kind of cuts with the, you know, the sharp of the cheddar would cut through the sweetness and then that roastiness in this beer, uh, it kind of just would be nice with some, some nice, uh, whether it be cheddar, I could see it being a little bit, uh, indicative of like that of a brie or a smoked Gouda, just because those have a little bit more of those savory characteristics and that, uh, sweet maple. And that's that little bit of roastiness of this brown ale would go nicely with both of those. You know, as I, uh, you know, round out the things that I'm thinking, and I do see this being really good for a chicken wing, um, that's in, you know, that that's that char-b-que chicken wing.

I'd like to see, I like that word.

Jason:

You use that word last episode. Char-b-que.

Craig:

You know, it's, I've seen it, you know, in some places they advertise it as char-b-que and that's kind of what comes to mind because, you know, other places say they're wings from the pit, wings from the pit, so char-b-que is easy. I think it makes a visual representation of like, Hey, I actually see grill marks on these wings and when you taste it, you're like, okay, this is not just, like, I actually went to Elmo's this past Friday out on Miller's port and yeah, they do a good job of the double dip, tossing them, but then, you know, the ones from the pit, it's like, okay, you can toss it in this, toss it in the barbecue sauce and then throw it on the grill and now it comes out and it just adds that layer, that extra depth. And that, you know, another layer of flavor that is that char and it's, it's a good addition because it takes it totally in another direction.

It kind of balances the sweetness of the barbecue sauce by adding a little bit of this like charred kind of smoky. And that's what I kind of see going on in this beer here is there's that roast that, you know, that, that deep kind of slight cocoa-y brown ale with a hint of