Look!  We got Sophie in a picture afterall!

Brian Smith, Uli Bennewitz, Sophie Bennewitz and John Jansen

Beers in the Flight:

1. Radler – A Radler is a mixture of lemonade and beer. Weeping Radish uses Real Lemonade sweetened with the Stevia plant and Weeping Radish Kolsch beer. ABV? Low. Perfect for a hot day.
2. Corolla Gold – A German lager style. If you are a lager drinker, this is a must try… Light (but not a “lite” beer) and not filling. I’m feeling a session coming on! ABV – 5.0
3. Weitzen – German wheat style beer… Brewed with 100% German wheat, banana on the nose and taste. Very drinkable weitzen! ABV – 4.7%
4. Black Radish – This spectacular German Schwartzbier is listed as “One of the 50 Beers before you die!” This one was slipped into the show by Uli and we’re so glad he did! ABV – 4.6%
5. Christmas Bier – And the crowd goes wild!! The seasonal Dopplebock Christmas Bier was certainly the reason for the season this year. What an amazing beer… Dopplebocks are definately one of Brian’s favorites. They won’t say how many Christmas Bier’s they brought back from North Carolina or how many lasted through the weekend! ABV – 8.2%

You MUST visit the Weeping Radish Farm Brewery when you can:

6810 Caratoke Hwy
Jarvisburg, NC 27947
(252) 491-5205
Located on 24 acres in Jarvisburg, NC on Highway 168/158 between Norfolk, Virginia & Outer Banks, NC

Take advantage of the beer (of course) and the fantastic local meets prepared by a German Master Butcher. Or, order some beer from their website http://www.WeepingRadish.com unless, of course, you’re in Texas in which case you’ll have better luck getting an uzi. <grin>

Weeping Radish Fire Truck

Visit us on the web at http://www.AbsOfBeerTV.com

Cheers!
Brian and John

Watch and learn about these special beers! Ever asked yourself, “I wonder if Schloss Eggenberg’s Samichlaus Beer would be a good session beer?” Click play and find the answer!

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In this show, our hereos are tasting:

Samuel Smith – Winter Welcome 6% ABV
St. Bernardus – Christmas Ale 10% ABV
Dubuisson Scaldis – Noel 12%
Schloss Eggenberg – Samichlaus a festive 14% ABV plus some change… <grin>

and…

You have to drop by the Bier Garden!

The Bier Garden

438 High Street
Portsmouth, Virginia

If these beers don’t leave you festive, we don’t know what will!

Merry Christmas and..

Cheers!
Brian and John

In this episode, Brian and John get into the Christmas Spirit with some Ridgeway Brewing beers. These beers progress from Bad Elf to Criminally Bad Elf plus the special Santa’s Butt!

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Ridgeway Brewing

We tasted:

Bad Elf – 6% ABV
Very Bad Elf – 7.5% ABV
Seriously Bad Elf – 9% ABV
Criminally Bad Elf – 10.5% ABV
Santa’s Butt – 6% ABV

Hope you are having a great holiday season…

Cheers!
Brian and John

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The Oskar factor:

First off, we’d like to point out that there was a couple “pauses” in the show…  Ahhh!  The magic of ad-lib!  So, if you haven’t heard us say this before, we’ll simply say now that we love beer…  and the beer drinking culture.  You probably won’t hear many negative comments from us about any beer other than it may not be something we drink on a normal basis.  We try to concentrate on sharing craft beers / micro brews because we feel like these are the beers some of the beer drinking community may be missing out on.  Although we have Macro beers and Macro Micro beers from time to time, you probably won’t see us covering too many of them on our shows..  but that certainly doesn’t mean we have anything bad to say about any beer.

Now…  here are some additional facts about the beers we chose to share with Sekshun8.

Oskar Blues – The Little Brewery that Cans!  (We think that’s funny!)
The Brewery is located at:
1800 Pike Road, Unit B
Longmont, Colorado  80501

Oskar Blues brewery opened in 1997 and, lucky for us, also opened a brewpub in 1999 which is located in Lyons, Colorado.  They opened their canning operation in the fall of 2002 with a hand-canning line in the 60-year-old barn next door to the pub.  Now for some stats on the beers you saw (or will see)!

Dale’s Pale Ale – Somewhere between an American Pale Ale and India Pale Ale, 6.5% ABV, 65 IBU
Gordon – Somewhere between an Imperial Red and a Double IPA, 8.7% ABV, 85 IBU
Mama’s Little Yella Pils – Czechoslovakian style Pilsner, 5.3% ABV, 35 IBU
Old Chub – Scottish strong ale, 8% ABV and both an AbsOfBeerTV and Sekshun 8 favorite

…and what Sekshun 8 shared with us!

Shipyard Brewing
Located at:
86 Newbury St.
Portland, Maine  04101

We tasted the Pumpkinhead Ale – 4.5% ABV..  Great pumpkin and holiday spice flavors, smooth, very drinkable ale.  They kept some aside for almost 3 weeks before we could get together.  Thank you for saving us some Sekshun 8!

And oh, by the way….  Check out more Sekshun 8 music by picking up their latest CD Black Wing Butterfly and/or listen to some streaming tracks online from their myspace page:  http://www.myspace.com/Sekshun

Finally, since this show was edited on this Veterans Day, all of us here at AbsOfBeerTV would like to thank everyone in our Arms Forces for your services!

Cheers,
Brian and John

In this episode, Brian and John focus on 5 special pumpkin beers. See which beers they picked as their favorites and be prepared for a couple wizard pranks…

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Beers we tasted:

Weyerbacher – Imperial Pumpkin Ale
Williamsburg Alewerks – Pumpkin Ale
Terrapin – Side Project Pumpkinfest
Dogfish Head – Punkin Ale
Southern Tier – Pumpking
… and special guest… Shmaltz Brewing Company – Coney Island Freaktoberfest

We are already thinking about Thanksgiving and some wonderful Turkey Beers!

The Freaktoberfest Factor:

John was so “freaked” out by his disappearance he couldn’t gather himself up to relay any freaky info about our freaky beer so here goes! ( I’m sure it was probably giving you freaky nightmares not knowing the freaky details!)

Shmaltz Brewing Company

Coney Island Freaktoberfest
Blood Red lager
6 Malts6 Hops
6.66% ABV  (that’s pretty freaky right there..)
Indulge Your Inner FREAK!

AbsOfBeerTV, Out!

The Stone Factor: Here are a few extra things regarding this episode.  First, a correction from our previous episode which featured Stone Brewing Company beers.  We said Stone was located in San Marcos, CA. but they have actually moved to Escondido, CA.  Thank you Matt Steirnagle for helping us get the facts straight!

A few extra words about the Weeping Radish Farm and Brewery.  The Weeping Radish is proud to introduce its “Farmer to Fork” food concept, also known as “Reinheitsgebot” food.  The US food chain has consistently expanded and by now the average food travels over 2000 miles between the farm and your plate.  A large amount of our food is even imported from other countries with little oversight and control.  Every perishable commodity (which includes most food we eat) requires additives, chemicals and preservatives in order to “survive” this processing and distribution system.

For this reason they have built thier Eco Farm, Butchery and Smoke House in Jarvisburg, North Carolina. This allows them to purchase hormone-free beef and free-range pork from local farms, and supervise the butchering and smoking process. They are also a member of the Eastern Carolina Organics Co-op, and bring organic vegetables directly to their farm.

The Juxtaposition Black Pilsner!  We were so involved with drinking and eating the only thing we could say was WOW to about everything that day… So some justice to the Black (Imperial) Pilsner – dark brown color with some nice deep amber highlights – GREAT HEAD – Stone Hoppy, roasted/coffee, malty, nice carbonation and  nice ABV… Let’s give a big round of applause for 10%…

Cheers!
Brian and John

In this show, John and Brian compare a 2009 Aventinus to a 2003…  It was hard to believe what a little bit of beer aging can do!

You’ll notice our new intro in this episode!  We were rocking to some (national recording artist) Sekshun 8 and thought it would be perfect intro music!  We hope to do a show with the guys from Sekshun 8 when we explore what beer rock stars drink!

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