Went to School Last Night

September 11th, 2008

For the first time in over 4 years I set foot in a place called School. Cicero’s Beer School to be exact and this was probably the best class I’ve ever taken. Timothy Suprise from Arcadia Brewing in Battle Creek, Michigan brought samples of four of his beers and discussed the ingredients and the process that went into making each. It was really interesting and fun. Plus the price was right: exactly zero dollars.

Here are the four beers we sampled last night:

Scotch Ale
This was my favorite beer of the night. It had a caramel taste and finished clean. Plus the website describes it as having “aroma of plums and toffee” so that’s good I guess. I had two more of these after class and got a pretty healthy buzz on thanks to the 7.5% alcohol content.

Coco Loco
I’ve had chocolate beer before and I’ve always thought it was disgusting but this was really good. I probably couldn’t drink a ton of it because it was sweet but a sample of it hit the spot. This would be a good desert beer.

London Porter
Meh. This one was kind of plain to me. It wasn’t bad it was just kind of there. I probably won’t be adding this to my rotation.

HopMouth
I do not like beers that are especially hoppy and bitter. To me an IPA usually tastes like gasoline. This was not an exception and it was bad, really bad.

I wish I had paid more attention to the food pairing advice Suprise gave. He had some good recommendations but they escape me now. Also I’m not a home brewer so I was a little lost when all the discussion of hops was going on but it was interesting. For the next 11 weeks I’ll be attending Cicero’s Beer School. I really need to “graduate” so I can get that dollar off beer card.