BEAR-ly Getting Started 10.3 - Vanilla & Porter

Jason and Craig open with a quick review of the Porter style. What is the most versatile flavor? And why is it vanilla? We learn more about the "Principles of Pairing." Food makes a great pairing with any beer. What pairs best with vanilla and porter? This episode is dedicated to Gina, who worked in the diner all day! Featuring Vanilla Porter from Rohrbach Brewing Company in Rochester, NY.

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Transcript

Jason:

The Buffalo Brews podcast. We are back with Barely Getting Started. This is episode 10.3. That puts us almost, that puts us 41 deep into Barely Getting Started series.

Craig:

I'm 41 years old, now I'm just, now you just made me feel old. Wait, you're 41 years old? 41, yeah.

There they lay down to be 42 in April.

Jason:

Fun facts.

Craig:

Fun facts. I was like 41. Yeah, that's a lot of episodes.

And now, you know, now I'm having my podcast mid-podcast crisis here.

Jason:

Mid-podcast crisis. 41 episodes.

Craig:

That's old. I am, I'm getting old here. I got to make sure.

Jason:

Now you got to buy a sports car.

Craig:

Yeah, next thing you know.

Jason:

Find a podcast that's a younger model, you know.

Craig:

You were talking about bringing your bigger board in and I'm like, all right, we need some time to bring in better equipment. We need to upgrade because- Bring the sports car in. Things are getting a little too- Podcast sports.

A little 41. It's all downhill from here.

Jason:

Hey, we're going to be, we started downstate in Port Crane, New York, Johnson, what's their other- Johnson City.

Craig:

Johnson City.

Jason:

And then they have a site in Binghamton as well. I think we had a, we had one of our listeners on Spotify message me and was telling me a little bit about the different locations, like I guess they had visited all three. So they were kind of giving their rating on which one.

I'll save that because I don't think that's fair to put that stuff out there and which one he thinks was better than the others. But he definitely had favorites. But I appreciate that feedback.

It's always great to know because we were talking last episode off air, we were talking about Steelbound and how many different locations that they have, Fredonia and Williamsville, Springville, Ellicottville, they have one out in Vegas. So it's like, yeah, it's cool to see breweries and distilleries that are expanding.

Craig:

Each one has like their own vibe, right? When you have something that's got different iterations of it, people are just, they choose which one is good for them. A lot of times it's the closest one, but you tend to flock together with those that share your vibe.

Jason:

I think this place is a great example of that too, because I'm going to bring up the facility right off the bat, but we'll talk about the beer in just a moment, is Rohrbach Brewing Company out of Rochester, New York. They were Rochester's first craft brewery founded in 1991. They originated from the concept from Rohrbach, Germany, which I didn't know.

I didn't know that they were a German family and I might be wrong on that, maybe on the details because not everybody puts details out about their family. But they started in Rochester in the German house that is, it's still there, located on Gregory Street, and now they have two locations. They have the one that's near the city market, great open air location, reminds me a lot of Woodcock Brothers up in Wilson, very, very open air inside.

And then the other one, which I prefer, has that very Irish pub, English pub feel to it, is Buffalo Road.

Craig:

Yeah, that was the first one I went to. First one, and it almost felt slightly restaurant-y to me, versus brewery and pub-y, so I guess that's what I mean by pub. Pub kind of gives you that just overall hospitality vibe where it's not just all about the beer, it's kind of just all-encompassing.

And yeah, I went to that one, had dinner there, and I've been to the one by the market a couple of times now. That seems to just be, when you're in the area, sometimes that's just on the path of what you're already doing quite a bit, so it's easier to stop by. But yeah, I told you the beer I picked was probably their second most notable beer.

They have three pretty notable beers, but you very quickly had said Rohrbach Scotch Ale, and it's interesting how much, like a Scotch Ale is not very appealing on a broad spectrum, but I think the majority of people that try Rohrbach Scotch Ale are like, yeah, no, I like this. And it's just a different beer for it to kind of be your flagship, and a lot of people think of like Genesee and Cream Ale, and then you think of certain breweries, they just, a certain style is like, yeah, that's what they do. And Scotch Ale being such a nice one-off kind of style, so to speak, because you don't really see a ton of variation on it.

It's their Rohrbach Scotch Ale, and it's the way it's been, and it's the way it's going to be.

Jason:

And you either do it good or you don't do it good, and they do it good.

Craig:

And we talked about Space Kitty, which is their IPA. Oh, yeah.

Jason:

I love Space Kitty Dippa.

Craig:

There you go. But this is, we're going to be looking at their Vanilla Porter. So we are kicking it up a notch on the roast spectrum here, the roast dial with coming off of the Brown Ale.

So to kind of get us all up to speed, if you missed any of the previous episodes, first I say go and listen and get yourself caught up. But we're talking about perfect pairings, both within the beer itself, that's the focus, you know, a one single flavor addition or adjunct, if you will, to a base style where it is kind of perfect for that base style. Now, perfect should mean, so I always talk about like perfect as like, oh, there's the perfect one, and that could be the only one.

However, different people have different perfects, right? So what one person's perfect could be someone else's perfect. So, you know, I never, nay, say anything anyone has to say in my classes, if they're getting a flavor profile, or if they're trying a cheese and beer pairing that I've offered and say, you know what, that first beer tastes better with the third cheese.

It's not like a how dare you, it's, I give you a lot of cheese and a lot of chances to kind of revisit things because I want to see what people's palates and to me that Maple Brown Ale and then we did a Raspberry Wheat. That Raspberry Wheat, is Raspberry perfect? Is it the pinnacle for wheat beer?

No, I mean, I said I really like the Blackberry and a Blueberry Wheat, and we have an Orange Creamsicle or an Orange Vanilla kind of wheat on tap right now, actually it's a pale ale, so you know, it is, it's one of those things of, is it perfect to you, or is it just a really good pairing, and that's kind of what we're going for here. So then, the Maple Brown Ale is what we did in the second episode, so Maple and Brown Ale is going very well together, and then now we have a Vanilla Porter, so, you know, let's talk a little bit about what we think of the base style of Porter, we'll talk about the principles of pairing, go into a little bit more depth about the third prong of the approach, and then we're just going to drink some beer and talk about it, until you look at me and say, yeah, I think you've been talking enough, Craig. We try to get to that 30 minute mark, but, you know, I try not to be too redundant, I do hear myself saying some of the same things over again, but then I'm like, wait a second, that was last episode, so I can repeat one more time, I got one more time for this episode.

Jason:

We have layers.

Craig:

Yes, layers. Yeah. It's tough, you know, when we record these back to back to back, but then they come out two weeks in between, I always forget that, you know, hey, people aren't listening to it as fast as I'm spewing it, so, on that note, let's, you know, we're barely getting started, so let's get to the point here, so, perfect pairings.

Porter. So, Porters, you know, there used to be just Porters, not Porters and Stouts, and we'll talk a little bit more about that when we get to our next beer, spoiler alert, it's a Stout. That's gonna be episode four, but Porter, take you back to 1700 England, you can get more in depth with our UK in a day, I think we did a Porter, or maybe we did an English Mild, but I know we talked about Porters.

Jason:

I think we did a Baltic in that one.

Craig:

Right, a Baltic Porter, maybe if we just talked about regular Porter, might have been the shot for Stouts, because it is the precursor and foundation of Stouts, but basically that's what it was, Porter is the name of kind of like the dock hand, you'd have tons of ships going in and out of port in London, England, and then you'd have these dock hands just taking stuff on, off, you name it, just busting their hump, when you talk about a hard, grueling day, you think of like coal miners, you think of people, you know, the deadliest catch, but you know, just unloading, loading, just non-stop back-breaking work, my hat's off to the people that do that, I have moved quite a few times in my life, and I know that it is not something that I want to do on a day-to-day basis, but if I did, then I would want to drink a lot, more than I already do, and you know, these folk would go to the pub, and they would spend hours drinking their Porters, and they basically named this darker beer off of the dock hands that were drinking it so much, and I'm going to go back to that Brown Ale Porter Stout Imperial Stout scale that I kind of use, and we talked about Brown Ale being more of like a cocoa, chocolatey, with slight roast, vanilla, caramel, and nuttiness to it, you know, and certain people's Brown Ales are going to exude one or more of those characteristics more than others, and then when we get to Porter, to me it's, we're dialing a little bit more into the roast note, so a little less chocolate, even though chocolate is still pretty prevalent, and now we have a little bit more coffee notes, okay, but it's light roast coffee, it's not necessarily too dark of a roast, but it's, you know, in my opinion, it should be more prevalent than in a Brown Ale, and then again, some Brown Ales, some Brewers, Brown Ales have a lot more roast than some Brewers, Porters, and vice versa, and it's kind of this overlapping two styles here, but Porter should have like a touch of vanilla, and a touch of caramel, you know, we're losing a little bit of that nuttiness, and we're trading off some of that, you know, base, dark malt, chocolatey note for a base, like, roasty note, but still, you know, usually present there, but to me, I'm thinking it's like a light brewed coffee, something easy to drink, not that we're going to drink 20 of them, unless, you know, maybe we were working all day on the dock, you know, this is where you can put, Bon Jovi, wasn't there one song where it's just like, you know, used to work on the dock? Johnny used to work on the dock?

Yeah, Johnny worked on the dock, so I'm just like picturing that, there we go, we're living on a prayer, that's why it's barely getting started, because I can't get started, I just keep going on tangents, so, yeah, too many, too many things, but I was like, yeah, Johnny worked on the docks, thank you for centering me, that's what I was thinking of, and then I'm just like, picturing, you know, someone carrying a Porter, and shaking their head,

Jason:

he's down on his luck, there we go, it's tough, it's tough, it's tough, then we could talk

Craig:

about his girl companion, but that's for another time, yeah, there you go, but yes, vanilla, vanilla is one of those, it's like the salt of sweet, right, you put a pinch of salt in everything, salt makes everything taste better, because now you have something to bounce off of, right, you can enjoy a very, very tasty steak, you know, that fat is going to add a layer of depth and character to the meat, as well as the savory and the umami that comes with a steak, but then that's just a pinch of salt, right, now, those flavors pop, and a pinch of salt usually goes, you know, a teaspoon or a half teaspoon in a lot of baked goods, and to me, vanilla is a lot like that, like chocolate cake, a little vanilla makes the chocolate stand out, every dessert that I typically make, and that might just mean I make a lot of similar desserts, it has some sort of vanilla, pancakes, if it doesn't call for it in the recipe, I'm putting some vanilla in there, a little extract in it, yeah, there you go, and it's not one of those things that you're ever like, oh wow, this has got so much vanilla in it, it just gives it kind of this, vanilla is that kind of like just easy going type vibe when it comes to, you know, everyone thinks chocolate ice cream and flavored ice cream, but vanilla ice cream, you know, I don't know if it's still the case, but it's always brought up that vanilla is like one of the best selling ice creams, because it is just, I buy it all the time, there you go, and it allows tons of flavor to be added to it, correct, and that vanilla is just that, you know, I think, you think of vanilla ice cream as white and just a very bright, clean canvas, and that canvas allows you to just paint some, you know, strokes on it that then just come off of that canvas a little bit more, so I do feel that vanilla is a beautiful and perfect pairing for porter, that's a mouthful there, because it has like a touch of vanilla, so, you know, talking about what to expect out of a porter, you know, we're looking for a little bit more roast in that brown ale, hint of vanilla, hint of maybe some caramel nuttiness, but, you know, I think the most indicative is going to be that slightly roasty coffee flavor, and vanilla, you know, just think of your coffee creamers, right, it's going to go, you know, whether it's an Italian sweet cream or a vanilla, you name it, but usually those coffee creamers have a lot of vanilla notes to it, so, to me, it's like a very natural and perfect pairing for porter, and I think Rohrbach, you know, one of the reasons it is such a strong staple for them, because it is such a good blend of flavors, so let's talk a little bit and get you back up to speed on, you know, what we look for in pairings, so we'll talk about that, we'll put the theory into practice with our beer, but if you were looking at food and beverage, first we're going to look at it holistically, right, that's what I did when I talked about all the elements of the porter, and then we have that three-pronged approach, where, you know, the first prong, or the ABCs, A being align intensities, so vanilla is not very, you know, not very much an intense flavor, but, you know, we'll see how much is used in this beer, but it's one of those that does a little bit more of the second prong, or the B, the bridging of the gap, where there should be like a hint of vanilla, but it's more that flavor affinity that I was talking about, where not necessarily the same flavors, you know, it's not a roasty or chocolatey flavor, but vanilla and chocolate are a very, you know, flavor affinity, that if you had a scoop of chocolate and a scoop of vanilla, very different flavors, but side-by-side, complement each other very well, just like peanut butter jelly, just like many other things that just... Lamb and tuna fish. Yeah.

Jason:

Whatever movie that is, I forget where that came from.

Craig:

Yeah, I was just like, oh, if that is what, you know, and again, there's no yucking someone else's yum, if you have young kids, you've probably heard of that, but to each his own, and your palate, and what is an affinity in your mind, and your palate is always, you know, that is special and perfect for you. We talked about different people's perfects, and that's why I never shake my head or turn my nose to anybody, because who knows what you have, you know, conditioned yourself to. To each their own.

To each their own, exactly. So that last prong, or the C in our ABCs, is to cut and contrast. So vanilla may be contrasting a little bit, right, that subtle vanilla, if we think about pouring that cup of coffee, you got a dark cup with a very light white or beige creamer that's going into it, and then, you know, part of that ritual of drinking coffee in the morning, especially if you do add cream, is, you know, you've got that roasty flavor and aroma that kind of wakes you up, and then when you pour that creamer in there, you see it just start to swirl and blend in, and you kind of get mesmerized a little bit, looking at your coffee just kind of go, and then you stir it up, and you know, now you have this nice new color that is homogenous of the two parts that were in it, the cream, you know, the ying and the yang, and now it is, you know, everyone's got what their perfect color of coffee is to them, because it's the perfect combination of, you know, milk or creamer or whatever you are putting in it with the coffee. I know right off the bat, if my wife prepares my cup of coffee, you know, I'm a very, can't go too much on me, but sometimes, you know, you get a cup and you're like, alright, that's going to be a roasty one, and you go, oh, okay, that's going to be a creamy cup of coffee, depending on, you know, people ask you, how do you take it, and you're just like, yeah, you know, a little cream, and I'm not really a sugar guy, but, you know, looking at the color of beige that my coffee comes out, I can kind of already know what it's going to taste like, but I never want to judge a cup of Joe by its beige-ish-ness. It's beige-ish, yeah, beige-ish-ness.

So maybe that's 7%, and we're dropping around down to about 6. We're about 6 1⁄2 here, 23 IBUs. Yeah, it's so easy, easy drinking on the bitter scale, but 5.9% alcohol, so this one a little bit closer to standard.

Jason:

Or even lower on this can, huh, 5.9?

Craig:

Yeah, this can is saying 5.9, so each year, sometimes, you know, the batches they brew, they are a little bit, little variants here and there. Now, the cutting and contrasting, you know, really what you're looking for, and if you want to do a well-balanced and just, you know, multifaceted pairing, you're hitting a little bit of all the prongs, right? You want to align intensities.

I don't want anything that's going to just totally outweigh the, you know, its counterpart. So, you know, I talked about that fish fry, and it's, okay, if I've got a beer-battered fish fry, and I don't really want to drink a heavy stout or porter with it, because to me, that's too roasty. I want malty, but I want too roasty, and malty, I'm looking for more sweet in, like, bread and cereal grain sweetness than I am for, like, a dark roasted or a heavily bittered beer from hops.

I'm looking for something to match that intensity a little bit. So, you know, if I think about porter, it's going to be a little bit more intense, but not super intense, and again, aligning intensities is not necessarily what I think they're going to go for here. It's going to be more of that bridging the gap, finding an affinity where the vanilla goes very nicely with the coffee, chocolate notes of porter, and then that cutting and contrasting is one of the things that we get with few beverages, because both bitterness coming from roast and from hops helps cut through richness, and, you know, rich whether it's very sweet or very fatty, and then the carbonation also kind of cleanses your palate. So, beer always tends to have quite a bit of carbonation unless it's super high ABV, so that will literally kind of scrub away at very sweet or very fatty or umami-type notes, and kind of just get your palate ready for another bite or another, you know, indulgence of whatever you're partaking in. So, with that, I should crack the can.

Give us a little... There you go. If that's not quintessential, I don't know what is.

That's indicative of a beer-centric podcast. There you go. So, pouring this out, a little darker head than the brown ale.

I mean, we're just now comparing different levels of beige, but that is a nice little pour right there.

Jason:

Hold that up for the camera there. That is... I like that.

Craig:

Yeah, so you've got, you know, a beer that's producing a good amount of foam, and it's nice, you know, sustaining foam. You know, the beer head is very important. Very few beverages have head to it, and it's, you know, kind of the fact that there are some, you know, molecules in there that are a little bit more unlike...

There's some fat in there, and it kind of gets caught in this CO2, these strands of protein, I should say. Like, the protein in there... Not fat.

Protein. Sorry. The proteins in beer get caught in these strands, and then the CO2 kind of then gets trapped within those protein strands, and as it's, you know, pushing its way out, it kind of just collects, and that's what kind of forms the head.

And this has a nice, light beige, you know, not quite tan, but definitely a beige, more so than that brown ale. And, you know, another one where I'm not getting these wafting vanilla bean vibes, and vanilla is one of those things that doesn't... You know, obviously, if you sniff some vanilla extract, you're going to get vanilla, or if you have a...

If you slice open a vanilla bean, you're going to get that rich aroma of vanilla, but vanilla seems to always be that subtle type of flavor. So hoping, you know, hoping for a nice, balanced, and perfect pairing here. As we look at the color, much darker than the brown ale.

Jason:

Oh, yeah.

Craig:

This is definitely black. It's, you know, holding it up to the light, you know, around the edges, it goes back, and you can see that, you know, there is some brown to the base color here, but, you know, as a whole glass, it is definitely a nice, dark black color. I mean, nothing that I'm saying like jet black.

Jason:

Nope.

Craig:

It's close, though. It's close. It's opaque.

Jason:

I mean, you get down about an eighth of an inch, and then you're losing all the light.

Craig:

When you put that light to it, and you see that dark, and even, like, you know, the last ridge of it being a lighter brown, you can kind of see the brown through the black, but from first glance, you know, could be a stout, could be, you know, would definitely think porter or stout if I saw this, but on that note, let's take a sip after a swirl and sniff. So, yeah, I do get a nice, subtle vanilla note. Kind of just comes off as sweet, and sweet's one of those vague words.

To me, vanilla usually is indicative of something that's going to be sweeter. It's not usually savory vanilla. It's going to be something that is sweetening the pot, so I get those kind of like sugar cookie kind of sweet vanilla vibes off the aroma, and off a first take, this is doing what I wanted the maple to do.

Jason:

Right.

Craig:

You know?

Jason:

This is why I like this beer right here. It's everything you expect.

Craig:

Yeah. It starts and finishes vanilla, but it doesn't overpower with vanilla. So, this is nice, because it's been a while since I've actually cracked one of these, and that's what's tough when there's so much beer out there, and you have a brewery that has a style and an offering that's been year-round, and it's, you know, been around for 20-plus years, it's, you forget about it.

You know, I had a Rusty Chain the other day on tap, and I was just like, hello, old friend, and it's nice.

Jason:

Good Vienna.

Craig:

Yeah, and it's like, you know, for a while, Rusty Chain was one of the only craft beers in Buffalo that you saw regularly, and then it's like, I don't want Rusty Chain, I've got to try a million other beers to get caught up. So, coming back to something like this is, you know, tells you why it stood the test of time. So, yeah, subtle vanilla on the nose.

You taste it, vanilla. You finish, it's vanilla. But there's still a hint of roast.

Jason:

There's different profiles to that vanilla as well.

Craig:

Yeah. Go deeper in there. Tell me more.

Tell me more.

Jason:

I mean, okay, here we go. So, nose, you don't get it until you're right on top of it, and you know you're going to drink something with vanilla in it. I always compare, like, it's a missing ingredient that people, it's unappreciated when you're making chocolate chip cookies.

If you didn't have vanilla in chocolate chip cookies, I don't think they have the same flavor profile, and I think it's because of the vanilla extract that you end up putting in them. Now, first sip. Now, I'm on the second sip, so now the profile's changed a little bit for me.

Craig:

A little acclimated now.

Jason:

All right. So, coats the tongue nice. Vanilla all the way across all aspects of the tongue.

And then the finish on the end, a little bit drier on the vanilla. Still there, but it's almost like you're getting two different tastes of the vanilla.

Craig:

Yeah. I mean, it's almost like, and I appreciate your, because that is a good recollection or, you know, a good description of how I'm tasting it as well. You know, when you smell the aroma, you're expecting the flavor, and you get it.

And it comes almost across as, like, creamy vanilla, right? Like, the first sip, it's this more, like, hey, there's a scoop of vanilla ice cream in here, vanilla, where the end vanilla doesn't taste as sweet. It's just this, like, that lingering vanilla flavor that is like that chocolate chip cookie vanilla that just kind of rounds out all the other flavors in the cookie.

Right. I think it's been over the course of the last 10 years, but everything is, like, twice as long now to me. I don't know how many years it's been where sea salt has been a huge addition to all of our baked goods.

Like, you know, the salted toffee, the salted caramel, the salted chocolate. It just seems like that is almost commonplace now, where for a while I felt like, oh, they're putting salt on our sweets now. But it's one of those things that, yeah, it's just, you see it a lot more.

And it's just, it's not even something people think twice about because it's just been around for long enough. But it's one of those contrasts that make, you know, the sweetness stick out more. And in this case, the vanilla is doing that for us.

So it does kind of tame the roast a little bit. Same as, you know, a vanilla cream or, you know, putting just regular creamer, heavy cream, half and half, or even, you know, some milk in the coffee. It just tames that roast a little bit.

But it doesn't, it doesn't make this a sweet beer. It makes it, it just makes it an easier roast than something that's going to have that residual roast note to it, if that makes sense. Makes sense.

Yeah. Because it's interesting, the finish finishes where it's almost like, you know, this is where I bring up that Willy Wonka candy where it's like, I'm getting, I could taste, can you taste this? Can you taste that?

Nope. Here comes, here comes the mashed potatoes and gravy. And, you know, she's tasting all these flavors.

And they're like, you're getting all that from that piece of gum, kid. And here it's, it goes from vanilla on the take, then the roast comes out and then the vanilla comes back. And to your point, it's almost two types of vanilla where it's like a sweet whipped cream vibed fluff vanilla at first and not super sweet, but enough to say, hey, this falls on the side of sweeter, not like that maple brown we had was a much roastier beer.

It was a, you know, it was definitely when you, if you brought that to me as a cup of coffee, I would know that the darker tone of it is going to allude to a roastier cup of Joe. Whereas this one, it tastes like there's a dollop of whipped cream to start. And then the old roast friend shakes your hand and says, I'm still here.

And then at the end, there's just that lingering vanilla. Right. Not that sweet vanilla, but a lingering vanilla that lets you know that it was there.

You know, I, I was here. Vanilla was here. And, and you're happy that it was.

And to me of all the beers so far, this is, this is probably the best pairing within the beer because the raspberry wheat was very good, but very raspberry. And you knew it was, if you didn't tell me it was a wheat beer, I knew it was a raspberry beer. I knew it was more of a wheat beer based on the mouthfeel and the look of it.

It was very hazy and opaque. That brown ale, you know, if I didn't know there was maple in there, I wouldn't jump at it immediately. I could probably tell you after.