(The Kylemore, O'Connell Street, Dublin, Ireland)
The experience of beer is flavor, and I find the essential experience of beer flavor arises from conflict. Within each and every real beer, two sides of taste struggle for supremacy: Hops and Malt. The malt side represents the sweet Earth: that dark, base smell coyly hinting at the sweet secrets within; the alluring, elemental color. By contrast, the sharp hops add the bitterness, the definition-- they give your taste buds something to focus on, they bring the malt flavor into sharp relief. The hops remind us that nothing is simple, and everything has its price. When you enjoy a beer these two sides wage a war to dominate your palate, and the best beers happen when the two sides become entrenched in defensible positions, protracting the battle into epic proportions. (Admittedly, I am a 'malt-maniac;' my personal feeling is that the malt is the more important element of beer flavor, although most of California's infamous 'hopheads' would disagree.)
If you
would like to learn how to write convoluted, self-indulgent
drivel about beer like this, click this button.
A few other highly recommended pub crawl sites:
The Official Palo Alto Pub Crawl still the only pub crawl hosted on this site
Here at Rocking Pig, fellow brew-master Dermot Lyons and I adhere to the venerable German Schweinheitsgebot (see below). Our nanobrewery produces extremely small quantities of high-quality (and even smaller quantities of dubious quality) homebrew for our own personal consumption-- beer for beer's sake. Because of our small batches and even smaller clientele, we aren't afraid to take chances, and leave no stone unturned when it comes to recipes (or searching for ingredients, for that matter). Our motto: 'An Schweinheitsgebot kleben: Tue nichts in dein Bier, dass das Schwein nicht fressen würde.' * We brew where no one has brewed before!
What's in the fermenter right now?
Selected Previous Rocking Pig Brews (reverse chronological order)
Click to see notes on each brew, and the RPB rating scale; or click for even more historic brews.
PS. I am loosely attached to my local homebrewing club, the Worts of Wisdom.
The Rocking
Pig has been silent for a while now, but I recommend a
visit to the Manalapan Brewery run by a kindred
spirit, Ray Ashley. (* 'Adhere to Schweinheitsgebot: Don't put anything in your beer that a pig wouldn't eat.' Attributed to David Geary)
Here are some beers that I would classify on the malty side of the equasion:
Here are some beers that I consider dominated by hops:
Look for them in your local beverage outlets! Join the battle!
My
new favorite site, Ron Pattison's European Beer Guide More amazing things about beer A pleasant poem about beer 
Back to WWW Temporarily out of order
For more deep dark thoughts on beer or
homebrewing advice/comments, write kyle@wohlmut.con
(The 4.15 Stanford Executive).