Blue Hen Brewing Company - Blue Hen Black & Tan

Blue Hen’s Black & Tan is undoubtedly an unusual animal. A traditional black and tan, if you’ve never had one, is generally poured from a draft tap only using typically Harp Ale as a base and a gently poured Guiness Stout topper. When poured properly, the two very distinctly colored beers are clearly separated. Not the case in a bottle. We could have told you that they were in fact separated until tossed about in the feeble hands of your UPS driver, but the fact of the matter is that Blue Hen blends their Munich Helles (lager) with their Blue Hen Porter (ale) to create this very unique beer. Both beers are brewed separately and then mixed together prior to bottling. In total, two-row Pale, Caramel, and Chocolate malts are used while five different hop varieties are added during the individual boils including: English Kent Goldings, Mt. Hood, Hallertau Herbrucker, Czechoslovakian Saaz, Tettnang, and Cascade. Blue Hen’s Black and Tan took the silver in the European Dark Lager category in the 1996 World Beer Championships as well as the 1996 World Beer Cup.

Note a predominantly chocolate roasted malt nose with some hop fruitiness evident. Look for good head retention in this light brown, filtered, medium-bodied hybrid. Look for a moderately hopped body, nicely balanced with maltiness. Toasted grains come out and it seems to have a crisp, angular feel in the mouth with a decidedly hoppy edge. We picked up on a hint of bitterness to the refreshing finish. Overall, a truly unique, flavorful and well-balanced beer, deserving of its accolades.

ON TAP (BREWER’S ASSOC. OF CANADA) - Almost 100 alcoholics were required to watch reruns of Dallas for a study conducted by the Addiction Research Foundation. Some patients watched the show with drinking scenes, others watched it with the drinking scenes cut out, and all patients viewed the program with either beer, non-alcoholic beverage or food commercials. Results indicated that the patients who watched both Dallas’s drinking scenes and beer commercials were "more confident in their ability to resist the urge to drink heavily" than those who watched the drinking scenes with food commercials. The reports were published by the Journal Studies on Alcohol and contradict the assumption that beer commercials influence alcoholics to drink. Researchers are reported as feeling perplexed and should perhaps study the effects of food commercials.

DAILY MIRROR - Cleanliness counts to barfly Brits. The British Brewer’s Society reports that when it comes to choosing a pub, women’s first priority is a clean toilet and men’s is a clean bar. The sexes switched positions on the second order of priority, and both chose friendly staff for their third choice. Stocks of beer, by the way, came far down on the list after general comfort, value and speed of service. The report also found that pub-goers drink a pint almost two minutes faster on Saturday nights and that 86 percent of American prefer British pubs to their own back home.

S.F. EXAMINER - Pyramids built by beer drinkers. Egyptian excavations revealed that the workmen who built the Great Pyramids were beer drinking, bread-and-garlic-eaters. Not unlike modern American, many died from cancer or industrial accidents. The mustachioed workers, whose tombs were discovered when a horse’s leg went through the roof of one of the tombs, had learned to brew five types of beer and bake 12 varieties of bread, as evidenced by a menu on one tomb wall.