What's hot in beer?

	Steve Mellon, Post-Gazette The flavors of coffee and beer have been mixing well with the public, bartenders and brewers say. Click photo for larger image. Related articles Where to get a cuppa beer Beer Notes: Anheuser markets wheat- and gluten-free beer

Coffee.

Brews -- technically, ales -- brewed with coffee are hot sellers hereabouts right now.

"All of our flavor-infused beers have been picking up, particularly chocolate and coffee," says Eric Heinauer, specialty brand manager at A.M. Lutheran Distributors.

Pours are percolating with two new coffee brews: Atwater Block Brewery's Vanilla Java Porter and Lagunitas Brewing Co.'s Cappuccino Stout.

Those two are "on fire" at 3 Sons Dogs & Suds beer store in Pine, says owner Bill Sukitch. He's also selling a lot of another dark seasonal, Bell's Java Stout.

All three beers are made with actual coffee, which might sound weird until you think about how coffee is one of the flavors of the dark-roasted malts with which these porters and stouts are made.

A related malt flavor is chocolate. Another brew 3 Sons is selling a lot of these days, Brooklyn Brewery's Black Chocolate Stout, doesn't even contain chocolate; those flavors come only from the blend of malts.

Pam Panchak, Post-Gazette A selection of coffee beers. Click photo for larger image. Grounded If you have trouble getting your hands on a coffee beer, you could always make your own. That's what they do at the Backstage Bar at Theater Square, Downtown. They serve a drink called the Dark Star by pouring about an ounce of Starbucks espresso liqueur into a beer glass and topping that off with 12 ounces of Penn Dark beer. Theater Square Cabaret manager Randy Kirk says it's popular and delicious. "The two go together so well." Other bartenders make chocolate-covered cherry or raspberry drinks by mixing Brooklyn Chocolate Stout with cherry or raspberry Belgian lambics. Even on its own, a stout like this pairs well with chocolate and other desserts. A stout like Bell's Cherry Stout can be dessert.

That's also the case with August Schell Brewing Co.'s 2006 Snow Storm, described by the New Ulm, Minn., brewer as "a style rarely seen in the United States, a London-style sweet stout. If you love coffee and chocolate, you'll love our sweet stout."

Actual cocoa or chocolate or chocolate flavor is added to many other brews, such as Newport, Ore.'s Rogue Chocolate Stout.

From 6 to 8 p.m. tonight, you can sample all six of these coffeeish and chocolatey brews, and maybe more, during the complimentary tasting at 3 Sons (724-940-7667 or www.3sonsdogsandsuds.com).

The tasting is titled "If Starbucks made beer." In fact, Starbucks coffee was right on the label and in the Double Black Stout that Redhook (another Seattle company) concocted in the mid-1990s but no longer offers. That brew was flavored with Starbucks coffee extract.

Lagunitas, in Petaluma, Calif., actually made a coffee beer before Redhook, in 1995, but federal authorities denied its application for a label.

"They said coffee is not an approved beer additive," says Lagunitas' "beer weasel," Ron Lindenbusch. They apply organic ground Hardcore Coffee over the mash using a (bought new) Scott's fertilizer spreader.

It's amazing the different ways and different times craft brewers add flavorings. At Bell's, production manager John Mallett notes, the brewery now pour pounds of ground Sumatra and Italian roast coffee -- from the Water Street Coffee Joint across the street -- into the hot wort as it whirlpool cools, then lets it steep for 15 to 20 minutes.

He says they figure that's "about a half cup of coffee per bottle" of the stout, which is one of many they make.

Caffeine?

"We assume so."

Atwater Block Brewery in Detroit also adds the ground Colombian coffee -- in cheesecloth -- to the whirlpool, prefermentation. Other brewers add brewed coffee or espresso.

At Greensburg's Red Star Brewery, brewer Jeff Guidos has tried various methods to put the coffee in his Coffee Porter. Alas, the batch he put on around Thanksgiving just kicked. But then, between the caffeine and the 6 percent alcohol, it kicked when sipped, too.

"You needed to drink about three to get the full effect," Mr. Guidos says. "You wanted to get up and run around the room, but you couldn't."

If you missed it, you might want to try the Espresso Stout that brewer Brant Dubovick plans to debut at the Church Brew Works in Lawrenceville in two weeks. (He notes he originally planned to add oats and lactose, too, to make it a "breakfast stout.")

Ray Daniels, director of publications and (until recently) craft beer marketing for the Brewers Association trade group, says he's seen an "uptick" in coffee beer (along with more beers aged in barrels and on wood).

They're not as rare as you might think: A search of www.ratebeer.com returns 97 beers with "coffee" in the name and 46 with "java."

At this year's Great American Beer Festival in Denver, Mr. Heinauer says, he noticed that "the big brewers are recognizing this [flavored beers] as a category on the move."

This holiday season, Michelob released Celebrate Vanilla Oak, aged on bourbon barrel oak and red vanilla beans, and Celebrate Chocolate, aged on cocoa beans.

The festival's competition actually has had since 2002 a separate category for "Coffee Flavored Beer."

Last year, there were 28 entries, up from 26 in 2005 and 18 in 2004. Competition manager Chris Swersey says that with the public appetite having grown in recent years for all bigger, more flavorful, often darker beers, "I would see the growth trend of coffee beers as going hand-in-hand with that general theme."

The World Beer Cup competition (that Swersey also manages) also has a coffee-flavored category. The 2006 gold medal went to Meantime Coffee from Greenwich, England, brewed with fair-trade Arabica Bourbon beans from the Abuhuzamugambi Bakawa co-operative in Rwanda, no less.

Last year's GABF coffee beer gold medal was taken by Capitol City Brewing Co. of Arlington, Va., for its Sumatra-infused Imperial stout called "Fuel."

Good name, but not as good as "Buzz Beer," the mythical caffeinated coffee brew from the Drew Carey Show.

The idea of stimulating beer is still comical to people such as Mr. Daniels, who quips, "I always thought that's why smoking was popular in bars."

The coffee beers we're considering shouldn't be confused with the "energy drinks" that also are popular now. As noted in this space this summer, there's an unusual lager beer in this market that contains as much caffeine as a cup of coffee -- 69 milligrams -- called Moonshot, made by New Century Brewing Co. of Hingham, Mass.

No, the coffee beers we're talking about here are about flavor and are to savor.

Mr. Heinauer offers that the Atwater Vanilla Java Porter is well-balanced, with the vanilla in the finish. "There's certain creaminess on draft that I find even more appealing than coming out of the bottle."

As for the Lagunitas Cappuccino Stout, "I find it a little more subtle. ... It's definitely more toward the roast side than the sweet side." It's sold in 22-ounce bottles.

Vecenie Distributing's Tony Knipling says the java flavor is at the forefront with the Bell's Java Stout. "I tell people, if they like coffee, they'll like this beer."

But even if you don't like coffee, you might like it, as well as the Lagunitas, as they're both fine, rich, nearly black stouts.

For more about the subject of coffee beers, listen to the guys at Craft Beer Radio tasting four of them at www.craftbeerradio.com.