Ebisu: The Town Named After a Beer

Residents of Tokyo and visitors might now know of Ebisu as the hip little grown-up enclave next to crazy Shibuya. But actually, 100 years ago, Ebisu was a pretty open land, where a bunch of dudes decided they wanted to create some German style brews. Fast forward a few decades, their beer became so famous (including a grand prix at the 1904 World's Fair, ahead of both European and American beers) that they needed to build a railroad station to ship their goods. The town was then named after the train station, which was named after the beer. They even created a god of business, Ebisu-sama. That's powerful.

(photo by r.)

One Woman and This One Guy took a trip to the headquarters of Ebisu/Sapporo beer, and sampled some tasty sips of fresh Ebisu Beer (lager) and Creamy Top Stout - "what a creamy taste." Indeed. The Ebisu is a lovely golden wheat color, silky smooth, with tiny perfect bubbles on top (thanks to high-tech tapping technology: one tip for the beer, switch to a specially designed tip to create the head). Really nicely balanced malt and hops and a little bit of young hop taste make this a great beer for lightly flavored Japanese food and other rice/veg/fish/tofu based meals. Yum!! 

(photo by r.)

Here's the Ebisu song. This catchy tune plays every time the JR train stops Ebisu station.

Stay tuned for more beers from around Japan. Gotta go now! One Woman and This One Guy have a Shinkansen to catch!

Mocha Porter - A Friendly Rogue

Porters and Stouts often get lumped together in a group called darkandheavy, misleading potential drinkers about its diversity. As I already mentioned in my recent report on young's chocolate stout, dark color does not automatically translate to heaviness, high alcohol, or high calories. This neat list at the shapefit.com website reveals that Guinness, Anchor Steam, and Tsingtao all have the same number of calories (153 kcal/bottle). Of these three, Guinness has the least alcohol by volume - only 4.2%. Porter gets its name, not from any sort of portly quality, but from its popularity among porters--transportation workers--in eighteenth century London, as the Alström Bros, founders of the Beer Advocate, explain.

Porters may be very heavy, or not heavy at all. The point is, don't judge a beer by its name, or worse, its color!!

Brewed in Orgeon, the Rogue Mocha Porter is a little bit of a trickster of a beer. Full of smokey, dark, and robust flavors, it seems like a heavy beer. But it's not. The initial sharpness of its flavors seem to defy food pairings, but it turns out to be an excellent food beer. 

It's all about the malts in this beer. With 9 different kinds of malts, they color and flavor this fun beer. One Woman tasted burnt sugar, moist tobacco, charcoal, a bit of dark toffee, and of course, mocha. With very little carbonation, it pours to create an airy crumpet-like head the color of a café au lait that quickly disintegrates. With all the burnt flavors, it would seem like the beer would be much heavier, but this is the beauty and the surprise of this porter. After the initial hit of flavors, it doesn't linger. It's not sticky-sweet either, so it doesn't fight with food. A little amazed about how well this porter slipped into the meal, One Woman enjoyed this porter with a meal of roasted beets with crushed almonds on a bed of greens tossed with a honey dijon vinaigrette, a grilled cheese sandwich (yeah, baby!!) made with a mild Petaluma Creamery cheddar and sautéed onions, plus a little spot of apple sauce on the side.


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Musical pairing: Igor Stravisnky's Rite of Spring, a riot-causing, very HEAVY piece that premiered in 1913. The selection tonight is dedicated to those still craving the weighty, heavy and dark of the primordial pagan ritual sacrifice. It's also probably one of One Woman's favorite works for orchestra. Congrats to David Milnes and the UC Berkeley University Symphony Orchestra for an awesome performance of the piece tonight!

Double Chocolate Stout - Just What a Girl Needs

What better way to end the day when it involved a lot of chocolate, hot water bottle, and pain (some gently call it the "moon cycle"), than with a smooth chocolatey stout?

The stout, when done right, can hold all sorts of different flavors and qualities. But contrary to many legends about stouts, most stouts (including this one and Guiness) are not that heavy, nor higher in alcohol or calories than a pale ale. So if your definition of a tough beer is a high alcohol, super heavy beer, you'll have to look elsewhere. Go ahead, have your "meal in a can," but I'll bet you'll be getting a fourth meal not too long after.

One Woman's Chocolate Stout came in a nitro-can (the kind with the little "widget"). Have you ever wondered about the magical little ball inside Guinness cans and other stout cans works? Well, basically, they were developed in the 1980s by Guinness so that the home drinker could experience a similar kind of foam texture to a heady draft beer. The widget and the pressurized nitrogen gas inside make it possible for those decadent fine bubbles to form. The amount of gas inside the bottle control how fine the bubbles are.

Young's Double Chocolate Stout, a sweet/milk stout brewed in England, is nowhere as heady as a Guiness, but just as tasty in so many ways. The color is a dark red brown, but it's so dark you can't really see through it. I was immediately hit by the smells of coffee, bourbon, and dark chocolate. Yum! Plus, there were hints of roasted cacao, beeswax or toasted honeycomb. Despite all the smells though, these are qualities and scents, not in-your-face flavors. It goes down so smoothly, even though the flavors are dry like a bittersweet darkchocolate. The combination of a pre-dinner Double Chocolate Stout with sweet potato chips was like a match made in heaven.

Which brings me to the musical pairing of the day: Flight of the Condor, a traditional Peruvian song, also familiar as the tune covered (or was it stolen) by Simon . This is in honor of the First Condor Nest in Pinnacles in 100 years. The article mentions that Condors stay with one selected partner for life. Amazing!