The Hero and the Super Hero ► HaGibor Black Magic Stout ● Six-Pack Brute IPA

Sometimes you just have to listen and a headline writes itself.  The dream of every copywriter and blogger. 

And so we have two new beers from HaGibor ("The Hero") Brewery and from Six-Pack Brewery, also known as Super Heroes Beer.  Like I said.

From The Hero we get Black Magic Stout, a traditional stout, though on the sweeter side of the street, at 6.6% alcohol.  Right off the top, let me say how much I enjoyed this beer, as I do several of the brews from HaGibor.  The brewery is located in Carmiel. 

Eran Grunwald, owner of the
HaGibor Brewery in Carmiel,
gifts the old blogger with
some of his fine beers.  

Black Magic very dark opaque brown, almost black, with a beige head.  The aromas brought to mind sweet spice like nutmeg, a little smokiness, and yeast.  The taste has stout roastiness, brown sugar sweetness, some coffee, chocolate and fruit, and that spicy background.  I've started to use the word "drinkable" to describe beers, meaning if I would buy more -- and the answer is yes.

It's a medium- to full-bodied beer with a roasty finish.  Stout is not my favorite beer style, but Black Magic does the best with what it has, and that works for me.

From the Super Heroes comes their fourth beer, Brute IPA.  It's a play on names, since Brut India Pale Ale (which itself is named after Brut Champagne) is a four-year-old beer style, born in San Francisco, with a very dry finish.  This is Israel's first Brut-style IPA.  It is made, like the other Super Heroes beers, at the BeerBazaar Brewery in Kiryat Gat. 

Eyal Noam, a brother-partner of Six-Pack Brewery, told me that Brute IPA is brewed with the enzyme amyloglucosidase (lucky me that I just have to write it and not say it), which is an ingredient in all Brut-style IPAs. 

"This enzyme," he explains, "breaks down complex sugars in the malt into simple sugars which can then be more easily fermented by the yeast. This results is a less sweet -- or more dry -- beer. We add this enzyme in the mash, when the malted grain is mixed with hot water. We replaced some of the malt with flaked corn, which makes the beer even drier and crispier. The hops we used in Brute IPA are Citra and Nelson Souvin.

"Of all of our beers, we have gotten the best feedback from Brute IPA."

Eyal and his brother Meidad Ram are (as you might have guessed) big fans of super hero comics, which is why all of their four beers have their own super hero on the label.  He adds: "But Brute is the first one who is a villain, an anti-hero.  Notice that the symbol on his chest is upside down.  He's up to no good."

Although Brute IPA is the first commercial beer of its style in Israel, Eyal acknowledges that his friend Nir Croudo earlier home-brewed a Brut-style IPA and helped him to translate the recipe into commercial proportions.

Super Hero brother/brewers
Meidad Ram (left) and Eyal Noam (second from left)
test their strength against the old blogger.
(Photo: Mike Horton)

So let's pour a glass of the Brute.  I would put its color at one shade darker than pale, very slightly hazy, with a foamy white head.  Lovely hop aromas greet your nose: citrus, pine, pineapple, as well as yeast.  The taste is bitter -- bitter fruit -- pineapple, lemon and guava.  The mouthfeel is tangy, with a dry and bitter finish.  Even though the alcohol is a sturdy 7.3%, there's no sensing it in the taste or the mouthfeel.  That comes when you stand up.

I must admit that I've never had an American Brut IPA, but the Six-Pack Brute IPA seems to have all the characteristics of the style.  It's aromatic, bitter and dry.  I thought it was delicious.  It's not the first time that an anti-hero did something right.

[Read more about HaGibor Brewery and beers here, and the Six-Pack Super-Hero beers here.]      

Halevala from Beerateinu: Finnish folklore and halva

It doesn't pay too think too much about the rather bizarre beers that are being produced by Beerateinu, the Jerusalem Beer Center.  I call them "Baroque beers."   

Halevala Rye Beer with halva
from Beerateinu.
(Photo: Mike Horton)

For example, a recent one is Halevala -- a made-up name which combines the word halva (a Middle Eastern sweet made with sesame seeds) and Kalevala, the Finnish national folk epic written in the middle of the 19th century.

Say what?

It actually makes perfect sense when you get into the mind of Shmuel (Shmultz) Naky, a partner of Beerateinu (along with Leon Shvartz) and chief innovator of the beers.  You just have to understand that Beerateinu beers combine his tastes and his interests -- in this case, halva and Finnish folklore.

"The label shows scenes from the Kalevala," explains Shmultz.  "You can see Väinämöinen, the ancient Finnish Zeus figure, creating the world by singing and playing his kantele, a traditional Finnish zither, which he made from the jawbone of a fish.  You can also see him pulling Aino out of the water, a young girl who chose to drown herself rather than marry the old Väinämöinen, and was changed into a fish."

Inspiring story, I'm sure.  But what about the beer?

Halevala is made with halva, barley and rye malt, puffed wheat, Magnum hops and Belgian wheat beer yeast.  Alcohol by volume is 4.5%.  It is brewed for Beerateinu at the Hatch Brewery in Jerusalem.  

Old Väinämöinen creates the world
by playing on his kantele.

Unlike every other beer I have seen, Halevala has a white plug of sesame oil in the neck of every bottle.  You give the bottle a little shake to loosen it and then you pour.  In the glass, the color is a cloudy light orange, fizzy but without any real head.  The aromas included citrus fruit, yeast and grassy notes, with halva in the background.  It could just as well have been tahina, since this is the main ingredient of halva.        

From the first sip, I felt like I was drinking a wheat beer, with  the addition of a little spice from the rye and a little sweetness from the halva.  The halva, by the way, is very understated; it doesn't get in the way of the malt and hops -- elements that make a beer beer.  The finish is actually astringent, bitter and dry.  (The Finnish is on the label but not in the beer.)  

But the most unusual thing about Halevala is the grease it leaves on your glass and on your lips.  Photographer and IBAV Taster Mike Horton opined that, "the sesame leaves a fine patina of oil on the lips as if one has been recently kissed."

But let that not be the reason you buy this beer.  It's interesting, it's enjoyable and it's Israeli.  And it's still available at Beerateinu -- after Passover.  As the Schweppes people would say about Halevala: "Drink Different!"        

Kosher for Passover Date Ale from Meadan

Readers of this blog should be familiar with the name Bryan Meadan.  I've written about Bryan and his gluten-free and Kosher-for-Passover beers quite a few times.  And it's been a very popular subject, if you go by the number of page-views for these articles.

Bryan "officially" retired from brewing in 2019, but he has kept his hand in just enough to produce a Kosher-for-Passover beer this year, brewed at the Oak & Ash (Good Stuff) Brewery in Beit Shemesh.

Kosher-for-Passover for those who eat kitniyot (legumes).

It's his famous Date Ale, which has been a best-seller on Passovers past.  "We tweaked the brewing process to make it even better," Bryan told me.  "I brewed 1,000 liters, and two-thirds are already sold."

You can still buy the Date Ale in time for Passover (which begins this year on Saturday night, March 27).  In Jerusalem, it is available at the Pyup liquor super-store in Ramat Eshkol, Gluless, and Sushiyuda in the Machane Yehuda market.  Other locations include the Pinuk Kitchen in Nes Tziona, and Bernstein in Netanya (Poleg).

For more information and to order the beer directly, call or message Bryan at 054-779-1116.  Home-delivery is available if you order a case of the beer, and there are pick-up locations for smaller orders.

Ordering is also possible from the website:  https://meadan.co.il    

Meadan is also producing a Hummus (Chickpea) Beer which is gluten-free but not Kosher-for-Passover this year.  "It's the best beer I ever made," says Bryan with all due modesty.

[To read past articles on the Meadan Brewery, do a search of this blog in the little window on the upper right.  You can also start here and link back in time.]    

Apricot Wheat Ale from Lodestone

One of Israel's youngest commercial breweries is Lodestone, owned by partners Jason Barnett and Malcha Miller, both American-born Israelis. Jason is the brewer; Malcha does the marketing, distribution and just about everything else. They contract brew their beers at the Oak & Ash (Good Stuff) Brewery in Beit Shemesh. 

As an aside, though an important one, Jason is devoting most of his time this year to getting certified as a Master Brewer (online) from the Versuchs- und Lehranstalt für Brauerei in Berlin. A free translation would be the Experimental and Educational Institute for Brewing. Jason's courses include Barley, Water, Hops, Chemistry, Brewery Arithmetic, Microbiology, Energy, Quality Analysis, and Supply Chain Logistics. Good luck to him. 

Apricots are a fine fruit to add to beers.

Which brings us to the third beer from Jason and Malcha: Apricot Wheat Ale. (Their first two beers are a Tropical IPA and a Peach Blonde.  You can read about them, and the start of Lodestone, here.)

I have written about three other Israeli apricot beers, all in the not too distant past: BeerBazaar Mishmesh (also a wheat ale), Beertzinut Apricot Fields (a Berliner Weiss), and Beerateinu Bukra fil Mishmish (kettle-soured).

The Lodestone Apricot Wheat is a very pale hay color, with just a touch of haze. Alcohol by volume is 5%. My drinking partner Moshe and I got aromas of grass, a touch of sour, wheat beer yeast, and very faint apricots. The taste is slightly sweet with sour fruit, though we couldn't really identify it as apricot. Still, it gives the beer a pleasant tartness and fruitiness, which only makes it more drinkable and refreshing. Moshe called it, "a great beer to come home to on a hot day." As the beer warmed up, the apricot taste got more noticeable -- a phenomenon we've experienced with quite a few other flavor-added beers. 

Malcha Miller and Jason Barnett deliver
Lodestone beer during the days of
our pandemic.  (May they soon be over!)

We await more interesting beers from Lodestone, especially as Jason Barnett brings his newly acquired knowledge to the brewing process.