Bilotta Videos

The Peak Organic company brews their beer with 100% certified organic ingredients. This beer is their Maple Oat Ale, which which uses organic oats from a company in Maine, organic maple syrup from a company in Vermont. This beer doesn't super-highilght any one ingredient, but does strike a tasty, clean balance, and is one you should try.

We end our journey with Great Lakes Brewing Company with their original - and flagship - brew. Once called "The Heisman" and now lovingly referred to as Dortmunder Gold, this is a unique lager style beer from the Dortmund region of Germany. Since 1990, this beer has won 14 Gold and 1 Silver medal from the Great American Beer Fest and World Beer Championships. Is it worth the gold it's been receiving? Oh, oh my yes.

The Eliot Ness is a Vienna style lager - a lager that maintains crispness while at the same time allowing some darker malts to make their way in to the beer. (Sam Adams Boston Lager is the most widely known Vienna style lager in the US.) This particular lager is named after Eliot Ness, the famous leader of The Untouchables, and it is both ironic and fitting. While Ness spent much of his career enforcing prohibition, he was also well known to appreciate a libation or two. As if that weren't enough of a reason to put him on a bottle, the mother of the owners of Great Lakes was Eliot Ness's stenographer! What's that? How's the beer? It would make Eliot Ness proud, we think.

One of our "Great Lakes Brewing" series, we examine the Commodore Perry IPA. The beer celebrates an epic battle fought by Commodore Perry and his men on Lake Erie during the war of 1812. This IPA actually presents a nice malt nose, which doesn't necessarily accompany all IPAs, and that helps this beer along its journey to becoming an incredible beer. Wonderfully complex and balanced, yet still ending with a traditional IPA bitter, this beer scores quite high with both of us.

The self-proclaimed "hoppiest beer in Belgium" is in fact a Belgium IPA - a new variety of beer that's making some waves. With the potential for a magnificent mix of Belgian malts and American hops, Belgian IPAs are still a work in progress. The XX Bitter from Browerij De Ranke impresses Dave more than Johnny - what do you think?

We take a look at two blondes from Belgium - well, both claim to be blondes, but both are actually a little something different. The first, the interestingly named 'T Gaverhopke from the Flanders region of Belgium and is actually an Abbey Tripple, and underwhelms us. The second, from the Browerij Duvel Moortgat, however, (a Belgian Pale Ale disguising itself as a blonde) turns out to be something really nice.

Not everything in this world can be perfect, and the Bos Keum Speciaal Paasbier from Brouwerij De Dolle Brouwers, an "Easter Beer", is far from it. Luckily, the show was more than saved by Clipper City Brewery's Heavy Seas series Red Sky At Night, an "Imperial Saison" - a new category of beers by any measure - that turns out to be spectacular.