BOCK N' ALE YA

Pour the drink, and you will be richly rewarded

By Patrick Beach
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Wednesday, November 12, 2008

The only times it's acceptable to drink beer out of the container from which it came is when you're golfing, fishing or tubing with 9,000 of your closest friends. You wouldn't drink wine straight from the bottle, would you? You would? Well, stop doing that, too.

And start pouring your beer into a glass, because swilling from the bottle is a vicious and stupid thing to do to your beer. You're missing aroma that's trapped in the bottle, not wafting up from a head of about an inch of foam from a proper pour into a proper - and clean - glass. And your beer likely will go flat faster in the bottle, because you slosh it around more in the narrow neck as you tip it to your boorish and uncultured lips.

You're also robbing yourself of the aesthetics of the whole deal. How can you tell what color your beer is if you're looking through brown glass? Plus, beer glasses are fun and attractive, and I'm about to tell you how you can spend all kinds of money on them.

There's the sturdy, utilitarian American pint glass that's ubiquitous in bars and its thinner-walled British cousin with the Crown stamp to show a legal pour of 20 ounces (that's a pint in the U.K., the so-called imperial pint). And the pilsner glass. Samuel Adams brewery recently went to a lot of trouble to come up with a glass with thin walls and laser etchings at the bottom, the latter to keep the bubbles going.

Mugs have their purpose; I have one I picked up while at an Oktoberfest in Vail, Colo., years ago. It holds about 22 ounces, meaning I halve my number of tedious return trips to the fridge. The jumbo mugs at North By Northwest's Oktoberfest were sizable enough to KO an ox.

And of course there are the famously fussy Belgians, who are as picky about their vessels as they are about their beers. Most every brewery there has its own glassware. Chimay and Westmalle often come in chalices, recalling the monastic brewing tradition that still thrives in the country, and Duvel has a tulip glass. Others come in a sort of brandy snifter. And Tripel Karmeliet comes in a kind of fluted glass that's absolutely beautiful. If I had a china cabinet, mine would be on display there.

Suffice to say that if you're a beer fan, you have a stash of glasses for specific beers and special occasions. This brings us to Dean Schlett, who earlier this year opened Old Koenig Engraving and Gifts after running Pubglasses.com and Steins.com out of his home for almost nine years. He was working for a business that sold pipe tobacco online and hooked up with a seller of pewter beer steins at a trade show in Las Vegas. He was simply looking for cool gifts for his groomsmen and ushers at his then-upcoming wedding. But that led the former University of Texas finance major to think about an online business. He and his now wife, Leigh, were thinking this: "We just figured let's give it a shot and if it doesn't work all our family and friends will be getting steins for a few years."

As so often happens, one thing led to another. Pewter and fancy steins led to him carrying an array of glasses, some from specific breweries, some with flags of various countries (including, quite naturally, Texas) and some plain. The guy has a ton of Guinness stuff, including Guinness slippers. "I have more Guinness glasses than the Guinness.com store," says Schlett, 35.

In back of the retail store, which also offers random stuff such as dominos, he has a machine and special software to do custom etching on pretty much anything he sells, glasses included. Everybody in his supper club got a beer glass with their name on it, which is cooler and more special than those precious little "charms" people put on their wine glasses to keep from mixing them up at dinner parties.

"It was a niche thing that worked because I was shipping to all 50 states," Schlett says. "And I've shipped steins to Germany. That blew my mind."

One of his bigger steins stands 21 inches tall, holds three liters and costs around $500. Glasses are more reasonable, in the $3-$5 range, with personalized etching running $10 or so more. And there's no minimum order. Schlett says he'd rather do a hundred personalized jobs than one order for 100 glasses with the same thing on them. "We're just a mom-and-pop Web store," he says, "which is an oxymoron."

Old Koenig Engraving & Gifts is at 900 Old Koenig Lane, No. 114. You can also check out the online sites mentioned above or KeepAustinPersonalized.com. Get your holiday orders in early.

Final, random detail: Schlett's business card is a coaster.

The most wonderfulest time of the year has begun. See, this pal and I have a semi-friendly competition to see who can be the first to sip Sierra Nevada's sublime seasonal, Celebration Ale. One October, I claimed the honor by walking into an Outback Steakhouse in Redding, Calif., to see - to my great surprise - the Celebration tap handle. Turns out it had just come in that day and nobody had ordered one yet. The downside to the victorious phone call I placed was that I had to admit I was, um, in an Outback Steakhouse. Another year, my friend won by buying a 12-pack at Central Market and drinking one in his car in the parking lot. Though one might be impressed with his competitive zeal, I feel it necessary to note this is Technically Probably Kind of Illegal .

Flash forward to a recent Saturday and already a very good one. The Horns were to play, I was barbecuing cabrito - baby goat - and I dashed to my neighborhood dispensary of adult potables to discover ? Celebration. Let the games begin! I grabbed three warm cases (the mere cornerstone of my stockpile; I like to have enough to last throughout the year), dashed home, threw one bottle in the freezer for a bit, got one of my Celebration glasses out, decanted and placed a very self-satisfied phone call. OK, so, it was 11:58 in the morning, but the outcome of a contest was on the line. And for all I know, my clock was slow.

My friend later claimed that he had actually purchased but not drunk his Celebration earlier than I had bought mine, thereby making him the victor. This is known as "changing the rules" or, as certain voters in Florida call it, "the 2000 election."

Why do we make a big deal out of this? Because we're guys. Also it's absolutely spectacular beer. The bottle label, a picture of a cabin covered in snow, puts me in a festive mood. As my friend points out, there is a clear delineation between malt and hop characteristics, and there's plenty of hop pull with 62 International Bittering Units, slightly more than a Dogfish Head 60. The color is a warm and inviting copper. The San Francisco Chronicle once pronounced it "the best beer ever brewed in America," and it might be right.

Or maybe not. My all-time sentimental favorite beer remains Celis Grand Cru. The Austin brewery was, honestly and truly, a major incentive to moving here. And I remember where I was when I heard the news that Miller - which had, boo hiss, bought out Celis - was closing it in the manner in which we all remember momentous tragedies such as, well, running out of Celis. The last of Pierre Celis' Belgians brewed at the Austin brewery dribbled into stores in the winter of 2001, and Pierre went home to lick his wounds from one of several corporate manhandlings he's had to endure.

In 2002 Michigan Brewing Company acquired the Celis name and began brewing Celis Pale Bock, White and Grand Cru. The latter is a Belgian strong ale, golden in color, brewed with coriander and orange peel true to the style. It is also potent, at around 8 percent alcohol. Michigan's Celis Grand Cru won a gold at the 2007 Great American Beer Festival, but its availability in the Texas market has been spotty if not nonexistent. But now distributor Duff - as in, you know, the beer Homer Simpson drinks - has started moving it back into its home market.

How is it? The other night I poured one of Michigan's and one of Celis' originals. (I still have a stash. And no, you can't come over.) Michigan's of course was fresher and more clear, while my vintage Celis was a bit cloudy to the eye and heavier, more malty on the tongue. I liked both, in other words, but for different reasons. Still, Michigan's is faithful to its namesake. Rejoice and be glad, and major props to Duff for restoring order and harmony to the universe. It's on shelves pretty much wherever you buy your fancy beer and on tap at the Draught House.

Speaking of the GABF: It's a good thing that Brock Wagner is building a new St. Arnold Brewery in Houston, because he's going to need a bigger awards case again. The oldest craft brewery in Texas got a silver last month in Denver for its Summer Pils in the Munchner-Style Helles category. That makes 12 Great American Beer Festival medals in 10 years.

Shiner's Holiday Cheer is just out. It's a dunkelweizen, meaning it's a dark wheat beer, brewed with Hill Country peaches and pecans. True to the style, it's crisp and pretty light-bodied. And it's not oppressively fruity - more of a suggestion of peach.

pbeach@statesman.com; 445-3603