• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1269 0

of Clapton’s “Hand Jive.” As I wandered around and sampled beers of varying ambition—from good IPA to stout and then one Pilsner that tasted, well, a little like cat pee smells—I got the sense that if it weren’t for this club, there would be no surging Alaskan brewing industry today (and thus no Guild), and that certain Alaskan citizens might never venture out of their snowbound cabins in the dead of winter, if not for the chance to toast each other’s hard work—and share some of that tasty moose.

HUMPY’S GREAT ALASKAN ALEHOUSE

610 West 6th Ave. • Anchorage, AK 99501 • (907) 276-2337 humpys.com • Established: 1994

SCENE & STORY

The twin sister to Humpy’s in Hawaii, Humpy’s is Alaska’s most serious beer bar, but is by no means pretentious. It’s named for pink salmon, a species also known as humpback salmon because the spines of the males eventually bend (developing a hump) from the effort of chasing females upstream and back to their birthplace every summer. And it’s consistently busy, especially in the summer, when cruise ships bring hordes of tourists in and out of ancient fjords, so there’s really no time for attitude here.

It’s a casual place inside, with padded booths and octagonal bar and a back patio for King crab feeds in season. Founder Billy Opinsky is thoughtful and polished, and stands somewhat apart in the land of unironic trucker hats and foot-long beards with his passing resemblance to a young Al Gore. Deeply involved with Alaska’s nascent craft beer scene from its early days, he has stocked the bar with fifty-five taps and fifteen bottled selections, with about half of the tap row consisting of beers from the state. The bar is known for good live musical performances from local and touring acoustic acts, and for unusual beer-tasting events during the big festival in January. For a dinner in 2011, Opinsky laid in aged rarities including beers from Cantillon, Gouden Carolus, and a Thomas Hardy Ale from 1996, which gave locals a chance to try beers seldom available anywhere.

PHILOSOPHY

For beer lovers, by beer lovers. This is a classic good beer spot with no extraneous frills.

KEY BEER

Ask what’s freshest. A dependable tap is Midnight Sun’s coppery Sockeye Red IPA (5.7% ABV), with a powerful, fragrant, and spicy hop character.

BEERS with YEARS

An aged-beers dinner might sound like a lark, but it’s not only wine and whiskey that can benefit from a bit of cellar time. Good beer is universally drinkable the minute it leaves a brewery, but, like a good dry-aged steak, time can add new layers of complexity to the biggest brews with a higher alcohol content—roughly 2.5 times stronger than your average supermarket lagers. (Which don’t improve with time. Hence their “drink by” dates. Chug away.) There’s an array of styles that lay down well, including imperial stouts, English-style barley wines, Belgian lambics and other sours, as well as barrel-aged and other strong beers. Alcohol by volume needs to be in the area of 9 to 10 percent to give the beer any chance of improvement, and the cork or cap should be in good shape to avoid oxidation, which gives beer a wet cardboard taste. Ultraviolet light must be avoided to spare a beer from the skunk effect, a more serious problem with green or clear bottles (as opposed to brown ones, which filter UV light).

With the exception of sour-style beers, which ought to have little hop character, the process of aging mellows bitterness and aroma while deepening and accentuating malt characteristics, drying out the last molecules of fermentable sugars and sometimes adding an acidic, vinous note that can pair well with desserts or certain rich poultry and beef dishes. Some ageable beers are aged in the brewery before being released; Sam Adams’s Utopias, a rare port-like concoction, contains a blend of barrel-aged beers up to sixteen years old. Aging beers simply requires patience, the proper setting: a cool, dark place, and an open mind.

MIDNIGHT SUN BREWING CO.

8111 Dimond Hook Dr. • Anchorage, AK 99507 (907) 344-1179 • midnightsunbrewing.com • Established: 1995