Father's Day! Beer!

OK, so every Father's Day, for those of you outside of my family circle, my Dad makes ribs. These ribs are cooked in the oldest, nastiest beer on hand (that's the secret ingredient; write that down, because it's important). This year's beer just happened to be my first real homebrew, a 22 oz. bottle of brown ale/IPA (Brownstörm) that's been sitting in the fridge, oh, let's say for about more than a year.

Anyway, this year I wanted to pair the special Father's Day ribs dinner with some special beer. But what beer could possibly be appropriate for the maximum appreciation of such a great man and his delicious, delicious spareribs? Well, I tried my hardest to find the right one!

Upon some research through BeerAdvocate.com, I found that stronger flavored beers such as an IPA are favored in pairings with grilled meat. But, crap man, it's hot outside and I don't want no bad ass brain-wreckin beer, I want a nice smooth drinking summer beer. You know, an easy-drinking wheat beer like Southern Tier's Hop Sun.

But wait, what if I could find a combination of the two?! Not only would it be the perfect mixture of summer drinkability and griller-meat-pairing-strong flavor, but such a synthesis just may be worthy of the glory that is exuded by my Father.

Then I found it, a special edition limited reserve beer created in a collaboration between established microbrewer Garrett Oliver of Brooklyn Brewery, USA and Hans Peter-Drexler of historic Schneider Brewery in Deutschland. Their desire was to mix "American ingenuity with German tradition" to create a truly delicious brew.

The coolest thing, though, is that they both decided to brew their collaborative recipe with their own local hops at their own respective headquarters. So, Brookyln released their own version and Schneider did the same. It was called Hopfen-Weisse with the names of either brewery on each bottle.

(Sorry it's a bit fuzzy, darned phone cameras.)

I bought both bottles to compare and contrast the brewing of the two countries with the same beer with ole' Daddy-o.

My Dad said, "Hmmm..."

I said, "Aaaaaah..."

But which one was better than the other? Brooklyn, with its American hops, or Schneider, with their German ones?

We both agreed, German tradition provided a much more smooth drinking beer, though it boasted an 8.2% abv while the much more harsh-tasting American version boasted a 7.8% abv.

Tradition supplants ingenuity. It's true, though I didn't want it to be true.

(That's the American one, but doesn't it look REALLY GOOD?!)

So, both my super mega awesome Father and I recommend to you, dear reader, the German version of the Hopfen-Weisse over the American while you are grilling/eating delicious grilled delectables (honestly it was a perfectly WONDERFUL pairing), because GODDAMN is it delicious, smooth, strong, and drinkable!!!