215 East Fourth Street
Royal Oak
248-544-1141
OWNER: Drew Ciora
BREWER: Kevin Debs
FLAGSHIP BEERS: Northern Light, a kölsch-style ale lightly hopped for a refreshing, crisp taste; Royal Oak Red, a malty and sweet red ale with good balance that won a gold medal at the Great American Beer Festival
It’s a cold winter night in early February. The streets and sidewalks of Royal Oak are covered with snow and ice, and a bitter wind blows down Fourth Street.
Inside the Royal Oak Brewery, thirty or so hardcore beer aficionados are gathered in one corner of the taproom, as has been the case on the second Wednesday of every month for more than ten years. Bad weather is just a small inconvenience for this group of people, previously strangers and now friends, all brought together by beer, the thirst for knowledge, and the pleasure of trying something new.
The second Wednesday of every month is Panel, a beer education and tasting seminar hosted by Tim Selewski, the brewery’s general manager and brewer emeritus. Every month Selewski sets up a program that explores a different beer style or styles from a particular region or country. Tonight’s theme is appropriate for the weather: hearty winter beers.
The beer education is only part of the draw. The other part is Selewski himself, who is one of the state’s longest tenured professional brewers. Selewski personifies passion for beer and has made it his calling to learn as much about it as he possibly can. Besides being a walking beer encyclopedia, Selewski is an insult comedian, and there is never a dull moment when he’s in the room.
Tim Selewski, the general manager and brewer emeritus at Royal Oak Brewery, leads his monthly tasting panel in a toast.
The first beer tonight is a dark lager from the well-respected Brooklyn Brewing Company in New York. All participants get a glass and about an ounce or two of the beer. Everyone examines the color and checks the aroma. After Selewski talks briefly about the style—calling lager a much-underappreciated beer—it’s time to drink. He holds his glass up and says, “Everybody! One! Two! Three! Panel!” On the word panel, everybody taps their glass on the tabletop and then takes a sip. Now it’s time to talk about the beer’s taste and texture. Everybody agrees it’s an easy-drinking, smooth beer with no bitterness.
The evening falls into a routine: pouring, discussion of style, aroma, and color, a toast, consumption, and more discussion about flavor and feel. The next beer up is Alaskan Winter Ale from the Alaskan Brewing Company in Juneau. Everybody agrees this is a surprise—but not in a good way. The label says that the beer is brewed with spruce tips, but the beer itself is syrupy and annoyingly sweet.
The Alaskan Winter Ale is followed by an Imperial Porter from Flying Dog and then a dopplebock from Augustiner-Brau, a famous brewery in Munich that was established in 1328. The beer is somewhat sweet, but not like the Alaskan Winter Ale, and has a 7.5-percent alcohol content. Selewski explains that this particular beer was historically brewed by monks with the intention of keeping them fortified during the forty days of Lent when they were not allowed to eat.*
That little tidbit about the monks sets off a discussion among participants of German breweries they’ve visited and which ones they look forward to going to in the future.
But soon it’s time to get serious again, and the next beer to taste is Cabin Fever from New Holland Brewing Company, a brown ale with roasted malt flavors. Participant Margie Suchyta of Royal Oak points out that Cabin Fever’s label lists the beer’s “degrees Plato,” which is something rarely found on a beer produced in the United States. Another discussion breaks out; everybody in the group has heard the term, but nobody seems to know what it means—with the exception of Professor Selewski, who proceeds to explain. Degrees Plato is the scale European brewers use to measure the amount of sugar that has been dissolved in the wort. It’s similar to but not the same as gravity. Selewski then offers a down and dirty way to get a rough conversion: if a beer has a specific gravity of 1.028,* take the final two numbers—twenty-eight—and divide by four to get an approximation of the beer’s degrees Plato.
The group sits fascinated during the brief math lesson, but soon it’s time to taste test the final beer of the night, Tres Blueberry Stout from Dark Horse Brewing Company. That beer is met with mixed opinions from participants. Some think it’s pretty good but they certainly would not want more than one, while others think it pours like motor oil and tastes worse.
Aside from the beer, two things keep this crowd coming back month after month. One is the wisdom of Professor Selewski. The other is the camaraderie of the group. The members of Panel have grown into good friends. Nearly every month, some regular brings a surprise to be shared with the rest of the group. Margie Suchyta’s favorite was the cupcakes made with stout and covered with frosting made with Bailey’s Irish Cream. “They were sooooo good!”
* According to the website Catholicgentleman.net, the bock and doppelbock beer styles were developed in the German town of Einbeck to sustain monks during Lent when they were fasting. “[T]hese beers were so delicious that the monks began to wonder if they were contrary to the spirit of Lenten penance. Being faithful sons of the Church, they decided to consult the pope. On the journey to Rome, however, the beer was subjected to extreme weather conditions, causing it to spoil and turn sour. When the pope tasted it, he was so appalled by the spoiled beer that he immediately deemed it an excellent Lenten penance.” www.catholicgentleman.net/2015/03/liquid-bread-the-top-5-bock-beers-for-lent/.
* When reading gravity, ignore that decimal point. If a beer had a gravity reading of 1.028, a brewer would say that it has a gravity of “ten twenty-eight.”