Office Hours preview for November 8: English Brown Ale and Porter.

Office Hours with the Publican take place tonight at 6:30 p.m. in Prost at the Public House.

We continue our autumn/winter tasting mandate of surveying Beer Judge Certification Program (BJCP) style definitions, applying them to beers on the Public House's guest bottle list, comparing and contrasting, and trying to decide which ones, in the current time, need to be carried on a regular basis and which of them do not.

In essence, it is our aim:

(1) To acknowledge the greater availability of beginning-level craft beers and imports on metro area beer lists.

(2) To reduce our stock accordingly, allowing our constantly popular and rotating drafts to showcase styles, freeing resources and space to recast the bottle selection.

(3) To tilt the list more toward the newer generation of seasonally changing styles and labels. In short, more Mikkellers, fewer Sam Smiths.

We do all these things already, but haven't done the necessary culling over the years. Consequently, we're out of balance. Tonight, we'll start with Category 11 — English Brown Ale.

11A. Mild
11B. Southern English Brown
11C. Northern English Brown

Category 12 is Porter, and we'll delve into it, too, probably with Brown Porter, leaving Robust Porter and Baltic Porter for next week.

Here are the links to the BJCP's descriptions.

11. ENGLISH BROWN ALE

12. PORTER