Our top pick is the Michigan Rare Craft Beer Blowout at The Big Hunt. You don't have to be a Midwest transplant to go bonkers over beer from breweries like Founders, Bell's, New Holland, and Jolly Pumpkin. List highlights include rarities like Founders Canadian Breakfast Stout, a Canadian maple syrup barrel-aged version of the brewery's Breakfast Stout made with oats, chocolate, and coffee, and a sneak preview keg of Bell's Hopslam, the hyped, honeyed Imperial IPA that hopheads eagerly await the release of each January. And then there are the always-rare sour ales from Jolly Pumpkin. These delicate, funky beers aren't for everyone, but Big Hunt bar manager and craft beer advocate Dave Coleman managed to get some bottles of Calabaza Blanca and Weizen Bam for the devoted.

You can also meet one of the brewers from Flying Dog and sample the first batch of Snake Dog IPA on draft in D.C. at the Black Squirrel tonight. Our other pick is the Beer 101 Class and Tasting at RFD, where studious newbies can sample ten beers while learning about different styles and the brewing process, all for the bargain price of $26. For Saturday, there were rumors about a downtown pub crawl from District Chophouse to Gordon Biersch to Capitol City to sample all three of the collaboration Altbiers brewed at each local brewpub for D.C. Beer Week. More on that collaboration beer and the story behind it next week from The Lagerheads and The Beerspotter. [UPDATE: All three versions of this D.C. Beer Week collaboration ale "Alt Together Now" will be tapped Saturday from 3:00 to 7:00pm at ChurchKey, along with three cask-condition versions of District Chophouse's version. Representatives from each brewery on hand to discuss their beers.]

Here is the full list of events this weekend. More details on any event can be found in our D.C. Beer Events Calendar.

FRIDAY

• Belgian Beer Happy Hour at Belga Café (4:00-6:00pm)
• Great Lakes Happy Hour at RFD (4:00-7:00pm, $4 per pint)
• Beer Week Wrap-Up Specials at Meridian Pint (5:00-8:00pm)
• Flying Dog Brewer Meet & Greet at The Black Squirrel (6:00-7:30pm)
• Canned Beer Night at Policy (6:00-9:00pm)
• Three-Course Pairing Menu at Dino (6:00-9:30pm, $39)
• Michigan Rare Craft Beer Blowout at The Big Hunt (7:30pm-Close)
• Beer Tasting 101 Class at RFD (8:00-9:30pm, $26)

SATURDAY

• DC Brewpub Collaboration "Alt Together Now" Tapping Party at ChurchKey (3:00-7:00pm)
• Firkin Spectacular at RFD (7:00-9:30pm, $40)
• Sunset Kayak & Flying Dog Tasting at Jack's Boathouse / Old Glory (6:00-9:00pm, $39)

SUNDAY

• Stella Artois Perfect Pour Contest at Belga Café (2:00-5:00pm)

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Pt1: Stone Skips Across the Pond from stonebrew on Vimeo.

It's no secret that we love to go on beer-themed vacations and tend to work at least a little beer fun into most of our regular travel plans. Thanks to a recent post on Beer in Baltimore, we are experiencing some serious beercation envy and thinking of re-prioritizing our list of "must-drink-there" destinations.

Last July, a small crew from Stone Brewing Company traveled to Grimstad, Norway and Fraserburg, Scotland to brew collaboration beers with Nøgne Ø and BrewDog. The beers, which you likely saw around town earlier this winter, were the 2009 Stone-Jolly Pumpkin-Nøgne Ø Special Holiday Ale and the Stone-BrewDog Bashah Belgian Black IPA.

Scandinavia has been high on our beer travel list, largely because of the two boundary-pushing breweries featured in Stone's four-part video blog series, but watching the boys from Stone eat, drink, brew, and sightsee their way across Norway and Scotland has given us total wanderlust. (But we have to admit we would have liked to see more HD footage of gorgeous landscapes and fewer shots of shirtless beer dudes and Greg Koch's antics–just a few.)

The Lagerheads will be settling for a trip to Canada later this year to visit breweries like Unibroue and Dieu Du Ciel, as well as check out the beauty that is Quebec City and the utter coolness that is Montreal. If like us you have no better immediate option than to live vicariously through others, check out Stone Skips Across the Pond. Part 1 is above; Parts 2 to 4 are below.

Pt2: Stone Skips Across the Pond from stonebrew on Vimeo.

Pt:3 Stone Skips Across the Pond from stonebrew on Vimeo.

Pt:4 Stone Skips Across the Pond from stonebrew on Vimeo.

"We gathered Belgian golden ales and their foreign relatives as if they were snowflakes, aware that each was so unusual, and often so beautiful in a singular way, that it would resist any but the roughest categorization."

So writes Eric Asimov in tasting-note piece on Belgian golden ales in The New York Times. Of course to every thing there's a season, and all good beers are but different colors of the gods' rhapsodous spectrum, etc., etc. But what is it about Belgian-style beers in particular that seem to make beer writers wax so? Mostly, it's the yeast.

Put simply, fermentation in beer happens when yeast critters eat up sugars and burp out booze. Among the byproducts of this process are esters and phenols, chemical compounds that, in proper amounts, impart pleasant, nose-tickling aromas of banana, pear, peach, strawberry, bubblegum, and so on. And the yeast strains prized by Belgian brewers (and their disciples abroad) — they're particularly productive in this department.

That's the main reason Belgian-style beers ascend drinkers to Rapture and send them on effusive, booze-fueled monologues. They're not better than other styles of beer. But these, um, personality-driven yeasts (Type A, safe to say), bring flavors to the party that you can't find anywhere else. For foodie types who love to discuss and describe what's in their glass, this means volumes of new tastes and descriptors for them — I've had Belgian-style beers that smell and taste like rhubarb, apricot, Band-Aids, gym socks, seawater, mildew, and the sweet, corn-syrupy red sauce from a can of Spaghettios. And I've enjoyed them (especially the Spaghettios one).

Point being, next time you open a bottle of Belgian-style beer, don't forget about your yeast critter friends. They'll be the life of the party.

• Jolly Pumpkin are among the American masters of barrel-aging and wild yeast, and their dry, stanky, farmhouse-style ales like Bam Biere and Oro de Calabaza are two of my favorite saisons (pictured above, at right). They arrive in D.C. in tiny, intermittent shipments, sometimes months apart, so let me know if you spot them. Having tried their sweet-tart La Roja and their foamy, heavily spiced and oaked Luciernaga (The Firefly) over the holidays, I can say that Jolly Pumpkin is one of the few American breweries whose beers I will always buy, no matter the bottle, whenever I find them.

• Sierra Nevada is the granddaddy, and their ubiquitous pale ale is the most important beer in America. Which is why it's great that they're still creating exciting new recipes, like their deep-hued Torpedo IPA and their perennial favorite of mine, the Summerfest lager. 2010 marks the brewery's 30th anniversary, marked by a collaboration with beer personas like Brewers Association President Charlie Papazian, and a new seasonal golden bock.

• Bruery founder Patrick Rue was just a (very talented) homebrewer when he incorporated in 2008, and already his beers have found cult status as well as shelf space in D.C.'s most serious stores. They specialize in Belgian-style beers like their Orchard White or their wild-yeast-afflicted Saison Rue, but they also brew a mean loaf of dark rye.
• Pretty Things is a husband-and-wife team about whom I've already rhapsodized, with special attention to their rosemary-smoked Babayaga stout. They're not available in D.C. yet, but they're expected to join us this spring.
• Lagunitas’ near-perfect IPA, the summer seasonal A Little Sumpin' Sumpin', was the #3 beer of 2009, and had the list been longer it also would have included their 2009 Correction Ale, a pale ale with an orchardful of grapefruit flavor despite a modest 6% abv. Between these newcomers and go-tos like their New Dogtown Pale, they're growing into a serious can't-miss brewery. My resolution this year is to try everything they put out.

Paste Magazine's most recent "List of the Day" surveys the 25 best American breweries of the decade. Just hours after it was posted, a friend asked us what we thought. Overall, we think it's pretty solid. We've had beer from all of the breweries, some more than others, especially Paste's picks for the two top spots, Dogfish Head and Allagash. Still, we have a few beefs...

We wouldn't have placed Victory or Founder's in the top five. Those spots should have been reserved for cutting-edge breweries like Lost Abbey and Russian River. Similarly, we love Weyerbacher but probably would have placed Bell's in its top 10 spot. And Jolly Pumpkin way down at 19? We don't think so.

Perhaps going beyond the bounds of Paste's rating method, we would have  listed Brooklyn, Stone, and Samuel Adams much higher for their widespread efforts to inform American drinkers that there's more to beer than Bud, Coors, and Michelob, as well as raise the status of beer in general. We also would have tried to squeeze Flying Dog, Left Hand, Troegs, and Duck Rabbit somewhere into the top 25.

Beyond that, if we could have done a Top 40, we would have tried to get O'Dell's, The Bruery, Boulevard, Full Sail, Captain Lawrence, 21st Amendment, Sly Fox, Anderson Valley, New Holland, Clipper City, Bear Republic, and Elysian on the list, but it would have been very difficult to decide who goes where. Since many of the aforementioned breweries are up and coming, we have a good feeling several of them will be on next decade's list.

For those of you who don't have the patience to click, below is Paste's list. We won't take the time here to argue the reasons for our gripes, but let us know what you think in the comments and we'll continue the conversation there.

1. Dogfish Head (Milton, DE)
2. Allagash (Portland, ME)
3. Avery (Boulder, CO)
4. Victory (Downington, PA)
5. Founder's (Grand Rapids, MI)
6. AleSmith (San Diego, CA)
7. Russian River (Santa Rosa, CA)
8. Three Floyds (Hammond, IN)
9. Weyerbacher (Easton, PA)
10. Lost Abbey (San Marcos, CA)
11. Bell's (Kalamazoo, MI)
12. Lagunitas (Petulama, CA)
13. Deschutes (Bend, OR)
14. Rogue (Ashland, OR)
15. Samuel Adams (Boston, MA)
16. Oskar Blues (Lyons, CO)
17. New Glarus (New Glarus, WI)
18. New Belgium (Ft. Collins, CO)
19. Jolly Pumpkin (Dexter, MI)
20. Stone (Escondido, CA)
21. North Coast (Fort Bragg, CA)
22. Ommegang (Cooperstown, NY)
23. Brooklyn (Brooklyn, NY)
24. Sierra Nevada (Chico, CA)
25. Great Divide (Denver, CO)

We are sure food-and-beer pairing guru Garrett Oliver, who will be gracing DC with his presence at Brasserie Beck this Tuesday, would not approve. But after trying the beer with chips and salsa, frosted cookies, cheese and crackers, and candy corn, we found a clear winner...of the triangular, orange, and waxy variety.

In this guilty pleasure pairing, the Lagerheads declare Oro de Calabaza and candy corn a winning combination. Since the beer is on the funky side (beer geek translation: horse blanket), we decided to try it with candy. Just like sour ales are often subdued with sugary fruit syrups, we thought the corn syrup and honey in the candy corn might cut the funkiness of the beer, which is caused by wild Belgian yeast.

We were right, but we are certain that Ron Jeffries, the renowned "creator of beers of outstanding art and grace, philosopher of things beery, and outspoken advocate of the slower, finer life," would be appauled to find out that we paired junk food with his award-winning Biere de Garde, but we're sticking to our guns and encourage you to give it a try.  (Note: Bottles of Oro de Calabaza were on sale at DeVine's in Columbia Heights earlier this month.)

Have you had some fancy-pants beer pairings lately, or made any lowbrow discoveries like ours? We'd like to hear about it.

When I was little I once saw a Family Circus cartoon in which the father, on Independence Day, thanked China for their fireworks, Germany for their picnic of sausages and coleslaw, and so on. It was about as funny as, well, Family Circus — but the message stuck with me.

So on that note, I remind those of you stuck in the imports section of your beer store that America is home to the world's most diverse beer selection, including many of the finest and certainly the freshest. This Independence Day weekend (I'm starting mine today), buy American beer. If you have a friend who thinks Stella Artois is the gods' gift to Belgium, send 'em this way for a list of proper American substitutes.

• Heineken (or Stella Artois) — Of the imports on this list, Heiney's the one I'm least offended to get for free at a party. But it's still just the Budweiser of Europe. If crisp, clean lagers are your thing (and in July, they're certainly mine), try Stoudt's Gold Lager or Sierra Nevada Summerfest.

• Guinness — Stout in the summertime is a bold move anyway, so go whole hog with Stone Imperial Russian Stout, a black hole of a beast. For something on the sweet side, Founders Porter is possibly the best American porter I've ever tasted, with huge chocolatey flavors and a hint of roastiness to balance.
• Corona — Sigh. White wine, I guess. I hear they sell that stuff in juice boxes now.
• Newcastle or Amstel Light — Brown ales, like the sweet Ellie's Brown Ale from Avery, are perfect for introducing newcomers to good craft beer. For something a bit hoppier, I turn to Troegs Hopback Amber Ale again and again.
• Chimay (and Belgians in general) — Of course, there are imports out there that don't come from giant conglomerates and even taste like beer. And guess what? America's got that style down. Jolly Pumpkin excels in many Belgian styles, with beers like their Bam Biere saison. (Check De Vinos in Adams Morgan.) For some that are more widely available, Brooklyn Local 1 and Allagash Confluence are two complex Belgian-style ales made just up the East Coast.

That's just a quick list. What are y'all drinking this coming weekend? Any other imports you'd like a recommendation on? Fill up that there comments section, and I'll get right back at you.

Photo by cristinabe via Flick, Creative Commons Attribution License