The story of Clown Shoes is a great one. We can't think of many other brands that have come as a result of a liquor store loving beer so much that the owner decides make a line of beer of their own; that's exactly what Berman's in Lexington, MA has done, though. Jesse Dooley, Berman's beer manager and brand ambassador for Clown Shoes, began improving the store's beer offerings a few years ago. Eventually Gregg Berman, one of the owners, became interested in the craft beers he was bringing in. They started to talk about the idea of making their own beer, and then the realization clicked...they already had a distribution license. They could make a beer and distribute it! They initially contacted a few breweries to work with and Mercury Brewing Company, brewers of Ipswich Ales, stepped to the plate with open arms. Head Brewer Dan Lipke was the perfect match because he didn't merely listen to what Berman and Dooley were saying, he really understood what they wanted out of the brand. As Jesse puts it "Dan has the ability to visualize and then translate our thoughts into great beer!" Based on our time drinking Clown Shoes beer there's a lot of great ideas and a lot of great beer happening.

For a new brewery Clown Shoes has been able to come out with several great products early on. Their Black IPA, Hoppy Feet, and new White Ale, called "Clementine," have both quickly become favorites of ours.

We asked Jesse exactly how they come up with their recipes and got some insight: "We take some factors into consideration such as the seasons but other than that we find a style of beer that we feel could be improved upon such as black ales or brown ales or white ales. We line them all up and sit down with Dan Lipke and discuss what aspects we like and dislike about the beers and how we think we could improve upon them.  We then come up with multiple ways that we all think that they could be improved and do test batches in each style.  We take a poll on the winner and there we have it!"

What really sums up Clown Shoes is how they look at beer. We asked them what the goal of Clown Shoes was and their response says it all: "To bring fresh, local and innovative beers to the folks without pretension. Ultimately, if we can make beer that people enjoy we have accomplished our goal." Amen to that, we say!

We're calling it right now, Clown Shoes is going to be big. If you haven't tried the beer go out and find some. We've reviewed their current offerings below and we can't wait to see what they put out next.

Our Reviews

Clown Shoes Clementine

This is the third installment from Clown Shoes. We had high expectations for this beer after hearing what went into it...our expectations were blown away. This beer is amazing, we just got out of work, it's 82 degrees out, and this exactly what we want. Sitting outside at the picnic table with a great white ale makes life pretty good. This is not a normal white ale. It tastes like a hoppy clementine orange but it's very dry and insanely drinkable. The orange flavors are subtle but have amazing depth. You can pick out the sweetness of the fruit along with the bitterness of orange peel. What really makes this beer shine is the balance, no one flavor dominates, they all seem to work in perfect harmony. We only have one bottle of this and we're already wishing we'd bought more.

Clown Shoes Black IPA

This was our first introduction to clown shoes. The black IPA style is completely made up, but we like made up styles. What it really means is a nice roasty hoppy beer. Made up styles are what american craft beer is all about, taking great ingredients and combining them to create a new drinking experiences. This beer combines all the roasty coffee flavors we love in a good stout with the mouth feel and piney hop goodness of an IPA.

Clown Shoes Brown Angel

This is a very hoppy brown, once again this really doesn't fall into a style. You can taste it's english roots but then you get slapped with a nice hoppy finish. The hops definitely dominate in the beer but the malt puts up a good fight. If you like Lagunitas Brown Sugar then you should definitely gives this a try.

If you drink enough craft beer, you have definitely come across one of the large format, 22oz bottles of brew known as a "bomber." In fact, there are many beers you can't try without buying it in the bomber format. The good aspect of this? You get a single bottle with 22oz of beer in it... that's almost two beers! The bad aspect? You get a single bottle with 22oz of beer in it... that's almost two beers!

We say this can be good or bad because, at times, you may want more beer. Maybe you have nothing to do that night... Or, perhaps, you have someone to share the extra beer with. These are the good scenarios. The bad scenario is when you find yourself without a buddy to drink your craft beer with and you don't want to ingest 2 beers worth of alcohol. To compound this problem, oftentimes these beers are the stronger brews that a brewery creates. It's the Imperial Stouts, Double IPAs, Strong Belgian Ales and the like that come in 22oz bottles. So, what is a craft beer drinker to do when he or she wants to drink a single serving of Double IPA but only has a bomber of said Double IPA? There are those who would tell you to, and we quote, "man up." The point of drinking craft beer is to enjoy the libation, though, not to get drunk... sometimes that's a pleasant side effect, but sometimes people have other things to do (like go down to the bar to drink other craft beer...).

I (Jeff from DrinkCraftBeer.com) found myself in this position a little while back, and ended up leaving half a bomber of Smuttynose Big A Double IPA in the refrigerator for 3 nights. Upon finishing the beer on the 4th day of it being open, it was still hoppy, carbonated and delicious. Rather than leave this as a fluke, I figured this would be an interesting beer experiment (beerxperiment?)... Just how long will an open bottle of beer last in the refigerator?

Read more...

A reader recently noticed one of our stickers in the wild and used in a very cool way! Someone had cut our sticker up to make it fit their bike and well we thought it was pretty damn cool. So that got us thinking, how else can they be used? Well while we've certainly got some ideas we thought we'd put out a challenge to all of you. We'll be giving away 30 stickers for free all we ask is you send us back a picture of where you put the sticker. The best use of the sticker will win a special prize pack with some cool DrinkCraftBeer schwag.

The Rules

1. Send us a request for a sticker on Twitter: http://twitter.com/DrinkCraftBeer use hash tag #DCBSticker and tell us why you deserve a sticker

2. We'll pick 30 people to get stickers.

3. Stickers will arrive in the mail. You come up with your coolest use. 

4. Tweet us a pic of how you used the sticker.

5. We'll announce the winner on October 2nd, 2009 and send him or her a DCB prize pack.

6. Keep it legal, we don't want anyone getting in trouble here! No street signs, private property (without permission), etc...