Beers

Tales from San Francisco: sips and notes from SF Beer Week

February 20, 2011 By Shea Leave a Comment

I am currently in San Francisco enjoying the best beer event in th U.S.: SF Beer Week. Below are my tasting notes from Friday’s festivities at City Beer and Toronados, where I was lucky to taste both the 2009 Cable Car (a sour beer made by Lost Abbey just for Toronado’s and unavailable anywhere else) and Pliny the Younger, (an epic 11% double IPAwith amazing flavor and balance). SF beer week is truly the ideal model for beer weeks everywhere.

Midnight sun obliteration vii – clean balanced hoppy stout, more like a black ipa with subtle roasted malt stout characteristics. Good but not my style.

Midnight sun monk’s mistress nitro. Takes a good minute to form its head – very dense.
Nice smoothness dried fruits and Xmas cake. Enjoyable and the alcohol is quite mitigated by the nitro.

Russian river mortification 2010: nice hop mid palate balances the sweetness on this impressive quad. Vg+. still only Belgian yeast lovers need apply.

Pliny the younger – is this a west coast IPA? Indeed but with ridiculous balance and pine centric. The best west coast IPA around? I would say yes.

Lost Abbey Cable Car – insane complexity and lactic character. Sour cherries, Brett but clean and very very balanced. Excellent+.

Filed Under: Beers

Beer of Legend: Isabelle Proximus

December 30, 2010 By Shea Leave a Comment

Holidays and a good friend’s visit created the perfect occasion for me to open one of California’s rarest and most exciting beer projects. Isabelle Proximus is the collective work of Avery Brewing, Russian River, Dogfish Head, Lost Abbey and Allagash – a true list of U.S. superstar brewers.

The Art of Lambic

Back in 2006 the brewers from each of the breweries listed above took a trip to Belgium together and tasted through as many Geuze lambics they possible could and searched for the secret tricks of this very complex and difficult to make style of Belgian sour beer.

Geuze lambics are traditionally made with indigenous wild yeast cultures that create some extremely interesting, and, at first glance, ‘off’ flavours. In other words, if these yeasts were used in wine the result would be disgusting.

Through history and accident, however, a great brewer can tame the beast of the wild yeasts and create one of the world’s most interesting beers.

These bold Americans decided to take on the challenge on their home turf.

Mastery and Collaboration

It was understandably difficult for five brewers of the stature involved in this project to get together and brew something at Tomme Arthur’s Lost Abbey brewery near San Diego. However, I am thankful they finally managed to do so four years ago and that Tomme’s master plan for this beer came to fruition.

The idea was to get four oak barrels sent from each of the five breweries along with yeast indigenous to that particular brewery. Then, the brewers would get together at the Lost Abbey brewery and blend the various components together in order to make a Gueze style beer unlike any other that had been made before.

The Greatest Sour Beer in the United States?

This beer tops the list of sour beers that I’ve had. Only Russian River manages to get to this level, but they don’t make anything quite like the Isabelle Proximus. It has the cellar-like and yeasty aromas you expect from a Geuze, but everything is under extreme control and I would even call the beer poised.

The sourness, unlike many lambics, is not overwhelming and in fact is balanced incredibly well with the oak and some secondary fruit characteristics brought from the used oak barrels. These fruit notes come from the Festina oak barrels that were provided by Dogfish Head. The Festina beer is made with ripe peaches and it is amazing to see how the fruit notes are carried by the oak into a separate beer and how well these flavours integrated into the overall balance of the beer.

This is something you should drink slowly and out of a wine glass. It is a remarkable creation and I would not hesitate to call it a masterpiece of the art of brewing. It is too bad that this beer was only made once. I aged this in my cellar for 2 years before drinking.

Excellent+
$40 at Lost Abbey Night at Toronado SF during San Francisco Beer Week 2008.

Filed Under: $30-$40, American Beer, Excellent, Lambic

Beer From Afar: a Rare Beer Tasting

July 25, 2010 By Shea 2 Comments

It has become a rare occurrence for me to write about beer these days. While I continue to love and explore this beverage, I’ve tended to focus on friend and community rather than analysis when drinking the stuff. But today I shared several of the best beers in the world with a very good and old friend who is soon to be married and it seemed an appropriate occasion to share my impressions.

We started with the Goose Island Juliet, a sour beer made with wild yeast and blackberries (made in Illinois). This was quite tart, but also balanced and very food friendly. I wouldn’t say it was the most complex sour I’ve ever tasted, but it is certainly excellent with food.

The second beer we had was the phenomenally complex Lost Abbey Cuvee de Tomme, one of the rarest beers in California and made by aging Lost Abbey’s Judgement Day ale in Bourbon Barrels and French Oak and then adding cherries and inducing a secondary fermentation with brettanomyces yeast to bring the beer up from 8 to 12% abv. This is definitely in the top 5 sour beers I’ve ever tasted, despite a low carbonation level. If you can find this it is worth every penny.

The next beer, Odin’s Tipple from Hand Brewery in Norway, brought incredible balance to the table. Rich, elegant and yet very long and complex, this was a nearly perfect stout-style ale and definitely in the top ranks of the style.

After the Odin’s Tipple the Alaskan Balkan Porter brewed with vanilla beans, cherries and aged in oak chips was not quite as amazing as it would have been outside of the context of the other beers. So, yes this is an excellent porter and far more complex than is normal for the style, but it does not quite reach to the top ranks.

We then continued with the extremely rare and absolutely awesome Founder’s Devil’s Dancer Triple IPA, which they rate as 112 IBUs (100 is the normal max). This was 12% abv and super bitter, but amazingly complex and surpsingly easy drinking. In fact, as someone who normally does not like IPA, I would consider this amongst the best examples of the extreme high alcohol IPA style today. Incredible stuff – and a pure palate wrecker.

Our last beer was the Nogne O Mikkeller collaboration sour ale brewed with Scandavian Cranberries and wild yeasts. This was very balanced and complex, bringing interesting herb flavours and a tart berry component that you’d expect given the ingredients. A very good quality beer and the only one in this tasting that is actually available in B.C.

Filed Under: American Beer, Beers, Porters, Sour Ale, Stouts

Beer Break

May 5, 2010 By Shea Leave a Comment

A good friend’s recent visit prompted me to set up a little beer dinner with a wide selection of brews (he’s a beer geek). I brought the majority of these beers back from the United States on various beer collecting voyages, but a few are available in the province. The five beers represent a large range of styles and are all superb examples of what they are trying to achieve. It strikes me that I don’t talk about beer enough on the blog – though I suppose that given the regularity with which I partake in wine drinking over beer justifies this. I am, however, very excited with the ever increasing craft beer movement here in Vancouver and within the last 3-4 years the market has exploded – something that the more mature wine market might learn from. Wine needs to start engendering more excitement and enthusiasm in the average drinkers and start bringing them into the fold of passion. As it stands, I know far more people who feel less intimidated by beer and accordingly more comfortable with expressing their enthusiasm for it. Wine just doesn’t get down to this basic level quite often enough.

So for any wine lovers out their who foreswear off beer, you would be surprised to learn how well beer pairs with food – often, with certain foods, far outshining its grape-based counterpart. The problem in the past has been a real lack of very high quality craft beers in the province and a true diversity of styles. This is now changing, and will continue to improve over the next couple of years. The momentum we are now seeing in craft beer has moved from the province offering a very basic range of styles from basic stouts, brown ales and lagers to a scene now where we have wheat beers, bocks, imperial stouts, a full range of Belgian beer styles, barley wines, and, now, the hottest beer style right now: sour ales. The upcoming Vancouver Craft Beer Week is the perfect opportunity for wine lovers to delve into this world.

For this tasting I chose to begin with a legend from Belgium making “lambic” style wines that are extremely dry. I discovered this producer – Cantillon – and this beer – Rose de Gambrinus – when down in California and I was struck by its intense and pure expression of natural tasting fruit without any hint of sweetness. Luckily for us BC beer drinkers these beers are being brought into the province now by Raincity brands, and will be available at your favourite craft beer store (Viti, Firefly, Brewery Creek, etc.) sometime in May. This particular beer was fermented with raspberry and tasted like a pure expression of the aroma and character of the fruit. We paired this with a wonderful St. Andre cheese and the coupling was out of this world – sort of like a complex and more sophisticated version of brie and cranberries. A truly outstanding marriage of flavours.

The next wine on the list is from one of the most sought after series in the craft beer world: the De Proef Brewmaster’s Collection. The concept here is for top brewers in the United States to collaborate with brewmaster Dirk Naudis of De Proef to make a beer brewed only once. Each year the guest brewer changes. The Van Twee Belgian Ale is the third in the series and is made with the brewer from Bells Brewing. Each year the style also changes to reflect the brewer’s tastes and so that each beer can contain an ingredient from the guest brewer’s home state. The Van Twee is a Belgian dark ale brewed with cherries and it was absolutely fantastic, maintaining the consistent quality this collaboration series has brought to the table. Supremely well balanced, full in flavour and nuance and yet not heavy on the palate and with good freshness and a long finish. The cherries provide a nice fruit lift and the dark ale underbelly actually has some stout-like characteristics and roasted malt flavours. Unfortunately this is only available in the United States right now, but if you are ever down in Seattle, Portland, or SF seek out the Brewmaster’s Collaboration series and you will not be disappointed.

The third beer, moving on to the first of two dessert courses, is Brooklyn’s Monster Ale, a beer made in the barley wine style, which tends to have a particular style of heavy malt flavours like caramel and butter, high alcohol and a lot of richness. However, this particular Monster Ale is vintage 2007, which is about as young as I’d like to drink most barley wines, as the age tames the aggressiveness of both the alcohol and the hops. The real revelation here, though, was how stunningly perfect it is to pair barley wine with crème brulée. Don’t take my word for it, try it for yourself. I’m not sure any wine pairing could exceed this. The Brooklyn is available in most of the fine beer stores in the province, on a seasonal basis.

The first of two stouts is also available in the province and is fairly easy to acquire – the North Coast Old Rasputin Russian Imperial Stout. This was one of the first RIS’s I got into many years ago and while I think it is good now, I also believe that it becomes far more interesting with a little age. This particular bottle was about a year old, which again helped the alcohol integrate with the rest of the flavours and brought out more richness in flavour and a more velvety mouthfeel.

The last stout is one of Michigan based Founders Brewing famous beers – the Breakfast Stout – a beer made in the style of an oatmeal stout, but with coffee and chocolate brewed in. This was also about a year old. The beer stood up to the hype and presented a full range of flavour and nuance balanced together with pure textural pleasure and a wonderful aromatic profile. This stout has it all and it is far more balanced than most ‘big’ stouts out there (I think it is around 8% ABV). Unfortunately, this beer is only available in the American Midwest. As with the previous beer, this was designed for drinking with a piece of dark bitter chocolate.

So I hope that this journey through a range of beers and styles offered enough intrigue to get you out to one of next week’s Vancouver Craft Beer Week events. I’m attending at least three, and if I didn’t have to work I’d be at many more. I highly recommend you check it out, even if you think you only like wine. Beer is the wine lover’s great missed opportunity.

Filed Under: Barley Wine, Lambic, Stouts, Strong Ale

Beer Wars Keynote from Greg Koch of Stone Brewing Company

February 1, 2010 By Shea 1 Comment

Last Sunday I attended the CAMRA BC screening of Beer Wars, a documentary about how the craft brewing industry in the United States has contintuously been shafted by the large beer corporations and their own government as they try to build market share in the United States. The highlight of the screening, other than the many tasty craft beers poured from the likes of Granville Island, Red Truck, R&B, Driftwood, Howe Sound, etc., was the attendance of Greg Koch, founder of Stone Brewing, one of California’s best and most important craft breweries.

Greg gave a short keynote to the audience, talking about his experiences and reliving some tasty moments he had with our local beers. I shot the video to share with all of you because I think Greg is both a great speaker and really gets across the passion that all craft brewers have for their art. This guy is an inspiration and I think craft brewers from across BC should try to follow his example and not compromise on the flavour and intensity of their beers to appease the mass market. Instead, as he says in the Beer Wars documentary, angry beers make for happy people. I agree – and if there is any greater need for liquor law reform it is to support our local craft brewers who have to battle the likes of behemoths like Molson and Coors who dominate the market with their crappy no-flavour lagers.

And, as a note I was extremely impressed with Red Truck’s new Porter and Howe Sound’s Three Beavers Imperial Red Ale – both were full of flavour and really well made. Seek them out. Here’s the video:

Filed Under: Beers, Events

Anchor Brewing Christmas Ale 2009

December 29, 2009 By Shea Leave a Comment

Anchor Christmas Ale 2009 I am a little late with this brief note on a great holiday beer, but there is still some of it floating around the market and it’s worth picking up to drag out your festivities for a few more days! Anchor is a pioneer in the U.S. microbrew scene, making its first beer (Anchor Steam) in 1896. However, in my opinion it is Anchor’s Christmas Ale that is their true paean to craft brewing. This is a special beer that sees a change in recipe every year and carries with it significant aging potential. They also change their label every year, but consistently keep the hand drawn tree as the basis. This year the tree was based on San Francisco’s famous Monterey Cypress near where the Panhandle meets Golden Gate Park. The 2009 ale is the 35th edition of Anchor’s Christmas Beer.

This year the recipe is a darker sweeter style (as opposed to last year’s piney version), with a nose filled with spice, cloves, and a hint of forest nettles. The palate returns some pine, but also plenty of clove, cinnamon and nutmeg, rendering this a distinctly Christmas beer rather than simply a dark winter ale. I love the mouthfeel and balance of this beer even more, and it is very drinkable at a modest 5.5% ABV. In fact, I would say this is the best and most drinkable Christmas beer I’ve yet had (with Taylor Crossing’s Christmas Cake Ale poured at Caskival this year in second place). The only thing better is some of the older renditions of this same beer.

Excellent
$17.50 / 6 pack at BCLDB and private liquor stores (Viti, Brewery Creek, etc.)

Filed Under: American Beer, Excellent, Seasonal Beer

Great Divide Brewing Company Hibernation Ale

December 20, 2009 By Shea Leave a Comment

On my recent trip down to Seattle I picked up a bunch of winter and Christmas beers from some of the very excellent U.S. microbrews available south of the border. Here we have a very interesting hybrid style ale from Great Divide of Denver, Colorado, a great brewing city and state.

This is an awesome winter ale. I would describe its flavours like a hybrid between an imperial stout and a barley wine, but dialed back a notch. In other words, the alcohol is lower (8.7%), the texture less viscous – but, the flavours are all still really intense and warming. I loved the notes of caramel, smoke, cigar, bitter chocolate and spices. I also love how Great Divide takes pairing beer and food so seriously that they print suggestions on the side of their bottle, such as: romano, aged hard Dutch cow’s milk cheese (gouda), grilled beef tenderloin, and apple crisp with ginger ice cream. Yum? Yum.

You can get this in six packs down in the U.S. for a very reasonable price and it kicks the ass out of any of the B.C. brewed winter beers that are actually bottled up here. And, that’s the sad thing about living in B.C. for a beer lover. But you cannot blame the brewers entirely. When I was at the recent Dix winter Caskival (an awesome event) I tasted several excellent B.C. brewed winter beers, and one absolutely outstanding one (The Christmas Cake Ale from Taylor’s Crossing). This was bittersweet, though, because none of the really good beers are bottled.

I’m trying to figure out the reasons for this right now and maybe some CAMRA members or brewers could leave a comment if they read this. But, from what I can tell there are two main factors. 1. The expense of bottling, particularly when the brewers work at Mark Anthony Brew Pubs with no bottling facilities; and 2. the perception that B.C. lacks beer culture and beer understanding and so would not buy these beers. Sure, B.C. is still miles behind the great U.S. beer states like California and Washington where it is not frowned upon to be a beer snob and a food snob all in one (oh and wine snobs are allowed to join in the beer snob fun too). BUT, given the recent evidence of a growing CAMRA (Campaign for Real Ale) movement in the province and the efforts of great beer stores like Brewery Creek, Firefly and Viti, there is certainly a market for better B.C. brewed beer (made with care and dedication), and there is no reason why B.C. could not eventually take on Quebec for the title to best Canadian Beer Province. Why do the French have to have all the fun? Let alone those pesky Americans! A request to B.C. brewers: please, please, start bottling your special one-off beers. Doing so will completely change the face of the B.C. beer scene.

Very Good+ to Excellent
$2 / bottle in Seattle (i.e. $12/6 pack) – try and get that price in B.C. for a great beer (thanks insane 117% BCLDB markup)

Filed Under: American Beer, Seasonal Beer, Strong Ale, Very Good

De Proef Signature Ale with Port Brewing

December 9, 2009 By Shea Leave a Comment

signature-200x300 A beer from the brewmaster’s collaboration series, this ale was a joint effort between Dirk Naudis of De Proef and Tomme Arthur from Lost Abbey/Port Brewing. Both of these guys are lauded in the craft beer community, and the idea of a collaboration between them on a crazy hybrid Belgian and American wild ale is pretty exciting. I’ve had and written up the second beer in this series made by De Proef and Jason Perkins of Allagash. It was awesome. This confirms the trend.

This is a one off brew, and a great hybrid style with a nose of banana, malts, and nice sugar and fruit esters. The palate was fantastic with banana, some floral notes, slight hops, and underlying herbs. This is very Belgian like in some ways, but has a fresh hops characteristic that is unlike most Belgians. This is totally different from the Allagash version, and had nice earthy funky notes underlying the palate that come from the wild brettanomyces yeast. But, don’t let the hint of funk scare you off – this is very balanced and not as volatile as some of the crazier wild ales. Big and flavourful, and yet very unique. 8.5% ABV. This is a great brew, and I’m greatly looking forward to the next offering, a collaboration between De Proef and Bell’s brewing.

Excellent
$15 USD at Healthy Spirits

Filed Under: $20 and under, American Beer, Excellent, Strong Ale, Wild Ale

North Coast Old Rasputin 12th Anniversary Russian Imperial Stout

December 4, 2009 By Shea Leave a Comment

In an exciting development, I am writing up this beer procured not on a trip to the United States, but rather on a trip two blocks away from my work at a local beer speciality shop. That’s right, a true blue bourbon barrel aged stout has made it across the border and into our stores. I’ve been ranting about the beauty of wood aged beers ever since I lived down in California where such things are not strange oddities but much loved companions. If the recent shipment of this rare beer from North Coast is any indication, we may be able to begin moderate rejoicing here in British Columbia.

Not only is this a proper wood aged stout, it’s an absolutely fantastic one, made using the standard Old Rasputin IRS, an outstanding ‘standard’ version of the style, as the base. The Old Rasputin has been available in this market for at least a year, and that was exciting enough in itself for BC beer lovers. The 12th anniversary, however, takes the joy to the next level.

This beer smells like goodness: vanilla, biscuit, nuts – all very clear bourbon notes. However, you can also smell the nice roasty elements of the malt through all this. And, unlike some beers made in this style, the Old Rasputin 12th Anniversary is balanced and does not hide the stout beneath the wood. The palate is out of this world yummy: hazlenuts, candied almonds, vanilla, biscuits, and roasted coffee and dark chocolate from the malts. While this will definitely get better with age, it’s also drinking great right now and is smooth and creamy and hides its 11% booze very well. An impeccably balanced beer and one of the best barrel aged stouts I’ve had the fortune of tasting.

The one downside here is the price of this beer in this market which is more than double what you would pay for this in the U.S. – of course due to the high markups and taxes from our ludicrous liquor distribution and regulation system. However, even at the crazy inflated price, this beer is a must buy for any beer lover in the province. Get it for a christmas gift if you have to, but do yourself a favour and drink this beer. There is a reason I’m giving it my highest rating.

Excellent+
$26 at Viti and Brewery Creek

NB: I have to apologize for all the superlatives, but this is truly both an exciting beer and an exciting moment for the BC craft beer community. I plan to help support this movement by attending tomorrow’s Winter Caskival at DIX in downtown Vancouver. I hope some of you can join me.

Filed Under: $20-$30, American Beer, Excellent, Stouts

Driftwood Sartori Wet Hopped Harvest I.P.A. – Cask

December 3, 2009 By Shea Leave a Comment

sartori Today I stopped by the 100th cask rotation at the Alibi Room here in Vancouver for a special selection of BC microbrewed beers. The place was hopping and filled with both beer geeks and beer industry, including many of the brewers themselves. There were quite a few one off beers being poured, but the one that really stood out to me was this unique “wet hopped” India Pale Ale from BC’s newest brewery Driftwood.

“Wet hops” refers to the fact that this beer is brewed with fresh hops transported (while in water) directly from the hop farm to the brewery. Typically hops are dried before they are shipped and then added to the liquid product of the mash. Using fresh hops is uncommon, and adds a unique aromatic quality to the beer.

This particular I.P.A. had tons of flowers, fresh citrus and subtle forest notes. The cask made it very smooth drinking, but did not dull the punch of the hops. The hops were perfectly in balance and the IBU’s present but in check. I’m not sure how to describe this beer any better, but I can say that I think this is by far the best I.P.A. I’ve had from British Columbia and I think it can compete with some of the best examples from the U.S. This beer is a superb accomplishment for such a young microbrewing industry, and if it is a sign of things to come, then the B.C. beer scene is about to get a heck of a lot more exciting.

Excellent
$6/pint – bottles no longer available, but hopefully will appear again next year.

Filed Under: $20 and under, Canadian Beer, Excellent, India Pale Ale