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2014 Firestone Walker Invitational

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 “Milk is for babies. When you grow up you have to drink beer.” – Former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger

 

In May of 2014 Dave and Steve attended one of the greatest beer events in the world: the Firestone Walker Invitational in Paso Robles California. Here are some thoughts and images. 
 
[tribulant_slideshow gallery_id=”2″]
 

We’ve never been to the Great American Beer Festival in Colorado, never been to Illinois’ Festival of Wood and Barrel Aged Beers, nor any of the Beer Advocate festivals in Boston, nor Savor. Even so, could any festival be a greater venue for the world’s finest beers than the Firestone Walker Invitational? Paso Robles is returning to form as wine country, boasting 2013’s award for Wine Region of the Year. The food vendors, who get short shrift at a beer event but play a critical role—especially to a collective swarm of snobs—not only in keeping people satiated and buffered from unlimited samples of draught deliciousness, but as a compliment to the beers. Food must be up to the quality of the beer or the contrast will define both the food and overall experience as muddled. And the food served at the Invitation is superb. Local restaurants like Robert’s, Estrella, Fish Gaucho, Leo Leo Gelato and more brought top notch California cuisine in bite sized portions. And then there is the beer.

Brewpublic.com has the full list here 

BEER OF THE FEST:

Avery Brewing Co.

Lilikoi Kepolo

This sour ale from Colorado’s Avery makes great use of the tropical lilikoi fruit to add both sweetness and a further tartness, making for one of our all-time favorite sour beers. Against redoubtable company on draught, Lilikoi Kepolo stood above the rest, as the most complex and delicious beer we sampled .

Other favorites:

Alesmith Brewing
Barrel Aged Vietnamese Speedway Stout

Alpine Beer Co
Keene Idea

The Bruery
Black Tuesday w/ Pistachio & Vanilla

Cigar City Brewing
Tangerine-Orange Berliner Weisse

FiftyFifty Brewing
Coffee-Vanilla Eclipse

Firestone Walker Brewing
Parabajava

Kern River Brewing
Citra DIPA

Lost Abbey/Port Brewing Co
Red Poppy

New Belgium Brewing
La Folie

Surly Brewing
Pentagram

Taps Fishhouse & Brewery
Blanche de Conundrum
Remy’s Pappy

CONCLUSION:

The variety and quality of brewers and beers, the food and facility, and the overall execution make this one of the best beer festivals in the country. People in the area are blessed to have Firestone Walker, and especially lucky to have such a great festival to craft beer. If you ever have the opportunity, get to Paso and check out the Firestone Walker Invitational Beer Festival.

 

Surly Overrated

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Surly Overrated

Like Keith Richards fans, sick of hearing about the epic excesses of Justin Beiber, passionate beer geeks sometimes grow weary of the buzz that comes with early achievement. Surly Overrated is a beer that according to the Minnesota based Surly Brewing company’s website, is named in response to an unnamed critic who claimed that ‘It’s easier to brew an extremely hoppy beer than an extremely balanced beer’. Distributing only to its home state, the Surly brewing company gained a reputation for great IPAs that come in cans early on in the craft beer canned revival. Beers like Cynic, a  Belgian style pale ale, Furious, a delicious hop bomb of an IPA, and Coffee Bender, an oatmeal brown ale flavored with a cold extracted coffee that is a favorite of java beer lovers. A combination of rave reviews and limited availability fueled the hype machine, and apparently spurred the mysterious critic to declare Surly ‘overrated’ . But far from it, Surly not only brews amazing hoppy and coffee beers, but their anniversary releases have included creative strong beers and sours, and their huge imperial stout Darkness not only commands new, diabolical artwork each year, but its release is an event known as Darkness Day that draws beer geeks from far and wide to party and get the chance to but a few bottles.

Surly Overrated west coast style IPA
Surly Overrated

THE BEER

Surly Overrated is a west coast style IPA, meaning pine hope notes and bitterness should dominate, while the finish should be dry and draw the drinker in for more.

TASTING NOTES

Pouring it from the can gives a well carbonated, not quite translucent orange brew with a white, dense head. Aromas off the pour are pine, some citrus, and a hint of dank vestigial hops. The flavor is, as promised, a big time pine forward hop explosion from the Columbus, Centennial, Cascade, and El Dorado hop varieties. Lacking the malt sweetness of a DIPA, the body is thinner. The finish is crisp, dry and refreshing, and clean.

CONCLUSION

Already brewing three other IPAs, Surly faced a challenge in continuing their tradition of great quality, while delivering on the promise of a west coast style hop forward beer. Without question Surly Overrated succeeds in delivering on that promise, with a tasty, refreshing IPA that is never too sweet, and leaves you wanting more. While not up to the majestic heights of Heady Topper, Overrated is a great addition to the  Surly IPA lineup. One that further solidifies their well deserved reputation as one of America’s most dynamic and consistent breweries in the U.S.  And while they may do a number of well regarded hoppy beers, their reputation is certainly not overrated.

8.0/10

Best Double IPAs in Winter

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Cold weather months are the time of stouts, porters, and winter warmers. But a few brewers are magnanimous enough to grant a hop fan respite. Here we look at three of the best double IPAs in winter.
 

Through winter-time we call on spring

Layered up for Dark Horse BA Plead the Fifth
Layered up for Dark Horse BA Plead the Fifth

So who the hell decided that winter-time has to be all dark beers and the like? Did the people that green lighted another season of ‘Two Broke Girls‘ posit that, come late summer, Octoberfest marzens and beers brewed with canned pumpkin should start arriving on the shelves? That by Halloween, ‘Christmas’ ales must be filling shelves, long before astronomical winter has begun? Did some neo-hippie beard-O from the west coast brewmaster declare that the current trend in seasonal cuisine should be mimicked in brewing, despite the fact that hops are primarily delivered as dried pellets? Must we rage, rage against the dying of the hops? Ain’t nobody got time for that.

Dogfish Head 90 Minute is brewed all year long, so keep your man hammock on. In fact, there are scores of hugely hopped beers that can be had fresh throughout the morose months in which we ponder the cruel sky god that abandoned us to the dark chill.

Other Imperial IPAs available year-round include notables such as:

Southern Tier Unearthly
Harpoon’s Leviathan Imperial IPA
Lagunitas Hop Stoopid
Three Floyds Drednaught and Arctic Panzer Wolf
Avery Majaraja
Stone Ruination
The Alchemist Heady Topper

The Hypeslam Challenge

The Best Winter Double India Pale Ale
With all these options, why does it seem like frost alerts signal stout season? First of all, stouts and porters are delicious, full bodied brews that really do fit with cold days and dark nights. Knowing this, brewers release their seasonal dark beers during this time, to match craft beer drinker’s tastes. So Barrel Aged Blackout Stout or BA Plead the the Fifth just make more sense in winter. But that doesn’t mean craft beer fans have nothing hoppy to look forward to after National S’mores Day. For this review we will sample three limited release double IPAs that come out between December-January.

Inspired by our friend Bobby‘s tweet:

Take the Hypeslam challenge. Put it side by side w/ any other premier DIPA & realize what an unbalanced boozy mess it is

When I asked for suggested DIPAs that are similarly fresh, he mentioned Abrasive Ale from Surly Brewing. Taking that advice, I paired it with a beer getting a ton of buzz since it came out last winter, Lagunitas Sucks: Brown Shuggah Substitute Ale. The Abrasive is released in December, and the Hopslam and Sucks, in January.

THE BEERS

BELL’S  HOPSLAM ALE

ABV: 10%

IBUs: ??

TASTING NOTES: The smell is subtle, reminding me of Fresca or Squirt (grapefruit soda). Expected a bigger nose from this translucent gold brew. Carbonation is low. Taste starts our hugely sweet keeping with the soda pop nose. Then come the hops. More pine than citrus, but both are present. Finish has a nice hop bite, battling that honey/malt sweetness. Bitterness builds up as you drink hoppy beers. With a ton of sweetness, the bitter bite remains (somewhat) under control, making this imperial IPA quite approachable. But the label is a man being crushed by hops not honey: Give us more hops!

LAGUNITAS SUCKS

ABV: 7.85%

IBUs: 63.21

TASTING NOTES: A darker gold than Hopslam, Sucks has a mouth wateringly bolder nose of massive tropical fruits (mango, pineapple) with citrus and some bread-y malts and some alcohol. Mouthfeel is light, with a bit more carbonation than Hopslam. The flavors from Sucks are a drone strike of hops. This is what a DIPA should be! Resinous, citrus hop filled, with a sweet malt backbone to balance the finish. Hop lovers will be adding a new Lagunitas brew to the stable of wants.

SURLY ABRASIVE:

ABV: 9.0%

IBUs: “120ish” (from their website)

TASTING NOTES: Oh Yeah (Kool-Aid Man voice)!!!! What an explosive wafting of resinous esters, with pine and citrus. Easily the most potent nose of the three, or of almost any beer. Color is darker than the others as well, pouring a cloudy yellow/orange. Grapefruit, tangerine and pine open up the taste, along with some serious bitterness, although the malt backbone keeps it just balanced enough.

Best Imperial IPA in Winter

CONCLUSIONS

Double IPAs can be too bitter, or too sweet. DIPAs are an attempt to crank up the hop-level on a style of beer some already think is too hop dominant. The challenge is to give hop heads a beer that lets the flowery esters shine, while not brewing a bitter or malty mess. As we tasted for the best double IPAs in winter, the three beers each took a different approach to the style.

Bell’s Hopslam Ale was the onus for this tasting, and it does have quite a bit of hype behind it. While not finding it as unbalanced or boozy as Bobby does, this beer is sweet from start to finish. If you are looking for your first double IPA to try, or a dangerously easy way to put down 12 ounces of 10% ABV beer, this is the one for you. Bell’s use of honey is a better cover for booze and bitterness than what other breweries accomplish with malts alone. However, at 18$ a six-pack plus tax, this is an expensive price to pay for your sweet tooth. Finally, I noted, along with a number of others, that the 2013 batch has much more honey and less hop presence than in previous years.

Lagunitas Sucks tropical fruit flavors make it one of the best overall DIPAs around. If balance is what you are seeking, this one has an optimal application of bready malts, subtly applied to give the hop flavors minimal interference. While it lacks the clingy, unattenuated honey, Sucks is a delightfully drinkable ale.

Surly Abrasive, as the name would suggest, comes right at you. It makes no apologies about the dominant, dank hop flavors, adding only enough malt to keep the beer from finishing like Aspirin. Of the three, Abrasive is best of the group at making a hop head’s dream beer. Surly crushed this and I can see why a beer geek would prefer it to the sweeter Hopslam.

Double IPA is a style I enjoy, but find them less consistently good than more traditional or American IPAs. DIPAs are a high wire act, and all three of these beers pull off a delicious take on the style. Hop heads, however, will find the most joy in Sucks and Abrasive. These two are world-class, and a few of the best double IPAs released in winter.

Best Coffee Beer Part 1

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What Is The Best Coffee Beer?

 

Founders Double Oatmeal Chocolate Stout
FOUNDERS BREAKFAST STOUT

The Premise

Each winter brings back together old friends in North East Ohio for the Tri-City Beer Club’s Annual Christmas party. In its 15th year the TCBC is a small group of beer fans who gather to blind taste test beers in a category. Getting older, the group has turned in Nirvana for NPR, and Cherry Coke for coffee. To reflect the maturing tastes, for the first time we decided to take on a hugely popular craft beer style; coffee beers.  So what is the best coffee beer? Round one of The Barley Whine’s research into this question puts some great beers up to the challenge.

Methodology

As always, we blind tasted brews of a similar style, rated between 1 and 10, with .5 as the only allowable decimal. The first beer was re-tasted at a random time to avoid position bias. Beers are ranked based on style, not their genetic closeness to Tim Tebow.

The Beers

Samuel Adams Coffee Stout

  • Founders – Breakfast Stout: #1 . Smelling of coffee and sweet chocolate, pours a khaki strong head with good retention. The taste is cold pressed coffee complexly combined with semi-sweet chocolate. Finishes with a bitter chocolate, hoppy bite. The mouthfeel is thick but slick from the oatmeal, and well carbonated. A world class blending of flavors, brewed to perfection.
  • Southern Tier – Mokah #2. Huge roasted coffee and chocolate nose. Do the Tootsie Roll! Milk Dud candy dominates the flavors. Lots of great chocolate, followed by the coffee, with cloying sweetness. The body is thick, less smooth than the Founders brew probably due to less oatmeal. Almost no bitterness in the finish. The 11% ABV is buried. The non-coffee drinks all gave this top marks.
  • Tröegs – Java Head: #3 . A dark chestnut pour with bubbly tan head. Smell is surprising mix of malts, coffee, and hops. Some sweetness, coffee, and hops with biscuity malts. Lots of astringency from the oats and hops. Coffee is mostly in the finish. Body is creamy, smooth and thick.
  • Surly  – Coffee Bender: #4. Burnt coffee nose. Sweet coffee taste, dark chocolate, espresso. Very tasty!
  • AleSmith – Speedway Stout: #5. Guess what? It’s black. Potent caramel/toffee nose. Taste is of a great imperial stout, with subtle java and chocolate, a bit of soy sauce.
  • Bell’s – Java Stout: #6 (tie).  Day old coffee grounds and vegetable smell. Lots of nice roasted malts, milk chocolate and burnt coffee hit the palette. The mouthfeel is nice and think. True to a stout but better with coffee, this beer suffers against sweeter, less chocolaty beers.
  • Samuel Adams – Black and Brew: #6 (tie). Dark brown color. Caramel nose with subtle coffee. Taste has a creamy coffee element, with only very little malt or hops. Body is a bit thin, well carbonated. Drinkable, but just too one note and bland to stand out against others.
  • Midnight Sun – Arctic Rhino: #8. Coffee and caramel notes with some alkaline odors. Tasted of roasted malts, mild coffee and a bit astringent. The body is really thin, with decent carbonation. Not as strong a java flavor, and much less thick than the others.

Conclusion

With stouts and porters, roasted malts, coffee and chocolate are a natural combination to play out in dark beers. If you like coffee, the addition of it to a good stout can make for a more complex, satisfying, even phenomenal brew. Chocolate is a very popular addition to dark beers and for those that do not like coffee’s bitterness, chocolate and a bit of additional sweetness turns them around on the style. Some of the best stouts fall in the coffee beer category so even if you’re not a 6 cup a day Starbucks addict, give any one of these a try in place of your Guinness or Baileys and you will be joyously surprised.