It's A Wine - It's A Beer - It's Both!

The Paso Robles mainstay, Firestone Walker Brewery, was born a couple of decades ago on the Firestone family vineyard.  Adam Firestone and his brother-in-law David Walker craft a host of beers in the city that's made a name for itself as one of California's wine capitals.

Their first brews were fermented in old wine barrels, and it took two for their leadoff bottling, Double Barrel Ale.  Brewmaster Matt Brynildson now oversees the making of the suds.

They call Rosalie "the rose lover's beer."  It's part of their Terroir Project, an experiment into a marriage between beer and wine.  They say Rosalie blurs the line between beer and wine.  To make it, 100 tons of Chardonnay grapes were harvested by Castoro Winery specifically for Rosalie, with smaller amounts of Viognier, Sauvignon Blanc, Riesling and Muscat used as well.  They used souring techniques on the beer to give it an acidity not usually found in those made with yeasts and malts.  Hibiscus flowers were thrown in during the whirlpool phase, when hops are usually poured in.  After both the beer and the wine juice were made, they were co-fermented using Pilsner malt and judicious hops.  They proudly say it's a true beer-wine hybrid.  Alcohol hits a low, low 5% abv.

I approached Rosalie with trepidation, because I'm not a fan of flavored beer.  I generally feel you can keep your pumpkin-raspberry-hibiscus beers and give me some hops, lots of ‘em.  This beverage surprised me.   It has a rich orange color, more electric than in either beer or wine.  The nose comes on with plenty of floral notes and a sour edge.  The palate shows the malt and hops as well as the hibiscus.  There's a nice acidity, a lighter feel than beer and a little more weight than wine.  I like it, hibiscus and all.


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Revisiting A Great Sushi Beer

I've done a little more exploration into a Japanese beer that's available at my local sushi place, Kawaba Sunrise Ale.  It's made in a brewery in Kawaba, which is nestled in the mountains northwest of Tokyo on Japan's main island.  The label shows an origin of 'Denen Plaza Kawaba,' but that appears to be a roadside rest area, albeit an extremely nice one with shopping available.  I presume the brewery is somewhere on the grounds in the village.  The beer is malty, low-alcohol (5%) and leaves behind a pleasant bitter note that really hits the spot with seafood.  

My much better half and I were having sushi the other night.  I love sushi, but the beverage options always leave me cold.  I like wine, but the choices never seem good at a sushi place, at least not the ones we frequent.  Beer always seems to be Asahi or Sapporo, neither a fave.  Our sushi place offers an extensive selection of sake, but I've never delved into that ocean enough to know where I'm swimming.

This night, I noticed a Japanese craft beer, Kawaba Sunrise Ale.  Billed as a red ale, I figured it had to be pretty close to my wheelhouse.  It was good, beery and ale-y enough to make both of us happy.  But that's a fairly weak description, especially for a guy who can go on and on about wine.  Why does beer stump me?

I clicked my way over to Beer Advocate, as I do when I want to know what real beer geeks think about a brew.  The Kabawa had - in one user's opinion - "some caramel malt sweetness and toasted grain… a lightly sweet, even creamy coating of caramel… an increased brown bread quality… some light hops spice… a dry tea leaf feel."  And he didn't think it was all that complex.

Maybe I'll just stick with "gimme an IPA."  That's what I really want when I want a beer.

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Maryland's Rich Beer Scene

When traveling, one should always try the local beers.  That's my philosophy, and it has served me well during the craft beer years.  Places like Portland, San Francisco, San Diego, Boston, hell, just about anywhere, have local beers scenes making suds worth sampling.  Maryland is no exception.

Heavy Seas Beer is produced by Clipper City Brewing Company in the heart of Baltimore.  It was pointed to by several articles and locals as the best B'more brewer.  Hugh Sisson first started brewing it in 1995 and gave B'more its first brewpub.  Heavy Seas Loose Cannon IPA is their flagship brew.  Simcoe, Palisade, and Centennial hops make for a wonderful nose.  Deep amber, the light head dissipates quickly, but who cares.  It's the taste you want.  Those beautiful hops meet British-style bitterness, which lingers on the finish.

RaR Brewing is an Eastern shore brewer in Cambridge, MD.  The brewery’s home is on the east side of Chesapeake Bay, on the Delmarva Peninsula, which also contains Delaware and, for some reason, a spit of land belonging to Virginia.  I would love to have sat in on the planning session that resulting in that division of property.

RaR is "local boys brewing local beers," and they’re doing a fine job.  As if the beer isn't good enough on its own, their labeling includes a mysterious little dinosaur swimming in water.  It's Chessie, I'm told, a sea creature legend in Chesapeake Bay.

Rar Nanticoke Nectar IPA has alcohol up at 7.4% abv.  It was available in handy six-pack cans where I bought it, and I shared it with my pals at the hotel in Fells Point.  A beautiful, floral nose gives way to a slightly bitter taste and finish. Citrus plays a heavily and makes for a refreshing drink.

D.C. Brau  is brewed, of course, in the nation's capital.  Their IPA, The Corruption, is a copper-colored northwest-style IPA at 6.5% abv.  And, what better name for a D.C. beer that The Corruption?  Especially now.  It's good whether you’re watching the Nationals or the Orioles.  They make it with Honey Malt and Victory Malt, and a big ladle full of Columbus hops.  It's a very nice brew, with more barley to accompany the hops. The beefy flavor is nothing short of hearty.

I ordered a pint of Terrapin HI-5 IPA after seeing only the tap handle, figuring the name gave away some Maryland roots.  I was wrong.  It's made in Athens, Georgia.  It is good, however, with five hops giving a lovely aroma and flavor.  Juicy and refreshing, the California-style IPA has a light bitter edge on the finish.


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Maryland IPAs

Maryland has some pretty good brewers in the state these days.  As in many of the 50, craft beer has found its legs in the Free State.  Here are two from Frederick, Maryland.

Flying Dog Snake Dog IPA

Flying Dog is reportedly Maryland's largest brewer. It was founded in 1990 by George Stranahan and Richard McIntyre.  The original brewery was located near Denver, with Frederick serving as a second outpost, but the Colorado brewery was abandoned in favor of the Maryland locale.  

For Snake Dog, the hops are Mosaic, Citra, Simcoe, Columbus and Warrior.

The fresh hops aroma gives the IPA a more floral than fruity nose.  It's easy drinking at 7.1% abv, with a nice bitterness that melds with the sweeter aspects.  Snakedog paired very nicely with smoked fish.

Flying Dog Double Dog Double IPA

Flying Dog's Double Dog Double IPA was envisioned as a tenth anniversary creation for the brewery, and got so popular it stuck around. Using Columbus, Warrior and Cascade hops, this IPA offers both bark and bite.

A bit more robust at 11.5% abv, this one can take you by surprise if you gulp.  Its creators recommend taming the slight alcohol burn with strong cheese or earthy carrot cake. Hearty and bold, this double IPA has enough flowery nose and earthy palate notes for at least two.

Note the artwork on both is by Ralph Steadman, who was Dr. Hunter S. Thompson's illustrator. Thompson was reportedly good friends with co-founder Stranahan.








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Beer With Sushi

Japanese Beer For Sushi That Tastes Great On Its Own

My much better half and I were having sushi the other night.  I love sushi, but the beverage options always leave me cold.  I like wine, but the choices never seem good at a sushi place, at least not the ones we frequent.  Beer always seems to be Asahi or Sapporo, neither a fave.  Our sushi place offers an extensive selection of sake, but I've never delved into that ocean enough to know where I'm swimming.

This night, I noticed a Japanese craft beer, Kawaba Sunrise Ale.  Billed as an unfiltered amber ale, I figured it had to be pretty close to my wheelhouse.  It was good, beery and ale-y enough to make both of us happy.  But that's a fairly weak description, especially for a guy who can go on and on about wine.  Why does beer stump me?

I clicked my way over to Beer Advocate, as I do when I want to know what real beer geeks think about a brew.  The Kabawa had - in one user's opinion - "some caramel malt sweetness and toasted grain… a lightly sweet, even creamy coating of caramel… an increased brown bread quality… some light hops spice… a dry tea leaf feel."  And he didn't think it was all that complex.

Maybe I'll just stick with "gimme an IPA."  That's what I really want when I want a beer.


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Beer More Popular Than Wine, Per Instagram Study

https://drugabuse.com/featured/the-state-of-alcohol-in-america/

Wine And Mexican Food

Bayou Brew

In Arnaudville, Louisiana, Bayou Teche Brewing has a raft of different beers, some with catchy names like Cinco de Bayou and Swamp Thing.  The website says that their LA 31 Bierre Pale Ale is designed to go with "red beans and rice. Chicken and sausage jambalaya. Boiled crawfish, crawfish bisque and crawfish étouffée."  Pretty much everything Cajun and Creole, in other words.

They talk about the beer combining "Belgian-style malts and an ample blend of East Kent Golding and Mosaic hops. It's a bronze-colored pour with a biscuit malt center, fruity, earthy, and citrusy hop flavors and a gentle bitterness."

LA 31 Biere Pale Ale is named after state highway 31, which meanders nearly 55 miles between New Iberia and Opelousas in the swamps of southern Louisiana east of Lafayette.

The beer has a medium weight and is kinda bitter, offering a good dose of hops balanced with barley.  It's a good food beer and went perfectly well with a pizza from Domenica on Baronne Street in the New Orleans' Roosevelt Hotel.


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Generation Z Shuns Beer

Stone Suit

Canned Wine

From about 6 years back, a look at wine in cans.

Beer On Mars

Mom-In-Law Comes Through With Choice Stout

Old jokes about mothers-in-law don't apply here.  My wife's mom loads me up with booze at Christmas, for which I am grateful.  There were two nice bottles, one of gin and another of vodka, and she knew I liked craft beer so she threw one of those into the stocking.  It was an imperial stout that she probably picked up at random.

Or not. A true Las Vegas resident, Verna loves the trappings of Sin City, and a beer called Sin Tax surely beckoned her.

Handcrafted in Vista, California, north of San Diego and east of Oceanside, this beer comes from a great area for the craft style.  When I lived in San Diego decades ago, there weren't so many options, but what was there was choice.  Today, you can hardly miss with a San Diego County bottle or can.

Mother Earth Brew Company makes the Sin Tax Imperial Stout with "premium British crystal and roasted malts melded with a Maris Otter base and American hops."  It's dry at 8.1% abv and they call their flavor-laden creation a "guilty pleasure."  "Don’t let it fool you," they say.  "This is an imperial stout first and foremost.  The peanut butter is simply featured to augment what is already there…a fantastic example of a legendary beer style."

This crazy brew has a nose that knocked me down.  Shades of blackstrap molasses hit first, then brown sugar, then caramel, then coffee.  Talk about aromatic and expressive, this is it.  The medium mouthfeel isn't creamy, but almost - it's smooth and gentle.  Flavors of espresso, Mexican chocolate and cocoa beans fill the flavor profile with dessert ideas.  I had one large bottle, and it satisfied both my sweet tooth and my taste for beer.


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Wake Up And Smell The San Diego Stout

San Diego's Modern Times Beer is an inventive and committed craft brewery. I tried their Orderville IPA a bit ago and loved it. More good news: they make a terrific stout. Black House doesn't knock one over the head, but it sure knocked me out. It's light on its feet and laden with fragrance and taste. Alcohol hits 5.8% abv is this easy-drinking stout. They list the ingredients as kiln coffee malt, oats, pale chocolate malt, black malt, along with roasted barley, biscuit and crystal 60 malts. The coffee used was three-quarters Ethiopian and one-quarter Sumatran.

The Modern Times Black House stout is a must for coffee lovers. This oatmeal-style beer smells like a cup of very strong coffee. It's fairly light-bodied for a stout but carries the heaviest, darkest aromas and flavors. The sip brings not only coffee, but chocolate into the party. The mouthfeel is perfect for food, and it pairs well a fall-influenced roasted butternut squash as well as pan roasted chicken on toasted couscous.

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Kona Brewers Ride Wave Of Success

Started by father and son Cameron Healy and Spoon Khalsa, Kona Brewing Company is based on the western coast of the Big Island of Hawaii. A lot of people surf there, but even more drink beer. 1995 saw their first brew, Pacific Golden Ale, which is now known as Big Wave Golden Ale.

KBC brews their beer not just in Hawaii, but also in mainland locations that are close to their distribution centers. The water mineral levels at each brewery are adjusted to simulate the water used in Hawaii.

Sustainability is a watchword for the company, as they recycle everything from plastic cups to spent grain to air conditioner condensation. They also like to give back to the community and the world by supporting local interests like Bishop Museum and the Kokua Festival, and global ones like Sierra Club's Blue Water Campaign and Surfrider Organization.

Kona Brewing Company Big Wave Golden Ale is a light-bodied Ale with a golden hue that they say comes from caramel malt. The beer has a fresh, tropical nose with a hint of citrus and tastes smooth, with just a nod toward the Galaxy and Citra hops used in making it. It's very refreshing and goes great with chips and salsa or ahi poke. Or sausages, if you're in the mood. Alcohol is a low 4.4% abv, so you can have another one.


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San Diego Beer: Orderville IPA By Modern Times

You've probably experienced the same sort of thing that happened to San Diego’s Modern Times Beer, only maybe not with hops. The story of their Orderville IPA is all about great passion, the best intentions, bad luck and a happy ending. Er, a hoppy ending.

Their blog, by proprietor Jacob McKean, describes how they set out to make a "wet-hopped" beer, using freshly harvested, green Mosaic, Simcoe and Chinook hops. They intended to brew the beer and dry-hop it with those wet hops. Not being a brewer, I'm lost already, but they say it sounded cool at the time and I agree with them.

This is where things went wrong. I'll let McKean get all beer-nerdy again. "The harvest, of course, didn’t shake out at all as predicted, and we were forced to brew two entirely separate beers: one with wet Simcoe, another with wet Chinook. The wet Mosaic showed up late—naturally—so we dry-hopped the Simcoe beer with the wet Mosaic. But we ordered so much Mosaic that we literally couldn’t fit

anywhere near enough of it into the fermenter, so we filled the hopback with the wet Mosaic and recirculated the beer through it over and over and over and over again." Then the two beers were blended, and that's Orderville. It is, by their own description, a "completely absurd and radically inefficient" way to make beer. But it's a happy - and hoppy - ending.

This Point Loma beer is one of the most distinctive IPAs I've ever tasted. As an IPA true believer, even I recognize that the style tends to taste almost interchangeable at times. This one most certainly does not. The green hops give the beer a less "roasted" feel. The aroma is fresh and almost biting, less floral and more herbal. The flavor profile has a bit of a cantaloupe note amid the citrus, which is something I've never experienced before. It's dry, it's fantastic, it's food-friendly and it paired very well with a pepperoni flatbread.

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Stone Ruination Double IPA 2.0

Escondido's Stone Brewing has long been a favorite in Southern California. They are probably a favorite in other areas, too, but I don't know what their distribution is like. You have to feel like you've made a good beer choice at the market when the guy behind you in the checkout line says, "Mmm, Stone. Good stuff." I understand that women sometimes talk to each other in the checkout line, even in restrooms, but men as a rule don't, so it's high praise when they do.

Stone Ruination Double IPA 2.0 debuted in 2002 as a "liquid poem to the glory of the hop." They like to say they bow to both the beauty and the boldness of the little flower. They draw all the "piney, citrusy, tropical essence" of hops to make the craft beer lovers of today glad it's not the '70s anymore. For hops nerds, it's reportedly Centennial, Citra, Simcoe and Azacca hops that give Ruination its character.

Ruination's nose gives a refreshing blast of citrus and floral, with a hint of that lovely bitterness you await on the palate. When you sip it, or gulp it, depending on how thirsty you are, you get that pleasure. Flavor is what IPA is all about, and Ruination delivers. The foamy head dissipates medium-quickly and leaves nice traces on the glass. Call it ruination if you like. I call it refreshment.


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IPA: Redhook Long Hammer

Redhook Brewing was founded in Seattle in 1981, when beer was bad and everybody knew it. The craft beer movement was the best thing to ever happen to beer drinkers. Once I broadened my beer horizon with Guinness, Newcastle, Fuller's ESB and the like, I could only smh - if that abbreviation had existed then - that American brewers couldn't seem to get beer right. Yet they sold damn much of it.

Redhook was a favorite tap choice of mine in my San Diego years, of which there were only two. That handle seemed to be poking its head up from every bar in town, including the one across from my Pacific Beach apartment. I saw it a lot, and I called its name a lot.

Before that, in L.A., my drinking buddies and I had the idea that you could order any beer with the word "red" in its name and feel secure that it would satisfy. Red Stripe, Mendocino's Red Tail, San Diego's Karl Strauss Red Trolley - there were probably more that I don't remember. The trick worked until Michelob, I believe, came out with a red-branded beer of some sort, then Bud. The novelty didn't work anymore. But Seattle's Redhook was always reliable. Plus, it has a cool logo. Oh, and they make a Purple and Gold version which I suppose is in honor of the University of Washington Huskies, although I'm sure the NCAA would not sanction such a thing. The NFL might, but the Seahawks' colors were too ugly for a beer can. Full disclosure: Redhook does actually incorporate an approximation of that green not found in nature on their Long Hammer cans and bottles.

Redhook Long Hammer Dry Hopped IPA is an amber beer has a little oomph and a little less citrus than a typical India Pale Ale. The nose has a nutty, grainy texture - not really too floral at all. That's unusual in an IPA, which is usually hopped to the max. The Cascade hops used to make Long Hammer are administered with care and reason. It drinks smooth and easy, even when the chill has worn off a bit. A nice frothy head whips up on the pour and gets out of the way quickly. An earthy finish provides a nice memory. Alcohol at 6.2% abv means a couple of pints won't do you in. It hits me as a winter IPA, while the style typically makes me think of relief on a hot, sweaty summer day. This will do then, too.


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