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Firestone Walker’s flagship sour Primal Elements is back with a new edition for fall.
From the Barrelworks wild ale facility, Primal Elements 2024 is aged “on French oak while balancing the sun-kissed sweetness of pineapple with the exotic tartness of guava.”
Throughout the month, I will be highlighting some Festbiers from Los Angeles ( and adjacent county ) breweries that will be readily available for your Germanic beer needs, here is post # 1…
Around the horn, clockwise, we have Oaktoberfest, a classic from Firestone Walker, Bear Ears from Brouwerij West, Huftgold from El Segundo Brewing and Das Hof from Hermosa Brewing.
There are some weird bedfellows in craft beer collaborations and here is another one not on my bingo card as Firestone Walker has teamed with Ernie Ball, they of the guitar strings for a West Coast DIPA…
Here is your first look at the label for XXVIII – 2024 Firestone Walker Anniversary blend. I will update you when the blend details are available but know that if you are in California or the FW distribution network that you should get a bottle or two even without knowing what is inside the bottle.
This year the special Firestone Walker Invitational collaboration beer partner is Half Acre Beer. And the beer is Trailing West Pilsner.
First off, I am so glad any time a summer beer festival chooses a lighter beer style for their marquee beer. It is just smart. That being said, this is the first year of the FWIBF beers that I have been really m’eh on.
Maybe my expectations were too high. Maybe past beers have set a high bar. Either way this beer is not a favorite of mine. Firstly, it is labeled as a pilsner but it seems more a lager to me so right from the jump, I am on the back foot. It is also got a weird mix of corn and minerality that doesn’t mesh for me. If they called it a midwest lager, I would have rated it higher. But if pilsner was the target, they missed.
Considering it is just four letters, Pivo has spawned quite a few collaborative beers that play with the name for the much loved Firestone Walker ode to Italian Pilsner.
And now there is another one that we might see here in Los Angeles since Creature Comforts is here as well as Georgia.
Each year Firestone Walker finds a partner and concocts their own Festbier and the style has run the beer gamut. Now we know this years beer is….
“Trailing West is this year’s Firestone Walker Invitational Beer Festival signature, collaborative release. A limited-edition pilsner made with our friends at Half Acre Beer, the recipe pairs a decoction mash of an Austrian barley variety over 100 years old with old-world Hersbrucker and Hallertaur Mittelfruh hops.”
Seems like forever ago when Firestone Walker started their quarterly hop adventure, Luponic Distortion. I believe I collected them all and even reviewed quite a few as well.
LD was a rotating IPA with each version utilizing different hops on the same base beer. Now, it is back as part of a variety pack in cans or bottles.
The new blue canned Distortion is pretty close to pale ale strength and pours an orange-y / yellow color. Aroma is quite strong. I set the glass down and could smell it from over a foot away. I get a bit of sweet tart followed by a bready malt note in equal measure. Berry fruit in particular on the second sip and a bit of a rough hop bite which I like. But still quite light on the palate and the malt keeps this from tasting watery which is an issue I have encountered a bit lately.
Seeing as how a N/A Parabola would not be the best course of action, Firestone Walker has made the much more logical choice of creating a non-alcoholic version of 805, with the clever insertion of the word Zero for the number Zero.
Could be a popular beer this summer, up and down the Central Coast.
The Short Lived Series from MadeWest Brewing has thankfully not been short lived and the latest has arrived with a gator on it and the latest partner, Firestone Walker.
It is a Cold IPA hopped with Mosaic, HBC 1019 and Nelson and the description is “bright hop character full of citrus and tropical fruit with notes of orange, honeydew and peach.”