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Northern Monk comes to Paso Robles all the way from Leeds in England (where a few American footballers play).
Let’s pick a few beers that I hope to taste at the Invitational next month…
Faith Hazy Pale Ale – “A Hazy Pale Ale packed with soft fruit flavours.”
Don’t Mess with Yorkshire Pale Ale – “with rhubarb and custard”
Heathen NE IPA – “One for the late nights and Hazy mornings.”
Northern Star Porter – chocolate, caramel biscuit “Smooth, creamy and rich.”
This is the official beer for the 2023 Firestone Walker Invitational. Alvarado Street is the dance partner and the beer is out in the wild already so those who did not get tickets can enjoy a piece of the festival.
This westie pours a really light yellow. Typical for Firestone Walker it is a fairly subdued ABV which is good. Light pine and orange peel on the nose of this lightly bitter beer. Tastes close to sessionable to me but others not as hop assaulted might find it more bitter. Super well-made, bright and simple down the middle IPA. This will really work well in the sunny Paso Robles June at festival time as well as summer anywhere else too.
Firestone Walker ain’t resting on their IPA laurels, and here is an upcoming new IPA from the Central Coast brewery….
Each year, Enegren Brewing releases a spring American Reinheitsgebot beer in collaboration with another pilsner friendly brewery, this year it is Firestone Walker.
“American Reinheitsgebot 2023 is a German Style Pilsner made with all American ingredients including malt from Admiral Maltings out of Alameda, CA and American grown HBC 1134 Hops, which are an American twist on classic Noble hops.”
Time passes by so damn fast. Reading the evolution of the Firestone Walker – Propagator anniversary IPA’s is getting longer.
So here is a shortened piece from the FW website – “For Gen-7, we decided on a massively hoppy Double Cold IPA at 8.7% ABV brewed with pilsner malt, rice, and dextrose, which gives it a bright golden color and relatively light and dry profile for such a big beer. We built the hop blend on the classic Gen-1 mix of Citra and Mosaic, this time blending Citra with Mosaic Cryo and Mosaic Incognito in the whirlpool. Incognito is a newer type of varietal hop extract that allows us to pack in even more mosaic flavor in the brewhouse without overloading our kettles with green matter.
For the dry hop, we layered on more Citra and Mosaic Cryo, plus Strata CGX (another cryo-like concentrated hop pellet) and Rakau from New Zealand. This blend gives Gen-7 a punchy mix of citrus, stone fruit, melon, and berry flavors.”
First off, do not sleep on Firestone Walker’s Parabola but I want to talk about 20 years and the Parabola variant, Paraboloid.
P-loid was “aged in a special selection of premium 20-year-old Elijah Craig bourbon barrels.” From my medium low bourbon knowledge, bourbons over 10 years don’t necessarily translate into better than younger than 10 years. I do like “regular” Elijah Craig so, maybe, the 20 will be really good and will add the scrumptious sounding flavors that the brewery describes, “mellow hints of oak, fudge and chocolate brownie.”
We start February with a 2022 beer from Firestone Walker, Houses in Motion.
“…whiskey barrel-aged wheat wine ale with coffee, cocoa nibs, and cinnamon,”
Boy do the whiskey aromas blast when you open the cap on this 2022 beer. It pours a bubbly dark red color. My initial reaction is not coffee or cinnamon but German chocolate cake. Getting coconut and whiskey. There is sweetness abounding here. As it warms, you get some tiny bits of coffee and tinier bits of spice. By the end there is a little brown sugar.
Firestone Walker is a big campus in Paso Robles and the barrel-aging area is a sight to behold. Let’s throw another big deal out there…
Getting to 10,000 anything is amazing. Especially with a beer style like bitter that does not get a lot of traction in a brewing schedule filled with 805 and Mind Haze.
Calwise Spirits is just down Ramada from Firestone Walker and they are releasing a gin finished in DBA barrels. Below is the fascinating journey from idea to finished gin.
“To help create “Old Tom” Big Sur Gin, Firestone Walker generated a mash of traditional brewing grains with a complement of wine grape juice, all fermented with native yeast and bacteria. This base was then distilled by Calwise, imparting a unique imprint into the flavor profile of the original Big Sur Gin.
Then, in the established Big Sur Gin fashion, Bergh infused the gin with organic wild herbs that are largely native to California’s iconic Big Sur coastline, including white sage, yerba santa, bay, fennel and elderberry as well as the essential juniper.
“We also enhanced the traditional recipe by including botanicals such as coriander and orange peel, which were suggested by Brewmaster Matt Brynildson,” Bergh said. “We added rose petal as an ode to David Walker’s British roots.”
Bergh worked with Brynildson, Sensory Research Analyst Craig Thomas and the Firestone Walker brewing team to create the mash, acquire the right barrels and guide both versions of Old Tom Big Sur Gin to fruition.
The resulting gins provide both common and contrasting qualities. The main version of “Old Tom” Big Sur gin is fragrant and elegant, while the version matured in DBA barrels has a richer, almost whiskey-like color and taste. “
…to stay? Looks like the debate as to where a Cold IPA lands in beer style taxonomy hasn’t hurt or stopped breweries from producing more, and here is another from Firestone Walker (a blog favorite brewery)…
..though still not a fan of the artwork palette or style, I do like the Escher touch tied to the name which is a nod to the what is it really talk.