Follow Sean Inman to the best in craft beer
The bottles of Yearling, Eagle Rock’s American Sour Red Ale may be topped with red wax but they should be covered in gold.
And tomorrow, July 6th you can taste the latest batch of the World Beer Cup 2016 Gold Medal winner. The “beer was aged in red wine barrels providing aromas of plum and sour cherry and flavors of ripe fruit and subtle caramel malt.”
Head over to the taproom for a taste and snacks and revel in the victory. More details can be found HERE.
Didn’t I just talk about Epic Brewing? Yup, but now they are releasing a canned IPA. I know you now think that I am crazy. What is so earth shattering about a canned IPA. Well, this one is Tart & Juicy. A Sour IPA. Combining the red hot IPA style with the orange hot Sour Style. Hopefully it will come in grapefruit flavor.
Personally, a Cuddlebug sounds more dangerous than a Sabre Toothed Squirrel.
But a sour blonde with both peaches and apricots sounds too delicious to pass up. And at $12 a bottle, it is on the easier to purchase side than others on the market.
If you are a stonefruit fan then head to Smog City tomorrow and pick up a bottle or two. And if they have any other sours on, give them a try too.
I must say that I do like currants more than Gooseberries but I am curious as how to either, let alone combined, will work in a sour. But Mammoth Brewing Company has their spin on it for their 2015 Harvest Series. I might just be adventurous to try it.
Rejoice all ye’ patient beer lovers for the Phantom Carriage has arrived! I have been waiting for this day since Requiem Stout from Gentleman Scholar arrived years back. But then Muis arrived and now the full Phantom Carriage deal is upon us in time for Christmas no less.
A great present for LA for sure.
Check it out as soon as you can (preferably with out of town guests) to show off the Bergman Blond sour and their cool cocktails…
..and you get to check out their even more cool glassware….
I finally broke down and brought up a Russian River beer, Supplication. Which the brewery website describes as a “Brown Ale aged in used Pinot Noir barrels from local Sonoma County wineries. It is aged for about 12 months with sour cherries, brettanomyces, lactobacillus, and pediococcus added to each barrel. Flavors from the cherries, Pinot Noir and oak balance each other nicely with a little funk from the brett.”
This beer has a 100% rating on Ratebeer. So it must be good. Here is my thumbnail review from 2010, “All I can say is TART. A great sipper filled with cherries in every sip. Only downside to me is that it really dries out the tongue. Had to have water handy to re-hydrate.”
The aroma of this beer is big. Kombucha style tartness just fills the nasal passages. This is, for sure, not a gateway sour. There is a bit of pie cherry in the nose but it is second fiddle to the sour.
There is a bit of Sweet Tart powdery sour notes in the first sip. Cherry is there as well. But there is something in the nose that just tastes off. Too vinegary at this point. If you search past the sour, there is a tiny bit of tannic flavor and a smidge of oak. But you gotta hunt that down.
The Verdict? I think this one passed prime and is sliding inexorably downward. The various bugs have gone too far with this particular bottle. Adding one off flavor that upsets the balance.
I was so busy reading the label of this 30 Years – 30 Beers collaboration between Widmer and Gigantic that I didn’t research the beer itself before taking a sip.
Boy, was I surprised because this is a tart and super fruity beer. I saw hoppy on the label and expected IPA but got a sour instead. Once that initial shock wore off, I was quite taken with this beer. Grapefruit pith, mango and fruit punch. Loads of acidity here too. The aroma carries no hint of it. Just barnyard funk. Twice I was lulled into thinking something else was coming.
Whatever position you hold in the craft v crafty debate, this beer should be tasted to be believed. Really top notch.
If you thought tickets to the Firestone Walker Invitational were hard to get and worth every penny then how about the special Barrellworks beers? One new one is coming out shortly, Agrestic which has been seen in the past but is now coming back in 375ml bottles. Believe it or not it is a weird spin off of a DBA base. Just with a bunch of what FW calls “a proprietary collection of microflora.”
Then of course aged for a bit and blended just so to the point where even super beer geeks are wondering what sort of magic they do. But that is not all….
Feral Vinifera
Feral Vinifera is an ultra-limited release also being liberated on September 20. Feral Vinifera was born of a collaborative effort with local grape growers and winemakers in Barrelworks’ backyard of the Santa Ynez Valley. Sauvignon Blanc, Chenin Blanc and Orange Muscat grapes were co-fermented with wheat-based wort, then inoculated with proprietary wild yeast to create this trailblazing hybrid.
SLOambic
SLOambic is Barrelworks’ foray into the funky world of lambic style beers. It was inoculated with brettanomyces lambicus, brettanomyces bruxellensis and lactobacillus, then infused with ollalieberries to create a distinctively, dry, cidery, fruity, vinuous and oh-so sour beer. November release date TBA.
El Gourdo
El Gourdo is what happens when the local pumpkin patch calls the barrelmeisters on the day after Halloween, asking if they want some orphaned gourds. Not only did the barrelmeisters take the leftover pumpkins last year, they roasted them in a pizza oven with brandy staves, bay leaf and walnuts before tossing them into a base wheat beer for secondary fermentation prior to oak barrel aging. We’ll just leave it at that for now. November release date TBA.
Reginald Brett
Big, malty, and alcoholic, this hefty brew is supported by a firm oaky backbone and slight tartness from its time in French oak barrels in the discreet company of a certain B. Lambicus. Scandalous! Release date TBA.
Brouwerij Lindemans is coming up from the cellar in April! I started with the Faro and now we tackle the Cuvee Renee. A refermented in the bottle Gueuze that the label declares “Improves in bottle with age”
I always dread corked bottles. You never know if the cork will behave or if there will be a geyser. But this cork came out easy and cleanly. No trouble at all. It pours a really clear orange with a bit of lacing around the edge of the glass after the initial pillow of foam recedes. The aroma is pure funk. I get grass, hay and barn wood. And this probably sounds strange but I also get that smell just before rain starts. Weird.
Boy, this a puckery inducing beer. My first thought was of sucking a lemon. It has that citrus note that is punctuated with tart. It is twisting my mouth into different shapes. It is really sharp at the front of the mouth which makes finding other notes a little harder. But I do get some oak wood notes. Very minor but there. A little bit of apple cider vinegar as well. I have had beers that are more sour but this is definitely at that end of the spectrum. Not an easy drinker and a sharp contrast to the sticky sweetness of the Faro from earlier this month.
Both were bought at the same time. So I will “assume” that they were close vintages. And yet they couldn’t be further apart to me. This is super tart and that doesn’t let up much as it warms either. In fact, I start to get more grapefruit pith notes now. My palate is in a state of sour shock.
The Verdict – Part of me thinks that this beer has turned a little too vinegary and that I may have held it a good half year too long. But the acid isn’t super high and I still do get some citrus notes and the barnyard funk is in full bloom. So, I am conflicted. Let’s split the difference and say that this would have been better back in January.
You will see semi-frequent posts about how I believe that craft beer and good food can be paired and now Mikkeller is putting his gypsy brewing stamp to it as well with the MAD project. He has teamed with Chef Jakob Mielcke to create a line of beers to pair with food specifically to very specific flavors. Such as….bitter, salt, sweet, sour and umami.
And here is how the Salt beer looks…
I would love to see a brewery and restaurant team up in LA and in every city and do this same sort of project.
http://madbeer.dk/?utm_source=RateBeer+Weekly&utm_campaign=24f16db828-rbweekly_83a3&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_33216a9626-24f16db828-307447785#!home