Great American West Brew Tour – Installment I

Installment I: 8/30/2007
Jackson, Wyoming, to LoLo Hot Springs, Montana

The Great American West Brew Tour was supposed to be Phase 3 of a multi-part vacation beginning with backpacking in the Grand Tetons (Phase 1) and driving of the Lewis & Clark trail (Phase 2). However, due to a series of mishaps (a cancelled flight, a broken stove, a hungry bear, a bigoted cop, and a wrong turn down Idaho 93) and a general enthusiasm for beer, the Brew Tour started to take over the trip.  For your beer-drinking pleasure, I present…

Grand Teton Brewing Company (Victor, ID)

This place is top-notch. First of all, they were open when my sister, Melissa, and I blew by at 9:50am and then pulled a rapid-fire U-turn to go check it out.

The proprietors, what we met of them, were friendly. Unfortunately, most of the crew was in Yakima, WA, for hops school, a situation we were to encounter several times this week. Mostly, I was just happy not to be judged for wanting to sample beer before 10am. They brew about 5,000 barrels a year, with a max capacity of about 17,000. They have been around since 1988, but originally as the Otto Brothers Brewing Company, and originally in Wilson, WY, until they had to move to cheaper land across the Idaho border to expand.

Nothing we tasted here was bland or boring, and a few are destined to become some of my all-time favorites.

Sure, the Au Naturale Organic Blonde Ale wasn’t exactly my cup of tea, or beer for that matter, but it had a depth of sweet malti-ness lacking in most other blonde ales. And the seasonal beer, the Marzen Lager Fest Beer was solid, tasty, but not a category-defining beer. It had a reddish-amber color with a sweet candy-like caramel flavor from the Vienna malts used, complemented by subtle hopping.

However, the true stand-outs were the Bitch Creek ESB and the Oud Bruin Belgian Sour.  The Bitch Creek was excellent, a perfect example of very strong malt and very strong hop flavors in perfect balance with one another. The malts gave the beer a dark amber color (mahogany in Grand Teton’s words) and the dark, sweet flavors of molasses and toffee. The citrus and pine scented hops (Galena, Chinook, and Centennial, with Centennial dry-hopping) were assertive in smell and taste, rising up to greet my nose before I could even take a taste. If I could buy this regularly, this would always be in my fridge. Luckily, Grand Tetons say they are expanding California distribution rapidly.

The Oud Bruin on the other hand, is a cellar reserve that will be gone once the last bottles of this batch have been drunk. Made with American barley, German melanoidin malt, and English Kent Goldings hops, this beer had a bright red color and a fruity-sour taste that was unlike anything I’ve drunk before. Sure, it had subtle characteristics of the typical Belgian spicy fruitiness, as a result of Flemish yeast blend used, but this was the first Belgian I’ve had in which the yeast wasn’t the show-stopper. This beer was a perfect example of ‘complexity’ in which the malt sweetness, bottle-conditioned sour-fruitiness (think tart berries: raspberries & cherries), and the mild pumpkin-pie spices of the yeast take their turns in impressing the drinker. I couldn’t drink this everyday, it’s too sweet, too low in carbonation, but it is a beer I’d like to re-drink on special occasions, and one I’d serve to wine drinkers.

Madison River Brewing Company (Belgrade, MT)

This young brewery was mediocre as far as the beer goes, but a fantastic locals destination. The back wall features 160 hand-blown glass mugs for their regulars to drink from, a colorful and cozy backdrop. I dream of the day when Toronado will let me leave a mug.  Unfortunately, cute as it was, breweries must be judged by their beer.

The only brew I’d re-order was the Hefeweizen, which I enjoyed for its devotion to the German style of hefes. It was all bananas and bubble-gum in smell. If you ever taste it, don’t add the traditional lemon or you’ll mask all that makes this hefeweizen special. Of course, I’d rather have an Ayinger or a Schneider any day, but I was happily surprised to find this type of hefeweizen in the middle of Montana.

The one other brew of note was the Oaked Honey Rye. This seasonal beer is a version of their usual Honey Rye aged in oak barrels (though I can’t say for how long). I’m pretty sure they successfully achieved the taste they were going for, I’m just not sure it’s one I’m interested in drinking. The oak strongly reminded me of a Chardonnay, even though this brew clearly tasted much more like beer than wine.

Most of the others were boring (original Honey Rye, Hopper Pale Ale, Hopjuice IPA) or downright bad (the “Irresistible Amber”, which was in fact quite resistible).

After this brief pit-stop, we were off to stand at the Three Forks of the Missouri (the end of the Missouri River and a pivotal moment in the Lewis & Clark journey), and haul ass to the LoLo Hot Springs before they closed. Unfortunately, this rushing around earned my sister the attentions of an odd Monantanan police officer who: A) Asked us if we were all citizens of the USA, skeptically, B) Asked us if we had been smoking marijuana (because he had smelled “something funny” in our car, despite the fact that the entire hillside was on fire, which turned everyone’s eyes red and made the entire county smell like ash, and C) Demanded his payment for the ticket, $20, in cash! First of all, what speeding ticket is only $20, and second of all, since when do you have to pay tickets in cash on the spot??? So…we may have been scammed, but at least we made it to the hot springs in time for a 15 minute soak, despite the reservations of springs’ proprietor, Old Patrick Swayze. Which, by the way, was entirely appropriate since the entire LoLo Hot Springs compound was eerily reminiscent of Kellerman’s Family Camp.Stay tuned for Installment II: LoLo Hot Springs, Montana, to Portland, Oregon…