Beer of the Fortnight 09/04/07 – 09/16/07

I interrupt the long delayed publication of the final installments of the Great American West Brewery Tour to bring you this beer note. I meant to spend this time today publishing Installment IV, but, alas, I have forgotten to bring my notes from that trip up here to Seattle with me. However, being in Seattle and all, during Oktoberfest no less, I have plenty else on which to report.  This has been a bountiful weekend of beer, including:

• Elysian Brewing Company (brewpub) – Friday night
• UW Tailgate – Saturday morning
• Washington Beer Commission Oktoberfest – Saturday afternoon
• Brouwer’s (beer bar) – Saturday evening. 

I think it is safe to say that after the day we had yesterday, there will be no more beer drinking today.

Elysian Brewing Company, Capital Hill, Seattle, WA

This was one of the best brewpubs I have ever sampled. I think it may be rivaled only by Bridgeport in Portland and Magnolia in San Francisco.

The crowd was: me, Allie, Melissa, Julia, & later Michael. I ordered the sampler tray, which came with 5 tastes: 3 of their regular pours, a seasonal, and a ‘bartender’s choice’. Usually when bars serve a sample that doesn’t include all of their beers – they leave off the good ones and sneak in their pilsner, something decent, and something experimental that they push onto sampler trays because no one wants to order a full glass of it. Not at Elysian!

This tray came with:

• The Immortal IPA
• The Wise ESB
• Perseus Porter
• Bartender’s Choice: Bete Blanche Belgian Trippel
• Seasonal: Night Owl Pumpkin Ale

Each beer was better than the last. I wasn’t taking formal notes, but I can tell you that I don’t need notes to remember that every beer was impressive. The Pumpkin Ale managed to be very pumpkin-y and spicy, without losing its beer-ness. It was not one of the most spiced pumpkin beers I’ve had, but the spice flavors weren’t subtle or hidden either, it definitely struck the right balance in the spice department. Julia says it is now her #1 favorite beer; I just hope she can find a replacement for it before the season ends.

Given my biases, it is probably no surprise that I loved the ESB best. I just think a well-made ESB very hard to top. IPAs don’t have the same depth of malt flavor, and ambers and nut browns taste cloying after the crisp hop zing of an ESB.

That said, I would be hard pressed to call a single style my favorite. But I can tell you that this is my favorite beer time of year because 1) There are so many well done pumpkin ales, 2) porters and stouts are finding their ways back onto the taps but the IPAs are still around, and 3) it’s marzen season!

I don’t know why so many breweries seem to have more success in the fruit/vegetable beer department with pumpkin than they do with fruit. I think a lot of the fruit beers end up sickeningly sweet, puckeringly sour, or distressingly more like soda than beer. Maybe it is because the pumpkin pie flavor is more spicy and savory than sweet, but pumpkin ales seem to be the novice brewer’s best shot at getting it right.

UW Tailgate

Not much to report here. Of course, there were the obligatory coolers full of keystone. And of course, we anticipated this and packed a backpack full of: Kona’s Wailua Wheat, Laughing Dog Huckleberry Ale, New Belgium’s 1554, North Coast’s Old #38, and some cider for Melissa.

I was bummed because I was wearing my new North Coast t-shirt and 2 minutes after I got to the tailgate I bit into a sausage that ended up being a lot juicier than I anticipated. I not only burned my face, but got a stain right on the front of my shirt. Luckily, I had anticipated something along these lines, given that this was a tailgate after all, and was wearing the North Coast shirt at the tailgate because I was saving my Magic Hat shirt for later.

Washington Beer Commission Oktoberfest

The BEST beer event I have ever been to. Ok, sure, the SF International Beer Festival has more selection, but it is so crowded and stuffy, and fratty. This was outdoor in Saint Edwards State Park, and it was a BEAUTIFUL day. At their longest, lines for beer were 2–3 people long, but most booths had no line most of the time. There were 30 different breweries, each serving 2 beers, and since all the breweries were from Washington, there were very few that I had tried before, so there were more than enough new beers to try. The best part is that almost every brewery was serving a fall seasonal brew of some kind, be it pumpkin or marzen, but the breweries were serving a wide variety of styles on their second taps.

Plus, we got some tasty brats and beef stroganoff at the Wooly Wooly Good Food Hungarian stand. Though as the Seattleites noted, we were missing the Wallingford Wurst Festival, which was regrettable considering the considerable effort the Wurst committee had put into plastering Fremont with posters for their event, and the effort Allie had expended in reading the posters every time she drove by them for the past month.

We tried 30 beers all together, but I only have notes on 18 beers. I imagine you can understand how it might get hard to be precise from beer 19 onward. When possible, we tried to drink similar beers head to head for comparison.

HARVEST ALES

These are generally faux-Oktoberfest beers. They aim for a marzen (Oktoberfest) taste brewed into an ale rather than a lager. They are closest to amber/red/pale ales with the toasty malt character of marzens and moderate to high hops. We tried:

• Hale’s: Best of the harvest ales, with a nice lacey head, rich red coloring, and grapefruit hop flavor
• Boundary Bay: Dark amber, maltiest of the bunch with good toast flavor, with an after flavor like a brown ale
• Water Street: Light amber, very hoppy, but watery and bland (despite the hops)

MARZENS / OKTOBERFESTS

So, I may have to eat (or drink, as appropriate) my own words about lagers, because I love marzens. But, they are darker and richer than most lagers, with higher alcohol content, and much fuller flavor.

They are malty, with a mildly sweet toasted malt flavor. They best part is that they don’t have the cloying malt sweetness of a Dubbel or a Bock. The German versions have mild to moderate hope flavor, but California versions are often a lot hoppier (perhaps creating the resemblance to ESBs that makes me love these so much).

We tried the following, but sadly, I have no notes. 

• Alpine
• Anacortes
• Baron
• Fish
• Ram
• Skagit

PUMPKIN ALES

• Elliot Bay: Sweet, both very pumpkin-y and very spicy
• Elysian: See above for a full description, very pumpkin-y, moderately spicy

PORTERS

We tried:

• Harmon Vanilla: fantastic! This had delicious strong vanilla flavor, full of spice, almost chai-like, with subtle carbonation
• Snoqualmie: best of the traditional porters, with big body, slight refreshing acidity, and a moderate coffee flavor; this was Julia’s favorite as well
• Flyer’s: very carbonated and dry, but not very flavorful
• Snipes: dry and very nutty with high carbonation and subtle chocolate flavor

OTHER DARK BEERS

• Iron Horse Quilter’s Irish Death (sweet stout): I fully believe this was what it was supposed to be, but I’m pretty sure I’m not a huge fan of what it was supposed to be. It was SO sweet, and thick, it was kind of sickening.
• Northern Lights Chocolate Dunkel: This had a great noticeable chocolate flavor, but it didn’t taste like a dunkel, much more like a porter. I loved a good dunkel and this just didn’t have the characteristics of true German dunkels, it could have been any dark beer.
• Pike Double Brown Ale: This was a solid but not special beer, with good nut flavor
• Port Townsend Black Bart: This was horrendous! It was extremely sour, like something gone rotten. I’ve looked it up online, but it is neither on their website, nor Beer Advocate. It was supposed to be a dark German ale. I guess it was supposed to be a dunkel, but whatever it was, it was bad!

DOUBLE IPAS

• Ram Hop King: Best of the IPAs! Full bodied with balanced hops with carbonation that is lively but not so strong to distract from the tasted of the beer.
• Water Street Balls to the Wahlstrom: This was ok, but it had a few flaws, and there are so many GREAT IPAs that I see no reason to drink it again. It had a bitter/sour aftertaste and a watery taste up front and no fragrant hops smell

AMBERS

• Maritime Nightwatch Dark Amber: My notes are barely intelligible on this one. All I wrote are dark amber color, low carbonation, moderate malt flavor.
• Mac & Jack’s African Amber: Unremarkable. Moderate malt flavor, caramel-y. High carbonation.

OTHER

• Iron Horse Saison Farmhouse Ale: Light and delicious, deceptively high in alcohol content. This was the most drinkable saison I’ve ever had. The server (who was quite attractive, enough to make me go back for my only seconds of the day) explained that they purposely aimed to make a less syrupy and high alcohol beer than a typical saison so that it could be served in more restaurants.

Brouwer’s

I expected to love this place, but it had its ups and downs. The space was nice, not too crowded or loud. The french fries were really good, and the waitress was very attentive.

The beer list was extensive, but uneven. They had about 50+ beers on tap, but they were almost all IPAs and variations thereon. I know this was because it was their Hop Festival weekend, and you know I love IPAs, but I believe that they could have spared 10 or 20 taps for a broad variety of styles and still have done the IPA theme quite well with the remaining 30+ taps. I mean, we spent all afternoon drinking beer and we didn’t manage to taste more than 30 beers during that time, so I fail to see the point in having only 50+ IPAs on tap and only 3 or 4 token non-IPAs.

The bottled list was several pages long in small print, but it was almost entirely Belgians, without descriptions or categorization. Unless the beer’s name described the style, or you were familiar with the beer, there was no way to tell what you might be ordering. This might not have been so bad, but attentive as the waitress was, she knew nothing about beer, so she wasn’t very helpful in navigating the beer list.

A fantastic start, but it’d be a hell of a lot better with more selection beyond IPAs and Belgians, and more information about the beers on their list.

Allie, Melissa, Julia & I met up with Julia’s roommate Andrew and her friend Stephanie. Ziad and his Scottish friend, whose name I feel terrible about not remembering at this moment, joined us after the first round.

I had an IPA whose name I didn’t catch when the waitress recommended it. It was ok, but weak. The hops could have been more fragrant and it lacked any kind of malt backbone whatsoever.

I finished with the Petrus Tripel. It was tasty, but I barely remember as it was the very end of a long beer-filled day.

Anyway, thank you Seattle! I will be back soon!

And now, I am off to see 3:10 to Yuma…mmm…Christian Bale….