Just Fred — Beer of the Week

Beer of the Week is something I like to pull out every once in a while around here when something impresses me enough, for whatever reason, that it deserves a column of its own.  There are lots of fabulous beers that never get named Beer of the Week, and lots of weeks that never get honored with a beer, but that’s often because there is so much else swirling around the beer (a whole rest of a flight of beers to be drunk, a brewery to be toured, a festival to attend, beer friends to be made) that any one beer just becomes a small part of the overall story.   Beer of the Week is a simpler concept: one beer, one review, end of story.  Indeed, it’s where I started with this blog, and nice returning point every once in a while.

This week, we have a BotW because I made a resolution lately to stop being a stockpiler and to drink my ’special’ stuff when I feel like it, because, hey, life is short.  The exception, and of course there is always an exception, are the beers that I am deliberately aging.  However, I differentiate that scenario from just accidentally holding onto a beer for 3+ months because the time never seems right for cracking it open.  Even the name of this post’s BotW seems unassuming and weeknight appropriate: Fred.  Just Fred.  Ok, actually it’s Hair of the Dog’s Fred.  Still, what kind of name is that for a beer? All of their people-named beers seem to lend themselves to confusion.  Mentioning enthusiastically in front of my grandmas that “I really love Fred!” would get them so excited about the almost-given-up-on prospect of great-grandchildren that I might suddenly be the favorite grandkid again… that is, until they heard me praise Fred’s “spiciness”, at which point I imagine they’d feel intensely uncomfortable, never mind the consequences of letting slip that “I had Fred after dinner last night.” 

Seriously though, this is one hell of a beer.  It was light amber colored, with a thick, long lasting off-white head.  I poured it into tumblers (we don’t have a lot glassware at chez Hopster) for myself and my roommate Kathleen, and each had over a finger’s worth of foam that persisted as we drank the entire bottle.  Or rather, as I proceeded to drink the entire bottle after commandeering
Kathleen’s share when we realized how hoppy this was (hops just aren’t her thing). 

The aroma alone is pretty intoxicating, with intense floral and green hop scents and powerful baking spice aromas from the yeast and rye malt.  There was also another smell that came through “loud and clear”, actually the first thing I smelled upon pouring the beer, and that was sour green apple.  This is usually the smell of the chemical acetaldehyde, which is a flaw in just about all styles of beer (Except Budweiser, but then, who reads The Thirsty Hopster and drinks Budweiser?  No one I hope.  And if you do, let me know because your next craft beer is on me.  I just can’t in good conscience let you continue in this vein.  It’s like those mothers who get arrested when Child Protective Services finds out they’ve been off galavanting around and letting their kids forage in the garbage.  At least this is my understanding from what I see on Law And Order: SVU.  So please, think of my clean criminal record.  Let’s keep it that way — don’t drink garbage).  Anyway, the point is, the acetaldehyde was unmistakable.  It’s usually either a sign of a sanitation problem or a very young beer.  Considering (A) everything else that was so right about this beer, and (B) Hair of the Dog’s all around stellar reputation, I want to give this the benefit of the doubt and assume that it is something that will die down with more age or that was specific to this batch, or this crate, and the way it was handled.

Getting past the aroma and into the beer itself was like going down a deeper and deeper rabbit hole.  It’s a whopping 10%, and heavier in body than most 10%ers, with a thick, oily mouth-filling texture and noticeable alcohol warmth.  The hops & spice continue their dual reign in the flavor. and I imagine it’s those 10 varieties of hops in here that give the beer it’s “oiliness.”  I keep using that word, and it probably sounds off-putting, but I mean it as a sincere compliment.  If I had distilled hop oils in a vial, this is what I imagine that they’d taste and smell like, all flowers and nectar and resin.  Except, the bitterness wasn’t over-the-top.  It’s not benign at 65 IBUs, that’s for sure, but it shares time with the other elements of the beer.  The rye is more assertive in the flavor than in the aroma, overtaking some of the other spice components.  I think Hair of the Dog knows how to work with rye better than any other brewery I can think of, and I wish they’d put out even more rye beers. 

In all, this beer had just about everything I want in a beer: a dense and persistent head without a bursting and seltzer-y carbonation, a layered aroma that pulls in the best that each of beer’s three non-water ingredients has to offer, a luxuriously thick texture, a pungent and varied use of hops that avoids brutal bitterness, and a collection of spice flavors that shifts and shimmers and only gets stronger as the beer warms up.  Try it if you can find it, but be warned, even just one bottle was enough to entirely bowl over my expectations and nearly bowl over the rest of me.

It’s a wrap: Belgian fusion tasting at The Trappist

Nicole and Chuck pouring the beers

This past Sunday was the 5^th installment of the Thirsty Hopster Tasting Series, and the first time we’ve partnered up with a local bar to enhance the experience. Initially, I thought ‘enhance the experience’ would just mean that everyone would be guaranteed a seat and there’d be no more discreetly hustling crates of beer to and from the park or makeshift seats fashioned out of couch cushions in my living room. But no! Chuck and Nicole from The Trappist went above and beyond: opening up the bar early especially for us, putting together and awesome plate of cheese, figs, olives, and other snacks, and providing better tasting commentary than I could on my best day.

The theme was a loose one I came up with when wondering about the two way traffic of ideas (or lack thereof) between Belgian and American brewers. Belgian and Belgian-style beers have gotten big in the US lately, with imports booming and domestic brewers innovating on classic Belgian styles. What I haven’t heard as much about is an impetus within the Belgian brewing scene to pick up on what the Americans are up to, and to innovate on American styles. So, we set out to find the best beers brewed by Belgian brewers in non-Belgian styles (generally American or British).

The group discussing the beers

Before diving into the beers themselves, I think the best insight of the day on this Americo-Belgian beer trend came from Tim  from William’s Brewing in San Leandro. He noted that when we Americans brew Belgian-style beers, we usually mean that we use their yeasts. But when Belgians brew American-style beers, they usually use… their yeasts. You’d think that if yeasts are what “define” one family of beers from another that a Belgian brewing an American-style beer would use American yeasts, but nope! They change up just about everything else except the yeast. This seems rather obvious on one hand, but struck me as I kept thinking about it as pretty important. There’s no particular reason why a Belgian-brewed beer has to use a traditionally Belgian yeast strain. On one hand, I think this means that there’s an untapped source of innovation there for Belgian brewers (brewing with other yeasts), so long as they think their customers show any kind demand for the crisp flavors of low-ester yeasts. On the other hand, it means there’s also a potential for a global convergence on high-ester Belgian style yeasts, if we adopt them at such a rate that they become the standard in every geography. I don’t really believe this will happen, especially considering how tiny the craft beer market still is in the US. I’m just throwing it out there as a possibility. In reality, I think that if anything the selection of craft brews styles and flavors out there will continue to diversify, both in the US and globally.

I have no official tasting notes from the event, but I will give a few words on each of the brews:

• Belgian Scotch Ales
  • Scotch Silly from Brasserie de Silly: Deep clear amber color, think off-white head. Very malty and very sweet, as expected with a Scotch, but gets its Belgian twist in its exceptional fruitiness. For me, the high sweetness and high fruit flavors together were a little overwhelming. I usually like either a strong dose of one or the other, but both together tasted cloying. 8.0% ABV


Miriam & Ben (who came in from NYC for the tasting! ok, not only for the tasting...)

• Belgian Stouts
  • Troubadour Oscura from Brouwerij De Musketiers: Very light color (medium amber) and lightness of roast (small bit on the second half of the taste) for a stout. Probably more similar to the prior beer (Scotch) than the following one (Export Stout). More drinkable than the Scotch Silly, but still showing strong Belgian-style esters. 8.5% ABV
  • De Dolle Extra Export Stout from De Dolle Brouwers: My favorite of the first three (the malt-driven beers). The carbonation rush was intense at first, bursting even, which was too much in my opinion, but it calmed down as the glass warmed. Nicole gave us some great tasting notes of which I only remember ‘pine’ and ‘licorice’, and in fact I could taste the licorice in the middle of the taste. Darker and roastier than the Troubadour, this one is unmistakably a stout. The alcohol is more noticeable as well, even though these two aren’t far apart in ABV. 9.0% ABV.
• Belgian IPAs
  • Gouden Carolus Hopsinjoor from Brouwerij Het Anker: This was a total about-face from the stouts, but there was really no good choice in terms of whether to drink IPAs before stouts or stouts before IPAs. It was very light in color for an IPA, straw colored, but not light in flavor. It had a really aromatic nose, full of perfume-y and earth-y hops and a big lemon kick. It was only mildly bitter, so many of the non-IPA drinkers proclaimed it the first IPA they ever enjoyed. It was a really nice departure from West Coast IPAs that often all have the same light amber color, pine and grapefruit aroma, and bitter flavor. I love those WCIPAs (Is this an acronym yet? It should be.), but I like most of all when someone does something new that’s just as good as the old stand by’s, if not better. 8.0% ABV.
  • Houblon Chouffe Dobbelen IPA Tripel from Brasserie d’Achouffe: Ah, at this point, I was long caught up in conversation, and failed to take mental notes. However, I will make it up to you with another recommendation…

Me & Michael, kicking back from our talking and picture-taking roles respectively

I’ve been hearing scuttlebutt for months now about Linden Street Brewery, a new distribution brewery going in over in Oakland, not far from The Trappist. Apparently they specialize in California Common style beers, which got me pretty excited since this is a style that needs a little more attention. It’s an ale-lager hybrid style, using lager yeasts fermenting at ale temperatures (which are higher), that Anchor rescued from oblivion. To-date, Anchor Steam is still the only commercial example you can find reliably, though there are others that pop up in smaller brewpubs here and there, or as seasonal releases. I had previously emailed the owner of Linden Street to find out what their deal is, and how an enthusiastic beer drinker could get a hold of their brews, but unfortunately he told me that their ‘unofficial’ Friday get-togethers had gotten too big, and there would be no more until their official opening. So, you can imagine how excited I was to find not one, but two Linden Street beers on tap at The Trappist, and that both were California Common style beers. One was a traditional light ale-lager hybrid, while the other was black. I tasted a few sips of them both and quickly snapped up a glass of the Black. It was incredible: dark, smoky, and heavily roasted, but still really crisp and refreshing. If you like Moonlight Brewing’s Death and Taxes, you’ll like this as well. I just hope they have their official opening soon so that I can get it at more places! In the meantime, make your way over to The Trappist fast, and see for yourself!

Beer Chef Slow Food Weekend Stone Dinner

If you are at all interested in food culture or in eco-sustainability and the whole green movement, it’s hard to miss all the hubbub that has been brewing over the huge Slow Food Nation event in town this weekend.  I won’t be able to make it, unfortunately, since I’ll be in LA for a wedding.  However, much as I would love to try all the slow bites on offer in the tasting expo over the weekend, at least know I can taste some slow brews Thursday night at Bruce Paton’s dinner.

Dinner with the Beer Chef is a near-monthly event put on by Bruce Paton, the Executive Chef at the Cathedral Hill Hotel.  It’s a multi-course dinner with dishes he has prepared to match beers from a particular craft brewer that will be served with each course. His Five Guys and a Barrel dinner in April was one of the most spectacular beer dinners I’ve been lucky enough to attend.

This Thursday, August 28th, the Dinner with the Beer Chef is slow food themed, in preparation for a weekend that will be full of slow food events. The beers served will be from Stone, a San Diego-area brewery known for their hoppy IPAs that has built a shrine to organic, local, sustainable foods and beer in their beautiful ‘Bistro and World Gardens’ in Escondido, CA.  The food will be a awesome-sounding three course menu prepared with seasonal ingredients from more local, Northern California farms than I can name here.  Check it out for yourself.  I’m not sure if there are spaces left at this dinner, but if it sounds good to you, it’s worth going to the Beer Chef’s website where you can make a reservation or get more information about future events.

Barrelful of brews: delayed tasting notes on Marin Brewing & Firestone

It’s been several days since the Marin Brewing Wood Aged Beer night at Toronado last Wednesday and the Firestone Night at City Beer Store last Thursday, but my homebrewing fiascos left me too worn out to write these up right away.  I can’t let them slip by unnoticed though, as the mix of beers I tried was too unique (sometimes in a good way, sometimes not so much…) not to review them.

First, there were the Marin Brewing Company beers.  Toronado was serving four of them, all aged in oak barrels.  These were:

• Grand Funk: Marin’s Star Brew Wheatwine aged for 2.5 years in Chardonnay barrels with Brettanomyces yeast.
• Super Funk: A blend of the Grand Funk (above) and Green Flash Brewing Company’s Super Freak (the Green Flash Le Freak, a Belgian-style IPA, aged in Grenache barrels with Brettanomyces yeast)
• Quadruple: Strong, dark, Belgian-style beer aged in a Maker’s Mark barrel with Brettanomyces yeast
• White Knuckle: Double IPA

Well, I’m sure you can guess where I started.  If you’re thinking Super Funk, you’re right – I love beers with complicated pedigrees.  However, I wish I could have gotten it as part of a flight of 5 beers and worked my way up to the final product.  If I could have had (1) the Marin Star Brew, (2) the Marin Grand Funk based on the Star Brew, (3) the Green Flash Le Freak, (4) the Green Flash Super Freak based on Le Freak, and (5) the Marin-Green Flash Super Funk based on Grand Funk and Super Freak, I would have been a very happy lady.  That said, after taking a sip of this beer, I was already a pretty happy lady.  Sure, this was partly just my relief at having something to sip after a marathon 11 hour brewing session, but it was also the smooth, oaky flavors of this blended brew.  The aroma was awesome, tons of oak and lots of grape.  There are a fair number of beers aged in wine barrels out there now, but I loved how this one balanced two very different wine flavors.  The Grenache grapes from the Super Freak came through in the nose: big fruit flavor that couldn’t be mistaken for anything other than grape, peppery spice, and a light dustiness.  Then the Chardonnay character from the Grand Funk came through in the taste, woody and smooth.  Maybe this is really more about oak that so often comes through strong in Chardonnay wines than the Chardonnay grapes themselves, but this was still a beer highly reminiscent of a Chardonnay wine.  Neither the Brettanomyces sourness nor funkiness came through very clearly — they were more subtle elements in the general mesh of tastes this beer had to offer.  Though I generally love big, bold flavors (especially when we are talking sourness or funkiness in a Brett beer), this was one time that I think the subtlety of the Brett was a good move.  This wine already had so many flavors layered on top of one another that it didn’t need another big “whoo-hoo, notice me!” flavor pushing up to the front, asking for attention.  I loved it and just wished I had gotten a 12 oz instead of an 8 oz pour.

Unfortunately, I can’t as readily endorse the Quadruple, which I tried next.  Strong dark, Belgian-style ales are a favorite of mine, as evidenced by my recent raving about Lost Abbey Judgment Day.  This one was just too sweet for my taste though, leaving me reluctant to finish even my tiny glass.  It had complexity, I’ll give it that, but not enough ‘bite’ from roast, or sourness, or alcohol to cut through the sweetness.  It was very fruity, with an unusual fruit profile for a strong dark ale, with light, tropical fruit scents and flavors being much more prominent than the typical raisin-y and figgy dark fruits.  In particular, there was a pineapple note that came through in the middle of the taste.  I’d say this is probably the result of either the Maker’s Mark barrels, the particular strain of Belgian yeast (some put off pineapple flavors), or both.  The taste ended with some light vanilla notes and Brett funk that I enjoyed.  Still, the sweetness was too much for me and I probably wouldn’t order this one again for myself.

On Thursday, ever dutiful beer journalist that I am, I headed out for another round of tasting, this time at City Beer Store for a lineup of Firestone Walker beers.  I’m only sorry I couldn’t stay longer because they had all of my favorites on tap.  They had:

• Lil’ Opal: Saison - a favorite saison of mine, previously reviewed here
• Double Barrel Ale: An English-style pale ale fermented in oak that is one of only two ‘non-India’ Pale Ales that I drink regularly, previously reviewed here
• Walker’s Reserve Porter: A Porter (obviously) that, like the DBA, is also one of only two Porters I really like, previously reviewed here
• Big Opal: Wheatwine (!! I love this style, but almost no one brews them, and I had been waiting to try this beer for months now)
• Abacus: Barleywine, previously reviewed here
• Parabola: Imperial Stout

Again, being fairly predictable, I went straight for the big beers.  I got a flight of 5 oz pours of each of the Big Opal, the Abacus, and the Parabola.  It was a wonderful way to sample the beers, since I could try the wheatwine and barleywine side-by-side, and let the Parabola warm up while I finished those first two.  Before jumping into each individual beer, though, it’s worth noting that the defining characteristic of all three is their viscosity.  These are heavy, syrup-y thick, full bodied beers – and to my mind, that’s what makes them exceptional above all else.  I liked the Big Opal and Abacus the best, though I’m probably alone in this opinion since everyone else filling up City Beer Store was savoring their glasses of Parabola and raving about it.  I did like Parabola, but favored the other two just a bit more, in part because the Parabola wasn’t different enough from the Abacus for my taste.

The Big Opal was smooth and creamy, with the big mouth filling viscosity I just mentioned.  It was a rich golden color and sweet without being very fruity.  Instead, it’s got some light caramel, some wheat spice and a bit of vanilla that probably comes from the oak.  It’s made with 50% wheat malt, of which half is torrified wheat, meaning that kernels of wheat are heated until they pop.  I’m guessing this might be part of the secret of the body of this beer, since torrified wheat generally adds to both the body and head retention of a beer.  This is something I’d drink like a desert wine: in small quantities with something creamy and rich.

The Abacus had rum-raisin aroma, full of dark fruits and booze.  As I moved from the aroma to the taste, the flavors shifted a bit towards chocolate and raisins, though the high ABV is still clearly apparent.  It has oxidized flavors or bourbon or brandy from its aging that I especially liked.  I started out at the beginning of the hour liking the Big Opal the best, but by the end, the Abacus edged it out for the #1 spot.

The Parabola was much like the Abacus in that it was also rummy and raisin-y, though definitely a few shades darker and with a roasted grain flavor that differentiated it from the barleywine.  However, as the barleywine isn’t particularly hoppy barleywine, and the imperial stout isn’t a particularly roasty stout, they both start to converge on a similar malt-y, syrupy, dark fruity flavor profile, of which I like the barleywine version a bit better.  This may just be because I like a lot of roast in my stouts.

FEmalt Enthusiasts: Adventures in homebrewing

Gail and I have been planning to homebrew together for months, but with both of our busy schedules, it just wasn’t possible… until yesterday! Now that I’ve got a little extra time on my hands and Gail was able to take a half-day off work, we resolved to get down to some serious business.

The original inspiration for this plan was the Queen of Beer competition, open only to female homebrewers. Since we’re pretty much the only female homebrewers we know in this area, and since we’re both beginners at this, we decided to band together. Now of course, neither of us has any lack of enthusiasm for big, fancy beers, so we picked an odd concept (to remain a surprise until the beer is ready), and then started modifying the heck out of our original, modest recipe. Suggestions started flying around fast: “What if we throw honey in it?” Or, “Why don’t we just put a pinch of special spice in at the end?” Or, “Oooh, let’s just throw some Brett into it and hold it for a year. No, I know, we’ll take it to my cousin’s farm and let it sit in the open and spontaneously ferment!” Needless to say, I think our enthusiasm outran our talent at this stage in the game. We reigned ourselves in a bit and settled on a formula that is still pretty interesting and unusual, and ought to have been completely manageable…

Yet, as I’ve found every time I’ve brewed: What can go wrong, will go wrong. I had made a few adjustments to my cache of equipment, trading up to a carboy from a bucket, and buying the colander I so desperately needed next time. I even had the foresight to test my outside camp stove to make sure I had gas left (plenty) and to make sure the burner was working (just fine). What we didn’t count on, however, was that over the course of the day, the pressure in the gas line from the propane tank to the stove would go lower and lower due to a leak somewhere in the line. This was probably highly dangerous, but at the time, we mostly thought it was highly annoying since our wort took forever to reach boiling again after we added our extract. We never did get it just right, but we’ll just have to wait and see how it affects the beer.

Still, I’m proud of us. I got to practice some new techniques (e.g., making a yeast starter) and picked up a lot of science from Gail, who knows her brewing chemistry back and forth. And of course, we didn’t take it all too seriously, and went out to Toronado afterwards to reward ourselves with a beer that didn’t require 10.5 hours of pacing my kitchen.

I’m going to let the picture captions tell most of the story since I was pretty diligent about documenting the process this time. All times listed below are approximate, to the best of my memory from yesterday.

11:00am Getting ready to make the yeast starter

11:15am The malt preparation for the starter a minute or two before it foamed all over the stove

11:40am The pivotal moment -- Getting ready to pitch in the yeast

12:30pm We've got fermenting action! Look at the bubble of plastic wrap on top of the jar!

2:15pm For the first of many times yesterday, Gail checks to see if the water is hot enough yet. Nope, not yet!

2:30pm The water finally reached 158 F and we started steeping our specialty grains

2:30pm We bundle up our steeping grains so they retain their heat

2:45pm During the steep, we weigh out our malt. We had half a pound more than we needed, due to one of our crafty substitutions, so we use my bathroom scale in a way its manufacturers probably never intended

3:00pm While the grain is steeping, we also measure and mark off 1-gallon marks on my carboy

3:15pm When the grain is done steeping, we pour off the wort and Gail sparges (rinses more sugar off) the spent grains

4:00pm Having brought the wort to a boil, we add in our malt extract. The stove must have blown out 5 times while getting the wort to boil. Little did we know this was only the beginning...

4:30pm Still not boiling. We're not really worried yet. But we should be...

5:00pm Still not boiling. We decide the problem is the shelter and so we add some modifications to better hide the stove from the wind

5:30pm Still not boiling. When in doubt, we go with plan B: Drink beer.

8:00pm There are no pictures from hour of "the boil" (and I use that term VERY loosely) because Gail went home in deperation to find what she describes as 'a small torch for melting wax off cross-country skis' that we may be able to heat the sides of the pot with to encourage it to boil harder. By the time she finds parking on her way back, the boil is over. This was one of the saddest moments.

11:00pm The wort needed 3 hours to chill down to 68 F, so that we could siphon it into the carboy and pitch in our yeast starter. This is what is left over after the siphoning. The malt sock contains our secret ingredient!

11:00pm The wort, fresh out of the kettle and into the carboy

11:10pm The wort, after being topped up to 5 gallons

11:30pm All done! The yeast has been pitched and the carboy plugged. There was a moment of panic during the carboy sealing. The stopper I bought at Brewcraft mysteriously disappeared at some point during our brewing marathon and Gail had driven home (again!) to get hers. When I tried to fit it in the carboy though, it kept popping out. I had a moment of "All these hours and the beer is going to go bad because we can't seal it off?!?!?!" Then google came to my rescue. Apparently all I needed to do was dry the plug and the carboy so they wouldn't be slippery. Phew. Disaster averted.

11:40pm The brewers celebrate with a well earned beer at Toronado

+1 Day 9:30am It's fermenting! We've got bubbles racing through our blowoff tube. That's something at least!