Boulevard Brewing Co - Saison Brett

"Saison-Brett, based on our very popular Tank 7, is assertively dry hopped, then bottle conditioned with various yeasts, including Brettanomyces, a wild strain that imparts a distinctive earthy quality. Though this farmhouse ale was given three months of bottle age prior to release, further cellaring will continue to enhance the “Brett” character, if that's what you're after."

I don't have, and was not able to find, much information on what the seasonal production/release of this beer is like, but I can tell you that it sees distribution mainly in the Midwest, with a few scattered coastal/near coastal states. California is not among them, so I received this in a trade. It's 8.5% ABV, and this bottle is relatively fresh.

Appearance: The photo makes it look more orange than it actually is. In person, it's a hazy golden blonde color, and the head leaves thick, dense lacing on the glass and itself remains pretty foamy on top of the layer of beer throughout my sipping session.

Smell: Lemongrass, ester qualities like apple and pear. There is definite rubber-Brett-funk, particularly the more that the beer warms up. There is surprisingly little straight-up earthiness; the aroma is mostly fruit with the funky Brett overtone.

Taste: This beer tastes a lot like how it smells -- like juicy apple and pear, with lemongrass again and a bit more of a straight lemon "zing", like zest rather than pulp. Toward the back end of the palate is where the Brett character really pulls focus, introducing the barnyard and tire funkiness and finishing crisply on the palate.

Mouthfeel: Saisons are often light and moderately dry; that is definitely the case here, and the addition of Brett helps to create an even more dry finish. Which if you've read any of my entries before, you know I love.

Overall: It's still been really hot in LA. It finally seems like it's starting to cool down, as of today, but it was hitting 90 and above basically every day for the last three weeks. BRUTAL! In such temperatures, saisons are a great go-to beer, as they are light and crisp on the palate, and for me there is a quintessential summery-ness to them that feels so appropriate for warm weather consumption. This is a fantastic saison, with the citrus and acidic fruit really shining, and the Brett addition adds a little something extra to the flavor. It's balanced perfectly and continues to develop as I have been sipping it over the course of the evening. If you're in a state where this is available, I'd highly recommend it!

4.5/5

Mammoth Brewing - Apocalypse Lager (Bluesapalooza 2012)

Say the brewers: "We are trying to appease the Mayan gods with this light-colored, bold flavored strong lager so they kill us quickly. Apocalypse beer was made using malted barley, flaked maize, white wheat, Owens Valley honey, organic raw blue agave nectar, Indian paintbrush essence and flowers, hops, Mexican lager yeast, and mystical Palo Santo wood. Don't drink the Kool-Aid. Drink up the Apocalypse."

It may have been a long day of drinking, but that description is hilarious. Why aren't more brewers making "the world is ending in 2012" beers? Anyway, clearly a lot went into this American Pale Lager from Mammoth, which ends up at 7.5% ABV -- not bad for a lager! This was a special brew created for the annual Bluesapalooza in Mammoth Lakes, CA during the summer, and it's a brewery-only offering for as long as it's available. Having tried it up tap when I was up there a month or so ago, I knew I'd want to take home a bottle and write about it; it's definitely one of the more unique and tasty lagers I've ever had. And look at that bottle art! Kinda cool, right?

Appearance: Clear and honey-colored, with a head that pours to about two fingers in height, before receding to a thin layer of foam on top of the beer and leaving rings of lacing on the sides of the glass.

Smell: Some phenolic notes, slightly medicinal or bandaid-ish, with more prominent bready characteristics from the grain. There is also some spiciness and a bit of dank grassy earth from the yeast and hops, definite floral notes, and even a scent that seems a bit like coconut.

Taste: The most prominent flavors are honey, grain, a hint of spicy floral that seems a bit like dandelion. As the beer warms, I get a bit more of the agave flavor, and it becomes a lot more rich and warming at the front of the beer, but still remains grainy and light at the back end.

Mouthfeel: Extremely smooth and creamy, but also light in body with a moderately dry finish. This is the type of mouthfeel I expect from a lager, and it delivers. Very refreshing.

Overall: Mammoth's intention here was definitely to make a full-flavored lager, and they absolutely succeeded. They packed a lot of dimension into this beer, even while retaining the lightness and sometimes grainy characteristic I often associate with this category of beer. Even as I recommend this beer, I'm aware that it's not an easy "get" for anyone, really, but I acknowledge that I was fortunate to try it. The more that I have Mammoth's beer, and particularly their seasonal offerings, the more that I am impressed by what they accomplish. As the only brewery for miles upon miles around, it would be really easy for them to rest on their laurels; instead, they continually push themselves and produce interesting beers featuring local ingredients. Anyway, I really enjoyed this beer, particularly as it's been hot as all get out in Los Angeles, and this was a perfect beer that offered deep flavor while not feeling too heavy or strong.

4/5

LA Beer Week - 9/24/12 - 9/30/12

Let's look now at the week coming up, where I will again give you my picks for LA Beer Week! Let me remind you that I'm tending to stay on my side of town, but please check out the whole calendar to see all of the events and figure out what appeals most to you!

Monday, September 24: Dogfish Head Ancient Ales Dinner at Little Bear
Quite honestly, I'm too broke to go to this. This meal of beer and food pairing will be $75 a head, and it includes five courses which sound absolutely delicious. As a fan of the food at Little Bear, and of DFH's ancient ales, this is something I myself would love to go to, but shall probably have to live vicariously through those who do go. If you go, make sure to let me know how it was!

Wednesday, September 26: FiftyFifty Night at Verdugo Bar
I am really looking forward to this one. Though I haven't officially reviewed any FiftyFifty beers yet on this blog, I am a huge fan of their Eclipse, a barrel-aged imperial stout that is released in December every year. Outside of the Eclipse, which sees limited distribution in California, we don't really see FiftyFifty beers down here in SoCal much, so this will be a fantastic opportunity to try some of those other beers that I wouldn't have an opportunity to without trekking up to their brewpub in Truckee, CA. (Which I would love to do eventually, but haven't had a chance to yet.)

Thursday, September 27: This is a toss-up between the Port/Lost Abbey night at Surly Goat and the Firestone Walker pig roast at King's Row.
Either one could be great; the P/LA event will be more strictly beer-focused, with the Surly Goat having an array of some of the brewers' more specialty offerings, including some aged vintages. The FW event, on the other hand, appears to be a relatively inexpensive dinner option, including a pig roast in FW beer, plus mac and cheese, and beer on the side. At the moment, I'm leaning more toward the food event, but I'll have to see where the night takes me!

Saturday, September 29: Flight Night at 38 Degrees
This event is no joke. Several brewers, tons of beer. I'm definitely going to have to rally if I want to do this the night before the closing event at Union Station, but from everything I hear this is not a party to be missed.

Sunday, September 30: Aaaaand this one is obvious. The Festival at Union Station features ~70 localish breweries, as well as a bunch of LA's famous food trucks, all together in an all you can drink madhouse, cleverly located on the public transit hub of downtown. Who is getting nowhere near a car that day? This girl!

My wallet is going to hurt at the end of this week, but as a beer lover, I'd be nuts to not take advantage of some of these awesome events. If anyone else is planning on going to any of these, I'd love to say hello and talk beer with you.

LA Beer Week - Brewer's Brunch at Eagle Rock Brewery

I just returned from the Brewer's Brunch at Eagle Rock Brewery, where Chef Jerry was serving up great brunch out of his food truck pop-up Tot Box (operating out of the Deano's Deli truck today.) I tried the Heisenberg tots, which consisted of tater tots with a variety of Italian sausage and maple syrup. If you like salty-sweet, it's a slam dunk. But, this is a beer blog, so I'd be remiss if I didn't also mention the wonderful variety of Eagle Rock beers on tap today:

• Solidarity, both the "regular" version and the vanilla bean version on nitro -- this is their unofficial "breakfast beer," as I like to think of it. A black mild with a nice roasty flavor that is low in ABV
• Manifesto -- their version of a wit, a great light option with floral notes provided by the addition of rose petals
• Populist -- their west coast style IPA; you'll get citrus and resin out of this
• Revolution -- their XPA, which displays the character of the grain in nice balance with the hops

The above are their year-round offerings; in addition they also had some seasonal selections:

• Eradicator Jr -- the bock they brewed for the GABF ProAm category, with a sweet nutty character
• Imperialist -- the first DIPA they've brewed, it's a huge 10% hoppy delight
• Unity -- the official beer of LA Beer Week, this year Unity is a "Berliner Rye," or a twist on the Berliner Weiss style that is brewed with rye rather than wheat. Unity also has the addition of prickly pear, which lends a crisp fruit note on top of the tartness from the traditional BW style.

If you try nothing else new this week, make sure you grab the Unity when you see it on tap. This light, refreshing beer could not be more appropriate for the scorching heat of the past few weeks here in LA. I'm going to review it later this week in more detail, but before I get to it I want to let everyone out there know that they should be on the lookout for it!

The brunch is officially done by now, but the taproom at ERB is open until 6pm on Sundays and 4pm-10pm Wednesday through Saturday, which should give you plenty of opportunities to try Unity before the closing festival next weekend!

LA Beer Week Starts TOMORROW!

Hey! So did you know my Aroma Coma review was my 100th post on the blog? Not quite my 100th review, but that's probably coming up since I haven't done that many non-review posts! I'll probably stick a fashionable confetti GIF or something to mark the "milestone" review, or something. Anyway -- onward to the important news, which is that LA Beer Week is back! Here are some of the events I'm going to try to hit up this weekend:

TONIGHT (Wednesday, September 19th): Women's Beer Forum at Eagle Rock Brewery
Though Beer Week doesn't officially kick off until tomorrow, Ting at ERB has done a Women's Forum once a month for about a year and a half, encouraging women to come and try flights of different styles of beer. She conceived the forum as a way to encourage women to find out what they like in a beer, and to try to develop a vocabulary around how to describe what those taste preferences are! It's a great opportunity for lady beer novices and "experts" to come try different beers, and tonight the focus will be on "LA Beer," including Unity, ERB's annual LA Beer Week Brew.

Thursday, September 20th: Dogfish Head invades Little Tokyo at Far Bar
I love the Far Bar, a tucked away little spot with a great outdoor patio in Little Tokyo. I don't always give a lot of love to Dogfish Head beers on this blog, but I credit them with being some of the first beers I tried as I got into craft beer. I think overall they produce solid, innovative beers, and the "tap takeover" includes 120 Minute IPA and Burton Baton, two beers we don't see too often out here in California.

On Friday, September 21st:, I'm going to take it easy.

Saturday, September 22nd: I'm going to be at UCLA vs. Oregon St football game during the day, so I'm not holding my breath for having a ton of energy left to hit up a lot of beer week events after tailgating. Since it's during the game, I definitely won't be able to make the Saturday with Kern River at Far Bar, but that would be a top pick for the day. KRBC is a fantastic small brewery, and their beers are in such high demand out here that getting a taste of any of their stuff at all without having to drive to Kernville is a freaking treat. If I can make it to anything in the evening, I might want to try to make it out to one of the Walker's Wild Ride events, where rare sours are going to be randomly tapped by out-of-a-hat (or similarly random) drawing at various bars around LA.

Sunday, September 23rd: I'm definitely interested in hitting up the Brewer's Brunch at Eagle Rock Brewery, both for the opportunity to hang out at my favorite LA craft brewery again, and for the (sure to be) delicious food that Jerry, family of the brewery owners, is going to be cooking. Guy is damn talented. I may head later to Beer Belly to participate in Crap for Craft, a charmingly named opportunity to trade in craft beer for local craft beer at the bar. Their food is also great...

I'll check back in early next week with some more events I'd like to attend. You should definitely check out The Calendar for yourselves, as there are tons of events every day, and I'm selecting events partially based on my geography. There will be something that interests you, whether it's drink specials at bars or more structured "learning" or "meet and greet" activities, and the events are all over the city! 

Will I be seeing you out at Beer Week?

Drake's Brewing Co - Aroma Coma

Drake's says: "Aroma Coma India Pale Ale – 6.75% ABV, 75 IBUs —Our summer seasonal India Pale Ale delivers an olfactory hop assault that lives up to its name. Made with almost all 2-row barley malt and a touch of Caramalt for body, abundant Cascade, Chinook, CTZ, and Citra hops add huge citrus, pine, and floral notes. A double round of dry-hopping then amps up the aroma to a new level. Breathe in the hops, and enjoy."

This beer is distributed only in CA, from the small brewery out of San Leandro, CA. Like their blurb says, it's summer only. I'm finally getting to it after a rash of trying an insane amount of great IPAs that were released this summer. Fortunately, it's only about a month young, so it still has fantastic fresh hop flavor and an inviting hoppy aroma as well.

Appearance: Rusty orange, with a modest head of about two fingers that leaves stringy lacing along the sides of the glass.

Smell: Great citrus aroma, with tangerine coming across particularly. There are also pungent hits of grapefruit, and a slight dank undertone. The nose is basically all bright hops -- it smells great.

Taste: Much like on the nose, there are great citrus notes here, including orange and grapefruit. I also get a few more tropical-like flavors-- perhaps mango and passion fruit? There is a bit of resin and biscuit on the palate that isn't as evident from the nose, and the dankness I smelled doesn't really make an appearance in the taste, either -- it's all juicy, fruity hops with a slight resin character that seems to add sturdiness.

Mouthfeel: Aroma Coma is light to medium bodied and is neither particularly dry nor particularly slick. It's a pretty standard mouthfeel for this style, and I have no complaints.

Overall: This is a seriously good IPA. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: there a finite amount of flavors that one typically picks up from an IPA, so just by looking at tasting notes it's difficult to pick up which ones are great and which ones are so-so. It comes down to things like balance, and the particular composition of the flavors, and the complexity. Having a beer that smells as good as it tastes is a huge plus too! Suffice it to say, this hit all the right notes for me, especially considering it's not an Imperial or Double IPA, and that it has a slightly lower ABV. It just goes to show that it doesn't necessarily need to be bigger and stronger to have great flavor!

4.5/5

Jack's Abby Brewing - Hoponius Union

Jack's Abby says: "This lager harmoniously combines lager yeast fermentation and west coast IPA hops. Our India style Pale Lager is like a traditional IPA but with a twist - it’s fermented cold and aged for extended periods. A blend of classic American hops creates a huge tropical fruit and citrusy hop aroma. A dry finish accentuates the pleasant bitterness and hop profile. Hoponius Union uses locally grown dehulled spelt from MA."

Here's an interesting idea: an "India Pale Lager." It comes off a lot like an IPA, but there are very, very subtle differences that I was only really able to pick up on as the beer warmed up a little. This IPL is 6.7% ABV and is available only in Massachusetts, so I acquired it through a trade.

Appearance: Bright orange, with a modest head of about 2 fingers that leaves some lacing on the sides of the glass.

Smell: A lot of the typical IPA aromas here -- citrus and a little bit of grass/pine, with a hint of a biscuity malt base underneath.

Taste: It tastes like how it smells, with those citrus and resin notes, but there is also a bit of mango creating an additional tropical fruit dimension. There is a bit of sweet caramel malt that comes through at the end, too. In almost every way, this tastes like an IPA. The only difference I can notice, and this might even just be my palate playing tricks on me rather than any kind of real difference, is that it just seems to finish a bit more crisp or clean. This isn't the same as the "dry" finish I talk about a lot in the mouthfeel. When I am tasting a beer for review, I try to pick up flavors from the time the beer first hits my tongue until after I've swallowed it, all from the time the beer has first come out of the fridge to when it's been sitting with me for close to an hour. Many times, as IPAs warm, the alcohol seems to come out more, or the hops seem to lose their fruit characteristics and become more bitter/astringent. In any case, certain flavors, to me, often become more pronounced. This beer does the opposite: it calms down as it warms. I have literally no idea if this has anything to do with it being a lager, or if that is just a quality of this particular beer, but as I was sitting and trying to think of differences between this and the IPAs I typically drink, that's what I came up with. Make of that what you will.

Mouthfeel: Light in body, with moderate carbonation, and a finish that neither slick nor dry. It's nice, overall.

Overall: This was a pretty refreshing, drinkable beer, and I'm pleased with the results of this style experiment. I didn't get much out of this that I couldn't get out of any number of IPAs that are available to me in California, but it was unquestionably tasty and a pretty good choice for a summer beer.

3.5/5

Stone Brewing Co - 16th Anniversary IPA

Stone says: "This year our brewing team was inspired by some exotic-ish additions of the lemony persuasion. Yes, it's a Double IPA (can you really say you're surprised?), but as we strive to do with all our Stone Anniversary Ales of the let's-take-this-IPA-in-a-new-direction variety, we've brewed up a Stone-worthy divergence from tradition. The amount of rye malt we used isn't quite enough to warrant the appellation "Rye IPA," but it still adds hints of spiciness that contrast deliciously with the tropical fruit flavors and aromas of the Amarillo and Calypso hops. Add a few European specialty malts, some lemon verbena, and three more hop varieties to the mix, and you have a highly complex brew melding both bitter and fruity hop notes with rich toasted malt character punctuated by nuances of spicy rye and subtle lemon."

This DIPA is 10% ABV, distributed nationwide, and will be available basically until it sells out.

Appearance: The picture makes it look much more red than it actually is, but there still is a red hue to this beer that is more apparent than usual in IPAs. The head poured to about 1.5 fingers and dissipated, leaving no lacing or rings on the glass. It's slightly cloudy and overall color is probably amber, but with that slight red tone I mentioned earlier.

Smell: Spice and herbal notes are dominant on the nose, and some tropical fruit aromas from the hops come in toward the end. I'd say the additions (rye, lemon verbena) make up the majority of the smell of this beer.

Taste: Even though I'm sure Stone hopped the crap out of this beer, it's definitely a "different" IPA. Much like on the nose, herbal and spice characteristics are dominant here, making this appear to be a very yeast-forward beer (whereas most IPAs, especially double IPAs, are hop-forward.) I can almost taste what seems like flavors of sage and thyme, and the lemon definitely comes through as well. The hop notes are mostly tropical, like mango. There isn't a lot of sweetness from any perceptible malt backbone, but the beer does seem pretty well balanced.

Mouthfeel: Slightly slick and oily, and medium bodied. This is a weaker aspect of the beer. My mouth feels a bit coated after I sip.

Overall: Stone hit it out of the park on two IPAs they released this summer: Ruination 10 and Enjoy By 9.21.12. I wouldn't say this is an "afterthought," since they definitely seem to have put some effort into making this a unique brew, but so soon after the former two, it pales in comparison. It's still a decent IPA, especially if you like herbal notes in your beer. I do think they achieved what they were going for: this is a deceptively strong DIPA (I didn't mention it before, but the alcohol is pretty well masked) that is unique and flavorful. As far as true IPA mastery goes, though, it's not my favorite.

3/5

Soon: LA BEER WEEK!

Fellow beer friends! Did you know LA Beer Week is coming up on us?

It's a glorious week filled with events held at different locales around the city, where craft beer admirers, newbies, and devotees alike have the opportunity to attend tastings, pairings, evenings with brewmasters and brewery owners, and other beer-related shenanigans all over the city, every day for 10 days (liberties are taken with "week," here!)

For last year's Beer Week, some of my favorite events included the kick-off festival at Naja's Place, featuring a TON of Stone beers, and a Trappist pairing with artisanal gourmet sausage at Wurstküche Venice. I also helped out at the 3rd annual Beer Float Showdown at Eagle Rock Brewery:

    Unfortunately, I missed the main event: the closing celebration at Union Station. I was away at a department retreat for school. But not this year! Beer Week falls in September this year, which has no conflicts with any retreat or conflicts I'll need to go to! So I'm looking forward to getting my fill of tasty craft beer at LA's most dedicated beer spots.

Remember that thing I said about possibly posting more about events? This may begin my foray into that, if I can remain coherent enough to take decent notes...