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.

Port Brewing - Hop 15

I have reviewed this once before, but I wanted to revisit because of my strong suspicion that it was older and rather stale by the time I opened it. In the interest of doing a more fair review, I have selected a bottle that was bottled this month, released last week, and should therefore be pretty darn fresh.

Port says of Hop 15: "First brewed in 2002 to celebrate the 15th Anniversary of the Pizza Port in Solana Beach, Hop 15 was imagined and designed by Tomme Arthur and Jeff Bagby as a celebration of 15 years of “Good Beer Brings Good Cheer.”
Hop 15 has 15 different hop varieties added to the beer every 15 minutes. Over the years, Hop 15 has racked up numerous accolades. It has won two silver medals at the Great American Beer Festival. It also was named Alpha King in 2004 and 2008, and received a first place award at the Bistro Double IPA beer festival in Hayward, CA."

As I mentioned previously, this is labeled a DIPA at 9.7-10% ABV. It's a "seasonal" or rotating release according to their website, and it does tend to disappear from shelves fairly quickly (the stale bottle I had last time was my own fault, as I let it sit in the fridge too long. I have since learned my lesson and do not commit such crimes against IPAs any longer.) Port/Lost Abbey beers have scattered limited distribution around the US, so if you're lucky enough to see fresh Port IPAs on the shelves, they're generally great quality, relatively inexpensive, and overall worth a purchase. Now -- on to the (re-)review.

Appearance: What I wrote before applies: "This beer has tons of visible carbonation, with about 2-3 fingers of head that leaves tons of sticky lacing on the glass. It is darkly honey colored."

Smell: Ah, now this is much better -- extremely dank and resinous, with notes of citrus (particularly pineapple.) Pine is most upfront of everything, though. Very different from the flowery/sweet smell and taste of the stale version.

Taste: Some citrus and tropical fruit, but still mostly dominated by sticky pine and grass. Having had a fresh version and a stale version, I now appreciate the malt backbone that was more predominant earlier, as it lends a balance to this beer that prevents the huge hop character from getting too sharp and medicinal.

Mouthfeel: Pretty big and thick, with moderate carbonation. It's pretty heavy overall. I like a slightly lighter or more dry mouthfeel, but it's not a dealbreaker.

Overall: I'm glad I came back to this, as this really is a great DIPA and my review did not do it justice before. It definitely falls into that typical West Coast style of bold hop flavors and (when fresh) a barely perceptible malt base. Next in the freshness quest is probably to try it on tap! So this gets bumped up a full point from last time.

4/5

Port Brewing - Hop 15

DIPA, 10% ABV

Appearance: This beer has tons of visible carbonation, with about 2-3 fingers of head that leaves tons of sticky lacing on the glass. It is darkly honey colored.

Smell: It smells strongly of hops, with hints of orange blossom and a slight sweetness and breadiness.

Taste: There is a definite hop bite when the beer first hits the palate, and a vague floral element is present throughout the body of the beer. The finish is mostly dominated by a strong malty backbone.

Mouthfeel: This is a thick beer in the mouth, with an almost sticky presence on the tongue. It's lightened mostly by the extra carbonation, but the sweet finish definitely assists with the thick quality of it.

Overall:  I wasn't a huge fan of this double IPA, but it's more likely due to my personal IPA preferences than to the quality of the beer itself. I prefer my IPAs to not have such a strong malty character, because I feel like it can overwhelm some of the more subtle characteristics that the hop varietals bring forth. That's what happened here -- I got plenty of hop bite, followed by plenty of sweetness, but any fruit and/or floral characteristics were completely lost on me. Though overall the beer was well-balanced between bitter and sweet, it wasn't as subtle and complex as other DIPAs I've had that I like better.

3/5