BrewDog and Mikkeller, Devine Rebel

The collaboration is all the rage these days.  Hopefully, you've all at least had a chance to taste one of  Stone's many beers from their collaboration series, which includes breweries like Ballast Point, Nogne O, BrewDog, Dogfishead, Victory, Jolly Pumpkin, and many other notable brewers.  But it's not just brewers that collaborating these days.  Some of you were probably lucky enough to check out the ColLAboration event at Tony's this past weekend. ColLaboration is a series of pop-up mobile craft beer gardens where true beer enthusiasts can gather and enjoy the best in brews under the warm California sun.  It's led by some of the best beer bars in the city joining forces: Verdugo/Surly Goat, Blue Palms, 38 Degrees, and Tony's/Mohawk Bend.  You can check out their page here.  So it seems only fitting that tonight I'm drinking one of craft beer's biggest collaborators and extreme beer makers, Mikkeller and BrewDog.

For those that don't know, and there can't be many of you if you've even read my blog once, Mikkeller is a "gypsy brewer," originally hailing from Denmark with a love of American Style Ales.  The self-titled term, "gypsy brewer," comes from his lack of a home brewery, relying on the kindness and collaboration of other breweries to make his beer.  BrewDog is the Scottish brewery created by the young brewmeister rebels James Watt and Martin Dickie.  They are known for their eccentric and high gravity beers, including the famous Sink the Bizmark and Nuclear Penguin, weighing in at over 40% abv.  When these two get together, it only makes sense that they should chase after a style that is one of the grandest of all, the English Barleywine.

For the uninitiated, a barleywine is in fact a beer, not a wine.  The term wine is applied because it has a similar alcohol content to wine and is one of the strongest beer styles.  They tend to load up on every ingredient characterized by rich malt and fruit flavors and often bold hop bitterness.  The color can range anywhere from amber to brown and the body is usually very thick.  The only thing that separates the American Barleywine from the English is the use of hops.  American Barleywines tend to use more high alpha acid hops than their British cousins.

According to the bottle, this Devine Rebel is inspired by the experimental and rebellious nature of the two brewers who made it, using ale and champagne yeasts along with partially aging the beer in Speyside whiskey barrels.  The color is a beautiful rich ruby with very little head. Aromas are of malts with sweet raisins and toffee.  Despite having a failry boozy taste, it's still very drinkable.  There's a very strong malt and rich raisin flavor with a roasted essence that wasn't apparent in the aroma, but is quite strong in flavor.  True to the style, the hops are present, but certainly don't dominate.  It's not overly carbonated, but has just enough from the champagne yeast to have a nice balance against the otherwise creamy mouthfeel.  Unfortunately, I'm not tasting any of the whiskey barrels in this.  Still an enjoyable drink though.

Devine Rebel: ***1/2

Great Divide Titan IPA

Great Divide Brewing is on the short list of my favorite breweries that I think consistently make great beer and I will always buy when I have the chance.  However, their beer was never for sale in California, so for years this has meant buying through ebay or making bottle exchanges with wandering beer gurus.  This past fall, Great Divide Brewing signed distribution deals with Stone and since that time Great Divide beers have been showing up on shelves in SoCal.  I couldn't be happier about this and it's just another reason why we should love Stone.

When thinking of Great Divide, I generally think of their big beautiful stouts and barleywines – dare I say Yeti...  However, they make some other interesting beers outside of the big category that are very worth talking about.  This week, I present you with Titan, their single IPA.  I love that they're putting suggested food pairing on the side of their bottles; it's fantastic, it helps you to drink the beer as they intended and aids people in the difficult task of beer and food pairing.

The color is deep golden and there's just the slightest hint of cloudiness.  A fairly miniscule head, with little retention.  I smell a decent whiff of piney hops, guessing cascade, with overwhelming sweet malts.  Seriously, the malts smell so sacrine and gentle, it conjures up mental images of powdered sugar.

The body is on the heavier side for a single and it definitely coats your mouth with its thick resinous hop and sweet malt flavors.  This beer has a hop bite arching all the way through the sip.  The bite is less floral and more resinous and grassy.  The malts are on the sweeter side leaving a little caramel that when mixed with the heavy hops produce a wonderful sweet mixture, not unlike tasting a piece of pineapple.  At times the finishing hop bite can be so strong it borders on a slightly fishy aftertaste.  It's a small flaw in this otherwise fairly perfect beer.  Despite being at 7.1 and being very bitter, I think the drinkability is off the charts.  Thanks again to Great Divide and Stone.

Titan IPA: ****1/2

Stone, Dogfish Head, Victory Saison Du Buff

It's unfair to label this beer as a Stone beer, although the label does bear their printing style and Bill's name is signed on the description.  It's actually a collaboration between Stone, Dogfish Head, and Victory.  The idea was to make a Saison that used floral and aromatic herbs for ultimate refreshment.  It pours a light straw color with a medium head and decent retention.  Nice bubbles and the aroma is a very clean and crisp malt. It's a Saison to perfection; Michael Jackson would be proud. 

Drinking this Buff in is a huge mouthful of flavor.  The body is light and extremely even.  The grains are big bready flavors, but very light on the tongue.  They mix with German style hops that bitter the back and sides of your tongue mixing with a bit of lemon and a lot of sage.  The sage is almost overwhelming, but mixes beautifully with the hops.  I'm not getting any of the rosemary that is promised on the bottle. 

The beer has a very smooth hop finish, although has little in the way of alpha acid's pine and citrus and tastes more like orange peel and pepper.  Ultimately, these brewers were able to achieve exactly what they set out for, a refreshing kickass Saison.  Drinkability is off the charts, and the beer is super refreshing and crisp.  My personal preference would be to have some more American hops in there to get a nicer piney finish, but the beer is still great as is.

Saison Du Buff: ****

Mini Beercation Day #3 - Stone Brewery

Sorry about the lapse last week, got caught up in work.  Hey! It happens, work has to come first, not like anyone is paying me for my thoughts on beer...

After visiting Stone Brewery on my third day of Mini Beercation I wrote quite a bit on my phone notepad so that I would remember, in detail, all the glorious details of this stop.  Unfortunately, since then, I have had to reboot my phone and as a result have lost all those tasting notes...

However, if I were to try and recall what I wrote on that day, I think it would have gone something like this:

Glorious, magnificent, visionary!  If Port Pizza was a blast from a past, then surely Stone is a glimpse of the future.

Walking into this massive structure at the end of a desolate road in Escondido, one is reminded more of a four star hotel, or a Winery. The stone entryway and 30 foot high ceilings have the feeling of some renovated gothic castle.

The beer selection has a number of Stone's year round brews, as well as some great selections from other  craft breweries.

There are two bars, one inside and one outside, as well as gardens out back that they often setup a small bar in.  The whole place has a feeling of grandeur because of the high ceilings accompanied roll up glass walls that open out into the patio, making the place seem really large.  

What's really impressive though is how they use this space.  They hold events out in their garden or simply let you take a casual stroll through.  The night we were there, Stone was hosting a movie night (Airplane).  You really get the feeling that they're dedicated to fostering community.

I ordered a Sublimely Self-Righteous, which was amazing as always.

Stone's food menu is an obvious dedication to their own beer ethic.  In addition to all of the food being made with beer, they make a point of having only local and organic ingredients and dedicate themselves to bolstering their local community through slow food, industry, and money.  To put it in their own words: "At Stone Brewing World Bistro & Gardens, we use in-season, locally, regionally, and organically grown produce.  We do this not just for the simple principles of freshness and sustainability, but also because fresh, local and organic tastes better.  It’s also better for you and the world in which we live.  No, we’re not health nuts, we’re quality nuts!  The fact that actual real food is better for you than the “food-like” substances that folks commonly eat is beside the point."

Good enough for me, we started off with the Mac 'n Beer Cheese with sausage, which was pretty incredible.  This was actually as good as it looks, See?

Down to the last bite.

Megan ordered the Rosemary Crusted Pork Loin.

And I, surprisingly, got the 3 BBQ Duck Tacos.  I say surprisingly because with Stone's wonderful menu of Steaks and exotic flavors, Duck tacos might sound a little bland.  However, this couldn't be further from the case.  Stone makes a Chile de Arbol and Levitation Ale BBQ sauce on this creation, topped off with some habaneros and asiago cheese.  This dish was spicy and succulent, the sweetness of the duck was a perfect match for the spiciness of the sauce.  Truly incredible.  

Finally, we finished off with what we thought would be simple Chocolate Brownies.  Once again, Stone blew me away.  I forget what type of beer they used in these brownies, but they were seriously out of control.  

Stone was really the perfect place to cap off this trip.  As I sat there having an absolutely great time, I started thinking about the success they've had and their current expansions, most notably, the possible opening of a brewery in Europe.  It certainly seems like their setting an excellent example, not just for other craft breweries, but for the food and business as a whole: it is possible to be successful and adhere to the quality and ethics that you believe in and possibly got you to where you are.  I will definitely be making more trips down to this brewery, I'd advise you all to do the same.

Mini Beercation - Day #1

Having my first real time off in many months, Megan and I decided to head down to San Diego for a little mini vacation.  The goal was two fold: do some great hiking and get a sneak a peek at San Diego's rapidly growing beer scene.

If you've never taken one, beer vacations probably sound like a lot of fun.  Well that's not altogether untrue, however, I have learned that day after day of tasting different styles and strengths of beers can really make you feel awful.  At the World Cup in 2006, I learned this the hard way in Munich; two weeks of drinking beer all day and watching soccer was an unparalleled experience, but so was the way I felt afterwards.  If you don't understand what I'm talking about, then here's a visual explanation.

Too much of this...

this...

and this...

can make you feel like this...

this...

and occasionally will have you looking like this...

Because of this lesson learned, I never plan my vacation exclusively around drinking beer and instead try to balance it out with plenty of walking and exercise so that the highlight of your vacationing doesn't actually become drinking.  That's just a little reasoning behind why I'm not declaring this as an all out "Beer Vacation." Now onto the good stuff.

We didn't do too much planning before we left and luckily, we didn't need to; right across from our hotel in La Jolla was a Karl Strauss pub house.  I'm not a huge Karl Strauss fan, but with the Laker game about to go on and being in walking distance, it was hard to pass up.

For food we ordered a beer battered sausage plate and a mac and cheese; neither were really worth mentioning.  However, let's talk beer.  As you probably know by now, I find it difficult to write full reviews when I'm out and about, so for this beercation, I simply jotted down a few notes here and there as I tried different brews.  I have to thank our really wonderful bartender.  She gave us free tasters of almost every single beer on the menu, which really is what made this possible.

First up was the Tower 10 IPA.  I believe you can actually find this beer in most Albertsons nowadays.  It's a decent IPA, but nothing to write home about.  It's about on par with New Belgium's Ranger Redhook's Long Hammer.  Next up was the Pintail pale ale, a very nice seasonal with good balance and that we both found to be very refreshing.  At 5.3% it was very drinkable and was probably the winner on the day.  After that we sampled the Minden Maibock, their May seasonal, which I found to be overpowered by apple flavor that really took away from the overall drinking experience.  I was pretty excited to try their Reef Break Red since it was a May and November seasonal.  This wasn't too bad a beer, but had a very high alcohol percentage, which, when mixed with the caramel flavor, scored very low on the drinkability chart.  Also, this big front end made the finish completely invisible, which just didn't work for me in an American red style ale.  The Belgian Stranger was perhaps a brew unique to that brewhouse since I couldn't find it anywhere on their site.  All I wrote is, "all the worst parts of a Saison with a hop finish."  Guess that sums that up.  Lastly, we had the Endless Summer Light.  This was a light pilsner that got much too fruity just before it finished with incredible crispness; it reminded me a lot of a champagne.

So rather than dump all these travels into one post, I've decided to break them up over three.  This should make for a bit of an easier reading experience, I know there's a lot of non-beer related news that you all have to get to as well.  Next week... Pizza Port Solano Beach!  Here's a preview,

Stone/Brewdog Bashah

Sitting down to a beer after a long hard day of work, on a Saturday no less.  As I sit back let myself relax into this glass of Bashah, I'm reminded of a mindset, or perhaps ideology, that goes deeper than the craft brew movement.  Regardless of what's in your glass, miller lite or Beer Geek Breakfast, after a long hard day of work, there really is nothing better than something cold and frosty to restore your spirit and vitality.

The Bashah is no exception.  I'm opening this beer with quite a bit of trepidation.  It's been exhalted for its collaborators, Stone and Brewdog, two of the industry leaders.  If you haven't already, you should watch Stone's 30 minute video about the making of this beer.  I was lucky enough to try this beer on tap at the Daily Pint about a month ago, but was pretty disappointed as it had a similar funk to my Shah Mat, leading me to believe that either I had stumbled upon some mysterious ingredient combination of Black IPAs, or my beer had simply gone bad.

It doesn't take too long after opening this beer to tell, that the batch I had on tap had simply gone bad.  Why? Because this is good.

There's practically no head on this beer and the aroma is almost entirely Belgian yeast.  The taste, however, is much more complex.  The front end is mostly hops and carbonation with a slight citrus bend.  The clarity and wildness of the yeast seems to take over in the middle and we finish with an incredibly complex mixture of chocolate roasted grains, and VERY bitter alpha acid hops.  Actually, those two descriptions should be reversed because while the bitter is settling in under the tongue, the chocolate roast subtley spreads out like a final shockwave: definitive punctuation on a very wordy sentence.

The body is understandably light to enhance the IPA qualities.  The Belgian yeast does the job it's supposed to, really enhancing the bitterness of the hops, but plays perhaps too much of a role in the flavor for my liking.  The flavors seem to swing from one to another rather than roll, and a bit of smoothing in this balance could hopefully be incorporated into future collaborations.

Lastly, in Stone spirit, they have adorned the label with typically Stone-esque long paragraph of sometimes wise, sometimes philosophical ramblings.  Unfortunately, this is not one of their better ones as it says little beyond commenting on the elusive and illusive qualities of their beer.  All that aside, it's well made beer with a lot to offer its happy drinkers with 8.6% alc.

Bashah: ****

The Cracked Kettle

My first night in Amsterdam, I went to this great beer place called In de Wildeman.

It goes without saying that they had numerous excellent Dutch and Belgian beers on tap, but I was astonished to find a few American style ales on tap as well. This was a welcome surprise for me. I knew that my travels around Europe would take me to plenty of rich spirited Belgian lambics, Czech pilsners, and German weizenbocks, but I hadn't expected to see the pungent ales that I'm accustomed to having back home. I was excited by the idea that I wouldn't have to be giving up some of my favorite styled ales while I traveled around Europe.

The next day as I was biking around the canals, listening to my ipod, I passed by a window that made me come to a full stop, almost falling off my bike. Here's what I saw:

From Amsterdam

Rogue??!! In Amsterdam??! This was really too much; I had to go in. It was in this way that I discovered Amsterdam's finest spot for purchasing beer: The Cracked Kettle. Owner Jeff Cunningham is actually an American, from Boston, and he's done a great job stocking his store with a wide array of European and American beers– something for every palate.

Unfortunately, I forgot to write down all the different American beers he was stocking, but I do remember seeing Rogue, Stone, Port Brewing, Lost Abbey, Three Floyds, Russian River, Dogfish Head, Victory, Allagash, Alaskan, and Bells.

Aside from the beer selection the store just has a really amazing feel to it. Beer and wine cover every square inch of its two floors. Shelves are so stocked with beer that bottles literally hang half off. The cases extend from floor to ceiling so that you have to be careful not to kick over bottles and have to get a ladder to reach the highest shelves. The wood interior also gives it a feel more like being in someone's beer cellar or old fashioned library than beer store.

After discussing a few of the west coast smaller companies and newest brews that Jeff wasn't familiar with, he introduced me to some of the most cutting edge Dutch brewers, who are taking our American craft style to new highs.

Brouwerij de Moulen are a Dutch brewery doing some amazing work. I only tried their darker heavier beers, but it looked like they had a number of excellent varieties.

I had this Bloed, Zweet, Tranen, which was a lot like a smoked porter. I'll put up some tasting notes on it in a separate post.

They have some limited runs that have these beautiful labels that look like they were printed in the 1800's.

Of particular note from this series was a beer liqueur that they created, shown here. Yes, a beer liqueur!

I tried the Rasputin, not be confused with the Rasputin that North Coast Brewing makes. Strangely enough though, this was also a Russian Imperial Stout (I mean, the name is Rasputin) that I really liked.

The one I sampled was from a batch of only 960. It was really smooth without losing anything in richness or boldness. I don't think I've ever come across a Russian Imperial with such a perfect balance of chocolate, and yet it had just enough bite to add complexity and flavor to it.

Another recommendation was Brouwerij De Prael, based out of Amsterdam. Unfortunately, I didn't get to taste any of these so I can't say too much more about them.

Also of note was Nogne O, actually a Norwegian brewery doing some excellent beers that I've seen available in the US.

Last, but certainly not least, is the Mikkeler label. Jeff told me that unique thing about Mikkeler is that it's actually just one guy, who I believe is Norwegian. He refers to himself as a gypsy brewer because he goes around to different breweries in Europe (mostly in the Netherlands) and the US and rents the space from them to brew different batches.

After checking out his site, I was pretty amazed at how many brews he's been able to put out using this method. I was lucky enough to try the Simcoe Single Hop IPA , the Black Hole (a rip roaring Imperial Stout), and the Struise Mikkeller (a sort of IPA belgian hybrid).

I was seriously impressed by the stuff that Mikkeller is doing and from the beers that I tasted and saw, it seems like we enjoy the same beers. So of course, I was overjoyed when I went to Beverage Warehouse last week and found that they were able to bring over a few Mikkellers.

After spending some time browsing through the store and talking with Jeff, I packed up a few of these bottles and set off on my bike around Amsterdam eager to try more. Next time you're in Amsterdam, definitely stop by this shop!

Stone Sublimely Self-Righteous Black IPA

I was a little dubious of this beer having been relatively unimpressed by it's potency on tap at the LA CABAL craft brew fest a few months ago. Perhaps I went in with expectations too high, or I had too many beers that day to truly distinguish and savor this brew. But I walked away that day uncertain about this strange creation. So imagine my surprise when I popped the top on this beastlyness and found that Stone had knocked another wall down in the quest to reinvent beer. As you approach the body you prepare your palette for some crazy intense stout that will dominate your stomach and tastebuds. Instead, your tongue does flips when the weight of the stout is replaced by malt and the finish is replenished by fresh hop flavor. On second consideration, this beer offers a beautiful and unique hop flavor, that is half built on surprise and sustained on fresh, citrus beauty. An absolutely unique creation from the ever inventive Stone.


To be fair to the brewers, when Chris and I tried this we were about 4 deep, which explains the rather short review and drunken pictures. Writing drunk is tough!


Sublimely Self- Righteous Black IPA: ****1/2