Saturday, November 5, 2016

Tenuous Link?

It was big San Diego beer news this week when Cosimo Sorrentino abruptly resigned from his job as head brewer at Monkey Paw Pub and Brewery and South Park Brewing Co.  The West Coaster published an interview with Sorrentino after his announcement.  I thought the interview raised more questions than it answered.  This passage in particular had me wondering about a larger meaning and wanting specific examples:
I feel San Diego has crossed over to a new era in brewing. The community spirit is being fractured; too many breweries fighting over the same styles, following trends for profit, not enough quality staff to provide front-of-house service…and let’s not get into the distributor issues. This was inevitable and will not necessarily be a bad thing for those making or drinking beer. San Diego beer will get better and those that succeed will benefit from the competition!
I want to know what Sorrentino defined as the new era and what triggered it.   And what does he mean by breaking the community spirit?  He ends the quote with the following statement: "San Diego beer will get better and those that succeed will benefit from the competition!"  His optimistic opening contradicts his previous statements, and the sentence ends with an ominous warning about breweries not surviving. Wow, there are deep levels of implications in that quote. 

This brings me to my tenuous link.  I have said before that breweries that make good beer will survive.  I will qualify that to say that good beer will go a long way to help a brewery survive.  Recently, I tried an awful beer from a local brewery I am not going to name.  It was a Belgian Pale Ale with Rose.  It had no Belgian yeast influence and no taste of Rose.  It was just a crappy, tepid paleish ale of some sort  Brewing and selling bad beers like this is going to put pressure on all breweries.  The craft beer craze has matured and people will not stand for subpar beers, there are too many other choices.  It made me think that there is something to Sorrentino's claim about too many breweries battling over the same style and a fractured community spirit.  I would add that some breweries are fighting with defective weapons.

Friday, November 4, 2016

San Diego Beer Week

Today, November 4, 2016, is the official start to the 8th annual San Diego Beer week.  There are multiple events every day until next Sunday, November 13th.  (Look for spillover into the following week as great beers not finished during Beer Week will remain on tap around town.)  There are too many venues to list here, but below are links to websites that have dates, beer events, and links to detailed information:

San Diego Beer Week  - The official website to Beer Week.

West Coaster - San Diego's best beer publication has a detailed calendar of events.

Tap Hunter - San Diego - This website provides tap lists of specific restaurants and bars, and lets you find what gems are still available after Beer Week ends.

I recommend checking directly with your favorite local restaurant or bar, too, or search on social media to find their schedules, as not all events are on the sites above. 

Thursday, November 3, 2016

Oniony Delight

Hop Concept IPA Citra & Azacca from Port Brewing is an IPA from Port Brewing's Hop Concept brand that consists of a series of releases that highlight and pair specific hop varieties.  Its most recent beer combines Citra and Azacca hops.  The two hops alone are supposed to produce citrus, tropical, and melon flavors, but I found that together these characteristics cancel out.  To me, the beer's aroma was liquefied and brimmed with fresh earth and onions, not a fruity tropical island paradise.   It smelled and tasted like the outdoors on a damp day.  I enjoy cold damp days.  Citra & Azacca had a pointed upfront bitterness that swept away other flavors and planted itself squarely on my tongue.  The absence of citrus brought a welcome seriousness to the beer.  Its 8% abv was serious, too, but any alcoholic heat was buried under the bitter onions.  The strong hop resins gave a long finish that lingered as a reminder to what a drinkable and enjoyable beer Port Brewing created with Hop Concept Citra & Azacca.

Tuesday, November 1, 2016

Good Writing Good Reading

I recommend reading The Beer Nut's blog posts on his recent trip to the United States. The first two posts focus on New York City and are here, and hereThe Beer Nut is an Irish beer blog that I have read since I first sought out beer blogs more than a decade ago.  It is the best beer writing you will read anywhere.  Here is an example of a beer he liked:
Feeling gypped by the first round I doubled down and spent a smidge over €10 for a half-US-pint of Jolly Pumpkin Saison X, a beer of just 4.5% ABV. There's a sharp bricky aroma, like good lambic, though almost tipping over into vinegar. On tasting there's an immediate gritty funk which is much more saison-like, huge juicy peach and honeydew fruit, which was a surprise, and then a classic oaky sour finish, bringing us back to lambicland. It's only barely to-style, though admittedly saison does have a pretty broad set of parameters. But it was absolutely beautiful: combining the best bits of several different kinds of beer in exquisite balance. Which, at that price, it would want to.
And a beer he did not like:
I kicked off with Invasive Species, a 5.7% ABV sour ale by Brooklyn outfit Greenpoint, which incorporates Motueka and Citra hops. It's a pale hazy yellow colour and smells very farmyard. The first hit on tasting it is an eye-wateringly sharp green acid effect from the Motueka and then a surprising candy-sweet middle. The Citra succeeds in turning this into 7-Up while the sourness is merely a tangy afterthought. A chalky fruit-flavoured antacid tablet flavour finishes it off. This really didn't work well for me: hoppy and sour I like, but sweet and sour is for chicken.
"Bricky aroma" and "gritty funk" are descriptors I don't read in other beer reviews, and I will not read a more brutal slam this year than "succeeds in turning this into 7-Up."  It is hard to write this well.

The Beer Nut's focus is Irish craft beers, but he reviews and discusses American, English, and European beers, too.  He is knowledgeable and open-minded and has followed craft beer's European growth.  He is no sentimentalist and does not bemoan non-cask beer or the rise of hop-heavy IPAs, or pine for a world of 4% milds.  The beer writing on The Beer Nut is worth reading even if you never drink any of the beers or plan to visit the pubs described on the blog. 

(The Beer Nut visited and wrote about McSorley's pub in New York City, a place that if I had a Bucket List would be near the top.  I wrote about, but mainly linked to and copied and pasted from Joseph Mitchell's classic 1940 New Yorker profile of McSorley's here.)