Alesmith Expands Tasting Room Hours

Finally!  I have missed Alesmith's tasting room more than once with its brief opening hours.  I just received an email stating that Alesmith's tasting room will now have some decent hours.  Here is the text from the email:

We're excited to announce longer hours of operation at our retail Tasting Bar! You can now visit us for beer samples, growler fills and bottle & keg sales on Thursday from 2:00pm-6:00pm, Friday from 2:00pm-6:00pm and Saturday from 12:00pm-6:00pm.  Please call us ahead of time if you are planning on bringing a group of ten (10) or more.  

A tour of the brewery is conducted on the last Saturday of each month, starting at 12:30pm by AleSmith owner Peter Zien.  You will see and learn how AleSmith beers are brewed and have an opportunity to sample AleSmith beers at the conclusion of the approximately 1 hour tour.  Please call (858.549.9888) or email (info@alesmith.com) to find out about our tour-only specials and to reserve your spot!

The email also announced that Alesmith's fall seasonal, Evil Dead Red, will be released next Thursday, September 23rd.  I am trying to remember whether I've had this beer before (I don't think so), because I get it confused with Alesmith's other red ale special release, My Bloody Valentine.

I Fart In Your General Direction

The Lost Abbey is suing Moylan's over tap handles. Peter Rowe's blog has a picture of the similar looking handles.  The tap handles in question look like medieval weapons.  Tomme Arthur and Brendan Moylan should ditch the lawyers, don their mail, grab their respective tap handle, and have a battle to decide who gets final claim to the Celtic cross.

Or maybe Arthur and Moylan could have a couple of beers together and then taunt each other:

Russian River Consecration

I used to think that brewers aging their beer in wine barrels was a bunch of mumbo-jumbo, and that the brewers were suffering from wine envy.  Of course I reached those conclusions without actually trying a wine barrel-aged beer.  I have now had several barrel-aged beers and they were good.   In the case of Russian River's Consecration, it was sublime.  It is one of the best beers I have had this year.

Consecration, which is aged in Cabernet Sauvignon barrels, is wine-like in its aroma, but it's clearly not wine, and the first taste lets you know that the brewers were not trying to make it taste like wine.  It is in its own orbit at the outer limits of the beer universe.   The beer was in a corked, 375 ml bottle.  The beer poured with small, thin white foam that quickly disappeared, leaving a clear, deep orange colored beer.  It is a remarkably smooth beer, despite its complexity and forward sour presence.  The finish is hops and alcohol, with the alcohol becoming more prominent as the beer warms, but you'd still be hard pressed to guess the beer had a 10% abv. 


Consecration is delicious.  This is a grown-up, barrel-aged sour and if you have never had a sour, you may need time to let it grow on you.  It is worth the effort.  It is now my sour benchmark, and I'll judge all subsequent sours and barrel-aged beers against it.  For what it's worth, Consecration is ranked thirty-third on BeerAdocate's Top Beers on the Plant list.

Stone Brewing Tasting Room in South Park

San Diego Beer Blog and City Beat are reporting that Stone Brewing is opening a tasting room on 30th Street in South Park.  San Diego Beer Blog reprints a Stone email announcing the new store, which is expected to open before the end of 2010.  The announcement states that growler fills will be available along with other Stone merchandise (and I hope Sawyer's Triple).  This is good news, and I hope Stone keeps growler prices similar to those at its brewery, because a half gallon growler fill is only $9, and bigger beers like Ruination are only $14.  I will try to post updates on the Stone store as I find them.

Update: San Diego Union's beer columnist Peter Rowe blogs about the Stone shop, too.

Beer Hype

I just received an email from The Bruery about its super-hyped Black Tuesday, which I post below:

The response was not unprecedented. In fact, the precedent was set last year when hundreds of our beloved fans stood anxiously around our building for hours on end, trying to get themselves a ticket into our Black Tuesday celebration. We hoped, and still believe, that online sales would be a far more convenient way for us to sell the tickets and for you to get them without having to waste an entire day in our parking lot without a promise of beer. Unfortunately, the company who runs our ecommerce server didn't seem to think the response would be so great. We did all we could and warned them numerous times in the past two weeks, even reminding them yesterday that this morning was going to be crazy, but you know how that story ends.

Clearly, things didn't end up going to plan. The server crashed before we could even update the page with the sales info due to constant refreshes in the minutes just before 9am. We're sorry. If there was something we could have done immediately to remedy this we would have, but along with the server, our internet also kicked the bucket. We couldn't even send an email to update everyone. In fact, this email isn't even being written from The Bruery offices.

On that note, here is your update.

BLACK TUESDAY TICKETS WILL BE ONSALE TOMORROW AT 9AM. We are setting up a new, dedicated server and we are told that it will work. All of the below info still remains true. If for some reason this changes, we will email you tonight or prior to 9am tomorrow.

We are extremely sorry for this hiccup in our planning and we hope it didn't ruin your mornings or your opinion of our beer.

Cheers,
The Bruery

The Bruery's website has details for those that want to buy Black Tuesday.  I will pass.  I just don't get worked up for the high alcohol imperial stouts.  That being said, I would like to try Black Tuesday at some point, I am just too lazy to jump through all the hoops that the demand for this beer requires.

My Oh Ryes

I recently had two excellent rye beers, Ladyface's Red Rye and Karl Strauss' Rye IPA.  I find rye malt approachable, imparting a sweetness that avoids the heaviness of some malts.  The Red Rye, like all good red ales, had plenty of hops, which provided an excellent complement to the malt.  The alcohol was around 7%, but you hardly tasted it. This is the third beer I have tried from Ladyface, and all have been superb.  (The picture is lame, I had the beer a third finished before I took the picture.)

Karl Strauss' Rye IPA is the best Karl Strauss beer I have ever tried, hands down.  I had it at Strauss' brewpub in La Jolla.  Strauss' website lists the beer as a tap-only June release, but it was still available in late August.  Karl Strauss should bottle this beer and make it its signature IPA and have it available year-round.  This is a hoppy ale that falls on the pine side of the IPA citrus / pine taste spectrum.  The rich, rye malt flavor balances the big hop bitterness.  The alcohol is 7.5% and is noticeable in the finish.  Rye IPA was served in a tulip glass, which was unfortunate because a pint would have been great.  

Tap Hunter

I just found the Tap Hunter beer toy.  It lists a bunch of craft beer bars and restaurants in San Diego.  Click on a particular restaurant or bar and see updated tap lists.  I am adding a permanent link to the blog.  In addition to San Diego, Tap Hunter has beer information for Vancouver, Denver / Boulder, Philadelphia, Portland and Seattle. 

That's A Lot Of Tsingtao

I thought this graphic was interesting:

It makes sense that China is the largest beer market given its huge population.  The Czech Republic's beer drinking is in a class by itself, and stood out to me.  Czech's drink 161 liters per person, trouncing the next closest country, Germany, who could only muster 109 liters per person.  That's a lot of Pilsner Urquell.

Stone's Greg Koch on NPR's Marketplace

Stone Brewing's co-founder Greg Koch was interviewed by Kai Ryssdal on NPR's Marketplace.  Here

is the link to the article, and there is also an audio feed.  Koch discusses Stone's European plans in the interview.  Here is a discussion on Stone's European brewery exploration:

Ryssdal: So where are we in the Stone expansion process?
Koch: We have a colleague who is out over there now, just hit the ground this past Monday. We're looking for an existing brewery site to retrofit their brewery to brew the style of beers we brew, would like to be a region where people would want to visit, good quality of life. But frankly, somewhat of it's in the "I'll know when I see it" category.
Ryssdal: Why do you have to make it there? Why can't you just take those bottles that we saw inside on the line, put 'em in a carton, put 'em on a boat and send 'em over to wherever you want in Europe?
Koch: We could, but we don't want to for a variety of basic, fundamental reasons. One is the time that it takes to ship our beer over there, and our beer is best when it's fresh -- and we steward that religiously. Now, when it comes to doing that and sending it refrigerated to Europe, that's extraordinarily expensive. And so, when it gets all the way over there, that's going to be quite an expensive equation for the consumer. But I think the primary reason is the carbon footprint. I think it would be irresponsible for us to send high volumes of beer from one country another and completely ignore the carbon footprint.

Stone is going to brew Stone beers in Europe, not new beers designed for the European market.  Good for Stone!   It is interesting in the interview that interviewer Ryssdal says the Europeans drink "fizzy yellow" beer, but here is what three Europeans, interviewd in an English pub, have to say about an American brewer coming to Europe:

Ryssdal: Greg Koch, CEO and co-founder of the Stone Brewing Company, talking about his plans to expand into Europe. It occurred to us that we could talk all day about what Europeans may or may not want. But why not just put the question to actual Europeans?

Barry Southern: I think American beer is a lot lighter. It has a fizz. If you would have a hot dog or a hamburger, you would then associate that with American beer.

Matt Wright: You wouldn't go for an American beer. You'd go for Stella, wouldn't you? Or a Kronenbourg, a European beer.

Chris Hubbard: I think if they could just offer something unique, as long as the quality is good, I think people would take it up.

Ahh, the difference of perceptions.  Stella or a Kronenbourg over any beer Stone brews?  Please, if the comment wasn't ignorant it'd be an insult.  I assume (based on no evidence) that Stone will focus on a Great Britain location for its new brewery.  If Stone picks the UK, its beer drinkers are in for a treat, and Stone, along with Scotland's Brew Dog, will jolt the English beer palate. 

I make it to Stone Brewing several times a year, as it's about forty minutes from my house.  I happened to be near the brewery today and stopped by to fill a growler and pick up some swag.  I heard the Greg Koch interview on the way home from the brewery - what a strange coincidence and time to queue the music from Twlight Zone.  

Stone 14th Anniversary Emperial Ale

Stone's 14th Anniversary Emperial Ale was released about six weeks ago.  I have had several and am starting to get a better handle on it.  I have been waiting for the "wow" moment before I posting my thoughts, thinking I was missing something about the beer, but it's not going to happen.  This is not to say this isn't a good beer, it is, I just had a hard time figuring it out, which sounds strange when I type it but not when I taste 14th. 

Emperial is a cloudy, yellow beer with big white foam.  It looks like a wheat beer.  The beer is Stone's interpretation of a classic English IPA, which Stone brewed using English ingredients including treated water.  The first taste I noticed was the beer's minerals, which were quite prominent on the front.  The minerals gave a tangy zip to the tip of the tongue.  This taste confused me as I usually look for a pine or citrus flavor in an IPA.  Emperial's pine profile became noticeable once I got past my initial taste confusion.  Its 8.90% abv was well masked, but the beer left a film in the mouth.  Emperial finished with a classic Stone bitter hop wave.

While I was not overwhelmed by this beer like some previous Stone Anniversary Ales, I did enjoy it and will get some more before it disappears.   Check out the glass in the picture.  It is a 22 oz Portland beer glass from Crate & Barrel that I received for my birthday.  This monster glass is perfect for drinking bombers.

Pizza Port Updates Website

Pizza Port has redone its website.  It looks very nice.  Make sure to checkout the Tap List Cams at each location to see the house beers and guest beers being offered. 

Big Fat Stone Rumor

I just saw this link on a BeerAdvocate message board.  The article referenced and linked in the BeerAdvocate post states that Stone is preparing a bid to "rescue Walsall's historic Highgate Brewing out of administration."  I am sure this news and related speculation will be burning up the beer "internets" soon enough.  Now back to work.

Update:  In the BA post/thread linked above, Stone's Greg Koch addresses the article, noting that the Highgate sight is just one of many sites Stone is reviewing and all reviews are in their preliminary stages.