Ahh!

I went to purchase some sandwiches today at a local deli/bottle shop and saw a bottle of Deschutes Old World Abyss (10.8% abv) in the fridge for eight bucks. I now understand why I have so many barrel aged stouts lurking in my closets. I resisted the temptation to buy it, for now.

No Frills Stout and Porter

"Though their life was modest they believed in eating well; the best of everything: diamond bone sirloins, three-shilling tea and the best bottled stouts." James Joyce's The Dead, in Dubliners

At the start of this stay-at-home period I did an inventory of the beers I've bought over the years and stored in my closet and in the back of my fridge. I did not realize I had so many high abv barrel aged stouts. I found beers with abvs of 10%, 11%, and even one with 13% abv. I managed to hoard for an apocalypse, not to kill time on a Tuesday watching Jeopardy!. I don't know why I have collected so many barrel aged stouts, and worse, I don't see an occasion - because when you open an 11% beer it is an occasion - where I will dig one of these beers out of their quarantine.

I did find two excellent dark beers, but they were not in my ad hoc cellars: Eppig Brewing's Sinister Path Export Stout and Pizza Port's One Pint of Plain Irish Porter, which was brewed with South Park Brewing and Half Door Brewing. The two beers were made with skill, not additives. Neither beer is juiced with the likes of vanilla, coffee, fruit, or coca nibs, neither spent time in a barrel, and neither has a lobotomy-level abv. Eppig's Sinister Path is a 7% stout. It is creamy and deep roasted, which brings out coffee and chocolate flavors. It has full body and a sweetness that would make this beer fine as a dessert by itself. I have gushed about Eppig's beers before, and Sinister Path is another masterpiece.

Pizza Port's special release, timed to match St Patrick's Day, is a 4.8% porter. It is a straightforward porter. It does not have the body or the sweetness of Sinister Path, which makes Plain Porter great with food, like the corned beef we had it with on St. Patrick's Day. Plain Porter is a dry beer, one of the driest I have had in recent years. This is not an impediment and another reason why it pairs well with food. You could drink this beer several times a week and not get tired of it.

I appreciate these two every-day dark beers.

Leadership

You did not come to this sight to read my opinions on leadership, or lack of leadership, in a Coronavirus world. Instead, I point you to this notice posted by Bagby Beer Company this past weekend. It is as courageous as it is heartbreaking.

Ten days into stay-at-home, I remain optimistic for craft breweries, restaurants, and other small, local businesses. I want to believe this outlook is not misplaced. Bagby Beer Company is going to be one of the first places I visit when the pandemic passes. I have wanted to visit since it opened, but the distance has always been my excuse to push off a trip to next week, or next month, or next time I am in Oceanside. Next week never comes.

No PtY For Me

I read on Instagram that yesterday Pizza Port Ocean Beach was going to tap Pliny the Younger. It has been a number of years since my last glass of Younger so I decided to visit Pizza Port. I arrived around 7:30 pm to find the keg long dry. Pizza Port started pouring Younger 11:00 am, and of course by 7:30 pm it was a memory. I am not that upset about missing out on Younger, and have noted that drinking a beer above 7.5% abv is rare for me. I can't even think about drinking beer that early in the day, especially a triple IPA, even if its is Pliny the Younger.

"Out of Town" Brewery

I asked the guy working at an Ocean Beach liquor store/deli if the store carried The Lost Abbey beers. He told me the store focused on local breweries, not "out of town" breweries. I told him Lost Abbey is local, based in San Diego County. He was response was, "yeah, but it's one of those old school breweries." Old school is valid reason not to carry a brand? The liquor store/deli has a craft beer selection better than most of its competitors, too, and it carries beers from plenty of "out of town" breweries. I suspect not wanting to stock Lost Abbey bottles is a more true reason, as most of its beers are in cans. Finding Lost Abbey beers near me is more of a challenge than I thought it would be.

Cracking Collabs

I have never taken collaboration beers too serious, thinking them more as acts of goodwill and camaraderie between breweries than as an opportunity to make standout beers. The more prevalent they have become, the less attention I paid to them. Over the past six months my thinking has been proved wrong, and I am now viewing collaborations as more than an excuse for a brewing boondoggle.

The Karl Strauss / AleSmith Blink of an IPA was a West Coast IPA released last fall by two San Diego craft beer powerhouses. This beer was brewed with Norwegian kveik yeast, a yeast strain that allows for flexible temperatures during fermentation. This low malt, bright hop beer dazzled with its citrus fruit and floral flavors. This beer's long, light finish refused to sour and stood out to me.

Port Brewing's The Hop Concept and Societe Brewing released Mosaic Monday for San Diego's Beer Week. (I think this was one of Societe's first released canned beers, too.) Mosaic hops, to me, are tricky and can have flavors of citrus and other fruits, or bring a deep earthiness to a beer that if misused can slip into a heavy onion flavor. The collaborating skill behind Mosaic Monday highlighted Mosaic's citrus flavors and suppressed the vegetable side. The result was a stunning West Coast IPA; biting, not weighty; crisp, not murky. This beer's abv was tame by Hop Concept standards, and stayed right at the Pupil Line (7.5% abv), which I appreciated. The note on the can hints that Mosaic Monday will make a return in 2020, let's hope so because it did not stay on shelves long, and it was one of the best IPAs I had last year.

An Epic Return

Stone Brewing is releasing a new Vertical Epic: 02.02.2020 Epic Palindrome Ale. According to the email from Stone Brewing, it is a limited California-only release, even for on-line sales. This beer, according to the email, "is a half Belgian-inspired, half Stone-inspired ale and features sweet orange peel and tangerine. Incredibly tasty now, but destined to mature beautifully over time." Stone Brewing is also re-releasing its 2015 version of the original Vertical Epic 02.02.02 and the 2016 version of Vertical Epic 08.08.08.

I missed the first Vertical Epic, but made sure to try the remaining eleven. I still have a number of Vertical Epics lined up in my closet. I liked some releases better than others, in particular I enjoyed the middle releases. All versions in the series expanded my beer knowledge and beer tasting experience.  (The Bruery did something similar with a Twelve Days of Christmas theme, but those beers became so big (~12% abvs, for example) and so outrageous in their flavor and ingredients, I lost interest long before the 12 Drummers Drumming.) I am looking forward to 02.02.2020 Epic Palindrome Ale because it is a new beer, the first Vertical Epic over seven years, and it is being sold in 22 oz bomber bottles.

Vertical Epic 10.10.10 from 2010

San Diego Toronado To Close

What the heck? The San Diego location of Toronado is set to close in the near future. No date has been set, but according to this SanDiegoVille article, closure is expected before the beginning of March. This stinks. Reading the article above, and the note from Toronado included in the article, it seems to me that something bigger is happening than people not drinking craft beer.

Beer Literature - Pub Life

I am in the middle of Patrick Hamilton's Hangover Square, a brutal 1941 novel of fringe characters spending too much time drinking to excess in London pubs and apartments just before the start of World War II. I was struck by these two passages describing the same pub near London's Earl's Court. The first paragraph brings us into the pub's quaint appearance and gentle ambience as seen through the main character's friend who meets him at the pub for beers:

The long, warm bright days still persisted, and the door of the pub was flung and fastened back. It was cool, dark, and restful inside and pleasant with the peaceful beginnings of the little house’s evening trade – two men talking quietly, another reading a newspaper, the flutter of a canary in a cage, the barmaid vanishing into the other bars and returning, the occasional oily jab of the beer engine and the soft spurt of beer. It was good to sit back in this cave of refreshment, and stare at the blinding brilliance of the day outside, the pavement, the dusty feet of temperate but jaded pedestrians.

The second, much darker passage, is how the pub looks to George Harvey Bone, the main character:

But, of course, he could not see what George could see – the wet winter nights when the door was closed; the smoke, the noise, the wet people: the agony of Netta under the electric light: Mickey drunk and Peter arguing: mornings-after on dark November days: the dart-playing and boredom: the lunch-time drunks, the lunch-time snacks, the lunch-room upstairs: the whole poisoned nightmarish circle of the idle tippler’s existence.

I'll take the first vision of an English pub.

Time To Rediscover The Lost Abbey

Recent news stories and my own thinking have me on the lookout for The Lost Abbey beers. Toward the end of last year I realized how long it has been since I had a good Belgian-style beer from The Lost Abbey. I used to enjoy Devotion, Red Barn, and Judgement Day on a regular basis, and it has been years since I have had these beers. Then I read these two Good Beer Hunting articles (here and here) last week on the market changes impacting wild ale makers. The first article mentioned The Lost Abbey and quoted Tomme Arthur. Finally, yesterday I read in the West Coaster that The Lost Abbey has signed a lease on a 100-year-old church in Downtown San Diego for satellite tasting room.

The Lost Abbey's Gift of the Magi (2009)

I searched this blog's archive and found I have not posted on The Lost Abbey since this one on its Merry Taj IPA in December 2013, a beer I am not sure is even still produced. This is a serious fail on my part. Heck, I was an original member of The Lost Abbey's Saints and Sinners beer membership club back in 2007. I am not alone. The Lost Abbey's beers have become rare finds in bottle shops I visit. Space that used to display bottled beers is now dominated by the latest canned beers. And it is not just The Lost Abbey losing shelf space, Belgian-style beers have been pushed to bottom racks if stocked at all.

The Lost Abbey's downtown tasting room is positive news. While I don't know if I will visit it any more than I will drive to North County, mentally, it is easier for me to see myself swinging by to taste and buy beer to go. The proliferation of tasting rooms near me and the convenience of growlers to go has made beer drinking easier, but also removed some of the adventure and exploration of seeking out different beers. It is time for me to get my quad on.

McSorley's Old Ale House

The owner of McSorley's Old Ale House in New York City has died. The New York Times has Matty Maher's obituary here. McSorley's dates from before the Civil War. I wrote about Joseph Mitchell's famous 1940 profile of McSorley's here.

I visited McSorley's in summer 2018. The place was mostly full of guys like me, middle-aged out-of-towners attracted by the history, the nostalgia, and the promise of beer. I do remember a few tough looking regulars, though, who looked to have lived through robust participation in the Bowery's rougher days. McSorley's has two beers: light and dark; and one order of beer is two glasses that I am guessing are 10 oz with half the pour made up of foam. I don't know who makes the beer (this All About Beer article by Jell Alworth from 2015 says the rights to brew the beer is held by Pabst) but you don't go to McSorley's for this week's latest and greatest hazy IPA.

Here are some pictures from my visit: the two beer order, the bar with the famous and sadly macabre wishbones, another interior picture showing the sawdust covered floor, and the exterior.

The obituary does not mention McSorley's future, but it is hard to imagine it closing.

Sweet Casa Agria

Casa Agria Specialty Ales is a small brewery in Oxnard, located in a boring, light industrial building at the edge of farmland not far from Highway 101. If you look down to check a text, or are not trying to find Casa Agria you will miss it. That would be a shame. Agria is Spanish for sour, which plays to Casa Agria's barrel aged focus. Casa Agria's website stated that the brewery's focus is "mixed fermentation farmhouse style ales, barrel aged wild ales, and Northeast style India pale ales." I'd add it also produces Mexican-style lagers.

The brewery is partitioned into three sections: a small bar and tasting room in the front, and in the back a room for brewery operations and a room for barrel storage that has additional tables for tasting room visitors. Casa Agria had every table occupied the evening I visited, so people are finding this brewery.

I did not try any of Casa Agria's sour or wild ales, which I regret as I write this post, but it had a saison and a couple of sours on draft, and it had wild ale bottles available for purchase. Of course, I tried its hazy IPA, Jets Overhead (pictured above), a 7% ABV beer. I found it sweet, fruity, and benign. It's a fine enough beer, not the best hazy IPA I have ever tried but good enough for me to buy a four-pack. I liked the 5% Casa Real Mexican-style amber lager, pictured below. Casa Real drinks lighter than its color but is not a thin beer. It brought roasted malts with some caramel, and the bread-like yeast you expect from a Mexican lager. Modelo Negra who?

The people working at Casa Agria were nice and enthusiastic about its beer. Despite the crowd, we felt welcome and were able to have a conversation. Casa Agria es una pequeña joya.