Game Day Beer Review: Russian River Supplication American Wild Ale

The Location: Napa, California, in the heart of the American wine country.

The Date: Saturday, November 9th, after a tough day of touring vineyards on a bike.

The Time: 4:00pm, Pacific Daylight Time

The Weather: 66 degrees, sun just beginning to lower in the perfectly blue California sky, trace humidity.  Best described as "the absence of weather."

The Scene: Feet on table, the University of Miami and Virginia Tech playing college football on a nearby television, with a small group of people relaxing near the hotel bar.

The Music: I Drive Your Truck, Lee Brice

The Beer: Supplication, Russian River Brewing

The Taste: Tart cherries and a mild funky taste, but not nearly as sour as one might expect -- the sourness being just about perfectly offset by a brown sugary sweetness.  The pinot noir barrels that the beer was aged in make themselves readily apparrent.  There's a saying in the wine business that it "takes a lot of great beer to make a great wine," and there's no better example of that than this beer from the ultra-talented Vinny Cilurzo and crew.

The Feel: Life doesn't get much better than this.

 

Game Day Beer Review: Russian River Brewing Redemption Belgian Pale Ale

(5.15% ABV)  Rounding out the trio of beers sampled during a recent trip to the Russian River Brewing brewpub in Santa Rosa, California, is Redemption, a Belgian Pale Ale.  The beer, as shown above, was poured on draft into a goblet. It was a clear, deep golden color with the palest white head imaginable. Although the head looked delicate, it left behind a heavy white sheen as it dissipated.

While the beer's visuals were impeccable, it smell was fairly mild. Nothing spectacular stood out on for this reviewer.

Redemption tasted to us like a somewhat muted Belgian ale. The heritage is definitely there, but it seemed much more subtle in the presentation than those coming from across the pond. We tasted  Belgian yeast and some slight candy syrup, as well as the distinct bite of apples.  We liked the beer, but only third best of the three we sampled while there: B+

Game Day Beer Review: Russian River Brewing Pliny the Elder Imperial IPA

(8.00% ABV) Poured from a 510 ML brown bottle bought at the  brewpub into a plastic solo cup.  This beer was drunk less than a week after it was bottled -- and if you read the label ("drink fresh, do not age," etc.) you'll realize how important this fresh quality is in the brewer's eyes. 

Pliny poured a deep cherry goldish color, almost the color of a strong Shirley Temple. The clear white head settled down quickly.

The smell is apparent even before it's even lifted to the nose: it's piny and fruity.  Upon a closer smell the resinous hops dominate, although there are some tropical fruits such as pineapple mixed in, and maybe some mint and other floral tastes, as well. 

Hop bitterness is the first thing you notice on the taste, although they're not overboard. The beer is dry and chalky in the middle and finishes with an oily hop resin on the aftertaste. It's medium bodied with relatively low carbonation.

It's an insanely, almost mezmerizingly drinkable beer, especially with the high ABV:  A+ 

Game Day Beer Review: Russian River Brewing Temptation American Wild Ale

photo by ingridtaylar	via PhotoRee

(7.50% ABV) Poured on draft at the brewpub in Santa Rosa, California into a goblet, a beer from the venerated master of the wild ale format, Russian River founder Vinnie Cilurzo.  Temptation poured a clear-as-a-bell gold color, with a fizzy white head with tons of tight bubbles. As the beer disappeared there was lots of lacing left behind. 

We smelled apples on the nose, as well as some grapes and some typical barnyard funkiness.

The beer had a nice level of lactic sourness, which was the first thing we noticed. It was crisp and refreshing, with a just-right level of carbonation. It was definitely winey on the aftertaste, but less so than, say, Dogfish Head's Noble Rot. The beer finished nice and  dry. We liked it -- a lot. A+

Further Thoughts from the Great American Beer Festival

Correspondent Ed likes to drink while barefoot
photo by Kingfox	via PhotoRee

We've been inundated by our readers with requests for a list of the best beers we had the pleasure of drinking while out at the Great American Beer Festival in Denver last week, and we've decided to respond. Today's entry will offer you some brief thoughts on which beers struck a particular chord with our educated tasting panel.  Although the beers below may not appear on the list of Medal winners at the event, in our opinions they were the best of the small and somewhat random sample we tasted, and well worth seeking out:

Stone Brewing Suitable for Cave Aging American Porter: Another monster beer from one of the craft beer industry's biggest names. Brewed in memory of Danny Williams, and a beer of which Stone can be justifiably proud.

Great Northern Brewing Wild Huckleberry Wheat: Montana's best known craft brewery produces an extremely drinkable wheat ale flavored with native huckleberries. It's a unique spin on a lighter beer, and almost as cool as the retro Airstream camper the brewery brought along as a prop for photo opportunities.

Hoppin' Frog Brewery B.O.R.I.S the Crusher Oatmeal Imperial Stout. Big, boozy and chocolate. Boris lives up to its name.

Our Thoughts on the 2012 Great American Beer Festival

photo by popculturegeek.com	via PhotoRee

It was when we saw two grown men dressed up as Super Mario and Luigi of Nintendo fame that it dawned on us that all beer festivals are somewhat alike in nature. Sure, the Great American Beer Festival held in Denver this weekend is larger than the rest -- it featured an astounding 650+ breweries and more than 2,000 beers -- but it still struck us as somewhat similar in nature to the other beers events we've attended over the past couple of years, gatherings in Columbia, South Carolina, Charlotte, North Carolina and Jupiter, Florida: craft beer lovers in their element, having a good time while walking around and sampling the various offerings from some of the country's top brewers.

The attendees represented a broad swath of middle America. While many were Denver locals, there were also a huge number of visitors from out of town who journeyed to the festival. Some patrons were normal looking, others not so much. Some were of the beer geek variety ("What kind of barrels was this beer aged in?"), and others more firmly in the novice camp ("I'll try some of that yellow one, please."). But while there may have been profound differences amongst the gatherers in terms of knowledge and attire, there were also some baisc commonalities: a true love of good beer, and for most of the participants -- at least of the male variety, anyway -- a healthy amount of respect for facial hair and hats. And the weirder, the better, as far as that last point goes.

And so it was that we came to see men dressed as cowboys roaming the dusty plains (okay, actually the convention center floor) in search of their next watering hole, and women dressed as pirate wenches and German fräuleins standing in line for the buffet sponsored by the American Cheese Society. This disparate group -- men in Top Gun flight suits and Olympic track suits among them -- all descended on Denver this past week in search of good beer.  And that's exactly what they got.

As we noted yesterday, farlieonfootie dispatched a team of our top correspondents to the festival to give you their impressions: the sights, sounds and smells of Denver, if you will. But a funny thing happened on our way to that report: although we fully intended to cover the event from all angles, after one too many two ounce beer samples all hell broke loose and that plan went completely awry. By the break of dawn Saturday, after almost 48 hours in the arena, most of our team could hardly remember that they attended the festival, never mind recall what they actually did there.

But as is typical of this blog, we have somehow managed to snatch a narrow victory from the gaping jaws of defeat, and piece together some of our staff's semi-intelligible notes and photo streams to make up the following report:

o Judging by line length, the hottest craft breweries in the country right now are as follows: Russian River (California), Dogfish Head (Delaware), Cigar City (Florida), Bear Republic (California) and Firestone Walker (California). While there may be bigger names out there (think Sierra Nevada and New Belgium) the buzz of the aforementioned breweries, combined with their relative scarcity in the Colorado market, meant long waits for the beers of those hot names.

o Sour beers are definitely in. Like Pavlov's bell, anything made with Brettanomyces is guaranteed to cause a beer geek's mouth to begin salivating.

o We were shocked at how many breweries there actually are in this country; it's not until they're lined up side-by-side that one can truly appreciate the sheer number of small market brewers whose businesses have come to life over the past several years. With roughly 25-30% of all breweries in the country attending GABF, it boggles even our beer-educated minds as to how many of them we'd never heard of. Which prompts the following existential question in our minds: If a brewery makes beer that no one has ever heard of, does it really exist...?