FlaSoxxJim's Beer Trip

[Texsox]

FlaSoxxJim will be heading up a Soxtalk beer tour of the US. Each new Sox series will feature a new brewery or style of beer. Starting this weekend in Seattle.

 

[Texsox]

jim's Quote from another thread

 

Or maybe we can do it based on the Sox' road schedule while they're on road trips. For example, everyone could try to get some Bert Grant's beers to enjoy while we hopefully make short work of the M's over the weekend. Mmm, getting thirsty. I think I'll stop off and get some Grants tonight. For those playing along, they make a light wheat (the only American wheat I really like), a celtic ale (decent), a scottish ale (maltier, stronger, and better), a 'Perfect Porter' that is less stout-like and closer to a trad porter (but with west coast hops), an India pale ale (hoppy, but not as hoppy as the historic style), and a really really good russian imperial stout (rich, thick, sweet, alcoholic). If I'm lucky, I can find 2 or 3 of the above at any given time here in the beer wasteland.

[The Beast]

FlaSoxxJim will be heading up a Soxtalk beer tour of the US. Each new Sox series will feature a new brewery or style of beer. Starting this weekend in Seattle.

 

We should have a soxtalk brewery. That'd be so cool!

[FlaSoxxJim]

Ah, Tex is very efficient indeed.

 

Alas, my easy beer stop on the way home had NO Grants beers tonight (I'll get some at another place tomorrow), so I have had to expand my evening's menu. I have kept it in the west and mostly on the west coast in honor of the hopeful turnaround in the road trip due to start tonight.

 

I think that since there's no telling what people will be able to find locally (Chicagoans are in preyyt good shape, and there are some great beer stores there), anyone who wants to play along shoul dpick up some of their favorite west/west coast offereings, or something they've wanted to try for a while. Then we'll all compare notes. I can give some stylistic and/or brewery history as people find things they like.

 

I think I want to wait until people chime in and say what they might have had before or are in the processe of having. That way I know I'm not talking to myself.

 

Some west/west coast things most people should be able to find (I'll stick with those):

 

Anchor Brewing Co., San Fran (late, to knock aout the better forgotten Oakland leg of the trip). Even though you have probably all tried it you might not know Anchor Steam is a WORLD CLASSIC. "Steam", also known as 'California common' is a distinct lager style, and Anchor produces the only widely available commercial version (they also own a trademark on the name 'Steam' and will sue anyone who tries to use it). Anchor's Liberty Ale and Christmas Ales (not available now, natch) are also very nice, and their Porter is interesting in that it uses a lager (bottom fermenting) yeast, instead of the ale yeast (top fermenting) traditional to the style. Steam is one of the beers I'll be enjoying tonight.

 

Sierra Nevada Brewing Co., Chico CA. Sierra Pale Ale is the other bona fide WORLD CLASSIC from the west coast that is readily available. Sierra was not the first American craft micro, but it was one of the first and is the one that made real in-roads. The defunct New Albion Brewery was the first, but it didn't make it. Sierra Pale Ale is THE archetypal west coast American Pale Ale, hoppy, clean, and slightly fruity. It is based on the headbrewer's homebrew recipe circa 1978, and is still bottle conditioned (live yeast in the bottle provide carbonantion). Sierra's seasonals (Celebration, Big Foot barleywine) are classics we can hit when the season comes around. Their stout and porter are enjoyable, if unspectacular, and their American wheat is refreshing enough for what it is.

 

Also be on the lookout for the Grants stuff, Rogue, Red Hook (now 1/2-owned by Anhauser but still making quality stuff), Pyramid, Mendecino Brewing Company. Streatching the west coast inland to include Colorado, you should be able to find Flying Dog (I'll also be drinking their pale ale tonight) and if you are licky (I'm not ), New Belgium. Fat Tire is New Belgium's flagship beer, but they don't make a bad beer.

 

Good beer hunting.

[mmmmmbeeer]

So is Red Hook going to start having a wider distribution now that they're under Anheuser? I can't get it down here in OK and it pisses me off, I aboslutely LOVE their Nut Brown Ale mmmmmmm.

 

And another line of NW beers that I really enjoy is Full Sail. My favorite brew of theirs is the Full Sail Ale, really good stuff.

[FlaSoxxJim]

So is Red Hook going to start having a wider distribution now that they're under Anheuser?  I can't get it down here in OK and it pisses me off, I aboslutely LOVE their Nut Brown Ale mmmmmmm.

 

And another line of NW beers that I really enjoy is Full Sail.  My favorite brew of theirs is the Full Sail Ale, really good stuff.

Full Sail is quite good, so of course I have no hope of getting it here.

 

I'm suprised you can't get the Red Hook stuff in OK, I thought their distribution was close to national (the only reason to get in bed with AB).

 

They are doing something odd with the Red Hook distribution here too. Their flagship ESB, pretty much the beer that made them, is almost impossible to find here now. Instead the distributors are carrying their newly relabled IPA (formerly their Ballard Bitter - more to come on that) as the brewery's flagship offering. The ESB was better from the standpoint that there are enough hooy west coast pale ales in circulation, but not as many malt-accentuated ales.

 

Their nut brown is a nice beer, compares favorably with Goose Island's Hexnut Brown and not as heavily hopped as Pete's Wicked Brown used to be. Their Winter Hook has been outstanding the last two seasons, I wish I had brought a case to tide me over 'til next year. Black Hook porter is good and Wheat Hook is better than yer average lawnmower beer.

 

To stick with the west coast themed weekend had a new Red Hook product yesterday called Sunrye that I had not ween before. Interesting in that it is very light in color and body but does have some rye in the grain bill so there is a unique dryness in the finish that only rye gives.

 

A little later I'll put together quick thoughts on the half-dozen or so west coast beers I sampled over the weekend, hopefully ater a Sox series win tonight.

[FlaSoxxJim]

OK, series beer wrap-up time. I just watched Billy cough it up big time and I’m so ticked off I can’t even see straight.

 

Only beer can calm me down (maybe).

 

Other than a Chimay Blue that found it’s way into my hands at a dinner party yesterday, I stayed out west all weekend, beverage-wise. I had a couple of Flying Dog Classic Pale Ales (Colorado) on Friday because I ‘panicked’ when I couldn’t find my WA State standby Grant ales (I also like Flying Dog a lot, and since we’re not playing the Rockies in Interleague this year, I figured this was as close as I was gonna get). Otherwise, I settled in with two Cali beers, the WORLD CLASS Anchor Steam (SanFrancisco) and Sierra Nevada Pale Ale (Chico), and three WA State beers, Grant’s IPA (found it yesterday) and Red Hook’s IPA and the new offering Sunrye which I hadn’t had before.

 

Anchor Steam is notable for several reasons. First, it is the only nationally distributed example of the steam/Cali common style. It is a lager beer, but it is fermented at ale temperatures. The higher fermentation temperatures of ales gives them the fruity (esters and phenolics), sometimes butterscotch (diacetyl) flavors and all-over-the-place kind of busy complexity that ale lovers adore and lager purists shun. Anchor steam gives you the best of both worlds. Most lager yeasts will give you an undrinkable product if you make them work at temperatures above where they are most happy. Anchor Steam’s clean but with a hint of fruitiness flavor profile is only possible because they have a very well mannered lager yeast that doesn’t get too out of line if you subject it to high fermentation temperature. This is THE textbook representation of this historic beer style.

 

The other interesting thing about Anchor is that the brewery was literally days away from folding in the late 60s when a local graduate student named Fritz Maytag stepped up to do something about it. It helped because this Fritz was one of THE Maytags, sitting on a sweet inheritance from his family’s appliance business (remember the lonely repairman ads?). So Fritz spent some of his inheritance to save the struggling local brewery. In the last 35 years he has grown the brewery into a nationally distributed brand and has saved a classic beer style from certain extinction.

 

I’ll not say much about Sierra Pale Ale other than to say that no other American micro so completely embodies the American craft brewery success story. It’s the standard by which to judge the American pale ale style. It’s simple grain bill of 2-row pale malt and a bit of crystal malt, it’s subdued perle hop underpinnings and its hit you over the head cascade hop finish. Just no way too improve on that. The ubiquitous use of cascades as a finishing hop in American pale ales is due to this beer. That they still bottle condition (natural carbonation with live yeast still in the bottle) is a nice touch. I spent most of the 2002 homebrewing season just tweaking my Sierra clone until I nailed it. Of course that is now the house homebrew.

 

Grant’s (Yakima, WA) IPA claims to be a faithful recreation of the historic IPA (India Pale Ale) style, and it comes pretty close. Historically, the deal is that British brewers in the 19th Century knew hops were a natural preservative. To get traditional ales to British troops and colonials in India and have them still be drinkable when they arrived, the brewers upped the hopping rates quite a bit. To offset that they had to also up the grain bill or else the beer would be unbalanced. The result was a higher alcohol/hoppier pale ale that was still stylistically a pale ale… but moreso (Yummmm).

 

Anyway, Grant has the hops there, although not as high a hopping rate as the historic examples, and they use American cascades - natch - for flavor/aroma rather than traditional English Kents or fuggles). The alcohol is not much above a regular American ale, but it’s enough to hold its own against the hops.

 

Bert Grant died a couple year back, but he lived to be a pretty old guy. He was a part of the early American craft beer renaissance and also a big player in the Washington hop trade, so the brand has a good pedigree. I stuck with the IPA because that’s were I stayed stylistically most of the weekend, but don’t hesitate to try any of their stuff when you get the chance.

 

Red Hook (Seattle). Again, not much more to say. As major holders in the brewery now, Bud may be bringing the brand to a larger national audience, but it’s usually only a matter of time before the bean counters come in and try to tell the craft brewers how to brew more economically (i.e., cut corners and brew piss). As yet, Red Hook’s offerings have stayed solid, but the verdict is still out. Their distributors (at least on the east coast) have decided that the IPA (aka Ballard’s Bitter) is the new flagship offering. It’s a mistake, because the ESB (beer-speak for ‘extra special bitter’) was the rare malt-accentuated amber ale (with wide distribution anyway) in a sea of hop-driven west coast American ales. Red Hook IPA is drinkable, enjoyable, even, but I’ll take Sierra, Grant’s, and a half-dozen other hoppy American ales over it any day. With Pete’s Wicked Red having ridden into the sunset, I miss having the Red Hook ESB readily available at the corner store/pub.

 

Red Hook’s IPA, as I mentioned, was for several ears known as ‘Ballard Bitter’, complete with a guy on the label with a handlebar moustache saying “Ya sure, Ya betcha,” for reasons unknown. The guy, the moustache, and the silly phrase are still on the new label of the IPA, but they have taken a back seat. In truth, Ballard had the “Coors Factor” going for it for many years. You know, you hear lots about a beer you can’t get and when it finally gets to your neck of the woods (courtesy of Burt Reynolds or otherwise), it doesn’t really live up to expectations. I had Ballard years ago when it first came out, and when I would tell fellow beer hunters it was ok but not great they couldn’t believe it. Now that it’s readily available they’ll concede it doesn’t quite live up to the hype.

 

[The above is in no way trying to suggest that Red Hook’s IPA is nearly as dismal a beverage as friggin’ Coors. I merely was drawing the analogy by way of the ‘Coors Factor’ - where a regional beer suddenly goes national and some of the mystique of the beer falls away when a larger audience actually tries it. If someone tries to hand you a Coors, run away screaming and don’t look back.]

[Texsox]

BEER TROUBLESHOOTING

 

 

 

SYMPTOM

FAULT

ACTION

 

Feet cold and wet.

Glass being held at incorrect angle.

Rotate glass so that open end points toward ceiling.

 

Feet warm and wet.

Improper bladder control.

Stand next to nearest dog, complain about house training.

 

Beer unusually pale and tasteless.

Glass empty.

Get someone to buy you another beer.

 

Opposite wall covered with fluorescent lights.

You have fallen over backward.

Have yourself leashed to bar.

 

Mouth contains cigarette butts.

You have fallen forward.

See above.

 

Beer tasteless, front of your shirt is wet.

Mouth not open, or glass applied to wrong part of face.

Retire to restroom, practice in mirror.

 

Floor blurred.

You are looking through bottom of empty glass.

Get someone to buy you another beer.

 

Floor moving.

You are being carried out.

Find out if you are being taken to another bar.

 

Room seems unusually dark.

Bar has closed.

Confirm home address with bartender.

 

Taxi suddenly takes on colorful aspect and textures.

Beer consumption has exceeded personal limitations.

Cover mouth.

 

Everyone looks up to you and smiles.

You are dancing on the table.

Fall on somebody cushy-looking.

 

Beer is crystal-clear.

It's water. Somebody is trying to sober you up.

Punch him.

 

Hands hurt, nose hurts, mind unusually clear.

You have been in a fight.

Apologize to everyone you see, just in case it was them.

 

Don't recognize anyone, don't recognize the room you're in.

You've wandered into the wrong party.

See if they have free beer.

 

Your singing sounds distorted.

The beer is too weak.

Have more beer until your voice improves.

 

Don't remember the words to the song.

Beer is just right.

Play air guitar.

[IlliniKrush]

Wow, i really LMAO at that fault, sympton, action thing texsox, nice