Rambling Reviews 8.19.2016: Dry Hopped Steam from Anchor, 10 Barrel's Cucumber Crush, and JC Flyer IPA from Iron Springs

Once again it's time to ramble about three notable beers I've tried over the past couple weeks.

We'll start out with Anchor's great twist on their iconic flagship. I'm talking about Anchor Dry Hopped Steam Beer. There's a little more to Dry Hopped Steam than just the dry hopping as Anchor Brewmaster Scott Ungermann also lightened the traditional Anchor Steam recipe for the dry hopped version. “We took our most popular, classic beer and gave it a contemporary twist by introducing a lighter body and an elevated, dynamic hop profile using new and classic hop varieties," states Ungermann in a press release. The dry hopped version is lighter and brighter than traditional Anchor Steam, with the floral hop aromas you'd expect from a dry hopped brew. It's still got the classic complex roasty and slightly woody character, it's just dialed down a bit to let the floral hops through. What's interesting is drinking the dry hopped version and the traditional one side by side to contrast the deeper, richer flavors of Achor's traditional Steam with the new, more contemporary version These days, a lot of the older craft breweries like Anchor struggle a bit to remain relevant in the fast moving brewing industry. Dry Hopped Steam shows Anchor has effortlessly overcome this challenge.

Next beer up is Cucumber Crush Sour from 10 Barrel Brewing. 10 Barrel takes a lot of flack from selling to corporate beer giant AB InBev , which reminds me of the time I was at an small coffee shop across the street from a Starbucks. On the coffee shop wall, there were all sorts of signs saying things like "Corporate coffee was evil", "Starbuck Sucks", and various other derision thrown at the Starbucks across the street. There was just one small problem: Their coffee was noticeably inferior to Starbucks. Say what you want about the evil diabolical plans of AB InBev, and while I likely agree with you, 10 Barrel is demonstrably one of America's better breweries, still going strong since the acquisition. Cucumber Crush is yet another example. There's light flavors of cucumber with a fruity, strawberry-like clean tartness. That's it.  Yet, this simple, straightforward uncluttered combination is just ridiculously refreshing.

Finally, we come to JC Flyer IPA from Iron Springs Brewing in Marin County's Fairfax. With family in Marin County, I drop by the Iron Springs Brewpub every so often and have enjoyed this West Coast style IPA. It's citrusy, with tangerine flavors dominating, with some piney notes and a little resiny stickiness. The malt basically stays out of the way. Just another in the long line of solid-to-great IPA's you find all over the place in California.

Rambling Reviews 6.13.2016: Debutante and Surround from Stillwater Artisanal, Sinister Black Ale from 10 Barrel

As summer approaches, it's time once again to ramble on about a few beers which crossed my lips.

I'll start with Debutante, a Biere de Garde from East Coast gypsy brewer Stillwater Artisanal. It's a collaboration brew with The Brewer's Art, a nifty  Baltimore brewpub I visited very early in my blogging life. As for the beer, it's an excellent composition of toasty malt, light sweetness, spicy aromatics, fruity esters, but it's a wonderful floral honey-like character that dominates the brew. So what if the Biere de Garde style was traditionally brewed for winter, it really works well as an early summer sipper.

Let's talk about another one from Stillwater, shall we? It's Surround, which Stillwater describes as an Imperial Oak Smoked Wheat Stout. And indeed, it's smokey. So smokey, the smoke just buries everything else. I sense dark chocolate flavors struggling to emerge, and a grassy earthiness on the finish. Surround also has a wonderfully creamy texture, but at 10% abv, there's also a noticeable alcohol burn. I found this a fascinating brew, reaching for the sky in the flavor department with soaring hits and misses. Doesn't quite work for me in the sum total, but wouldn't be surprised if plenty of others really dig it.

Far less ambitious that Surround, but a lot more successful is Sinister Black Ale from 10 Barrel. Of course, "Sinister" might be the word you'd use to describe A-B InBev's strategy of acquiring regional breweries like 10 Barrel to better help them strong arm beer distributors to feature only A-B InBev brands. But if those diabolical plans involves beers as good at Sinister, the future of beer will be a lot better than people think. Sinister is a surprisingly deceptive brew, a simple, refreshing dark ale no where near as heavy as you would expect, with notes of light semi-sweet chocolate and molasses that work quite nicely together. Achieving such refreshing straightforwardness in a dark ale is a feat I have to applaud, no matter what evil corporation is behind it.

Rambling Reviews 2.10.2016: New beers from 21st Amendment, 10 Barrel and Sierra Nevada

Time once again to ramble on a few new beers that crossed my path.  Here in the dead of a San Jose "winter", these new brews are decided on the lighter side.

Such as El Sully, described as a Mexican-style lager from 21st Amendment. Presumably named after 21st Amendment Brewmaster Shaun O'Sullivan, it's a damn good lager. New I realize most of you are probably not breathlessly awaiting the next new lager, but if you ask me, the simplicity of a well executed lager is a thing of beauty.  El Sully's decent malt heft, effervescent crispness with a light grassy hop bite is sometimes exactly what's needed in a beer, nothing more, nothing less. It's not a flavor explosion, but give me a basket of chips, a good salsa and a pint of El Sully and I'd be pretty happy.

Next up, Riding Solo Pale Ale from 10 Barrel Brewing, a single hop beer made with Comet hops which 10 Barrel sent me to sample. Riding Solo is the brain child of "Benny" who, according to a 10 Barrel press release "was on the fast track working for a large brewery, and then it all came crashing down. He made a bad choice, climbed the wrong building in Bend and found himself in the clink without a job."  Hmmmm...am I the only one finding the "large brewery" word choice rather ironic given 10 Barrel is part of A-B InBev's global beer empire? At any rate, we'll assume Benny paid his debt to society and is working hard to turn his life around. If he comes up with more beers like this, it won't take him too long. I enjoyed the unique flavor of this Pale Ale, with a subdued bitter grapefruit peel character with a herbal character similar to mint. It's one nice little Pale Ale.

Finally, we come to Otra Vez, a Gose with prickly pear cactus and grapefruit, released with much fanfare from Sierra Nevada. The Gose has emerged from near extinction to become the fastest growing craft beer style and this addition to Sierra Nevada's year 'round line-up has cemented the Gose's status status in the craft beer industry. Having enjoyed many a recent Gose, when I saw a six-pack of this in my local bottle shop, I snapped it up. Unfortunately, it left me wishing Sierra Nevada just brewed a regular old Gose without dumping a bunch of exotic fruit into it and dialing back the sourness. A more traditional Gose is a study of yin-yang balance between the interplay of salt and sour in a light wheat ale. Otra Vez is basically a light fruit ale with a little salt and nary any sourness. It's reasonably enjoyable but comes across as a missed opportunity, the fruit becoming a distraction rather than an enhancement of the Gose style. I'll even go so far as to say if there was ever such a thing as a mass market Gose, a profit driven modification of the style to better conform to more general tastes, it would taste something like this. Sorry, Otra Vez just isn't my idea of a Gose and I just wasn't turned on with what really was just a light fruity ale.

Road Trip to Bend: Touring 10 Barrel Brewing

On a cool, clear Labor Day weekend, my wife and I headed up to Bend, OR.  While we looked forward to reuniting with friends who recently moved there from Cupertino in the Bay Area, it was also a chance to check out the thriving brewing community in Bend.  Just two hours after our arrival in town, we headed over to 10 Barrel Brewing's production brewery for the week;y 3:00 pm Friday tour.

By now you know, 10 Barrel was acquired by Anheuser-Busch last November. Located on the Northeastern edge of Bend, the brewery seems both physically and spiritually disconnected from the rest of the city. Early in the tour, our guide points out the original 10 Barrel system that gave the brewery its name. Someone asks "What is malt, exactly?". While our guide struggles to answer the question, what she lacks in beer knowledge, she easily makes up with raw genuine enthusiasm for 10 Barrel's beer.

The brewery buzzes with activity, forklifts beeping and humming around the brewery moving around pallets seemingly at random. Even late into the afternoon on Friday, brewery bustles with energy, striving for escape velocity well beyond Bend, fueled by Anheuser-Busch money.  As our small group dodges forklifts and looks at all the shiny new brewing equipment while sipping from complimentary bottles of Apocalypse IPA, we are sufficiently primed for the long weekend.

The original 10 barrel brewing system at
10 Barrel Brewing

Friday afternoon and they're still hard at work brewing

Rambling Reviews 7.13.2015: Three From 10 Barrel Brewing

10 Barrel Brewing has made lots of noise recently, winning awards and getting acquired by Anheuser-Busch last November.  Now, they have expanded their distribution to the Bay Area and were kind enough to send me three of their beers to try out. Let's find out about some of their beers that's attracted so much attention.

First up, Swill, a mixture of lemonade and a Berliner Weiss known as a radler. "Swill" is a daring name for a polarizing beer. Reviews of Swill on RateBeer and BeerAdvocate are pretty much of the "love it" or "hate it" variety. My wife and I, who have had our share of arguments, were similarly divided. She found it a little too sweet, while I thought the sweetness level was about right. Both of us liked the punchy lemony sour "tang" to it as we sipped this on our front porch during a hot afternoon. It's pretty light beverage with the underlying wheat beer and barely any detectable hop presence, leaning a little more towards the beer side than the lemonade side.  Of course, there will be beer geeks who will simply refuse to be caught dead drinking something like this.  I think a large fraction of the remaining 98% of the population will enjoy this just fine.

Next up, Apocalypse IPA. The largely neutral malt lets the hops shine through with plenty of bright flavors dominated by grapefruit, with some grassy and floral notes in there too. Nothing particularly earth-shattering here, just a well rounded, dry, and balanced IPA that's more about drink-ability than popping you in the mouth with a bunch of hops. Brewed in the stereotypical West-Coast IPA fashion, I found this compares well to the best examples of this style.  I'm talking about beers like Bear Republic Racer 5 or Lagunitas IPA in case you were wondering.

Finally, we end with Joe IPA, an intense grapefruity hop wallop with a little resin finish.  It's surprising dry and well balanced despite all the hop intensity. It's pretty impressive, since IPA's with this much hop flavor usually end up as big malty monstrosities, often sticky sweet and tasting like hop syrup. Somehow they cram in all that hop flavor into a balanced brew. Joe IPA won Gold in the American India Pale Ale category at the North American Beer Awards and fourth in the National Beer Championships this year. It's pretty obvious why.

Let's give 10 Barrel extra bonus points for not naming their IPA's using some tired hop pun. Looks like so far, Anheuser-Busch hasn't screwed up Goose Island. We can only hope they do the same with 10 Barrel Brewing.

10 Barrel Brewing's SF Bay Area Roll-out and acquisition by Anheuser-Busch: A chat with brewery co-founder Chris Cox

10 Barrel co-founders Chris Cox, Garret Wales, and Jeremy Cox
(10 Barrel Brewing photo)

Their beer won awards and plenty of raves on websites like BeerAdvocate and RateBeer. But the biggest news 10 Barrel Brewing made was being acquired by Anheuser-Busch (A-B) last November.  Now this Bend, OR brewery is rolling out their beer into the San Francisco Bay Area. That's right, technically the same outfit, A-B InBev, that brought you Lime-a-Rita now brings a brewery known for eclectic experimental beers to the Bay Area.  Let that sink in for a moment.

So what sort of beers can we expect from 10 Barrel here in Northern California? And how has the A-B acquisition factored into all of this?  I spent a few minutes chatting with 10 Barrel co-founder Chris Cox about these and other questions and here's what he had to say.

Tell us about your Northern California Roll Out.  What beers will we see?

We’ve been planning to move into Northern California for two years. We came down June 9^th to San Francisco to introduce our beers to the area and are excited about the next time we can come down to the Bay Area and have some fun. There will be four beers to start with in the Bay Area.  First, will be our flagship Apocalypse IPA. You can also find our Joe IPA and DUB, a Double IPA, and Cucumber Crush, part of our Crush series. We’re coming down to the Bay Area with our best.

Cucumber Crush sounds interesting.  How did that happen?  What motivated you to think "cucumber" and "sour" together and say “Let’s go for it?”

The credit goes to our brewers. Tonya Corbett runs our Sour program and we have a “Crush” series where we continually add fruit additions to the barrel during the fermentation.  For this one, we started with a Berliner Wiesse and added cucumber to it. It has a really refreshingly light sourness, and definitely a good "after work out" beer.

How did the A-B acquisition affect your plans to distribute into the Bay Area?

It didn’t affect the roll-out. Actually, the acquisition probably set it back a couple months since a lot of things were put on hold initially once the deal closed. We really like the Bay Area and we’re looking forward to coming down often. It gives us the chance to eat some really good food and drink some of the other great beers brewed in the Bay Area.

What does 10 Barrel have to offer to Northern California that already has plenty of good breweries?

We think we have great beer, too. We’re just looking to come down, sell some beer and have some fun. What’s fun for us is to get involved in communities where there’s a lot of good craft beer.  We just started distribution in Colorado for the same reason. That’s fine with our parent A-B, as they haven’t given us any sales targets.

Really? Corporations always have goals and sales targets. A-B really doesn’t give you sales targets for these roll-outs?

A-B works with us as advisers and they help support us a lot with distribution. As regards to goals and sales, we do the same things today we did last year. We’re actually less aggressive at sales than we were a year ago and just as focused on the beer and really ingraining ourselves in each market. All the decisions remain here in Bend and its business as usual. They’ve gotten involved in a number of critical business matters than don’t have a lot to do with actually brewing the beer. It’s given our team the opportunity to really focus on the beer and not on things like accounting or buying glass in volume quantities. The A-B acquisition allows us to focus more on the things that got us started brewing beer in the first place.

Inside 10 Barrel's Bend Brewery
(10 Barrel Brewing photo)

Now that it’s been over six months since A-B acquired 10 Barrel, how else have things changed? Any surprises?

Well, I do attend more meetings and participate in more conference calls than I used to. There's that.

One great thing is it allows us to source raw materials that we couldn’t get before. We used to brew Joe IPA only in small quantities at our brewpub in Boise because we couldn’t get enough hops for larger production batches. A-B helped us get the quantities of hops we needed so we could brew in larger volumes so more people can drink it. Joe IPA has gone on to win Gold in the American India Pale Ale category at the North American Beer Awards and fourth in the National Beer Championships this year.

Any beers besides the four you mentioned we’ll see in Bay Area you can talk about?

There are three or four other beers we’re trying to get approved for sale down here. One of them you’ll certainly see in the Bay Area is Pub Beer, an American Craft Lager. You can see we give our beers really imaginative names.

Chris Cox is clearly enjoying this honeymoon period with A-B, sounding relaxed and very confident over the phone during the interview. While "selling some beer and having fun" may be sufficient to A-B management for now, there will likely come a day when A-B's investors start asking tough questions about the 10 Barrel acquisition to A-B executives. Answers like "Well, they're selling some beer and having fun" probably aren't going to go over too well on Wall Street.  But it's important to realize the size of the 10 Barrel acquisition is basically a rounding error on A-B's spreadsheets, with A-B having far less to gain by squeezing a few extra dollars out of 10 Barrel through heavy handed management tactics then they would lose from the negative fall-out from very public acquisition failure. With that in mind, A-B's hands off approach makes a lot of sense.

There's so much historic fear and loathing directed toward A-B in the craft brewing community the automatic reaction to this and other similar A-B acquisitions was that A-B would simply gut the brewery and dumb down the beer. Few considered the opposite outcome, where A-B would provide resources otherwise unavailable to the smaller brewery to allow it to really prosper. Whether the former or the latter happens with 10 Barrel is still an open question.  The good news for the Bay Area beer community is that we get to try some new highly acclaimed beers and ultimately get to vote on the success or failure of A-B's acquisition of 10 Barrel with our pint glasses.