The Session #68: When Does Novelty Cease?

For this month's Session, Tiffany at 99Pours asks us to write about novelty beers.   Here are my riffs on the subject.

In the 50's, Elvis Presley introduced novel innovations in music to the world.  About the same time, Alvin and the Chipmonks released records using novel recording techniques.  Both Elvis Presley and Alvin and the Chipmonks won multiple Grammy Awards.  Elvis is still Elvis.   Alvin and the Chipmonks are still unlistenable to anyone over the age of seven.  Somewhere between Elvis Presley and Alvin and the Chipmonks lies the interface between timeless innovation and perpetual novelty.

Beer is no different.  Chile beer is one novelty beer that many feel has not only overstayed its welcome, but should never have come over in the first place.  And yes, chile beer is often a stale lager with a jalapeno pepper thoughtlessly dunked into it, a beer gimmick resulting in an overpowering and undrinkable mess.  But it doesn't have to be that way.  One of my favorite beers is Devil's Canyon's Hades Habanero, where a deft touch of the habenero's transforms an earthy underlying amber ale into a lively concoction.  And this year I experienced the pleasure of Green Chile Ale from De La Vega's Pecan Grill & Brewery in Las Cruces, NM, a beer where local green chiles are carefully put on a pedestal of light malt to be celebrated in all their glory.  I also experienced a beer brewed with fennel of all things, Almanac's Spring 2012 Bière de Mars, and found it sensational.   Somehow, these beers made with habaneros, green chiles, or fennel  don't seem like novelty beers, but examples of innovative brewing with unusual and local ingredients.

Of course, there was a time when the ubiquitous IPA was a novelty beer.  Just a few decades ago, an IPA in America was either a rare British import, or was handed to you by a shaggy homebrewer with a devilish glint in his eye.  And as IPA's caught on and became ordinary, the new novel became uber-hoppy double, triple, and even quadrupal IPA's, as brewers engaged in a hop-driven arms race.  Until there was nowhere else to go and a few breweries got the bright idea to release Gruits, beers without any hops, but often flavored instead with spices and other exotic additions.  And it was novel.

Well, sort of.  For the first 5,000 years of brewing history, the Gruit ruled, as hops first started showing up in beer around 1400 AD.  Seems like as long as beer is continually reinvented, there will always be novelty beers.  They just may be standard beers from our past, or of the future.

California Cafe' Brewmasters' Dinners Remain in Good Hands

Dessert of Glazed Plums, Pine Nut-Prune Chutney, Honey-Cinnamon Sabayon
paired with Firehouse's  Hardly Thomas Barley Wine

When I heard Chef Todd Yamanaka was replacing departing Chef Mark Pettyjohn at Palo Alto's California Cafe', that proverbial sound of a needle scratching across a vinyl record echod in my mind.  After all, Mark Pettyjohn was clearly a driving force behind the California Cafe's Brewmaster series, with his enthusiasm for both the breweries and pairing their beers with creative plates.  In fact, Yamanaka only assumed his post as Executive Chef at California Cafe's Palo Alto location barely one week.  If that wasn't enough, things fell through with the previously scheduled brewery for April, and so Steve Donohue of Firehouse Brewing came in to pinch hit with just a couple weeks notice before the next dinner held this past April 26th.   Considering the amount of time and effort that goes into these things, sounds like a disaster waiting to happen.

Except it didn't.  Sure, for some of the courses, I'd have to admit some of the beer and food pairings were not as cohesively integrated as in dinners past.   But there was this comfortable spontaneity  and "let's just try this" to the whole affair, both in the food and in Donohue's brews, especially his experimental Barley Wine and Sour Ale, that couldn't be duplicated with the weeks of preparation Pettyjohn usually took.  I should add the penultimate course of Coffee Crusted Angus Ribeye and Wild Mushroom Risotto paired with the uber coffee roastiness of Firehouse's Brendan’s Irish Stout hit it out of the park with its warm, earthy comforting character.  Otherwise, I'm not going to go into a culinary breakdown of the evening, since I'm not good at that stuff, especially since my esteemed beer blogging colleague Peter Estaniel was there that evening, and he is good at that stuff, and I expect he'll post something soon.

Yamanaka may not be a hard core beer geek, but in talking with him he clearly appreciates beer, and the man can clearly cook.  With all the announcements of $100 plate beer dinners in out of the way places in San Francisco, Sonoma and Napa Counties, and it's reassuring for rest of us that one at half the cost can be found in Palo Alto and it's future looks at lot stronger than it did a week ago.

Next up, Devil's Canyon Brewing from my home town of Belmont May 31st.   By then, Chef Yamanaka will have time to breathe, get his sea legs, and whatever other cliches you want to add by then.  It ought to be interesting. 

The Session #61: Of Course Local is Better. But Where and Why?

For this month's Session Matt Robinson of Hoosier Beer Geek  asks us what makes the local beer tastes better.  I don't have a clue what the answer is, which didn't stop me from writing.

When was the last time you heard someone say, "Support your local brewer"? Seems like it's been a while.

Of course, your "local brewer" has changed over the years. Growing up in Bowling Green, OH in the 70's, my dad drank Rolling Rock because it was from the local brewery, a mere 300 miles away in Latrobe, PA. By the 90's when I was a graduate student at Ohio State, the city of Columbus finally had its own brewery, but you couldn't find their beer at campus bars, so going out with friends and having a few "Rocks" was still drinking local. Rolling Rock just had that unique flavor you couldn't find with other beers, which I suppose was why we preferred it. Never mind that unique flavor in each bottle of Rolling Rock was from massive amounts of dimethyl sulfide, widely considered a brewing defect.

With so many new breweries popping up today blanketing the landscape, it's hard to say which ones are actually local. This was apparent the day I attended a beer dinner in Los Gatos a couple years ago featuring a San Francisco Bay area brewery located about 40 miles away. The brewery's representative exhorted the crowd to drink his beer because it was from their local brewer. He was seemingly unaware that he was standing about a block away from Los Gatos Brewing Company, which would probably beg to differ as to who the local brewer in Los Gatos was. In fact, I counted at least six breweries closer to where he was standing, proclaiming himself as our local brewer, than where his brewery was actually located. And yet, despite this apparent contradiction in brewing geography, his claim to be our local brewer somehow seemed genuine. Maybe that's because his beer was better than most of the beers from the technically more local" breweries.

One by-product of the commercial success of craft beer is that through inevitable industry consolidation and increased distribution, craft beer is becoming more national and less regional.  We're losing something in that.

My local brewer happens to be Devil's Canyon in my home town of Belmont, CA. I've had so many pints of Silicon Blonde, Deadicated Amber, and Full Boar Scotch Ale there's a warm familiarity each time I have one. The beers from my local brewer have a unique character, nuance, and flavor profile which make them unmistakably local.  I've had beers from far away lands like Kenya and Thailand which have a unique character, nuance, and flavor profile which make them unmistakably foreign. Drinking a pint of Deadicated Amber is like being out with an old friend. Drinking a pint of beer from a distant brewery is like meeting a new friend.

But that's just my opinion. Psychologists, anthropologists, and sociologists have struggled to figure out why local seems better for years. Maybe that's because geographers and economists are still debating what "local" means.

Hit by a Kaleidoscope

I never saw Kaleidoscope coming.

A fleeting photo of a pint of the ellusive Kaleidoscope

It's Beer Friday at Devil's Canyon, the neighborhood bash they hold the last Friday of each month, where they open up the brewery, roll in a food truck, and bring in a band or two, and serve beer. If you're lucky, they'll pour a special, limited release. With SF Beer Week just ending, they had four, count 'em, four special beers brewed for SF Beer Week left over. Having missed most of SF Beer Week due to work and family committments, I was glad to sample some of these beers before they were gone for good.  By far the most impressive of the bunch was Kaleidoscope, and beer that defies conventional description.

Kaleidoscope was the result of a nine brewery collaboration between (take a deep breath) Devil's Canyon, Pacific Brewing Laboratories, Triple Voodoo, HighWater Brewing, Golden Mongoose, Phat Matt's, Two Monkeys, MyBucca, and Red Cup Lager. What's surprising about this collaboration was how all those guys could actually all fit inside a brewery and create something drinkable, smooth, with a restrained complexity.

There's a lot of great collaboration brews out there, but they are almost always these big, strong beers full of heavy flavors. Driven by enthusiasm, and quite possibly ego and one upmanship, brewers in these collaborations have produced many memorable, arresting, and unforgetable brews, but sometimes I wish they would just dial these collaboration beers down a little.   A couple collaborations have been as about subtle and enjoyable as getting popped in the mouth with a sledge hammer.  So had I known Kaleidoscope was a nine-brewery collaboration, I would've figured it being some obscenely high alcohol over-hopped palate shattering mess and avoided it like the plague

But I'm glad I didn't. The spicy pork quesadilla I had with this beer made it a little difficult to fully gather in all Kaleidoscope's flavors, but there were plenty of roasty flavors from the dark malts, a light spiciness that seemed like anise and some subtle aromatic quality I couldn't put my finger on, and a noticeable  but well balanced grassy and earthy hop finish. It was one of the most unique, indescribable and most importantly, tasty brews I've ever had. And only 5% abv, it was arguably sessionable.

How did they actually brew this? According to this press release on Devil's Canyon website:

"Starting with the general framework of an IPA, the group gravitated toward these malt elements: Pale malt, crystal malts, biscuit malt, oatmeal, roasted wheat, rice and a few other surprises were selected.

To make things really interesting, Green and Black Teas were added to the mash.

For the hop additions, an “inventory clean up” approach was undertaken; a little of this, a little of that. The bitterness levels were kept on the lower side to allow the tea and whirlpool additions to come through.

And speaking of whirlpool additions… dried currant and Grain of Paradise were added to play off the unique flavors contributed from the mash. Throw in some English Yeast and the beer was underway."

OK, well that explains what they used to brew it.   How they worked together maintaining the skill, restraint and most likely humility required to prevent this beer from turning into a horrible monstrosity is a secret they'll probably keep to themselves.

A bunch of brewers, throwing a whole lot of ingredients together and producing something smooth, drinkable, complex but restrained and balanced isn't just impressive. It's miraculous.

The Session #49: Regularity is Extraordinary

For this month's Session, Stan Hieronymus of Appellation Beer asks us to write about Regular Beers.

Regularity seems so ordinary and boring, but it's what we all crave. The mind can handle only so much intense stimulation before it effectively cries "uncle", while too much passive relaxation renders us paralyzingly numb. A healthy medium of regularity is why none of us make our home on a roller coaster or in a sensory deprivation tank. Indeed, regularity is quite underrated, especially for those who suffer from depression, anxiety, autism, substance addition, mental illness, brain injuries, and other afflictions where "being regular" is either fleeting or impossible. Finding an ordinary regularity is what we do to get through life.

And so about once a week when neither of us feel like making dinner, my wife and I head down to our neighborhood taqueria after we're both pretty tired and frazzled after a particularly long, stressful day at work. We each get a burrito and a pint of Deadicated Amber Ale from our hometown brewery Devil's Canyon. The roasty malt flavors, its strong earthy character, and its light grassy hop finish goes great with Mexican food. The simple, yet subtlety complex pleasures of a good beer and a burrito allows us to recharge and rebalance so we so can do it all over again tomorrow.

Beer has long been a regulator in civilization and for that, we are grateful.

Beer of the Month: Full Boar Scotch Ale from Devil's Canyon Brewing

I thought about featuring a winter seasonal for this January's Beer of the Month, but plenty of craft breweries have pulled their winter seasonals from the shelves, replacing them with their spring seasonals. It's bad enough when I go to K-Mart in the middle of October looking for Halloween costumes for my kids and they already already have the Christmas trees and decorations up, but here in the middle of winter, it's getting awfully hard to find a winter seasonal. Craft breweries alway claiming to be so much better than big corporate breweries often by the sole virtue of being smaller local companies, and if they stopped imitating the annoying habit big corporations have of releasing seasonal products months before the actual season they are intended for, this superiority they claim over big corporation would gain additional credibility.

Thankfully, Devil's Canyon Brewing Full Boar Scotch Ale, is available all year around, even if it seems ideal for winter. So ideal in fact, that I got myself a growler of it for the holidays, sipping out of port glass on cold winter nights. OK, it rarely gets below 40 degrees Fahrenheit at night in the Bay Area, but having gotten soft living here for ten years after moving here from the midwest, at least 40 degrees feels cold. It's a damp cold.

I quite enjoy all the flavors from the dark malts which combine with buttery, toffee-like notes with light molasses, and savory umami flavors. Try as I might, I couldn't detect any hops, even though I figure there's some in there. It's complex, but not heavy, making it very versatile beer that's both very drinkable and great sipping beer.

Devil's Canyon Full Boar Scotch Ale can be found in multiple locations up and down the San Francisco peninsula, or you can pick up a growler from the brewery in my hometown of Belmont. Enjoy it this month after a day shopping for Easter decorations.

Giant Metallic Object Spotted Near Devil's Canyon Brewing

It towers over the city of Belmont casting long, ominous shadows. Startled airline pilots swerve out of its way as they land their aircraft onto nearby San Francisco International Airport. UFO sightings along the San Francisco Peninsula have tripled. And if you've driven down Highway 101 near the Ralston exit and looked westward, you can't help but see it towering over the small industrial park where Devil's Canyon Brewing is located. Just what is it?

Linda and I decided to spend last Friday solving this deep mystery and grab a couple pints at Devil Canyon's Brewing Beer Friday, an open house Devil's Canyon holds the last Friday of each month. Turns out this shimmering tower of metal is a humble grain silo. I spoke for a few minutes with Daniel Curran, Devil's Canyon's VP of Sales and Marketing, who told me the new silo halves their grain costs, as they can now buy grain in much higher volumes with the increased storage capacity of the silo. Cutting costs by increasing volume? Well, that sounds something like a mega brewer ABInBev might do. But hey, craft brewing is a business, and as a business, any craft brewer to find ways to keep costs down to stay competitive, just like ABInBev. But since grain has a pretty long shelf life, I'm not too concerned about a drop in Devil's Canyon's overall product.

But what is very un-ABInBev-like is that Devil's Canyon maintains and cleans all the tap lines wherever their beer is sold, making the extra effort and expense to maintain the quality of their product at the point of sale. Having experienced excellent beers such as Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, Sam Adam's White Ale, and Anchor Steam ruined by a stale cheesy flavor introduced as the beer flowed through a dirty tube into my glass, trust me, this is good to know.

Linda and I also checked out Mayfield Brewing that evening, which is located in the same industrial park not less than 50 yards away. I've heard a lot about Mayfield, but never had the chance to check out their beers before, especially since the $30-$50 a bottle pricing was a little too steep for my recession limited wallet. The good news is they were serving 4-5 ounce tastings for a more affordable $5.

Mayfield's claim to fame is aging their beers in used wine barrels, infusing a lot of wine and woody characteristics into their beers. For a couple of the beers we tried, this created an interesting, unique, and complex drink. But notice I didn't use the word "tasty", because with the Iconoclast Aurora, and Iconoclast Eclat, an Alt Beer and IPA aged in Zinfandel and Cabernet barrels, this process seemed to create a forced marriage of flavors and the resulting liquid seemed to have a bit of a identity crisis. Linda, a big IPA fan, really missed the floral aroma found in a good IPA, which seemed to be sucked out of the brew from the barrel aging process in the Eclat.

There were no such problems with the Iconoclast Nocturna, an Imperial Stout aged in Syrah barrels. Maybe that's because Syrah and the chocolate notes of the Imperial Stout are a more natural pairing, or the smoky, woody, and vanilla notes that the brew seemed to pick up from the barrel aging effortless pair with the chocolate and coffee notes of the stout. No "acquired taste" required to enjoy this one, which was one of those beers that make you sit up and say "Wow!". Linda and I gladly spent $30 on a bottle of this stuff.

Only about 25,000 people live in Belmont, and yet it's home to two craft breweries. I think we're going to like living here, despite all the strange goings on from time to time.

Buying Local Before and During the Devil's Canyon Brewing Beer Dinner

Having moved up the San Francisco peninsula to Belmont about a month ago from the South Bay, Linda and I have been looking for a way to get acquainted with our new local brewery, Devil's Canyon. In one of life's small ironies, the first chance we had was a beer dinner last week at the California Cafe in the South Bay town of Los Gatos. I've enjoyed their Hades Habanero in Santa Cruz and had the Deadicated Amber Ale a few times, but I hadn't had their Scotch Ale and California Rye IPA yet, and both were on this tasty looking and rather carnivorous evening's menu:

First course: Amber Ale Battered Jumbo Shrimp, jicama aioli, and and frisee salad paired with Deadicated Amber Ale.

Second course: Grilled Beef Tri-tip with cashew sweet potato croquet, watercress, and spiked steak sauce pair with California Sunshine Rye IPA

Third course: Smoked rack of wild boar ribs, house made Worcestershire sauce, fried onion strings pair with Full Boar Scotch Ale

Dessert course: Root beer float with banana ginger ice cream chocolate ginger snap cookies, toasted marshmallow chantilly cream with Devil's Canyon Root Beer.

Before the beer dinner started, I needed to pop into my old running haunt, The Athletics Performance, and replace my worn out running shoes. Just a couple blocks down the street from the California Cafe, I've bought all my shoes over the past five years here, and I go through a lot of running shoes. I know the owners well, and since they're runners too, we always chat a bit about upcoming races, and our training is going. Athletic Performance founder Brad Armstrong holds track work-outs to all comers Tuesday and Saturday mornings on the Los Gatos High School track which many runners in the South Bay take advantage of. The Athletic Performance also sponsors a few local running races each year.

That evening, Christine Kennedy was minding the store, who remembered which running shoe model I normally wear. I'm glad she did, since I had forgotten. Christine's doesn't look a day over 35, and finishes first place in the 50 and older woman's age group in races all over the nation. It's not every day you meet some 50 year old woman who'll kick your ass in a road race. (I know she's kicked mine a few times.)

I pay a little more for my shoes at The Athletics Perform than at some big box retail outlet store, but there's no way you'll find me at one of those soulless, cavernous places. It takes ten minutes to find anyone working there who'll give you a confused stare to a simple question. The profits go to some far removed corporate headquarters, and are rarely reinvested in the local running community. I may save a little of my money, but get far less value for what I spend. And running shoe stores like The Athletics Performance are surviving, and in fact thriving all over the country in the face of deep pocketed corporate retailing competition. Most runners easily recognize the extra service and community involvement they get from a good local running store and spend their dollars there, proving that well run local businesses can be a powerful economic forces.

And that brings me back to the Devil's Canyon Beer Dinner that evening, where instead of simply drinking beer from some far removed brewery, Linda and I actually got to talk with people from Devil's Canyon who actually create the beer, and are passionate about what they make.

Of course, interacting with your local brewer may lead to disappointing results. Inquiring about when they would add Hades Habanero to their regular line-up, I learned they would likely be phasing out that beer, citing a need to focus on a few beers and not getting over extended. Damn! I'm all for quality over quantity, and understand and respect the business decision. I just don't have to like it.

But things got better from there. As the first course was being served, Dan Curren of Devil Canyon's explained the optimal temperature to serve their Deadicated Amber Ale was much warmer than most places serve their beer. At around 55 degree Fahrenheit, the malt flavors definitely become more pronounced, and the hop finish more noticeable than the colder pints of this brew it I've had elsewhere.

During the second course, Linda and I got to chat with Head Brewer Jason Beck about our favorite beer of the evening, their California Sunshine Rye IPA. Linda and I both noted a little bright flavors of apricot and light citrus in this unusual IPA, brewed with Centennial hops, which gave it a smooth earthy and grassy bitter finish. Jason explained he doesn't like going for aggressive hop bitterness in his IPA, unlike most California brewers who go around socking people in the mouth with bags of hops with no hesitation. As much we like beers like that, we really enjoyed the restraint with the hops coupled with the unique and lively blend of flavors of this memorable IPA with the feel good name.

The best food and beer pairing for the evening in my opinion was the third course, where the smokey and savory flavors of the wild boar and Worcestershire sauce harmonized well with the bitter chocolate and smoky flavors of the Full Boar Scotch Ale. And while we appreciated California Cafe chef Bobby Logan's innovative use of ingredients to create layers of flavors in all of his dishes, we couldn't help wonder if the Devil's Canyon Root Beer, with it's complex sweetness derived with cane sugar, agave nectar, and local honey, would go better in a root beer float with good old vanilla ice cream, rather than the kitchen sink of ingredients in his ambitious take on the classic. No matter, it was pretty good anyway.

And so when as people get to know their local brewer, understand their commitment and care to the brewing craft, and taste the final product, is it at all surprising that the 1,500 craft brewery Davids in this country are slowly but surely taking market share away from the the few mega-brewing Goliaths? As an unrepentant capitalist, I'll say it again that well executed local businesses are a powerful economic forces. I just need to keep pestering those guys about putting Hades Habanero back in their line-up.