High Altitude Training and Carbo Loading in Yosemite

Sometimes, you just have to break the monotonous routines of life, to refresh by experiencing new things and breaking routines. And so was glad I recently spent a long weekend with some friends at a cabin inside Yosemite National Park. In addition to seeing friends I haven't seen in a while we were also celebrating my girlfriend Linda's birthday.

And while I've found it's important to establish a training routine for running success, breaking this routine once in a while is always helpful. Races often create some unexpected adversity, so dealing with new and different barriers in training from time to time helps to prepare for whatever the race throws at you. So I appreciated getting a couple good high altitude runs in through the trails in and around the town of Wawona inside the park, which seemed to rejuvenate my legs a bit, having gotten into a little running rut.

Of course during the weekend, we spent a day in the Yosemite Valley, taking in the surreal, iconic landscape that's inspired generations. As I stood amongst the majestic pine trees, with the Merced River rushing by, and gazed upwards at the famous cascading waterfalls shooting down the shear cliffs thousands of feet above me, one question immediately jumped into my mind: What's the beer like around here?

Fortunately, I did not have to wait long for an answer, as we took a break at the historic Ahwahnee Hotel and enjoyed an Ahwahnee Amber Ale from Mammoth Brewing. Amber Ale is a often a rather uninspiring style, but maybe that's because few Amber Ales are as good as this one. We all enjoyed the rich, lightly roasted malt flavors that gave way to a slightly, astringent hop bitterness. Well composed, balanced beers like this are a wonderful thing. I honestly can't remember a better amber ale than this. (This beer is normally sold as The Real McCoy Amber Ale.)

Later in the Ahwahnee Hotel gift shop, I picked up a six-pack of Yosemite Falls Pale Ale from Snowshoe Brewing in nearby Arnold, CA. Back in the cabin, I found this to be a rather malt forward pale ale, with lots of bread-like character to go with a light orange peel bitterness. I wasn't blown away by this one, but it did start to grow on me after the third bottle over the course of the weekend. (This beer is usually sold as Snowshoe's Thompson Pale Ale.)

After poking around the Yosemite Village Store, and a little gift shop and grocery store in Wowona, I picked up a few other offerings from Mammoth Brewing. Their Epic IPA could have passed for a slightly hoppy pale ale, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. This brew had the malty backbone of a well done biscuit, which blended well its light citrus and floral hop character. Not what I expected for an IPA, but really nice combination of flavors. And I found Mammoth Brewing's High Country Pilsner to have a minerally character, with a slight tartness, and subdued hop finish. While not the classic pilsner flavor profile, Linda and I found it quite refreshing. Both the Mammoth's IPA and Pilsner were unlike the classic styles, yet both were quite unique, memorable, and enjoyable. Wasn't I talking about virtues of breaking routine and predictability just a few paragraphs ago?

There were some nearby breweries I wanted to visit, but just couldn't find the time. Of course, when your girlfriend is celebrating one of life's milestones with her closest friends, and you're out and about, searching for beer, well, women get emotional about stuff like that. But I'm a pretty lucky guy hanging around a closet hop-head, and we've shared many tender moments that often involve me asking about her feelings as I pointed to a beer, with her responding with a heartfelt "Go for it!".

Babe, here's to celebrating lots more birthdays with you!

Brewing Network Hosts First Annual Winter Brews Festival

As sort of a warm up to San Francisco Beer Week, the Brewing Network is hosting it's First Annual Winter Brews Festival this January 30th at the Linden Street Brewery.

From the online press release the event:

will feature a wide variety of winter warmers and unique innovations from some of the best brewers in the Bay Area and beyond.

Partnering with Linden St. Brewery in Oakland, this festival combines the love of seasonal beers with the enthusiasm of the local craft beer scene. With barrels from breweries such as Russian River, Firestone Walker, the 21st Amendment, Speakeasy, Linden St., Moonlight Brewing, Magnolia, and many more, this Winter Brews Fest promises to provide big, malty beers to ignite the taste buds of beer lovers, new and experienced.

Hot food and live music will round out the festival, which will run from 1pm to 8pm. Tickets will be sold at the door.

Where: Linden St. Brewery, 95 Linden St. Suite 7/8, Oakland CA. 94607

When: Saturday, January 30th, 1 - 8pm


Looks pretty interesting, and there's a decent chance Linda and I can make it. Hope to meet all four of you there!

Southern Tier in My Hotel Room, and More Civilized Places

It's something I look for whenever my travels take me eastward. I never know quite where to find it, but with a little diligence, I usually locate it. I'm talking about the many excellent beers from Southern Tier Brewing. And yes, drinking it from a plastic cup in a hotel room does not seem to be giving this beer the respect it deserves. But sometimes when travelling, I just have to improvise. It's also difficult to hold off opening the beer until I bring it home.


Southern Tier was founded by Phineas DeMink and Allen ("Skip") Yahn, who purchased the defunct Old Saddleback Brewing Co. in Pittsfield, Massachusetts in 2003. All the equipment was removed, brought back to Lakewood, NY, located in the far west corner of New York state. (It's close to Jamestown, NY, where 10,000 Maniacs are from.) The Brewery began distributing regionally in February 2004. Southern Tier has grown steadily since then, and according to their website, distributes to over 34% of the United States. (Sadly, California does not seem to be part of that 34%.) The good news for Southern Tier fans is that they are currently moving to a larger brewery.

All this growth does not surprise me at all, as I read a lot of god things about their beers, and of the few I've tried, not one was worse than excellent. Here's a brief run down of those I've tried and have notes for.

Raspberry Porter
The bitter chocolate flavors from the roasted malt blend well with the tart, raspberry fruit, with no real sweetness to speak of. Porters are one of my favorite styles and this is nice little twist on the style without seeming gimmicky.

Creme Brulee Imperial Stout
This reconstruction of Creme Brulee in an Imperial Stout was one of my 2009 Bay Area Beer Runner Award Winners for "Best Desert Beer" . It starts out with a strong vanilla flavor with lactose sugar providing a custard-like character, roasted malt playing the role of the caramelized sugar, and just a whisper of Columbus and Horizon hops giving it balance. You know it's going to be good just from the aroma, and it just goes down silky smooth. This could have been easily been sickening sweet, but hits all the right notes for just an excellent beer drinking experience.

Mokah Imperial Stout
Mokah is another great dessert beer from Southern Tier. It comes across as a sweet, creamy beer milk shake with plenty of rich and well blended chocolate and coffee flavors.

Imperial Cherry Saison
Very restrained cherry tartness and a light woody flavor from the oak barrel aging really add a lot of depth to the strong, zippy, yeasty spiciness going on here. Very smooth for all those strong flavors, and just seems so artfully blended.

Surprising Results of Northern California Brewing Geography from a Simple Analysis

I always wondered how brewing activity is tied to geography. So to understand this more, I rather naively started looking at some of the data on beer brewing licenses by the California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control for each county to see what I might discover. And if I say so myself, a very simple, straightforward analysis does indicate some general truths, and also raises good questions to pursue for further analysis.

The California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control produces a report of the number of alcohol licenses per county. So simply looking up the number Type 1 (Brewery), Type 23 (Small Brewery) and Type 75 (Brewpub) licenses issued to each county, a rough idea of the brewing activity of the county can be determined. This may not be your ideal gauge of brewing activity per county, and it isn't mine either. It doesn't take into account quantity, where data is harder to find, or quality of the beer, which is rather subjective. But simply taking a count of the number of brewing locations within a county and a good starting point for "back of the envelope" calculations. So I started by looking at nine California counties that border the San Francisco Bay (San Francisco, Marin, Sonoma, Napa, Solano, Contra Costa, Alameda, Santa Clara, and San Mateo), added a couple nearby ones with demonstrable brewing activity (Santa Cruz, Mendocino), and threw in San Diego county just for grins, seeing how an California county everyone would agrees has plenty of breweries in it, would stack up against the others. (For those unfamiliar with these California counties, here's a handy map.)

After determining the Type 1, Type 23, and Type 75 licenses issued by the State of California, I took the sum of these numbers, and then divided the population of each county by the total number of brewing licenses in it, and rounded to resulting county residents per brewery to the closest thousand. After each county residents per brewery is listed, I've put the number of Type 1, Type 23, Type 75, and county population in parenthesis in the following format: (Type 1 / Type 23 / Type 75 / County Population). In order of fewest residents per brewery, here is what I found:

Medocino (17,000...( 2 / 3 / 0 / 86,221)
Napa 22,000...( 0 / 1 / 5 / 133,433)
Sonoma 29,000...( 0 / 14 / 2 / 466,741)
Santa Cruz 51,000...( 0 / 5 / 0 / 253,137)
Marin 62,000...( 0 / 3 / 1 / 248,794)
San Diego 79,000...( 0 / 24 / 14 / 3,001,072)
San Francisco 81,000...( 1 / 5 / 4 / 808,976)
Alameda 134,000...( 1 / 10 / 0 / 1,474,368)
Santa Clara 136,000...( 2 / 7 / 4 / 1,764,499)
San Mateo 142,000...( 0 / 5 / 0 / 712,690)
Solano 204,000...( 1 / 1 / 0 / 407,515)
Contra Costa 206,000...( 0 / 5 / 0 / 1,029,703)

Let's consider that 20,000-30,000 people per brewery figure for a moment. That's one brewery for each small city in the county. And how many of you honest expected Napa County to rank second on this list? Three things seemed to jump out of the numbers, at least to me.

Three Distinct Groups of Counties
It was surprising to me to see the counties neatly organize themselves into three groups. There is the group of Lower Density Counties, that includes
Medocino, Napa, Sonoma, Santa Cruz, and Marin Counties. All of these counties have a fair amount of wine making activity as well. Next are the two High Density Urban Counties of San Francisco and San Diego, which surprisingly have almost the exact same density of breweries. The last group of counties, bringing up the rear are Alameda, Santa Clara, San Mateo, Solano, and Contra Costa counties, which are the Largely Suburban Bay Area Counties.


Outside San Francisco, the Number of Residents per Brewery is Surprisingly Uniform
I didn't really expect this, thinking there would be more concentration around San Francisco and Oakland, but that wasn't the case.

The South Bay Isn't Quite the Beer Desert Everyone Says It Is
I've suspected this for a few months now, and it was part of my motivation for doing the analysis. Compared to most counties in the Bay Area, Santa Clara holds it's own, thank you very much. If there is any beer desert in Northern California, it is the Northeastern Counties of Solano and Contra Costa.

I'm encouraged these results suggest a number of questions to delve further, which are:

1. Does this rather simple approach work as we expand to other regions? I really didn't expect such a nice, neat arrangement of counties. What refinements can we make for it to be more reliable?



2. Is there a relation between wine making and brewing? If we look at other California counties with a lot of wine making activity, would we see similar results in brewing activity? What about wine making regions of Oregon, Washington and New York states?



3. Can we look at other urban areas in the United States and compare the residents per brewery in these area, and see what cities emerge as particularly active brewing cities. Of course, cities like San Francisco, San Diego, Portland, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Boston have reputations as brewing meccas. How do these reputations square with the data?
   

I'm looking forward to seeing conclusions we can make about brewing and geography and if this kind of stuff interests you, then stay tuned. And of course, if anyone has any comment, questions or sugestions, I look forward to hearing them.

The Session #35 : The First Annual Bay Area Beer Runner Awards for 2009

The year kicks off with The Session hosted by Christina Perozzi and Hallie Beaune of Beer for Chicks who ask "So we want to know what was your best and worst of beer for 2009? What beer mistakes did you make? What beer resolutions do you have for 2010? What are your beer regrets and embarrassing moments? What are you hoping to change about your beer experience in 2010?"

2009 is the year I started both blogging and homebrewing, becoming less of a beer spectator and more of a participant. Both were great journeys, bringing me to plenty of interesting people and places, with a few frustrating and awkward moments any new activity invariably brings. But besides a bottle of beer popping open in my luggage, no real disasters. I'll continue down that path in 2010 con mucho gusto.

Having enjoyed so many great beers in 2009, I simply cannot limit myself to picking just one as the best, so I'll mention a few memorable ones. And yes, there were some bad beers out there, and while I normally don't pick on a small craft brewer who had a bad day, or go after the obvious targets from the big, inter-galactic mega-breweries, I do have a couple dishonorable mentions. So without further ado, here's the First Annual Bay Area Beer Runner Awards for 2009.

The Award Winners

Best Zen-like Beer Drinking Experience: "Hitachano Nest Red Rice Ale" by Kuichi Brewery
It's pink and fizzy like Budweiser Chelada. It has strong notes of strawberry, an odd flavor for beer. Rice used in the brewing process is typically not a good sign. There's a sourness to the brew that suggests a Belgian, or at least European origin, but it's from Japan. Yet, all these unlikely elements add up together for an amazingly pleasurable and memorable beer drinking experience. Give it a one-handed round of applause.

Best Inaccurately Named Beer: "Terrible" by Unibrou
It comes in a big, black bottle with only the word "Terrible" on it in big, bold letters, daring you to drink it. Go ahead, and you'll be rewarded with flavors of raisin, dried fruits, anise, along with a nice toasty and slightly spicy yeast character. Despite all that subtle complexity, you won't notice the 10.5% abv. It's fantastic.

Best Chick Beer: "Raspberry Wheat" by El Toro Brewing
This category was chosen in honor of our hosts. I hope they see it that way. Plenty of brewers cannot resist the temptation to release "chick beers", light beers flavored with fruit. They're often either cloyingly sweet, or highly disjointed with fruit flavors sitting clumsily on top of the underlying beer. El Toro uses a fine touch to harmonize and blend raspberry into the slight tartness of their wheat beer creating something special. I'm not secure enough in my manhood to order this when I'm at El Toro, but have found stealing a sip or two from my girlfriend's glass to be a guilty pleasure. And if you're OK with the concept of fruit in beer, El Toro's aromatic and complex Peach and Blackberry Ales will open you to possibilities of fruit in beer you may thought had never existed.

Best Beer for Dessert: "Creme Brulee" by Southern Tier Brewing
An amazing and faithful reconstruction of Creme Brulee in an Imperial Stout. It starts out with a strong vanilla flavor with lactose sugar providing a custard-like character, roasted malt playing the role of the caramelized sugar, and just a whisper of Columbus and Horizon hops giving it balance. You know it's going to be good just from the aroma, and it just goes down silky smooth. This could have been easily been sickening sweet, but hits all the right notes for just an excellent beer drinking experience. And just behind Creme Brulee in the Beer for Dessert category is Southern Tier's "Mokah".

Best Beer That Makes Me Damn Proud to be Raised in the Midwest: "Blue Sky Rye" by Free State Brewing
I lived in the Midwest between the ages of three and thirty-three before moving to the California Bay Area ten years ago, so I have an affinity for great Midwestern beers. As you might expect from a brewery located in Kansas, Free State Brewing shows great respect for grain in their beers, and their Blue Sky Rye is my favorite example. Free State combines two types of rye with English Pale Ale malt and dark crystal malt, and balance it out with Styrian Golding and Crystal hops. The subtle rye flavors really add dimension to this brew, and it has a wonderful honey like sweetness to go with all those great fresh malty flavors.

Best Beer Tribute: "Bill Brand Brown" by Triple Rock Brewing
I enjoyed this special release at the Eat Real Festival in Oakland this year. Triple Rock used cocoa nibs to add an extra layer of bitter flavor to the rich, roasty, and slightly nutty malt goodness in this brew, elevating a humble brown ale into something very unique and memorable. I'm all for big flavors in a session beer, and have to think Bill would have heartily approved of this one. It's a great tribute.

Best Beer That Renewed My Faith in Lagers: "Premium Lager" from Creemore Springs Brewery
I don't know why people are so dismissive of the lager style simply because there are so many horrible ones. During a trip to Ottawa, Canada last May, I was fortunate to have a couple pints of this lager from Creemore Springs. Nothing complex here, just sharp, fresh, simple flavors of slightly toasty malt with a crisp, bitter hop finish. Great lagers are one of life's simple and overlooked pleasures.

Best Weird Beer : "Siamese Twin" by Uncommon Brewers
If a Belgian Double with coriander, Kafir Lime, and lemongrass sounds weird to you, you're not alone. I picked up a four pack of this last summer, and after finishing the first can, didn't like it. I appreciate being creative and unorthodox, but that does not always equate to being tasty. But by the third can, I'm thinking, "You know, this whole combination works really well". I still don't know how Thai spices take a Belgian Ale to a higher level, but they do. Uncommon Brewers is located in Santa Cruz, CA, where weirdness is a matter of civic pride.

Dishonorable Mentions

Most Ironic Tribute Beer: "Obama Presidential Ale" by Half Moon Bay Brewing
Does it make any sense to commemorate the first African-American President with an extremely light, straw colored ale that produces such a lacy, lily white head? Is a very timid tasting ale, dialed way down in flavor seemingly so as not to offend, really the right beer to honor a President who's called for sweeping, difficult, and uncomfortable change? There's a fine line between celebrating our new President and a desperate attempt to boost sales by simply slapping the popular President's face on a beer label, and I'm afraid if the beer doesn't remotely resemble anything about Obama, you're on the wrong side of that line. (This beer is normally sold as "Harbor Light Ale" by Half Moon Bay Brewing.)

Worst Beer from a Highly Respected Brewery That Beer Geeks Swooned Over, But I Did Not Like Very Much: "Thirteenth Anniversary Ale" by Stone Brewing
Plenty of beer reviewers and beer geeks raved about this one, which I found to be an out-of-control, harsh tasting monstrosity. I just didn't get this beer, where strong flavors of dried fruit, heavily roasted malt, alcohol, and shovels full of hops were kicking and screaming for my attention. It would seem this brew would age well, allowing the flavors to find a way to get along, but the bottle advised to drink it fresh, just another thing I just couldn't figure out about the brew. (Stone's 12th Anniversary aged beautifully after 6-9 months.) I've always thought Stone's strength was not because they use strong, aggressive flavors, but the finesse and balance they use with these flavors. They seemed to have lost their way with this one.

It's been a great year for beer. Look forward to doing it all over again in 2010!

Economic Study Suggests Collectable Beer Release Prices to Continue to Go Up

There's been a fair amount of discussion and hand-wringing about the rising costs of limited release beers. It seems craft breweries are producing more and more special releases, collaborations, and other collectible beers, at prices that seem to be going nowhere but up. I recently found a paper presented at the First Beeronomics Conference held in May of 2009 which suggests this trend will continue.

In his paper entitled "The Price of Unique", economist Phil Armour studied the prices of Stone Brewing's Vertical Epic series on EBay. By correlating the mean winning bids for Vertical Epic bottles transacted on EBay as a function of the volume of each beer produced by Stone Brewing in the series, Armour calculated an economic quantity called the Own Price Elasticity of beer in the Vertical Epic Series, and compared it to data found in rare wine auctions.

Own Price Elasticity describes the change in the price of an item caused by a change of its available quantity. Generally, as more of an item is produced, it's price goes down. What Own Price Elasticity determines is how dependent is the price of the product to its supply. If an item becomes rare, is the price bid up to incredibly high levels by people desperate for it? Or does the higher price quickly drive people out of the bidding? The higher the Own Price Elasticity is, the more likely people will pay high prices for a scarce item. Water is sometimes considered highly price elastic since when it is rare, people will still pay high prices for it to survive, while sugar is considered highly inelastic, since people historically turns to other sweeteners like honey, molasses or corn syrup when the price of sugar increases even marginally.

Armour found that the Price Elasticity of the Vertical Epic Series was higher than in auctions for rare, first growth Bordeaux wines. What this suggests is that in the case of these rare wines auctions, bidders were more likely to decline to bid on as the price increased, and turn to different vintages, while those coveting the Vertical Epic series on EBay decided they had fewer alternatives, and therefore, continued bid up the prices higher.

From my vantage point, it seems that as the craft brewing industry grows, more potential buyers of rare releases enter the market, and thus, more people are available to bid up the prices in the marketplace. Since these special releases sell out quickly, and are often spotted on EBay selling at above the retail price, breweries are simply motivated to brew more of them, and sell them at a higher price, simply because the market allows them to do so. Both anecdotal evidence and Armour's study suggest the market for special collectible beer releases is not saturated, and so we can expect breweries to release more of these special rare brews and command higher prices for them. To my mind, it remains to be seen if and when the craft beer market becomes over saturated with these beers.

New Year's Eve Wine and Beer Pairing at Wine Affairs

You can spend New Year's Eve at Wine Affairs pairing some excellent beers with tasty food, or can instead pair the tasty food with a somewhat one-dimensional beverage. Either way, looks like a good time will be had by all. Here are the details as they rolled into my e-mail a few days ago.

Ring in the New Year at Wine Affairs
Join us for a four-course dinner with optional wine or beer pairing

New this year - two seatings
6:00pm and 8:00pm
Live music begins at 9:00pm performed by Kristina Sablan with Darren
Anderson

Menu

Baked Ricotta and Goat Cheese with Toast
Wine Pairing: 2008 Pierre Andre, St Veran, Burgundy, France
Beer Pairing: Franziskaner Hefe-Weisse, Germany

Crab Salad in Endive Leaves
Wine Pairing: NV Zonin, Prosecco NL,Vino Spumante di qualità, Italy
Beer Pairing: Schneider Aventinus Doppelbock, Germany

Catalan Bean and Sausage Stew with Mint
Wine Pairing: 2006 Frescobaldi, Remole, Toscana, Italy
Beer Pairing: Duchesse De Bourgogne, Verhaeghe, Belgium

New York Style Cheese Cake
Wine Pairing: 2008 Marcarini, Moscato D'Asti, Italy
Beer Pairing: Smoked Beer - Aecht Schlenkerla Rauchbier Maerzen, Germany

Price: Dinner only - $55.00 per person
With Wine Pairing add $25.00 per person; With Beer Pairing add $20 per
person
Wine Club members: 10% discount applied

Tax and gratuity not included

Call now for reservations. Space is limited. 408-977-0111