Daniel Del Grande of Bison Brewing builds supply and demand for organics....now in Edible East Bay

Bison Brewing's Dan Del Grande
(photo from Edible East Bay)

If you ask me, Bison Brewing's Daniel Del Grande is one of the sharpest environment activists in the brewing business, with a keen sense on how to use capitalism to further a pro-environmental agenda. Which made for a good article in the latest issue of Edible East Bay, which you can read at the link below.

Brewer with a Cause: Bison Brewing's Daniel Del Grande builds supply and demand for organics

Scenes for the 8th Annual Meet the Brewers Festival

The 8th Annual Meet the Brewers Festival last Saturday was the usual of mostly South San Francisco Bay breweries.  Held on the grounds of San Jose's Hermitage Brewing, the usual suspects like Strike Brewing, Santa Clara Valley Brewing, Almanac Beer, Hermitage Brewing, Freewheel Brewing, Discretion Brewing, Red Branch Cidery and New Bohemia  were all pouring some fine brews.  Notable newcomers showcasing their latest concoctions include Steel Bonnet, Geartooth Alewerks,  Brewery Twenty Five, and Golden State Brewery. If I didn't give a brewery a mention, it was because I just didn't get around to their stand. Breweries typically bring their A-game to any beer festival, but usually there's always a misfire or two.  Not Saturday.  Everything my wife and I sampled was solid to excellent.  Biggest surprise?  Strike Brewing, long known for straightforward Session Ales was pouring "Stand Up Triple IPA", a dynamite Triple IPA. Sorry, no fancy tasting notes, I was just enjoying the brews and community.  I'll leave you with a few snapshots from the afternoon.

Scenes from the Grand Opening of Blue Oak Brewing

Another day, another brewery opens in the Bay Area. This times it's Blue Oak Brewing, tucked away in a little industrial park in San Carlos, just off Highway 101 which hosted its Grand Opening last Saturday. A small crowd of maybe thirty people crammed into the small tap room Blue Oak shares with Redwood Coast Cider to enjoy brews such as their herbaceous Hoppy Pale Ale, and well as their aromatic Belgian Golden and Strong Ales. Once again, no detailed tasting notes here, my wife and I we're just enjoying the beer and the random company of some of the people we shared a table with. I'll leave you with some pictures from the afternoon.

A quick look at Hapa's Brewing, San Jose's newest brewery

Hapa's Brewing, which opened up a mere two weeks ago, has already carved out its unique identity at a location lacking one. It's a little too west to be considered part of downtown San Jose, a little too north to be part of the Willow Glen neighborhood, and a bit too east of Burbank, sitting a nowhere's-ville surrounded by drab industrial buildings. It's organic warehouse space quickly filled up during last Friday afternoon when I stopped by, the place already developing a local following in its brief existence.

Judging the beer from any brewery that's just opened is a bit dicey. Talented brewers usually need a few batches under their belt to fully understand their new brewing equipment works, and bad brewers can get lucky and brew great beer right off the bat, but fail to repeat their success. As far as Hapa's goes, so far, so good. My favorite Hapa's brew was their Little Angel Mocha Porter. If they had added just a smidgen more coffee to the brew, it would have too much. Instead, the dominant coffee flavors really shine with a light bitter chocolate undertone, with a light body and sweetness. Very nice.  Their Barbie's Blonde Ale, with its light earthy and minerally character looked to be a popular after work refreshment, judging from all the pints of it pouring in the tap room, and gets my thumbs up.

The story behind Hapa's is one you've heard a thousand times already: A couple home brewers following their brewing passions and create a business. Yet emerging from this tired cliche' is breath of fresh air to forgotten corner of San Jose. That's why I never tire of discovering new breweries.

The Session #120 : Intersections with Brown Ales

For this month's Session, Joe Tindall over at The Fatal Glass of Beer admits Brown Ale has a bit of an image problem. While the color brown often conveys comfort and relaxed earthiness, it also signals something worn, tired, and faded. There are also brown things that....well, you probably don't want to think about while drinking beer. So it's not too surprising that Brown Ales are some of the least sexy styles of beer. That's too bad, since I like a good Brown and when I look back on my relationship with Brown Ales, they've been there along the way as I've made new discoveries in beer.









Such as the time back in my graduate school days at The Ohio State University in the early 90's, roaming the aisles at the Big Bear grocery store, I spied bottles of Samuel Smith's Nut Brown Ale high up on the beer shelf. Back then, my experience with any beer that wasn't a straw yellow Lager was pretty much limited to Michelob Dark. I couldn't help notice that one bottle of Samuel Smith's Nut Brown Ale cost about as much as a six-pack of Bud and was imported from some historic looking brewery from the UK, so I figured it must be good. In that time of great exploration in my life, I picked up a bottle. Trying it later one night in my dorm room, I found it, well, different. It was not some secret ambrosia and with my palate molded by light Lagers, it took effort to finish. Later on, I'd take a bottle or two to poker games to look cool and sophisticated as my friends sucked down cans of Natty Light. I was a bit of twit back then, and probably only grudgingly shared my Nut Brown Ale with anyone who asked to try it. Another Samuel, Samuel Adams, started showing up on beer shelves, which had a distinct advantage over Samuel Smith in that it was significantly cheaper, very important in those days when instant ramen noodles with frozen vegetables was my usual dinner.

Fast forward twenty years and 2,000 miles westward. I've been living in and around San Jose, California for ten years. By then, I'd discovered discovered so many great breweries in Northern California, although most of them are concentrated around the cities of Oakland and San Francisco, or bucolic places like Mendocino County or Santa Rosa. San Jose and it's Silicon Valley surroundings was considered a brewery backwater. Then one day, I discovered a new brewery in San Jose called Strike Brewing and one of their first beers was simply called "Brown".  (They now call it "Lumberbuster Brown").  Light, tight, and a little nutty, I found it to be a refreshing Brown from a brewery specializing in sessionable ales. Strike's no-nonsense straightforward style was equally refreshing at that time in Northern California, full of big booming IPA's and Imperial everythings. Strike Brewmaster Drew Ehrlich was a minor baseball pitcher before co-founding Strike and his beers suggest he threw batters nothing but a steady diet of solid fastballs. Strike was one of the earliest entrants into San Jose's small but growing brewing scene, a group of breweries which reflects Silicon Valley's tradition of both innovation and laser-focus on process. Being a Silicon Valley techie, it is with pride that I can now enjoy hometown brews from Strike and plenty of other new local breweries.

Five years later, late last summer, I'm chatting which Calicraft's Brewmaster Blaine Landberg in the back of his newly opened taproom. I'm interviewing him for an article in a local food magazine, and he's eagerly handing me sample after sample of each of his beers, telling me all about them like they're his kids. It was not wise to interview him on an empty stomach. He gets to Calicraft's Oaktown Brown which at 6.7% abv, 70 ibu, which is not your traditional Brown Ale, and tastes far more balanced and composed than those numbers suggest. We both lament that Brown Ales are underappreciated. Landberg's idea behind Oaktown Brown was to give the style the royal treatment, adding oak at fermentation and plenty of Cascade hops, creating a woody, vanilla, and slightly red wine character to the big roasty flavors. I don't know how he keeps all those big flavors at the right volumes but he does it this complex brew I find myself sipping effortlessly.

One could derisively call Brown Ales the cockroaches of beer, continuing to persist despite commercially eradicative indifference. The thing about Brown Ales are, whether in traditional form, modern renditions, or contemporary reworkings, they have their passionate believers.