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Saint Moylans
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The Black One
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Older Viscosity
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Hip Hops Archives
Project Beer Cave
By Hot Knives on April 6, 2008 (6) Comments
When Hot Knives first began reviewing beers, we bought new bottles quickly and often, mostly bombers on pocket change. The closest thing to “aging” those beers was the sloshing around they did on the bike ride home from the liquor store.
Then the small, but reliable, checks started coming in from the weekly beer column we call “Hip Hops,” which gets reprinted occasionally here and there. Beer money! As a result, the reviews have matured a bit — we splurge on less frequent shopping sprees and tote around geeky bound diaries to take notes — and with it, our holding policy has changed too. Nearly a year ago, we decided we wanted to try cellaring our beers, by saving certain bottles for a set period of time at (mostly) friendly temperatures. We got another push to do the project when our Internet friends at 1000 Beers embarked on their own ambitious mission of burning through unfamiliar craft brews one at a time. Now we’re upping the ante.
Thanks partly to those checks we have been able to amass a small but respectable collection, around 75 bottles that run the gamut from oily 13 percent ABV malt sludge to wild yeast Belgians. And few in the collection have been popped. Instead we have buried them dutifully in our basements and living room cabinets. The goal: Gather 99 bottles for aging and only begin popping them one at a time as we replace ‘em with something else.
Once we hit that 99-bottle mark, the next mission is to build, or buy, a proper 50-degree beer chamber. Until then, we have plans to house them in a wooden chest the size of a casket inside a walk-in fridge. To get ready for that we recently unearthed the bottles we’ve been storing. We took inventory and began drooling. Wanna see what we have aging? Take a peek at the video.
9:17 AM | Permalink | (6) Comments
Spring Board
By Hot Knives on April 3, 2008 (1) Comments
At the premier performance of the cataclysmically cool collaboration of Bodycity and Glasser, we happened upon the perfect accompaniment to outdoor fire-cooking: Norwegian Wood. Not to be confused with blond Viking fuel for fire, this ale is mahogany colored gas for the grill master.
Like many of the boutique ales coming out of the Nordic lands, Norwegian wood is steeped in tradition that stands in stark comparison to the brews of its countrymen. Over 90% of the beers brewed in Denmark and Norway are bland pilsners, but as Black Metal is to NorPop, so are breweries like Haand Bryygeriet to Carlsberg. According to the importer, the Hand Brewery consists of four old timers who brew in their spare time.
Norwood is based on traditional Norwegian farmhouse ales; kilned over open flames and spiced with juniper twigs and berries. As we learned when researching Aecht Schlenkerla Rauchbier, many ales were once quite smoky on account of wood fire cooking of wort, but the tradition has died off significantly in deference to the mild and chuggable.
These smoked suds are a solid match for grill side swilling, especially in the not yet sweltering afternoons of spring. Norwood is solid indoors and out; as an evening workday ender, or over lighter fluid soaked mesquite coals. The smokiness lingers in your mouth and the malts leave a lasting sweetness that finishes with a slight bitter tinge from hand-harvested juniper. Don’t look to hard for the mediciny Christmas flavors of wreaths; the berries and twigs are used exactly as coriander and orange are in Belgian ales: they contribute to the roundness of the beer's flavor without standing out. Serve at just colder than room temp-a fifteen-minute ice down in your cooler if you’re in a park-and all the flavors of woods and fires will really sing.
Soundtrack: Woods “Family Creeps”
Dairy Pairy: Montcabrer: an Ash Ripened Goats milk cheese from outside Barcelona.
2:51 PM | Permalink | (1) Comments
Saint Moylans
By Hot Knives on March 17, 2008 (1) Comments
Happy Green Day! We celebrated last St. Patrick’s Day with a bang, it was a Sunday after all, so rolling out of bed into a glass of Harp lager and frying off an Irish breakfast special was a lot easier. Still, we feel so guilty having nothing quirkier to recommend to peeps than Arthur Guinness’ tried but true frothy extra stout and a tumbler of piss-warm Jameson. It’s tradition, and great, but we’re hardly traditionalists.
So, when we stumbled upon a couple Bay Area attempts at widening the ‘Green Day’ beer options, we nabbed them: an Irish Red Ale from Marin County, and a Dry Irish Stout from Moylan’s. Both seemed perfectly timed to the holiday without screaming “gimmick.” Ironically the same brew master presides over both too. And considering it’s the same ruffian who is responsible for a couple of the best West Coast-Irish hybrids —the iconic “Kilt Lifter” and a lucky charm of an Imperial Stout — we hoped we could suggest a couple new St. Patty’s Day beers to y’all!
The results were thirst quenching and mildly inebriating, but not quite a success.
St. Brendan's Irish Red and Dragoon's Dry Stout
On first pop, the Red Ale is a nice orange beard hue. Its bubbsies hang a few seconds longer than normal, and the aroma is hoppy and a little lager-esque. A slight sour-kick at first taste quickly retreats to a more bland, general mouth slickness. Emotions conjured up include: warmth and security, boredom, and a general aura of calmness. We decided this was more of an all-day chugger to accompany a ploughman sandwich spread or something. We popped the other one.
As for the Dry Irish Stout, which we paired with grainy biscuit crackers a small, piping hot plate of French-Moroccan tagine, we were similarly non-plused but satisfied (see video above). In the end, both of these were noble replacements for the holy trio of Guinness, Harp and Jameson. But certainly not for the serious red-faced celebrant.
12:47 AM | Permalink | (1) Comments
The Black One
By Hot Knives on February 20, 2008 (4) Comments
At its inception, Imperial Stout was a savage concoction. The Russian Czars’ thirst for stouts could not be quenched and English and Irish producers couldn’t produce beer that would survive the brutal cold of a month long trip to St. Petersburg. Their answer was a beer that could withstand any voyage; a brew so high in alcohol that it would not spoil, and so flavorful from roasted malts that it would still taste amazing in the event that it did. Imagine bulging barrels of viscous beer the color of crude oil hefted deftly one after another by British maritime brutes. Cargo hulls full of alcoholic ballast destined for the dead city of the Eastern Lords…
Black Flag Imperial Stout evokes the evil spirit of its English ancestor. The head churns in your glass like the dark version of the foam from which Aphrodite emerged; it’s fluffy and thick, but has a caramel tint that precludes something less than loving. Your tongue, relieved of saliva, almost ventures down your gullet with the black torrent leaving a long finish that starts by coating your uvula with hooch molasses. The generous hops quickly segue way into lasting coffee notes that are more fruity than chocolaty, almost behaving like a lighter roasted coffee with the viscosity and kick of a super short shot of espresso The boozy flavors linger in-between your teeth so vividly that chewing seems more than reasonable. Don’t bite your tongue.
Yeah, all Imperial stouts exhibit these flavors and feelings, but whereas Stone’s or Avery’s (both of which we revere) are like a charged Black Metal Ballad brutalizing your mouth in quick jolting blows, Black Flag inverts the temporal field of your palate. The sound of steeling a knife goes from a quick Shikkk to a long lulling sine wave of metal on metal. The Brewers of Black flag emerge from the New Mexican desert like skeletal Bedouin, hauling earthen kegs northwest to an undead sock hop at some brew-court in Portland where zombie hipsters wink sunken eyes and sip frothy mugs of fuckyeah.
Black Flag is the session stout for stout fiends. This bottle could easily find a permanent place in your fridge or in your burgeoning beer cellar for beginners. You might find yourself drinking way too much, turning your teeth black and making you talk like some kind of scurvy ridden ex-member of Christian death. But would that really be so bad?
Dairy Pairy: Ditcheat Cheddar
Soundtrack: Danzig III
Find it: Red Carpet
1:32 PM | Permalink | (4) Comments
Older Viscosity
By Hot Knives on January 25, 2008 (1) Comments
“Pop, phisss… utter vacuumed silence.” That is, essentially, the sound a bottle of Older Viscosity makes when you (finally) open it for a drinking. We like to think we could place it a line-up of recorded bottle-openings — much the same way those grating, accented halfwits from “Car Talk” would have you imitate the sound your engine is making it so they can diagnose it. In this case, the utter silence is not a symptom of something being wrong with your $20 bottle of premium, aged dark beer, however. It’s the sound of something horribly right.
This slim, beaker-shaped bottle from Port Brewing is their super-aged version of Old Viscosity — a champion all its own. The San Marcos brewers take different batches of the stuff and blend them in oak bourbon barrels, where it’s aged for a year, according to the brewery. The limited edition brew, released late last year, will likely disappear soon and (with luck) reappear later again this year. We recommend popping one of these bottles every 3,000 miles rather than servicing your car.
The pour comes out a velvety, black desert liquid, more like fossil fuel with a bubbly film than any dark beer we’ve seen. There’s almost no carbonation, few bubbles, negligible head: hence the utter silence. The sight kinda put fear in us, expecting a diesel-strength cask beer. But we were pleasantly surprised by how gentle and refined the 12% ABV beer tasted. Sipping it post-dinner, out of wine goblets in a sepia-toned living room, gave the concoction even more of a digestive vibe. Smelling, we imagined caramel apples, vanilla beans — real dangly ones, not a flavoring — and sweet tawny port. On our tongues, there was a milky, creamy, toffee taste that spread slowly, like dulce de leche spiked with whisky. And when we say milky, we mean like lactic acid, that comforting sticky build-up feel that makes milk and cookies good. Expecting motor oil, we got the chamomile tea of beers.
Dairy Pairy: Quenby Hall Stilton
Soundtrack: Nine Inch Nails’ Further Down the Spiral
10:00 PM | Permalink | (1) Comments
Old Ruffian
By Hot Knives on January 12, 2008 (1) Comments
There have been days when we’ve cursed the Rocky Mountains for keeping the Colorado beers we love (and those we think we could love, if that love were only given a chance) from reaching our beer dealers in Los Angeles — silver bullet indeed. We’re used to getting pretty much whichever beer we want, when we want it. So knowing that Avery withholds some of its seasonals and six-packs from reaching us in Los Angeles, well, it stings. And staring at pictures of Great Divide beers online and not being able to find them anywhere? Quite simply it’s torture. Of course, we know it’s not Great Divide or Avery or any other brewery’s fault we can’t drink their beer. It’s just economics and geography. Still, it makes us sad.
So, when on a recent trip to Albuquerque, New Mexico, we ran headfirst into the Great Divide section of a local liquor emporium, it was like a screechy “Oh my god, look at you!” family reunion. We introduced ourselves first to Old Ruffian, their barleywine-style ale. We got to know each other in a garage on a snowy Christmas morning. Filled to the brim from New Mexico veggie breakfast burritos, feeling awesome about wearing motorcycle gloves, we popped the top of this bad boy, literally, inside the engine of a 1957 Chevy. Albuquerque is hardcore.
And this beer is hardcore. Poured like a handshake into a frosty pint glass, Old Ruffian froths with a wavy head of hop-scented foam — like a mane of skunky hair on a Hells Angels biker. The rest of the glass shimmers like a molasses soda. Old Ruffian is the kind of badass brew that balances sugar, sweet and sour notes diplomatically without wussing out on any of them. There’s the piney hop sting at first taste, and a maple syrup throat itch while gulping. It’s a little juicy, a little boozy, and totally thirst quenching despite it’s dangerous ABV. If you’re east of the Rockies, and you can get it, don’t be afraid of this beer, deep down it’s not so rough: like a biker with a mom tattoo.
Dairy Pairy: Barbeillon
Soundtrack: George Thorogood’s “I Drink Alone”
10:16 AM | Permalink | (1) Comments
Beery Christmas
By Hot Knives on December 24, 2007 (0) Comments
It is Christmas Eve, heathens. Time to make a chestnut fire, a batch of fresh bread and don wool socks. Of course, that can be a tall order if you have to, oh, say, work around the clock or spend Christmas apart from dudes and family. Our fallback many a winter — the only thing we’ve found that can replace the holiday cheer of mom attempting vegan cookies or skipping church to make snow angels in your parent’s yard — has been seasonal ales, big bombers of winter beer and frothy Christmas specials. At the risk of sounding like depressed alkies who lean on a bottle for Christmas spirit, consider that the perfect winter beer will offer the triumvirate mentioned above: chestnuts and fresh bread in the palate, and enough booze to keep your feet (and soul) warm. So, here’s a first stab at some of the better winter beers we’ve had this December, with more to come. More importantly, it’s not too late to run out and grab a couple as stocking stuffers…
St. Bernardus Christmas Ale
A light molasses pour, fluff bubbles with waft of carbo-buzz, subtle roasted chestnuts and malt sugar undertones — this is a safe-bet table-pleaser. Whereas some of the St. Bernardus brews are the idyllic frothy beverage emitted from the barrel around the neck of a life-saving St. Bernard, this Christmas ale is like the candy cane mead swigged by a naughty, Belgian shopping mall Santa.Dairy Pairy: Saenkanter Gouda
Soundtrack: Dandy Warhol’s “Little Drummer Boy”
Avery’s Old Jubilation Ale
You know the old Budweiser ads with steeds pumping their sinewy leg muscles through snow and ice with a Bud sleigh behind ‘em? Now get ready for the real thing. This Colorado brewery’s winter ale is a standout for one reason: they don’t go sprinkling spices in their kegs like they’re baking holiday ho-hos — just a strong mahogany syrup made of five malts, no added herbs, and lots of nutty mellowness. One of the better meal pints this year; it won’t mess with your perfectly spiced vegan pig loin.Dairy Pairy: Ossau-Iraty
Soundtrack: Spiritualized’s “Oh Happy Day”
Deschutes’ Jubel
Oregon flagship brewers went all ‘Peace On Earth’ with this year’s holiday brew. It’s a rare attempt at even-handed hopping and malting. Flowery juniper pine-sol hits first, crystal clear sipping upfront, then rounded out by a robust, if jumbled, baker’s chocolate and oven-scented malts after-taste. Good, not great, but still plenty worth serving to weaker-budded buddies.Dairy Pairy: Fig cake
Soundtrack: Bright Eye’s “Road to Joy”
Alesmith’s Yulesmith Holiday Ale
It feels like just yesterday that we were scarfing blistered peanuts, diving for cover from the neighborhood kids’ firecracker wars and glugging on the red-and-blue tinted Alesmith Hoilday ale for Fourth of July. Now we’re decking the halls with their other holiday seasonal and ‘tis the mother f-ing season. This bomber pours red-copper brown like a rusty faucet and tastes like a malt wreath fell in your double IPA. Style-wise, Yulesmith is actually a bit like Jubel: malty and hoppy at once, but they pull it off with flying colors.Dairy Pairy: Tuxford And Tebbet's Mature Black Wax Cheddar
Soundtrack: Belle and Sebastian’s “O Come, O Come Emmanuel”
N’Ice Chouffe
How do goblins celebrate Christ’s birth, you might ask? Well the ones behind the Belgian Brewerie d’Anchouffe throw a bunch of orange peel and fresh thyme in their batches of brown ale and let it get spicy. At a recent house party we stuck a bottle of this elfin nectar in the freezer and pulled it out just as ice was starting to congregate around the bottle. Corked and poured, this beer came out a muddy, herby slurpy. The thyme coulda been stronger for us garden geeks, but the citrus was perfectly balanced against medicinal malt notes. A good 750 ml for late-night Christmas shopping runs or Home Alone-style holiday heists, perhaps, or of course outdoor fire parties with gnomes.Dairy Pairy: Boulette d'Avesnes, washed with beer and spices
Soundtrack: Grandaddy’s “Alan Parsons in a Winter Wonderland”
8:56 AM | Permalink | (0) Comments
Headless Helper
By Hot Knives on December 5, 2007 (2) Comments
There will always be central aspects of the holiday season that are total bummers. For some its traveling long distances crammed up against smelly strangers in a metal box impossibly cruising tens of thousands of feet above the surface of the planet: screaming children placed at all corners like mentally mutilating motion sensors. Others sweat the savagery of the shopping days with names that smack of biblical plagues, or chug horrendous herbal-speed-sodie-pops to shakingly click on once in a year low prices at ungoldy hours.
Our horror for the holidays is a hydra with one head: Pumpkin Ale. While we like to consider ourselves non-haters, we believe there is a special circle of hell for the makers of oft ubiquitous after October bottles that bear cutesy pictures of harvest squash, jack-o-lanterns, and other autumnal ephemera. When another pie tasting beer pops up in the stead of a truly wonderful winter ale we cry a little…we die a little.
Usually, this blatantly biased and unfair critique is leveled against the most deserving of bummer-breweries. This year the emperor’s unsightly ass was exposed with a suggestion from Alex, the beer buyer and expert-extraordinaire of Red Carpet in Glendale. While staring at the cases, arms filling with brews, we set upon the slightly campy looking bottle to the untrue North. Ichabod Ale will undoubtedly be the only pumpkin ale to grace this blog, graceful commentary in tow. The brew is a very rare seasonal selection from the Alpine Beer Company, when we bought ours a few weeks back there were a rumored three cases in Los Angeles, two of them in front of us.
Why did Ichabod avoid the Axe? Firstly this is no “special release” from Sam Adams. Alpine is a tiny brewery and you can taste the small batch vibe before the beer is in your mouth. The flavors immediately turn towards Flanders, or at least Michigan, where sour and crisp flavors set the stage for what few sugar and spice notes play in the finish. The beer tastes like it’s spent some quality time in beautiful wood barrels nestled in snowdrifts atop pointy hills. The addition of pumpkin in this case is in reverence to the age-old equation of fruit+time=booze. No dribbling of an extract from New Jersey over sterile brew towers for Alpine; which means none of that nonsense for you. You taste the room where this beer was made before you taste the time of the year, and for us that’s the real merry maker.
Dairy Pairy: Senne-flada, an unpasteurised washed rind cows milk cheese from the Swiss Alps.
Soundtrack: Dawn Penn's “No, No, No”
7:28 AM | Permalink | (2) Comments
The Wild Dog
By Hot Knives on November 24, 2007 (3) Comments
If the Good Doctor — upon burning through Baker and Barstow and pulling to the side of the desert highway to take a gibbering inventory of the drugs and booze — had not counted two quarts of Wild Turkey bourbon, but rather two bottles of this Wild Dog porter, rest assured the infamous burn through Vegas casinos and the post-Nixon American Dream would have been considerably… well, sloooowwwer.
This black froth is heavy stuff. Not to be touched if you value quick inertia. Yet this is exactly why it belongs among the cadre of preferred strong winter brews, perfect for slugging fireside or near the end of a holiday meal — even out of a thermos on a hiking expedition. As we babbled about in the recent Hot Knives Thanksgiving podcast, you’ll remember that the Flying Dog brewers, to make Wild Dog, literally took their Hunter S. Thompson tribute beer (Gonzo Porter) and pumped it into the nearby whiskey distillery, where the brown bread-like stout was left to age in oak bourbon barrels. The result is fitting: bombastic and indulgent and proud.
Slipping this into a glass isn’t easy, it erupts in a violent way, lashing out with a high head of millions of little caviar-sized mocha colored bubbles. This would be annoying if not for the perfect froth proportion it creates for the rest of the drinking experience. Wait two or three minutes and it has subsided to an idyllic level, which helps bring the brew up to a slightly warmer temperature too, so you can get all the sweet and sour notes. You can even pour this crew into extra-wide Scotch glasses and swirl it in hoop motions as if you were savoring 20-year-old whiskey. There’s less of the soy sauce notes you usually find in a porter or stout of its consistency; more balance of dark, hard grains against an after note of apple bacony sugar. The last note is like stinging nettles and American sour mash.
Dairy Pairy: Hook’s 10 year Cheddar
Soundtrack: Silver Apple’s “A Pox on You”
8:29 AM | Permalink | (3) Comments
Hop Nouveau
By Hot Knives on November 6, 2007 (5) Comments
As a point of order, it's important to note that now is the time of year when the weakest of wines will have its day. If its youthful booze you're looking for, turn your eyes away from tired Beaujolais and pick up a wet hopped IPA.
When it comes to IPA’s we like to think we’re completely in the know. We’ve tried literally every incarnation of the recipe we can get our hands on from humble interpretations of the dustily old world, to gigantic and brutal booze monsters from northern California. Over the last few months, however, there have been a number of IPAs brewed in a different style than one might usually associate with our favorite beer. From Bridgeport to Sierra Nevada, brewers have been producing what’s known as “wet IPA’s,” to take advantage of the yearly hop harvests in Washington State. These beers quite literally turn the IPA style on its head. Historically, British brewers pumped up the jam on their ales with more hops and alcohol to deter spoilage on long trips to relieve imperial soldiers in India. Instead, the hops get picked and rushed to a different southland to quickly be pickled in a tart and delicate brew.
Port Brewing’s High Tide IPA, was one of the first wet IPA’s sampled by your favorite beer geeks. After the holy shit a new Port brew gimmie-gimmies subsided in the aisles of Cap’n Cork, we were slightly concerned. Yes, this was a new beer from one of our favorite brewers. Yes, it was an IPA…but the alcohol percentage was so low…
The concern over the hooch levels were quickly overridden by our first tastes and a little more education about the brewing style. There was an astoundingly clean variety of hop flavors, and the 6% abv was just present enough to let the grassy, medicinal final flavors of fall levitate on the liquid. The mouth feel had a super soothing feeling, like lemonade does when bought from enterprising six year olds. While this would be immaculate in the summer heat, this fruit of the fall hop harvest offers the perfect foil to ciders and pumpkin ales. Super savory and sweet, this beer would be perfect for a Thanksgiving feast (if your hoard it in your fridge), or a slice of your favorite pizza in the park. It’s a beer that has blissfully bright and clean flavors, but its delicacy means that it won’t fight with your food.
Dairy Pairy: Selles Sur Cher-an ash ripened goat cheese from central France.
Soundtrack: Jesus and Mary Chain "You trip me up"
8:27 AM | Permalink | (5) Comments
Black Techno Beer
By Hot Knives on October 21, 2007 (2) Comments
Sometimes it feels like we drink nothing but west coast triple IPAs and 750 ml Belgians, doesn’t it? It’s not far from the truth cuz when you’re home cooks and non-paid beer bloggers you tend to gravitate toward what you know you’ll like. One area where we’ve felt particularly deficient is German, and German-style, brews. We’ve definitely discussed the need to get deeper into Deutsche technique — maybe by sipping some warm mai bocks in the back of a black and chrome Audi pumping Kraftwerk or something.
In any case, it’s not that we’re ignorant about German beer — we’ve both traveled there, one of us lived there, we have tasted fresh-out-of-the-tap hefeweizen — we just aren’t nuts for the style. Mediocre, over-malted bland stuff, lots of it anyway. Of course, there’s Spaten Optimator, which is more than pub-worthy, and the bock inspired heavy ales from Avery are some of America’s contributions. Craftsman’s rauch biere (smoked lager) too holds a large part of out hearts. But for the most part, we’ve long wondered why the so-called land of beers seems so unimaginative. Maybe it’s cuz the German mindset demands such traditional precision that any sort of loosey goosey experimentation gets the shaft. Just look at the whole Reinheitsgebot thing (German purity laws on the books since 1516), that are always proudly touted on German beers. That law, of course, dictated that nothing but water, malt and hops could be used to brew beer. Sounds ok right, but there’s no mention of yeast (it hadn’t been discovered yet!). Reason enough to amend the silly thing, or throw it out entirely.
The point is, we’re always looking to challenge our theory, so when we recently spotted a couple staunch black bombers of German-style beers we’d never seen at our local one-stop shop (Galco’s) we sprung for it hoping to get turned on. One was a black Bavarian lager, the other a doppelbock. Doesn’t get more German than that.
The brewery is actually an 80s upstart microbrewery in Wisconsin called Sprecher, started by a former Pabst head brew master who got the itch to brew something more wicked. And the bottle aesthetic is intense: simple and clean, gothic and low budget. To be honest, we got giddy because we thought maybe we had stumbled on some kind of hardcore bathtub beer made by Midwesterner wild men — like the nutso noise band Wolf Eyes only for beer. That comparison was quickly smashed, less screechy basement-performance cassette release and more like mid-career Iron Maiden or early head bangers from Megadeath. Both beers were dark, randy and completely straight forward. Just edgy enough to taste great, but not enough to be considered anything better than standard.
The doppelbock was appropriately malty, well-rounded, sweet and roasty, while a little weak. Nose and mouth both gave off a fresh cracked hazelnut vibe. The head even had a bit of burnt orange rust. We could have let it sit a little longer in the autumn sun to be honest, it almost begged to be consumed at a warmer temperature. All in all, a welcome exchange for the typical Oktoberfest shod.
The Bavarian black lager was a different story, while not a seasonal or a special release it had something special going for it. First off the pour is darker than a succubus rounding second base and blacker than most Danzig album covers. The foam was a perfect mahogany-color, giving it the same glimmer of wood and vinyl you see on a custom-made vintage amp. Also, the stuff went down well cold, almost medicinally elemental, there was only one real taste: black bread malt with a hint of booze, nothing else. According to the bottle, it’s a riff on the black lagers that were created as bread water meant to sustain monks through lent. It’s not what we’d call interesting exactly and it’s certainly not complex, but it is pure and clean. One thing’s for sure, if we ever attempt a vegan version of the liver layered lard spread that German castles serve instead of butter, this will be the pairing. All in all, drinking it felt like a validation of what we think about most German-style beer: that it’s precision is its greatest virtue even though it can get boxed in by its tradition. That said, we absolutely owe Germany another visit.
Dairy Pairy: Epoisses, cow's milk washed with Marc de Bourgogne.
Soundtrack: Wolf Eyes’ Burned Mind
12:22 PM | Permalink | (2) Comments
Stone's 11th
By Hot Knives on October 10, 2007 (4) Comments
The anniversaries of many of our favorite breweries mark our calendars with exclamation points and smiley faces. There are some annual milestones that sneak up on us in wonderful ways. Finding the latest special release from Unibroue par example always makes us smile collectively, whereas the yearly release of Hopsickle (equivocally as the birthday celebration of Moyans might someday be…) makes us start towards beer coolers with gimmie-gimmie eyes and accompanying yelps of glee.
Stone’s birthday is something that we relish in almost as dearly as that of a bff-type cousin, or a super cool uncle who used to sneak us sips of scotch when we were eleven. Even if its been almost a year since we played hooky from work and made our first pilgrimage to Escondido, we exchanged hurried gushes of delight at the first tastes of this year’s liquid notch on the proverbial gun. We’ve drunk five bombers of this brew since its recent release in both social circles and isolated tasting during varied hours of the day and night. We experienced this nectar o’grain in every conceivable position we utilize for our fermented contemplations. The results have been positive.
As the froth subsided, this Black IPA immediately impressed us. The color, a brown muted true black lulls the drinker into reminiscences of a first Kostritzer, or a dressed up Bock that seemed all the rage in 2006. The second this beer strikes chords with your nervous system, the world changes. Utter harmony explodes out of what a local comrade calls the “Ruined Bastard.” The heavy handed alcohol and deep dark malts teleport you to a surreal plane where rows of giant headed Greg Kochs hand out glass after glass of black ale garnished with a fistful of fresh hops and soy sauce flowers. You wipe the fragrant resin off your nose, and ask short breathed where the hell you are. The multitude of grinning Esconditans echoes back: the future.
Dairy Pairy: Idiazabal, a smoked raw sheeps milk from northern Spain.
Soundtrack: The Clash, “In Hammersmith Palais”
7:19 AM | Permalink | (4) Comments
Holy Matrimony
By Hot Knives on October 4, 2007 (7) Comments
On our one and only pilgrimage to Belmont station in the old town of “P,” we serendipitously stumbled upon a guided lecture by the head of the import department for one of the bet and brightest beer distributors in the country. While not every ale in the line up was mind blowing, the overall aesthetic of Shelton Brothers reads like a manifesto. Not only does this distro exclusively support the likes of De Ranke, the after hours brewers of XX, but they have a policy of only importing beers from brewers who produce less than a certain amount per year. The kid tested mother approved ale we sampled in the video above, was a collaboration between two heavy weight of small batch brewing: Port Brewing co and De Proef Brewerij. The ales of Port have graced this blog both as subjects of loving reviews, and as the backdrop to our trip to Stone Brewing Co. last year. After our tour of duty with the Stone Executive Chef Carlton, we headed over to pizza port where we drank four different IPAs, ate awesome pizza, and watched the Stone Staff do the same. De Proef is a slightly more obscure, but no less reputable source of prime sauce. Its captain is Dirk Naudts, nicknamed “the Professor.” Naudts is like the Baby Bob Dylan of Belgian beer: not only is he literally one of the most regarded brewers the world over for his specific work via his small batch brewery, but he also designs ales for bigger Belgian and Dutch breweries. Unfortunately we couldn’t find the names the of the unofficial fruits of his fermented loins... This ale screams of specificity. On one side of a veritable phalanx of flavor you have the Professor, rocking different fermentation techniques that most Americans can ‘t name. Brilliantly subtle yeast flavors and alcohol notes yield an utterly pleasant, but deeply complex flavor. Its goal is to absolutely trick you out of the hop bouquet you encounter upon first swirl… Spectacular lacing like some kind of dissolving foam mountain left in the wake of Venus herself: Kronos’ castration causing copulation convulsions. Cloudy golden, like the first time we poured a prankster: density that makes basic vision impossible but a color that emanates light, like an inverted stout. The sweet aroma made the few lingering fruit flies in echo park drift to their deaths in smallish puddles of faded glory. What about the hops? The age-old battle between any brew snob’s favorite styles, West Coast IPA and Belgian Glory, lock arms mid killing field and spin of in some unholy but oh-so-right maypole celebration of all things wonderful. The depth of Naudts’ yeast strains and strange fermentation is not lost on the powerful and crisp hop barrage that follows. Every descriptor in the beer aficionado’s lexicon comes to mind. Words can describe it, but they wouldn’t do it justly. Ultimately both fronts flank everything else and leave the drinker refreshed, slain, totally immersed in the frankness of the thought that 750 ml of beer can be priced at $13.99…and worth every cent. Dairy Pairy: Valencay Affine. An aged goat cheese, shaped like a truncated pyramid. 8:00 AM | Permalink | (7) Comments By Hot Knives on September 23, 2007 (5) Comments For many epicureans, as with any other group of enthusiasts, there will always be archetypal representations of genre based perfection that are lost, or simply cease to exist. The fish that got away, is a typical lament for any manner of minutia masters and for the booze hound and the beer snob, these occurrences become rarer and rarer as the world slowly cruises closer to itself via the internet and the market. Most examples of these phenomena in our realm of dorkery pertain to small runs of super rare specimens that grace the shelves of a favorite beer monger for the briefest of moments, snatched into oblivion by fellow fiends and unknowing boozers. As our network expands, there are fewer and fewer beers that remain unknown, and those that were once impossible to find somehow grace the shelves of Wholefoods… ‘Le Trappe Quadrupel’ was the most coveted Belgian bottle to grace the shelves of one of our first perpetually amazing beer stores, Jubilation, in Alex’s hometown of Albuquerque. The beer, bottle conditioned in beautiful ceramic 750ml crocks, was the first brew to really push our early conceptions of Belgian ale. It was also consistently sold out up until the day that, until now, the beer disappeared from our lives. Many a night Le Trappe’s name was mentioned listlessly over glasses of both sub par suds and the best Belgian ales these four lips have sipped. Today, after taking turns trying to pry the goddamn cork out, we tapped a gold mine. We swished and clicked and swirled and ogled the brew with the usual drive and attention. Then one of those sense-memory vortexes opened wide and threw us back five years. The thick cloud of a head, miniature hoards of bubble that tickle the underside of your tongue and the crystalline apple cider finish literally transported us 797 miles to a higher altitude and a drier climate where the sky stretched on forever. A time when expired Texan identities were our one trick ponies in a town whose punishment for underage drinking was death… Here’s the problem: we have no idea where this bottle of glory was bought. It was one of the few interesting things left over in a cooler for the Great L.A. Beer Ride, and as such has an easily reducible pedigree. Who of our 8% and abovers knows where to find this loverly libation? Find it. Even if you’ve never had the pleasure of the old ceramic bombers, this beer will make its mark on your mind. Diary Pairy: La Tur, a soft ripened blend of Italian sheep, goat and cow’s milk. 10:41 AM | Permalink | (5) Comments By Hot Knives on September 15, 2007 (3) Comments Lagunitas is one of the few breweries that has taken our pitch seriously enough to send us a box of complimentary “review” beer. That was about, oh, a year and a half ago: A huge-ass cardboard box came via FedEx to the Hot Knives offices (back when we were a food and drink column for a newspaper and we had offices) and we jimmied it open to find the Frank Zappa tribute special release brew we’d asked for. The bombers went straight in the fridge and that weekend we popped ‘em on the porch after a bike ride, threw back some snacks and pontificated on the booze. After two bottles, we got stuck on how bad the label art was and we never got around to writing a proper review. Too bad too because the stuff ain’t bad. And no one has sent us free boxes of beer since then... So, when on a recent 7-11 run we noticed that that Frank Zappa-tribute seasonal is back, we felt compelled by dirty karma to give this shit another shot. Same good beer, totally different — and even worse — label art! There’s a big wavy head on the stuff at first pour, sort of a rocker hair version of beer foam. What’s better is the effie fucking carbonation bubbles that fizzle for the first minute and then dissipate; it’s a perfect carbonation level for a summery IPA. And yes, this is in most ways an IPA. It’s not terribly different from the straight-ahead Alesmith IPA or something: a session IPA that you could drink “1, 2, 5 or 10” of. After the initial hop zing, which is expertly balanced but not as nutso as you’d expect from a Frank Zappa tribute, comes a well-rounded mellowness. Back when we first glugged this beer, and now almost 18 months later, one after taste comes to mind: strawberry brioche. And not because it actually taste like it, but because it hints at. We can’t help but think that means something. To conclude: don’t let this label fool you, there’s a decent IPA chugger inside this mother. Dairy Pairy: St. Pat 9:18 AM | Permalink | (3) Comments By Hot Knives on September 9, 2007 (1) Comments It was an unseasonably hot Sunday afternoon and we were gawking at our favorite 7-11 beer fridge when a guy we pegged for an unlikely beer coniseour started loading up a milk crate with bottles of Duvel, Three Philosophers and Golden Draak. The dude seemed grittier than most Belgian drinkers, sporting mud-splattered construction boots, Oakley sunglasses and heavy metal facial hair. After a long consideration he grabbed one last bottle, a Deus, and lugged his loot to the check-out counter. Standing behind him in line, we couldn’t help put pipe up, “Have you tried the Deus before? It’s totally nuts if you age it.” Turning first to his friend (backwards cap and smug face) and then very, very slowly at us, the dude scoffed and waited a moment before saying “That’s for my girlfriend.” As if to make clear that this was a ‘fuck you,’ and not just a statement of fact. Well, let the dusch drink his Duvel while his lady friend sips the good shit. Deus ain’t bombastic, despite its fairly high 10% ABV. That’s thanks to the fact that it’s literally brewed as if it were a champagne (aged 12 months in French caves, removed of its yeast the same way sparkling wines are). But it’s not easy on the pallet either. The smooth and curvy champagne-imitating bottle is a bit of a tongue twister too because you almost expect it to taste like wedding bubbles, that’s certainly what it looks like. On first pour, the foam threatens to spill over and the color is only slightly deeper than your average Dom P. The nose is an ambiguous spice and a very mild booze waft. It hits the lips tasting like some mad scientist mix between bergamot and chamomile, mildly reminiscent of a beer-scented lotion. What the deus? It’s admittedly refined ($26 retail), a little floral, not altogether manly per say. But man, this stuff is rewardingly confusing, giving any Belgian a run for its money in the ‘complexity’ category. And like most special brews in this world, it gets better the more you drink it. Don’t get us wrong, this is not the stuff of ‘go home, need to crack a beer,’ it’s special occasion stuff. That’s why we only sip it in our best low-cut slips and pantyhose. Dairy Pairy: Monte Enebro 5:30 PM | Permalink | (1) Comments By Hot Knives on August 28, 2007 (11) Comments And now for something completely different! Duchess de Bourgogne is not from the Western United States, contains almost no noticeable hops, mostly comes in 11.2 fl oz. bottles, and features one of the most neo-classically emo girly portraits we’ve ever seen on a beer bottle. It’s not typically the beer we cut our teeth on, at least on these pages. And yet… fucking incredible beer. And, the Duchess keeps popping up in our world! (We recently paired her with not one but two recipes, drooled over her in our first radio spot and featured her prominently in our beer and bike brouhaha.) Still, she made us too nervous, downright intimidated, for us to be able to pen a review until now. We kept chilling. Despite the look and the 6.2% ABV, make no mistake: this is a dark lady. She’s a traditional, flagship Flemmish red ale brewed with roasted malts only and aged in French oak, hence the brownish, oxidized-blood color and the sweet savory notes. First pour reveals a filmy, slick off-white head that clings on the sides of the glass and forms a clump in the middle like a pendant; beer jewelry. First notes include slightly rotten bread, raspberry and wood chips. On first taste, the Duchess is puckery sour, not unlike kamboocha… in fact eerily similar to kamboocha. Much like that fermented mother tea, the Duchess’ beauty largely hinges on another kind of age secret: the beer is a mixture of ale ages 8 months and 18 months lending it an insane complexity, like a young misses whose adventures bestow on her a sexy middle-aged countenance. Or think of bubblegum beer, fizzy, neon-colored sour candies designed to taste exactly like cask ale. A red Chimay lollipop. Dairy Pairy: Torta la Serena 9:09 PM | Permalink | (11) Comments By Hot Knives on August 25, 2007 (1) Comments The jackass comment from one reader two months ago, who called us “cheap whores” in response to us dropping in on a schmoozy beer bloggers reception where we sipped for free, actually broached an interesting subject: Are beer writers, and bloggers, especially prone to favorably reviewing beers if they’re courted in any way by company reps? In our case, we rarely encounter much special treatment. Still, we have on occasion received free boxes of beer. We like to make ice cream with it. Well, whether it answers that question or not, we recently accepted an invitation from the marketing reps at Pyramid Brewing to take part in a summer beer pairing party in the company’s Gold Box Suite at Angel Stadium. Now, we’ve never been much impressed by the brewery, which is known mostly for their apricot-infused hefeweizen. But we heard they were bringing a seasonal called Curveball and thought it might be worth a swig. Though Alex couldn’t make it, Evan took the train out to Anaheim with his former boss in tow and drank it all in. Not knowing exactly what to expect, we nevertheless assumed that most of the other guests would be beer writers, industry insiders and/or company reps. As it turned out, Hot Knives and Hair of the Dog were the only beer writers present and few if any of the other guests seemed to even care what they were drinking as long as it was cold. In fact this may have been the most ingenious way for the Pyramid employees to throw a party for their friends on the company card we've ever seen. After a couple Thunderhead IPAs (easily Pyramid’s best beer, though admittedly tame and standard) we broke out the video camera to the dismay of some of the older dudes gobblin’ on beef franks and coconut shrimp, so that you readers could be invited to the gold box suite too. Note the sad state of the food and beer “pairings” and even the reluctance of one of the Pyramid guys to look in the camera let alone give us some straight talk about the beers. Rather than engage us, he chose to read the side of the bottle’s bland marketing speak! All sarcasm aside, conversations with the two very nice marketing people for Pyramid was a fascinating peek into the world of who sells the beer for medium-sized, mainstream microbrewies, where the MBA grads talk more about branding than they do brewing: Listen close to the chatter in the video (abuzz with slogans, units moved and “big sports accounts”) and you’ll see what we mean. That said, the excuse to see a baseball game — one where the Yankees slaughtered the OC home team — was well worth the offensively mediocre hefeweizen. And if that makes us cheap whores, well, so be it. 5:39 PM | Permalink | (1) Comments By Hot Knives on August 22, 2007 (3) Comments A number of breweries both known and not are releasing beers whose flavors don’t really correspond to their determined class. When you take a sip of Gonzo Imperial Porter, one of the Flying Dog litter, it seems more like a regular west coast style stout than something deserving such a regal moniker. Avery’s Hog Heaven “a barely wine style ale,” while a great beer, had the two of us hotly splitting hairs over what qualifies something as a barley wine as opposed to a strong ale. The situation can sometimes be incredibly frustrating. When spending over $8.00 on a beer it damn well better taste like you want it too or a sense of wasted time and money sets in like a blistering PBR hangover. When a bottle becomes a boondoggle; you might find yourself turning your back on a brewery forever… The Big DIPA is something to ponder in the aforementioned contextual brain twist. It is purported to be a bottle conditioned Double India Pale Ale, hence the acronym. While the contents of this silly looking Belgian bottle certainly taste nothing like any double IPA we’ve ever tried, it’s specificity defies both its categorization by its parents and the knee jerk reaction you typically experience with bottle boondoggle. The look of the beer is sumptuous: a burnt caramel color topped with a cloud of foam reminiscent of towers of bubbles that hid you private parts when bathtubs seemed huge. Wonderful hop aromas tickle your nose hairs and you think about all the niceties associated with a solid flavorful IPA. Here is where you take a double take at your purported double. Instead of that wave of citrus and pine you might be craving, you get a solid yeast rush, followed by the briefest tinge of hops and a malty afterthought. Confusion. A second sip with eyes closed reveals a completely different and more interesting beer than the label that strange frog king graces with his rotund visage implies. With more swirling and a slightly warmer temperature (which the bottle actually suggests) the character of a truly great bottle conditioned ale makes itself known. The complexity of flavors from sweet yeast, brief dry hops, and long lingering toasted malts evokes visions of a strange cocktail: Saison Dupont, a splash of Green Flash Imperial IPA, and a swirl of Downtown Brown. For those of us constantly seeking newer and greater IPAs, this bottle is something to avoid. Blue Frog's DIPA is nowhere near a true double IPA, or a single for that matter, but at least its more boon than doggle. Dairy Pairy: 20 Month aged Comte 8:15 AM | Permalink | (3) Comments By Hot Knives on August 9, 2007 (7) Comments Due to a few blog blitzkriegs that have been pushing our RSVP numbers nearer to 30 riders, we decided to post a few recommendations, assurances and perfunctory legal brush-offs. 1. Don't get hammered on Friday night. 2. Bring water, and drink like a fish throughout the day. 3. Bring some snacks that are high in protein and or carbs: nuts, energy bars, etc. 4. Sunscreen. We don't want you guys looking like meat on Sunday. 5. Bring something to carry your beer booty in. 6. Lube your chain, pump your tires, bring a spare tube if you have it. We will have tools, tubes and lubes, but it can't hurt to bring your own. (Especially if we have a gang of 30.)
Soundtrack: Fela Kuti "Confusion/Gentleman"
The Found Abbey
Soundtrack: Agustus Pablo "This is Agustus Pablo"“Kill Ugly Radio”
Soundtrack: Devendra Bahnhart’s “Oh Me, Oh My”
The "Deuce"
Quite literally the champagne of beers, Deus Brut des Flandres is light and sparkly and — if you ask some of the beefier beer advocates out there — for girls. (This despite the fact that it’s extremely challenging to not pronounce its name “deuce.”)
Soundtrack: David Bowie’s “Velvet Goldmine”Duchess de Bourgogne
Soundtrack: Psychic TV's "Godstar"Beer "Tasting" Strike Out
The Big DIPA
Soundtrack: Jesus and Mary Chain “Head On”
Rout Route
Here it is: the design of our demise. Don't be intimidated. This ride is going to be an awesome way to waste the day, and then get wasted. Things We Recommend
Assurances
1. There will be a half dozen or more riders in our company that have loads of experience biking in the streets of L.A., riding long distances, and dealing with large numbers of bikers.
2. We will take breaks.
3. There will be at least one point in the ride where a car will meet up with us to unload and chill as much beer as you want to take off your back.
4. The day before the ride we will post an amended map, with a few "escape routes." If you don't want to join us for the last legs of the ride, then we'll post directions to some metro stops for you.
5. This will be rad. We assure you.
Obligatory Statements
1. This is not a booze cruise. Obviously the express purpose is to gather an insane amount of beers, but if you are planning on chugging beers midday and riding over 40 miles, well...you are insane.
2. Please know your limits as a biker, and a human being. If you start to feel particularly exhausted, don't bottle it up until you pass out in front of a bus.
3. While it is perfectly legal for us to occupy entire lanes of traffic, we will obey street signs, traffic lights etc. If you defy the law, you might get a ticket--draining your beer cash reserve. Bummer.
4. "We will not be held resposnisble for personal injury or death." But we will help you if you get hurt etc.
Most Important of All
1. Consult each destinatino point on the map and review each store's beer selection footnotes. Communicate with the ridersbuying beer around you, so we don't end up with 100 IPAs.
2. The Goal of the ride (other than the party afterword) is to bring readers into our reality, by showing you our favorite places to buy beer, via the streets of the city we love. If you want to burn ahead of the group, feel free, but this isn't a Wolf Pack ride in the daytime. Half the awesomeness of this event hinges on unity. Get into it.
12:18 PM | Permalink | (7) Comments
Sweet 15
By Hot Knives on July 29, 2007 (5) Comments
Occasionally life passages require dramatic, indulgent celebrations. Since we — the two baby men behind Hot Knives — both turned a quarter-of-a-century-old this year, we’re starting to forlornly dig the passage of time enough that we can get Dionysian once in a while for special occasions. Like last week. We partook in an out-of-control, meat-free, 7-course tasting menu meal that cost more than our monthly rent, just to toast to recent good fortunes: Celebrate good times, c’mon.
The brewers at Pizza Port know this. To celebrate their 15th anniversary, they brewed a new imperial double IPA by adding one of 15 different kinds of hops to a bubbling cauldron every 15 minutes. The result is Hop 15, breathtakingly badass, and not as much of a Frankenstein beer as you might imagine. Compared to some triple IPAs, this orange-hued brew is downright balanced. Of course the immediate first note is a chomping bite of hop flavors — a well-rounded and complex mouthful of zesty, earthy, and floral notes firing all at once. Piney notes win out over sugar, which we tend to like. The lingering aftertaste is fresh, even relatively clean tasting, reminiscent of a sea breeze through a field of pine trees. Tender.
Dairy Pairy: Roquefort
Soundtrack: Modest Mouse’s “Head South”
11:20 PM | Permalink | (5) Comments
Sweet 14
By Hot Knives on July 24, 2007 (0) Comments
Avery Brewing Company is probably the best argument in favor of southwestern beer superiority. In terms of flavor, packaging, and lunacy, their beers rank highly in our little pantheon of liquid love. For anyone outside of the exteded four corners area, you’re seriously missing out. Oak aged barley wines? 15% abv. stouts? Imperial Oktoberfest Lager? Every year this brewery churns out beautiful bombers that make our tender clutches quake when we spot them in reachin refrigerators. If the full line were available in southern California we would have a stronger tolerance for booze.
In years past, the Avery Anniversary Ale has run the gamut from a beautiful Bock last year, to the still wishfully remembered Ten (10 hops, 10 malts, 110 IBU’s, 10% alc. by vol.) This year’s offering, a dry hopped dark ale, can be summarily described as “a fucking mouthful.”
The ale pours a deep mahogany color, reminiscent of many great imperial reds currently en vogue on the west coast. Bubbles abound in miniature infinities. Though they are never strong enough to form a lasting head these little armies arise at the mildest agitation and swirl so invitingly as to desire intimate knowledge of their physics. Think lacing that makes you want to remove your trousers…
While we did at first whine that we once again were deprived the depravity of an Avery Anniversary IPA, the complexity of this beer surprised and awed us into submission. In the nose this guy is full of red fruits, spices, and chocolate. The first sip is an explosion of malts that some abyss colored stouts barely achieve which fades directly into a full flavored dry hop finish. Dump this dude into a big glass with plenty of room for swirling and sniffing. You'll find yourself contemplating its various flavor profiles like some kind of drunken pre-Socratic.
The 14 proves no ale is too dark for summer. Find this beer; wait until sunset, slow down.
Dairy Pairy: Beemster Classic (Or the eldest Gouda you can find. 16 months minimum.)
Soundtrack: Ethiopiques 21
7:42 AM | Permalink | (0) Comments
Sonoma Slayers
By Hot Knives on July 17, 2007 (4) Comments
The Sonoma Farmhouse series is a new line of beers brewed by the bad dudes of the central coast. Lagunitas’ beers usually rank on the heavier side boasting brutal bitterness, and large alcohol percentages. The first two farm hands are milder affairs, with temperate booze levels and heavy-handed subtlety. At a meeting of the minds on Alex’s front porch, we discussed the new ilk of a collective old flame with Greg Buss and Mike Meanstreetz, both hardened Lagunitas cherishers. After eight bombers and two bowls of peanuts we were drunk, and fairly certain that we love these new beers.
While the brewery said that the Sonoma Farmhouses weren’t really available outside their homeland, reports of the Saison’s presence in beer stores abound from Highland Park to Azusa. No sightings of the Hop Stoopid (except our stash), but bug your beer-mongers. If you annoy them, they’ll annoy their distributors, and with luck you'll find these bombers on familiar shelves.
Saison Style
At 5.3% alcohol and barely recognizable hop character, the Saison style stays on the side of the discernibly summer. It’s a refreshing session beer with an aftertaste that evokes both corona and saltine crackers. The front of the flavor profile is well balanced with a particularly pleasant yeastiness, with hints of citrus and black pepper. Mass production of this brew certainly took a steady hand. The subtlety of the Saison might not be for every die hard Lagunitas fan, but for the rest of the world this might be your new favorite after work chiller, or a permanent resident for your floating beer cozy (will someone please invent them?). Just don’t let anyone put lime in it.
Dairy Pairy: Sarah’s Nevat
Soundtrack: Brian Jonestown Massacre: “Talk-Action=Shit”
Hop Stoopid
Unlike the Saison, which you should only slam during a warm day, Hop Stoopid fills the heavy boots of the Lagunitas repertoire. Our assumption would be that a brew with such a boastful name would be a triple-imperial-something, rearing to kick our teeth through our noses with booze and hops. Not really the case here. The hops combo does run all over the gamut, from the pinesap of the northwest to the medicine man intensity of the southern lords. In the nostrils this brew smells of total IPA glory. But, like its aforementioned brethren, this brew’s innermost attributes are pretty chilled out. All of your beer senses are immediately inundated but then released in a very surprising, but fulfilling manner. Think Green Flash Imperial IPA with more complexity. The lightning speed of the hop flavor progression immediately gives way to the super smooth balenced malts, really hiding the booze in this one: it only comes out if you sip at just below room temperature.
Dairy Pairy: Affidelice Au Chablis
Soundtrack: Gang of Four “Anthrax”
8:00 AM | Permalink | (4) Comments
Lagunitas Live
By Hot Knives on July 13, 2007 (1) Comments
On a recent trip north for a wedding, Lake and Alex burned some time and bought some bombers at the Petaluma digs of Lagunitas brewing company. Lagunitas’ beers have been long time faves of your favorite beer snobs, and it was a real treat to get a peek at the industrial side of their full bore brews.
Unlike Stone’s monolith of a production center cum-hedonist-compound, Lagunitas’ location has more of a factory vibe. Too early and without time for the regular tour, the Brewery’s secretary Stephanie gave an awesome walk around, offering a chance to see, and show you, the mechanical workings of a fast growing super-brewery.
The video shows the Lagunitas means of production in full swing, with their chilled out crew rocking hard to death rocker/horror director Rob Zombie’s late 90’s jams. In the background, you can see the outlines of what Stephanie told us was a three day supply for the growing giant: over 80 pallets of beer.
Stay tuned for reviews of what we brought back…
9:30 AM | Permalink | (1) Comments
Green Flash Imperial IPA
By Hot Knives on July 1, 2007 (2) Comments
There is, according to Jules Verne (among other Frenchies), a fleeting visual phenomenon that accompanies a warm summer sunset — he called it “le rayon vert,” the green ray, or perhaps more literally “the green flash.” By his description, the green ray was a split second flash of emerald light just as the sun dips below the horizon. Explored by master of the mundane Eric Rohmer in his 1986 film (the classically understated “Summer” as it was called in its American release), the green ray was quite literally illusive, and figurative for the love that Rohmer’s protagonist is missing until the last seconds of the film.
Suffice it to say, we loved Green Flash’s Imperial IPA. It even lived up to the deeply dorky metaphor that the brewery name references: the bitter bursts of this classic San Diego-style IPA were wonderfully fleeting, momentarily arresting and then — zap — gone from the palate.
First came a hint of raspberry zing, followed by the frothy alcohol sting and finally a quick, mellow effervescence, noticeably skipping the sickly sweet linger. This IPA is not an envelope-pusher exactly, but it is an iconic standard. And whereas some stronger IPAs (Moylan’s Hopsickle, Avery’s Maharajah) are tough to slug in summer heat, this one went down like hop soda pop. Which is not to say its an unchallenging bottle.
Our friend Julie, a French Canadian with a thirst for lagers and Eric Rohmer films had this to say about the hoppy green flash the beer emitted: “I’m hoping I could eat sausage right now because the fat of the sausage would take the bitterness away!”
Dairy Pairy: Morbier
Soundtrack: Brian Eno’s Another Green World
1:02 AM | Permalink | (2) Comments
Dad's Little Helper: malt liquor
By Hot Knives on June 17, 2007 (3) Comments
Happy Fathers Day, dad dudes! It’s the only day of the year where your kids won’t give you a hard time for finishing the whole Sunday paper on the pot or commandeering the remote control! And you deserve it. But is it weird to have Richard Nixon to thank for your special day? From what we understand, the dick proclaimed Fathers Day a permanent, national day of observance back in 1972, right when Vietnam was freaking you and your buddies out.
What better way to celebrate our dads, we thought, than to toast to them — their support, their advice and all their lessons in sensitive masculinity — with a high-class glass of malt liquor.
It may just be the one day of the year where beer can really say “I love you.” Evan looks back fondly on turning sixteen in Berlin, Germany and sharing a couple of cold Warsteiners with his father, Roger, at a Steglitz beer garden. And Alex holds memories dear to his heart of dad, Billy Brown, drinking the occasional King Cobra 40 oz. (That classy brand of brew is a whole other post entirely.)
So, this weekend we cracked a frosty brown bottle of Dad’s Little Helper, a malt liquor from Rogue Brewery — think Mickey’s brewed to strict purity laws. The kitsch value of this beer makes it as corny as our dads’ jokes: off-color and endearing. No, literally off-color: Dad’s Little Helper, true to form, is piss yellow. Held up to the sun, it looks like a foughty through and through. There’s no head to speak of, no nose save for scant scents of sweet starch. The carbonation is surprisingly subtle. And the stuff feels strong. As for taste, the syrupy corn and malt flavors hit the middle of the mouth nice and straight-forward. The result is a familiar foughty taste without the sting of acrid booze. If Rogue set out to imitate, and perfect, the actual taste of mediocre malt liquor, by George they have done it. For the most part the beer is pleasantly smooth and guzzlely, assuming it is frosty.
Even if your dad has better taste in beers than this, we think its worth bonding over. For memory’s sake if nothing else. Cheers dads!
Dairy Pairy: Chive Double Gloucester
Soundtrack: Billy Joel's Glass House
12:02 AM | Permalink | (3) Comments
St. Bernardus Abt 12
By Hot Knives on June 8, 2007 (1) Comments
If we were skiing down a black diamond hill in the Alps and we hit a tree trunk and blacked out unconscious and woke up buried in a snowdrift with no use of our legs and an aneurysm that was slowly filling our skull with blood, it would all be A-OK if only a St. Bernard rescue dog was standing over us with a barrel of St. Bernardus Abt. 12 around his neck, the spigot frothing forth.
This premium Belgian brewery, with its tagline “Heavenly nectar within reach,” churns out biggy ABV bubble brews with extremely high fermentation levels, meaning fruity and yeasty kicks — OG Belgians to be sure. Pouring these bastards takes foreverrrrrrrr, just cuz the froth is so kicked up. The wait, however, is worth it.
The Abt 12, St. Bernardus’ highest achievement and priciest export, is a smooth and crisp but extremely dark ivory-colored pinnacle of traditional brewing. There are notes of ripe bananas and lemons and a yeasty, earthy nose. The taste is like pure gold looted from the layman by dirty, stinking drunks of the cloth. The irony is this shit is so good, we'd be giving ourselves concussions just to be rescued.
Dairy Pairy: Aragones
Soundtrack: Darkane’s Rusted Angel
11:15 PM | Permalink | (1) Comments
Extra Special and Bitter
By Hot Knives on May 25, 2007 (2) Comments
Lagunitas Undercover Investigation Shut Down Ale
It probably wasn’t until late in high school that we really, truly grasped the concept of a paradox — the most famous of which may be the lie paradox popularly coined as “this sentence is false.” It’s gnarly stuff. Well, in beer philosophy the most puzzling paradox is that of the ESB or Extra Special Bitter. And we may not have fully grasped it yet, but we think we’re close after a recent weekend spent studying the seasonal, limited-release of Lagunitas’ Undercover Shut Down Ale. It’s an ESB and it’s a sweet beer.
The cover’s cool, which is kinda rare for this brewery’s bottles (chill out on the canine motifs already!) but even better the beer color is rich as shit; a dark shade of gold, glittery, and crisp-looking despite a hint of opaque depth. The head is a decent 1-inch but gives way nice and easy for quick guzzling. Now, the thing that boggles the beer brain about ESBs is that the stuff isn’t really supposed to be as hop-bitter as you’d be led to believe. The style is actually supposed to achieve rare balance between acrid bitterness and super toasty malts and or slightly sugary burn flavors. The idyllic note is more like a beer version of bittersweet chocolate. It’s a tall order for some American brewers who go ape-shit with the bitter, which is why some of the typical standouts lean more toward an Extra Bitter.
Undercover Shut Down is a classy ESB in that the “extra” truly modifies the “special” not the “bitter.” It’s drinkable and not that crazy. It could actually use a little more fizz to propel it a little further from the standard Lagunitas sweet note. But it hits more than one spot on the tongue, keeping an entire pint thoroughly interesting. There’s something to be said about this kind of balance, especially if you’re knocking back three of them in a row while manning an outdoor grill like we were. Instead of malt-sugar sting or hoppy burp breath, this concoction lends a nice yin-yang drunk that is undeniably special and yet not abnormal at all.
Dairy Pairy: Ossou Iraty
Soundtrack: Jonny Cash's version of “Mr. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang”
12:18 PM | Permalink | (2) Comments
"Barley Wine"
By Hot Knives on April 22, 2007 (0) Comments
Avery's Hog Heaven
The term “Barley Wine-style” is a new one on us. We like to think the guys at Avery Brewing Co. were making hand quotation marks as they seized on the phrase. That’s cuz Hog Heaven is hardly the malt bomb that you’d expect from a bottle with “Barley Wine” on the label. Most powerhouses in the Barley Wine class, like Stone’s Old Guardian or Anchor’s Old Foghorn, are heavy on sugary roasted malts and can knock you out with a boozey left hook. In a class of beasts and brutes, Hog Heaven is the Oscar de la Hoya of the Barley Wine world.
Avery, if you’re not familiar, are brutes themselves, specializing in the huge and hoppy. Stone’s strongest beer never exceeds 12% Alcohol By Volume, whereas Avery brews at least three that exceed 15%. Which is why it’s kind of insane that these monoliths’ only attempt at the Barley Wine is one of its weakest beers at “only” 9.2%.
On first pour the beer looks caramel red and opaque and deceptively “smooth.” The nose is there; it certainly smells like a Barley Wine — all alcohol and sugar. But the first sip shatters that impression. We were reminded of a super sweet IPA, think Lenny’s RIPA. Like an IPA, it was exceedingly drinkable, not merely sip-able like most Barley Wines tend to be. There was little head, but it stuck around. The burnt, amber booze flavor slide down the gullet rather than sticking to your tongue. Misnomer or stroke of genius? We don’t know. Either way the bottle needs to read “Barley Wine-style” along with a sticker that reads: DANGER: Thirsty Beware.
Dairy Pairy: MouCou Creamery’s ColoRouge
Soundtrack: Danzig/II
5:32 PM | Permalink | (0) Comments
Getting Lucky
By Hot Knives on March 30, 2007 (2) Comments
Lagunitas Lucky 13
Slipping this beer into a pint glass sounded a lot like two-inch fingernails — painted precisely a deep crimson red — clicking on a car door. It felt like wind and someone nibbling our ears. Half a bottle got us buzzed like we can only imagine you get when removing miniscule black underwear from a girl with hoop earrings and a femme pompadour. In a word: lucky. We wonder if that's what the people at Lagunitas were shooting for with this, their 13th anniversary copper brew. The word "lucky" seems fitting for another reason. Because even though the brewery is often hailed as a No-Cal up-and-comer, Lagunitas remains a hit-and-miss brand. We love some of their beers (Maximus, Number 9) can't drink others (Cappuccino Stout, Brown Shugga). This high-octane amber is a step above — or a stroke of luck — but either way it embodies what the company does well. A wispy head gives way to a Labrador red liquid. It is both exceptionally hoppy and sweetly bitter at first taste, before giving way to an almost metallic burnt caramel. Being a middle-of-your-mouth kind of beer the tastes come in waves: a tease and a door slammed in your face. The last note of every sip, however, is so fucking sweet.
Dairy Pairy: Alsatian Munster
Soundtrack: Sonic Youth's Goo
7:07 AM | Permalink | (2) Comments
Brother David's Double Abbey-style
By Hot Knives on March 16, 2007 (0) Comments
The bottle of this one says it all: There’s the ice-capped mountains, amber waves of grain and pretty plains of Anderson Valley depicted in all their glory — and right there in the middle of this splendor, is Brother David with his sick, furry mustache and his favorite death-metal monk hood. (Brother David also looks suspiciously like the mid-90s cab-driving spokesman for MTV.) The point is this Abbey-style dark ale is unique in a way that takes some getting used to — it’s not how you might have made it, and it kinda sticks out — but it touches you nevertheless. Your first moments with this beer are filled with anxious puzzlement. The first note is heavy banana and clove, almost like a heffeweisen. But the sweetness sticks around, getting almost pruney and deliciously bread-like. The booze is there (it’s 9% ABV after all) but its balance is surprising. The carbonation is restrained which makes for a slow-dissolving head that froths around with a translucent sugar sheen. Like a geek in a Megadeth T-shirt who picks his nose and tries to wipe it on the seat of the bus, this Belgian is unpredictable and yet familiar. It’s a niche beer and it’s lovable. But like that same geek, you don’t necessarily wanna spend all night him. The Black Album gets old after a while.
Dairy Pairy: Beaufort de Savoie
Soundtrack: Animal Collective’s Feels
8:57 AM | Permalink | (0) Comments
Old Reliable
By Hot Knives on March 13, 2007 (1) Comments
We at Hot Knives anticipate each one of Stone Brewery’s seasonal releases like a high schooler with a joint in their pocket anticipates the final minutes of algebra II. Just when we are getting over the bummer of the end the previous special release (we miss you already Double Bastard) a new conception of an old favorite hits the shelves. This review is late in coming, as the official release date for Stone’s 2007 Old Guardian Barley Wine was January 22nd, but you’ll be able to swill this beauty for another month…hopefully.
One more gush about our personal lords and saviors in Escondido before the homage d’brew. What makes Stone’s seasonals so fucking radical is that each year they make the same seasonal special releases, but they never taste the same. Yes Stone does make insane brews that deviate from the pre-ordained pageant of beauty like oak aged or dry hopped versions of their usual gang of five, or just something maniacal that never leaves Escondido, but you’ll never see this brewery crank out some silly concept beer that they’ll never make again and call it a special release. No “special” raspberry cappuccino porters, and certainly no “imperial” lagers or pilsners.
Old Guardian is a beer you can really hang out with on your porch. This year’s model, weighing in at 11.26%, requires some attentive time and a small glass. The flavor this year is much more pronounced than ’06, and the finish is long and joyous. The gargantuan malt and hop aromas meet in your mouth like some kind of epic battle between beer brute squads. The finish is surprisingly soft considering the initial intensity of the mash melee: strong notes of alcohol give way to vivid strawberry and mulling spice flavors.
We could drink this all year. We wish we could.
Dairy Pairy: Blues. French Blues (Roquefort, Blue D’Auvergne, Fourme D’Ambert etc.).
Soundtrack: The Make Up After Dark
8:16 AM | Permalink | (1) Comments
Rogue’s Monk Madness
By Hot Knives on March 5, 2007 (0) Comments
As a wise man once said, “When in Rogue, do as the Rogue do.” This is old proverb speak for “Northwest breweries should stick with the badass bitter beers they are known for.” Just look at Rogue Breweries’ OG flagship brews Shakespeare Stout, Brutal Bitter and Old Crustacean, all of them harsh, complex and consistently on point. But with their newest concoction, Monk Madness, the preeminent Oregon tastemakers at Rogue have continued to stray from their roots to unimpressive results. Right now, every American brewer and his mother seems to think it’s his right, or obligation, to try his hand at a Belgian-style ale. The results can be disastrous for one simple reason: Belgian ales, even the strongest of the bunch, have a subtlety and traditional pureness to them that the American ruffian brewer can’t recreate. Rogue’s tribute to the Belgian ale, for instance, hinges on five varieties of malts and five different hops — an ambitious recipe on paper that damn well goes too far. The deep velour and rippley brown color is off-putting, the sour bite of it is upsetting. Everything about the burnt caramel hop flavor and slightly hopped-up, nutty booziness screams identity crises, like an American playboy vacationing in an ancient monastery but without the basic decency to learn Flemish. The fact is, Rogue’s ever expanding list of beers seems more and more like an excursion from what they are known for, and what they do best.
Dairy Pairy: Smoked Gouda
Soundtrack: The Dandy Warhols’ Come Down
9:24 PM | Permalink | (0) Comments
Westmalle Trappist Triple
By Hot Knives on February 24, 2007 (0) Comments
Oft imitated, but rarely approached — there are few things better than beer made by men of the cloth. But for the most part, traditional trappist ales, (or monk-made, bottle conditioned Belgian ales) are hardly innovative.
This golden liquid fits very much in this category. The frothy head is incredible; the aroma startlingly fresh, almost grassy. The amount of sediment in each pour must be terrifying to a lager fan (goopy white chunks of fermentation boogies). And the crisp nip of the beer’s taste is exceedingly well-done. It's like Delerium with less ego. But creative it's not.
This triple is light, only mildly hoppy and has floral notes up the ass. It's a tame and pleasant afternoon chugger for sure, if you're not asking for boundaries to be crossed or envelopes to be pushed, or whatever.
Dairy Pairy: Camambert with Dijon
Soundtrack: Jefferson Airplane's Surrealistic Pillow
1:34 PM | Permalink | (0) Comments
Beer Meets Sparks
By Hot Knives on January 12, 2007 (2) Comments
Aesthetics aside, this herb was not made for beer. What feels like a typical IPA on first taste then sours on the tongue, into a bitter medicine flavor. If you've ever smelt fresh beans that have sat too long in the fridge, you'll recognize this finishing flavor. It's subtle but unpleasant to the point where we almost couldn't drain a pint. The aftertaste is similar to yerba mate in its bitterness, but in a blind taste test would be hard to pinpoint. In the end, we felt buzzed and jittery but can't reccomend this faddish attempt. And forget about cooking with this one. It might work paired alongside magic mushrooms though.
Dairy Pairy: Soy string-cheese
Soundtrack: String Cheese Incident's "Purple Octopus"
12:24 PM | Permalink | (2) Comments
(Wee) Heavy
By Hot Knives on January 10, 2007 (3) Comments
Scotch style ale is a blessed rarity. Not too many breweries endeavor to make their own variation, and those that do generally do an amazing job. With the exception of one ill fated super sour bottle of Moylans' Kilt Lifter, which seemed a bit past its prime, every time an opened bottle has the word "scotch" on it has been greedily devoured by our booze parched throats. Alesmith's Wee Heavy is exactly what it claims to be: scotch style ale. What lies within the flawless packaging of this $7.99 wonder is akin to The Clash playing Junior Murvin's "Police and Thieves," or Kim Gordon singing Iggy Pop: the perfect cover. This is not an attempt at making archetypal scotch ale, instead there is a righteous conciliation of old and new. Alesmith makes intensely high-octane beers: this is McEwen's on really pristine speed.This brew tastes looks almost like a porter in the glass: deep and limitless with glints of red trying to escape the void. The flavors are familiar to both the roots and the revision. The distinct sweet caramel and molasses flavors that sent us back to our first taste of Scotch Ale pre-empt strong roasted malts and an aftertaste that is equally alcoholic and complex...weed ghee and whiskey in front of a parlor fire.Heavy.
Dairy Pairy: Cave Aged Gruyere
Soundtrack: The Slits' "Heard It Through the Grapevine"
10:17 PM | Permalink | (3) Comments
Belgians in America
By Hot Knives on January 9, 2007 (3) Comments
Being fans of nearly everything Port Brewing does, we'd been looking forward to the Lost Abbey Avante-Garde for some time. Once poured though, the results were a little milder than we expected. The slight head, the medium hop and the very subtle bitter bite of this beer were all well received. The taste is super fresh -- perhaps best described, for lack of a better word, as round or robust -- and smooth (Stella Artois smooth, not Silver Bullet smooth). But the lack of a sour note, boozey sting or bitter burst kind of left the beer monochromatic. Monotonous even. It's refreshing like people in beer commercials tell you beer should be. Only problem is, unless you're pairing it with a mouthful of pizza, it's too easy to lose interest in a bottle of this.
That's where Three Philosophers came in, sat down at the bar, lit a cigarette and slapped us upside the head.
We'd never heard of Ommegang before a recent visit to a new beer bar in Downtown LA where the owners talked up a storm about Three Philosophers. Apparently Ommegang is a Belgian-style brewery centered in Cooperstown, NY. The 3Ps is their flagship beer as far as we can tell. It's an unusual combo brew, kinda like a Belgian black & tan: a strong malty ale mixed with an intense Belgian kriek, or cherry lambic. There's definitely a yin-yang thing going on with it.
The big hints are roasted, toffeeish malt and creamy cherry-vanilla, but the Belgian-style ale still shines through some of the time. It's not like you feel like you're drinking Stout or some weird fucking Belgium car bomb cocktail. All the things that the lighter bottle danced around leaving us wanting more (bitterness, sour notes, strong booze feel on the tongue) they were there in perfect proportions. The sweetness is tame enough that it doesn't numb your tongue or keep you from finishing the bottle. It wasn't too fruity for the one of us who fears lambics and it wasn't too weak for the one of us who prefers black to tan. We've had it warm (when the only other choice was to wait for the bartender to put it on ice) and we've eaten salad with it, and we think it's just about the perfect winter bottle.
Dairy Pairy: Fig cake with a 1-year aged cheddar
Soundtrack: Beta Band's Three EPs
9:02 PM | Permalink | (3) Comments
Alaskan's Winter Brews
By Hot Knives on December 9, 2006 (0) Comments
Tree tops and smoked meats and whiskers on reindeers.
If anyone knew winters it'd be Alaskans right? Well, almost. We snatched up both the Alaskan Winter Ale and their award-winning Smoked Porter recently and turned up the space heater and put on beanies and chugged. The ale was good but not great. It advertises itself as 'brewed with spruce tips' so we understandably expected to be rocked by some weird Eskimo aftertaste, but nope. The spice level is nice and the sweetness is higher up than the hops, which we could appreciate in a seasonal, but it just wasn't rich enough to live up to what you would expect. We wanted more, can you blame us?
The Smoked Porter on the other hand was a winning sludge. This dark brothy porter is completely up front about its intentions: it is beef jerky in a bottle, something more akin to smoked salmon than to most beers. We drank it down and immediately felt more solstice-y. You'll see.
Dairy Pairy: Traditional Munster
Soundtrack: The Shins' Oh Inverted World
9:15 PM | Permalink | (0) Comments
Hopping 'Sideways'
By Hot Knives on December 8, 2006 (3) Comments
A man vacation to the SoCal Coast.
*Note to Readers: At the risk of sounding like assholes on an infomercial, this will be the last posting about Stone Brewing Co. you'll see from us for a while. We've reviewed, cooked with, and made ice cream out of many of their seasonal brews because we think they're the preeminent strong-ass beer brewery of its size, and the best chance Americans have to one day be able to order good beer anywhere in this country. In any case, we're taking a break from the SoCal scene for now.
We were both feeling washed up on the Friday morning we decided to hop in the car and drive south toward North San Diego County. But as we pulled on to the I-5 South, the gray skies started to part and the sun shined through. There were some bombers of beer in the back seat on ice just in case, but we planned on making Stone Brewing Co.'s facilities by early afternoon so we could make their 2 p.m. brewery tour and tasting. We had a camera, a one-hitter and sleeping bags.
It occurred to us at the time that our cute, little man weekend was shaping up suspiciously like the antithesis to that surprise thirty-something classic "Sideways," the movie that put Pinot Noir on the map. The parallels were both repulsive and extremely hilarious, we thought.
In that crap film, if you haven't seen it (fuck you, you've seen it, c'mon) the story starts with the dried up writer hack played by Paul Giammoti packing his car for a week of male bonding with his old college buddy who was about to get married. He leaves his San Diego apartment with bottles of 40-year-old champagne in tow and heads to Los Angeles to pick up his actor friend before they shoot north to wine tasting country.
If we were subconsciously living out this horrific, clichéd nightmare, we at least like to think we were doing it backward.
Getting off the freeway in Escondido, we found ourselves in a North County suburb about 20 miles outside of San Diego. Close to the coast, the area is pretty, but inland, where we were heading, it looked like shit. In beer culture, unlike with wine, this doesn't matter a lick though. We forged ahead through the suburban sprawl day dreaming of huge stainless steel vats of boiling barley mash. The idea of pastoral grape vines held no sway here. Total beer country.
Stone Brewing lies at the top of a hill in an unlikely neighborhood of corporate headquarters, Silicon Valley-style office complexes with wide streets and flagpoles. The brewery does, however, stick out like a sore thumb. It rises out of the ground like a fortress of granite, natural stone and wood planks. (We found out later that all the materials used in construction were recycled from demolished Downtown San Diego buildings, awesomely.)
The front entrance, though construction wasn't complete on our visit, is awe-inspiring. A 50-foot ceiling lets columns of light in like a cathedral does; in the center sits a massive stone boulder. We've never felt so small.
The front lobby is also a general store. At the far end there's a refrigerated aisle of every Stone beer. A maze of kitschy, overpriced merch (Ruination IPA bicycling jersey anyone?) was the only thing between us and a bar made of stone slabs and sleek taps of every beer Stone makes. A surfer dude employee, a young Kurt Cobain-looking feller, started pouring us cups as soon as walked up. We had arrived. The first sips of Levitation Ale went straight to our giddy little fucking heads.
The tour, by the way, is free and comes with a free beer tasting. And raddest of all, the brewery staff loves giving tours and showering visitors with free beer. It's a win-win situation. They get bragging rights, you get to drink free booze in the middle of the day.
Do you, or someone you know, have a bachelor uncle who is really obsessed with cigars or antique cars or eighties metal and loves to share his useless information in chat rooms? This was the case with our brewery guide for the day--we forget his name, sorry man. He was decked out in black and gray Dickies gear all emblazoned with the Stone gargoyle logo, and big leather boots. We followed him, and the other 20 or so beer geeks who'd shown up for the tour, into the sparkling airplane hangar-sized brewery. Vats the size of nuclear reactors shone above us. A black and white pirate flag waved in the air from one of them. Dudes dressed like scientists jogged around in galoshes, gripping clipboards.
After a lesson on hop varieties and a sampling of chocolate malted barley, our guide showed us a whirring monster vat that, he told us, was filled with the Double Arrogant Bastard Ale that Stone releases for Halloween. Oohs and ahhs oozed out all over the place. We crunched down on some regular barley while our guide informed us about Egyptian brewing techniques. It was like a Natural history Museum for Beer
Somewhere in the middle of this Charlie and the Chocolate Stout Factory Dreamland, a stocky chef with bright blue hair, dressed in an all-black kitchen toque walked up to us and nervously asked if we'd been looking for him. We had. We'd been told to ask for Carlton, the head chef of the soon-to-be-open beer garden and bistro if we came down. We wanted to pick his brain. He graciously offered us a private tour of the huge kitchen and dinging room and we slunk away from the rest of the tour.
Carlton, a righteously supreme dude, has worked for his fair share of big operations and more recently ran his own restaurant in Escondido before being stolen away by Stone. He has, he showed us, been hiding away for months in the big shiny new kitchen of his, scheming the new menu and experimenting with beer cooking (pitter patter, be still hearts).
Everything from the line equipment to the walk-ins to the keg lines to the handmade plate ware this guy is working with made us shit our pants. His menu is nothing to scoff at either.
There is a shortage of serious chefs in this country who realize the potential of beer-cooking, so when Carlton explained that his IPA potato fritter appetizer required one entire bomber of Stone IPA we said a Hail Mary. In fact, nearly a fourth of the dishes on the lunch and dinner menu called for some amount of actual beer.
The rest of the place is no less awe-inspiring.
As we were winding through Carlton's tour of the kitchen we met the groundskeeper/gardener/janitor for the brewery, a guy named Chili. He was mopping the floor with a silly grin on his face. He showed us a pile of habañero peppers he'd grown in his garden and politely declined a sample. Upon his and Carlton's recommendation we made plans to drive to a pizza place down the way about 10 miles for their home-brewed beer.
Making our way through the lobby gift shop we made one last stop off at the free beer taps.
"What's that one?" one of us asked Carlton.
"Order it, tell him I said you could have some," he said slyly.
The surfer dude looked skeptical but finally poured us a baby cup of black milk.
Our lips started stinging with the sweet sensation of a beer so strong it's liquor. The hops battled with the malt inside of our brain. Fireworks backfired down our throats.
"What the...?"
"The strongest beer we ever made, you can't buy it. It's leftover from a charity event we did and donated the beer."
Now that's a good cause.
8:28 PM | Permalink | (3) Comments
Stone's Double Arrogant Bastard
By Hot Knives on November 9, 2006 (0) Comments
Double hops, double malt, double asshole beermanship in a bottle. You took too much too much mahn.
Only once a year do the fiends at Stone Brewing break out their meanest shit, the Double Arrogant Bastard, and that time of the year is now wusses.
When we took a trip south to their Brewery 2 months ago (which we have yet to finish writing about because of the blow-edness of our brains BTW) one of the vats we walked by was churning this double brew in anticipation for Halloween. Well, your costume may be in the closet, but the Double Bastard is ready so run to your nearest convenient beer locker.
Admittedly, this stuff is for the most part a toxic brew. It's overtly boozey, much sweeter than your normal Bastard (ironic huh) and way more bitter with a caramel malt flaave. However, as your mouth turns to accomodate it's harsh notes, there's something gut quenching about it. Perfect, for winter, perfect for druggie parties where you want to just dive in to your beer, perfect for really extreme beer tastings. Wrap up the night with this.
Dairy Pairy: Irish Blue Chese
Soundtrack: Motorhead's Greatest Hits
9:14 AM | Permalink | (0) Comments