Tenaya Creek: Tapping their newest beer, God of Thunder Baltic Porter, at 6PM. Sauced Food Truck will be serving food made with the beer, and Tenaya Creek will be raffling a growler of the beer at 7 and 8PM.

Khoury’s Fine Wine: Also tonight at 6PM, Khoury’s will be tapping 3 rare kegs of Ballast Point beers: Victory At Sea (imperial vanilla coffee porter), Barrel Aged Black Marlin (porter), and Abandon Ship (smoked lager). Sausagefest Food Truck will be serving food.

When I wrote about New Belgium’s La Folie, I should have just written this.

Lately I’ve been trying to figure out what the primary driver of innovation in craft beer is. Is it consumer demand? Do savvy brewers notice shifting tastes or coming trends and whip something up that fits the bill? Does the local brewpub brewer get badgered by enough beer geeks and homebrewers that he decides something like a Nelson Sauvin IPA is worth a shot?

Or are some of the more innovative offerings a result of the brewer’s desire to make something that he or she finds interesting? To what extent can professional brewers push the envelope and get consumers to follow? Any rational person might’ve thought a hop monster like Stone Ruination IPA was wildly out of place in the craft beer market 10 years ago. Now, not only is it my regular go-to when I want my tongue to swim in a sea of C-hops, but it’s one of the highest rated Imperial IPAs around. Hell, I can get a bomber of it at the gas station down the street while picking up a meatball sub.

Now you may be wondering why I’m spending so much time thinking about this topic, let alone writing about it. I doubt it’s keeping many of you up at night or fueling in depth discussion at your dinner parties. It’s at this juncture that I’ll let you in on a well kept secret: I plan to be a very successful and well-decorated brewer in our quaint little town of Las Vegas.

So how does a lowly homebrewer go about doing this? The first step starts Monday: A part time job at Big Dog’s Brewing Company. I’ll be washing kegs, cleaning lines, graining out the mash tun etc. It’s not glamorous, but it’s a foot in the door at one of the finest and more innovative beer habitats in this town. Trust me: if you haven’t had Dave Otto’s hoppier offerings like Dirty Dog IPA & War Dog Double IPA, you’re doing yourself a terrible disservice. We may even strip you of your Hop Head merit badge.

All that aside, we get back to our initial line of questioning. If I get the opportunity to develop new beers in this highly customer-interactive brewpub setting, what’s the best way of going about it? My first inclination is to lean on what I’ve been successful with and enjoy drinking. Who doesn’t like a Saison with a ton of fruity aroma from dry hopping? Probably a fair number of you out there.

That’s where the real fun of a brewpub setting comes into play. I can talk to you while you experience the fruits of our labor. You can come pepper me with questions and comments any time you like. Please trust me when I tell you that I want to know what you liked, what you didn’t, what new experimental hop you’re homebrewing with, what beer you loved from your recent trip to a new brewpub in Antarctica, what you had for breakfast, etc. I want it all.

I want to push the envelope, innovate, and make great beer by hook or by crook. Whether it’s a crazy idea I have, or it’s based on something you and your buddy drunkenly brewed in your kitchen, I’m all about it. In the process, I hope we can help our local brewers make great beer for you, and thereby thrive.

Most importantly though, please come fill as many growlers as you can if Big Dog’s has a new seasonal farmhouse style beer! Just in case my fancy schmancy beer geek Certified Cicerone tastes don’t quite latch on to the taste buds of the masses.

Thank you Married To The Sea for the perfect comic.

The phonetic similarities between the two should be enough of a clue that these are meant to be together. Like some sort of alluring alliteration, I decided to pair a saison with my grilled salmon.
First, it should be noted, all saisons are incredibly different, and there is more than one way to grill a salmon. As such, the following lead to a perfect pair:

The Salmon: I marinated the salmon in olive oil and lemon juice (from actual lemons, not a bottle). After it was grilled, I seasoned it with a little salt, and some fresh ground pepper. The result was a deliciously lemony fish with a spicy, peppery edge.

The Saison: The only saison in the house was Saison du BUFF, a collaboration beer between Stone, Dogfish Head, and Victory Brewing Company. This is no ordinary saison. It is brewed with parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme, fresh from Stone’s garden. These herbs give the beer a peppery taste with a very refreshing, herbal finish. The amarillo hops give this beer a citrusy zest like aroma and taste. A very floral and herbal take on the saison style.

The Pairing: This pairing was all about complimentary flavors. The citrus zest in the beer matched the lemony tartness in the salmon. The fresh black pepper matched the peppery saison yeast and the herbal finish in the beer was like an added seasoning to the fish. The naturally lighter flavors of the fish was a perfect pair to the light, bready malts in the saison.

A fantastic pairing, if I do say so myself!

New Belgium’s La Folie has become one of my favorite beers. The first time I had it, I didn’t know what to think. I could tell that this was an amazingly complex beer, but I wasn’t ready for the amount of sour that was coming my way. To me, it was like drinking vinegar. It wasn’t until I began drinking other lesser sour beers, and learning of how La Folie is made, that I began to understand, respect, and ultimately, enjoy this beer.

Lauren Salazar is the blender at New Belgium who creates La Folie. This Embrace the Funk interview with her is worth a read. In it, she describes the process that New Belgium goes through to create this beer. Some notable bits of info regarding La Folie:

– La Folie is a technically a lager. Before the base beer is acidified, it is fermented with a lager yeast strain, making it a dry as possible.
– Different oak fermentors of the base beer are continually being individually drained by different amounts to make different sour beers throughout the year. As a result of this, the beer that is being used to blend and create La Folie is already between one and four years old.
– Because La Folie is a blend of aged sour beers, Lauren doesn’t recommend aging the beer. In her mind, she already did the aging for you.
– La Folie is pasteurized, meaning that after it is blended, the beer is heated to kill all living bacteria in the beer. The idea behind this is that the beer is frozen in time in it’s ideal form.

The next time I had a bottle of La Folie, it was an entirely different experience compared to the first time. I could taste the flavors of cherries, red wine vinegar, leather, oak, and green apples. It was like a sweet berry fruit dipped in a balsamic reduction. The bright, clear color was amazing to look at.

This past Wednesday, Khoury’s Fine Wine put a keg of La Folie on tap. Keg beers need to be kept a fairly cold temperature to balance the carbonation and to keep the beer from getting too foamy. If you order this beer on tap, be sure to let it sit for a few minutes to warm up. Wrapping your hands around the glass helps with this. If the beer is too cold, most of the flavor is hidden; as it warms it will start to open up.

Despite Lauren’s advice, New Belgium was selling 2010 bottles of La Folie during GABF week. Danny picked up a bottle so we could compare it with the keg at Khoury’s. The beer had some of the obvious signs of oxidation in the aroma and aftertaste. However, rather than being a deterrent, it complimented the sourness of the beer. It seemed to reveal a more berry like flavor. The sourness was still very present, if not more so. Your own preferences will determine which one is better. Danny preferred the aged version. I liked the cleaner, fresher version. Regardless, both were delicious, and trying the two side by side was a great experience.

As much as I love this beer, it is difficult for me to recommend it. It truly is a one of a kind beer, and as such, is not for everyone. It really takes an open mind and a previous experience to sour beers to keep this from being an overpowering shock.

See also: The Science of Sour

Big Dog’s Brewhouse

Periodically throughout the year, local Big Dog’s Brewery hosts what they call Brew School. Brew School is a chance for their customers to take part in brewing one of Big Dog’s award winning ales. Not only do you get to help brew a beer, but a month later when the beer is finished, you are invited back to take part in a graduation dinner featuring the beer you brewed! Since I had first heard of Big Dog’s Brew School, I had been wanting to check it out, and I finally had the chance this past Saturday. Saturday’s Brew School featured Big Dog’s imperial IPA, War Dog. I’ve yet to try this beer out, but I’ve heard countless times how great it is. Brewing a batch of this beer myself is probably the best way to experience, and appreciate, this immense beer.

Fresh Malted Barley

One of the greatest things about Brew School, is that head brewer Dave Otto is extremely candid and honest about their brewing process. It is clear that he is genuinely passionate about brewing and wants to ensure that everyone in the class is learning and getting involved in any way that they want. Attendees stirred the mash, cleaned up spent grain and added hops to the boil. Dave gave everyone a taste of the grains and also a taste of the wort after the mash, so anyone who hasn’t brewed before can have a better understanding of the brewing process. One of the things I found most interesting about this beer, is that it’s been several years since they last brewed it. The reason being, is that they have been unable to purchase enough of the simcoe hops that are needed. This year changed that, when Sam Adam’s found that they had an overabundance of the hop, and Big Dog’s was able to buy some off of them!

Dave Otto Mashing In

There were several home brewers who attended the Brew School, and as I mentioned earlier, Dave was very open about the brewing of War Dog. This beast of a beer uses 1,300 lbs of grain and about 60 lbs of hops! Dave mentioned that he really wants the malt to take a backseat in this beer so it can be primarily hop focused. With this in mind, there is very little specialty malts, it’s primarily just standard two row barley, with the tiniest touch of caramel and Vienna malt to add the slightest bit of color and sweetness. Not only that, even though the beer is about 8.3% alcohol, he wants to ensure the the beer is still extremely drinkable, with a light body, and little malt presence. To achieve this, Dave adds sugar to the beer as well. I’ve always preferred imperial IPAs that have sugar over ones that do not. Having a dry and crisp body helps to accentuate the hop bitterness. In my mind, even when the flavor is perfectly balanced, having a heavier body detracts the refreshing character that every IPA should have. This was one of my complaints of Stone’s 16th Anniversary IPA. The taste and flavor was amazing, but it was a very heavy beer. War Dog, on the other hand, not only has a strong, immense flavor, the light body makes it crisp and light.

Weighing Out The First Round of Hops

As I mentioned earlier, a month from now we are all invited back to the brewery for a graduation dinner, featuring our beer cooked with one of the dishes. Of course, we also get to have a pint or two of our hard work, as well as take home a growler! I’ll provide additional details of the dinner when that time comes. In the meantime, be sure to check out Big Dog’s website. They should be posting details soon of their next Brew School on January 12!
Below are some additional photos from the class.

Our Beer’s New Home For The Next Month

Our local New Belgium Ranger was kind enough to give some of their newest beers to Dave, which he happily shared with us. Thanks Karl!

Barrel Aged Deliciousness

Every year, Stone Brewing Company holds a nation wide challenge to see who is the most arrogant bar in America. The challenge is simple, drink the most Bastard beers in one week. Help out Aces & Ales with this epic challenge by not only imbibing in great beer specials, but more importantly, great beer!

These are some of my favorite beers, and if you haven’t had any of them yet, then do yourself a favor and get a few pitchers this weekend!

Over the past year, I’ve been very impressed with New Belgium’s Lips of Faith series of beers. The collaborations they’ve started making with other breweries has been fantastic. Last year’s Kick, made with Elysian Brewing from Seattle, is still one of the most unique, and flavorful takes on the fall pumpkin beer theme. This year’s Brett Beer, made with Lost Abbey from San Marcos, was an incredibly refreshing beer that should age very well. More recently, Super India Pale Ale, from New Belgium and The Alpine Beer Company, brought immense flavor and balance to the over saturated IPA market.

About a week ago, New Belgium released the last of it’s 2012 Lips of Faith beers. Bière De Garde is a collaboration beer made with Brewery Vivant from Michigan. I haven’t the chance to try this yet, but I’ve heard several people call this one of the best of New Belgium’s beers.

The second Lips of Faith beer that New Belgium released last week was Imperial Coffee Chocolate Stout. I tasted this beer on tap last Wednesday at Khoury’s. Once again, New Belgium shows it’s ability to combine and balance multiple flavors into a beer that not only highlights each element, but also succeeds in not overdoing it.

I’m convinced that this beer has some lactose in, as the smooth, creamy mouthfeel, and residual sweetness remind me of every other milk stout I’ve had. I’ve been told that there is no lactose in the beer, so I’m wondering if this sweet, creaminess may be coming from the chocolate in the beer. The coffee flavor is incredible. This beer really does taste like a black cup of coffee with some sweet creamer added. Again, I assume that this sweetness is coming from the chocolate, which, by the way, is perfectly balanced in this beer. Not over top, but some definite chocolate undertones present.

If you are a coffee lover, like myself, then I highly recommend you try this beer out. It is currently on tap at Khoury’s as well as Aces & Ales. Also pick up a bottle of Bièr De Garde while you’re at it!

Aside from going directly to Stone for their $150 dinner, this is likely the only way you’ll have to taste all 11 Vertical Epic beers back to back.