2007-12-30

QUICKTAKE: Green Flash Imperial India Pale Ale

Oh, what can you say?, maybe as it says on the bottle;

"Its all about the hops!"

This is a beer from San Diego and is in the category "San Diego style IPA"; meaning a super-hoppy, high gravity ale, and probably everything I want in a beer, at least when I have my hop-monster moments.

The beer has a very orange color with a light high head. It has a aroma with citrus and pine hints. And the taste is a strong hoppy backbone with the same pine and citrus touches as in the aroma. This is a real hop-monster (101 IBU) but still very balanced and extremelly easy to drink, only problem is that you want more of it. With 9% ABV it feels amazing that you can create such a great beer when the alcohol is not noticable as in this beer.

Great brew, and as the brewmaste says; "Its all about the hops!".

This beer is really amazing and I am already rearranging my toplist to find a suitable spot for it (not easy, but I will have it a try at least, :-)).

As a brewery I discovered this brewery during this years GABF and we tested both the pale ale, WIPA, and this IPA. For a small local brewery in San Diego and only 5 years old this is a great brewery and I will try to test more of them as soon as I get the opportunity.


Green Flash West Coast IPA at Falling Rock in Denver

Cheers!

2007-12-29

Flying Dog is moving...

Just got the information that the Colorado brewery Flying Dog is moving all brewing operations to Frederick, Maryland.

This is one of my favorite breweries the last couple of years and this seems to be a big step for the brewery. In reality it means all operations and that they are closing down all brewing in Denver.

"Here’s the word from president and CEO Eric Warner:"

As you may have heard, Flying Dog Brewery recently announced that we are embarking on the next step in our illustrious, 17 year history of crafting remarkable beer by concentrating all of our brewing and production to the brewery in Frederick, MD, where 70% of Flying Dog Beer is already being brewed. This move will take place in January and we are working to ensure that our entire production team will be able to make this move over to Maryland. Accounting, sales, marketing and other administrative functions will remain largely unaffected by this change and our HQ will remain in Denver.

We decided to make this proactive move as it has become increasingly important to be extremely nimble in today’s business environment. Only those who can quickly adapt in the hyper-Darwinian economy will survive and in today’s craft brewing landscape. We are facing unprecedented cost pressures due in large part to the tremendous hop and malt cost increases. Concentrating our brewing operations to one facility will help us become more efficient while maintaining our exceptionally high brewing standards. This is a smart, proactive move for our growing company and will allow us to most efficiently use our resources.

The Frederick facility is a state-of-the-art brewery that has already been producing great beer for Flying Dog and we look forward to ramping up production and growing our business even more than the +20% trends we are experiencing in 2007. The bottling line in Frederick has lower oxygen uptake at filling than the one in Denver, which translates to better flavor stability and longer shelf life. It also kicks out bottles at twice the pace of the line in Denver. The brewhouse in Maryland is also capable of brewing a wider range of recipes than the one in Denver. Finally, the brewery in MD plans on substantial capital expenditures and plant upgrades (close to a million bucks in 2008 alone) to continue to brew better beer in an efficient and environmentally friendly way
It will be interesting so see what this will mean for the brewery and what will actually happen with the current brewery in Denver. At least it feels good that we actually got to visit the brewery in Denver just a couple of months before it was closed. Anyway it seems that the change is not so drastic when you see that actually 70% is already brewed in Maryland. The plan is at least to grow and that is always good I guess. The company is on pace to brew 50,000 barrels of beer this year, a 20 percent increase.

2007-12-28

A Real Ale report

Coming back from the city last night I did some more real ale experiences with beers and breweries not sampled before. From the real ale offering over at OT sampled to of them (very tired of Christmas beer so the Otter Claus was left out).

1. Robinsons Double Hop (Cask): A ESB brewed by Robinsons from Unicorn Brewery, Stockport, Cheshire, England. Reddish colored with a light head. Malty and hoppy aroma with some citric notes. Quite bitter finish, but ending quite fast. Not excellent but a decent ale and much better than the Christmas beer that I am so tired of right now. Simply refreshing and lite that you can drink more pints of.

2. Elgoods Old Black Shuck (Cask): A dark stout brewed by Elgoods brewery from Wisbech, Cambridgeshire, England. A balanced stout with pleasant roasted flavours. Coffee and caremel notes. Quite short on the finish but at the end a very decent and drinkable beer.

QUICKTAKE: New England Brewing, Atlantic Amber

Sampled last night over at Oliver Twist and the second beer from this brewery (the first one was the IPA (Sea Hag)).

This beer is of the style normally called "A California Common" which means a beer brewed with lager yeasts at ale temperatures. The style originates in 18th century California, where the brewers without access to refrigeration produced beers using lager yeasts in combination warm temperatures and then naturally cooled the beers on the roof tops of the breweries. The biggest beer in this style is probably the Anchor Steam range.

The beer is clear amber with a white head, quite malty aroma with a floral note and medium bodied. The taste consisted a light caramel sweetness, with hops arriving towards the end. Not amazing as the Sea Hag but a good representative of the style and always fun with a canned beer.



A fun thing about this beer is that it on the can says that the beer won a price as a "altbier"? over at GABF in 1993!. You could wonder how big this category was in 93 to be able to win Gold as a altbier. But based on the definition of altbiers it might have something in common;

"Traditionally fermented warm but aged at cold temperatures."
Cheers!

A beer trip of Norway?

If you ever wanted to do a beer trip in Norway then you should check this blog entry over at Knut Albert.

The micro market is very tiny in Norway but at least it is growing and based on the regulations in Norway it is impressive to see that some people dare to make a try of brewing beers at all.

How about something new?: Laughing Dog Brewing


Sometimes you feel just to promote new breweries that you discover and hopefully something that might be coming to a pub close to you. Small breweries are something that you as a beer geek always need to promote.

So if you ever see a beer from Laughing Dog Brewing you should definitely test it out. This is a tiny brewery that we discovered during this years GABF and the brewery is located in Selkirk Mountains just outside of Sandpoint Idaho and in the city of Ponderay. They produce a full range of beer style as; pale ale, IPA, Stout and ESB. The bottles all come with the Laughing Yellow Lab that appears on all of their brews and is Ben their family dog. The full range of beers looks like this;

1. Laughing Dog Pale Ale
2. Laughing Dog India Pale Ale
3. Laughing Dog Cream Ale
4. Laughing Dog Sweet Stout
5. Laughing Dog Crotch Sniffing Bastard (ESB)

And they also do an Imperial IPA called; Laughing Dog Devil Dog Imperial IPA.

All great beers, where my personal favorite was the pale ale, which a very hoppy aroma pale ale and balanced perfectly with a great mixture of malts. As a pale ale this is a perfect beer that is not too much of everything, simply a very balanced beer, but still with the citrus hop kick you want in a beer.

So remember this, if you see the beer, let them a go. Just saw that the beers are available over at; Belmont Station in Portland.

So when can we expect this beer over at Oliver Twist or Akkurat??

Buy a Idjit to your home...


Just read that through the result that Brill & Co has taken over the distribution of all beers from Dugges, it also means that directly a range of the beers will be available over at Systembolaget. As a start this means;

1. Gustafs Finger
2. Bältesspännaren
3. Kals Stout
all available on 0,5l bottles.

But the most interesting news is that Mikael over at Dugges also informs that during spring 08 we can look forward for "½ Idjit!" at Systembolaget and finally in the fall we can enjoy; Idjit!.

If you have missed the talk about the Idjit! range of beers, then here is a short recap;

½ Idjit! is a porter brewed by Dugges Ale & Porterbryggeri on the west-coast of Sweden. ½ simply means that it never went the whole way up to a full Idjit, so it just became of potent port at 7.0 ABV. It comes with a darkish color with a very thick tan head, coffee, choco and with a hint of liqorice flavour. Simply a amazing beer when it has been available.

Then to double that and brew something totally crazy Dugges is also brewing the full Idjit that can be described as big Imperial Stout at ABV 16.5!. Still only available as limited test brews this beer will be stored at least six months and seems to be a beer that might come up to the level as Imperial stout beers as Närke Kaggen Stormaktsporter or Nøgne Ø Dark Horizon First Edition.

At least it has been a beer to wait for, and getting the news that we can actually buy it locally at the Systembolaget is great news, and much better than the hype with Kaggen that is a great beer but impossible to get hold of.

2007-12-27

How about Scandinavian micros?

As an interesting reflection it seems that the times are changing in the Scandinavian beer scene, at least the tendency looks like that. What I am talking about is the fact that for years you have seen the Scandinavian micro beer scene evolve and grow steady with new Danish, Norwegian and Swedish micro breweries popping up each year.

But strangely enough it has been impossible to actually get hold off the beer between the countries. You were enjoying great new micros in Denmark but due to some reason you could not get a decent beer back home. It seemed odd by it was easier to get a great US-micro or a Belgian beer compared to you closest neighbors.

This was definitely the case between Denmark and Sweden. You have a close neighbor with great new beers but you had to pass the borders to actually get them. Why this was the case was a bit difficult to understand. Some explained that it was caused by different types of regulations, but that could not be the whole truth because why it then works for US-beers or other countries.

Others have explained that the breweries are so small so that they had to concentrate within their own market. And that is probably a big explanation, but also causes you to ask yourselves why it would be so difficult to sell a beer just a few miles between 2 cities just because we have a country border, and a country that should be so easy to export to.

The larger breweries actually instead did other varieties to the extreme where they export main street lager beers to countries like Denmark so that we the Swedes could buy them back, just because of the price. But you could not buy a great beer from the same country; just a Carlsberg and brewed in Sweden!

But then something changes.

You can not explain exactly when it actually happens, but it is small steps that you slowly notice and then suddenly something is different. What I mean is that suddenly you have seen the market to change. Not largely but at least for the better. These small changes that I have seen and has caused the market to change are as I see it;

1. Nøgne Ø being available as Christmas beer at Systembolaget in 2005\2006.

2. Also a short run of the Nøgne Øs Pale Ale an Amber ale at Systembolaget in 2006.

3. The Swedish\Danish beer match at OT in June 2007 (my blog entry), which made more people in Sweden being aware of the Danish and Swedish micro market

4. A returning sample of breweries from the beer match at Stockholm Beer in Oct 07

5. Nøgne Ø being sold by Brill & Co through Systembolaget during fall 07

6. Galatea starts to import; BB, Norrebro & Broeckhouse
Through these small steps and probably a few others that I have not seen or noticed myself you can actually get a decent micro brew from you closest neighbors.

Through Systembolaget(the Swedish Alcohol Retail Monopoly) and the so called "beställningssortimentet" you can now actually get beers from Nøgne (like; Nøgne Ø # 100!! (nr 89403)) (Brill & Co), Bryghuset Braunstein (BB), Noerrebro Bryggeri & Brøckhouse, all through Galatea.

In the better pubs like Bishops Arms, Oliver Twist (both Ølfabrikken and GB has been available after the summer) and Akkurat in Stockholm you can get the same beers.

This is not much if you actually know what is available in the micro market for each country, but it is at least something and represents a good collection of quality breweries. And if this is a trend we have something to look forward after.

I am not 100% sure but I also think that you can see the same trend in Norway and Denmark regarding Swedish beers. At least I have noticed that a brewery as Nils Oscar is available in Denmark through Ølbutikken in København and Dugges Ale- & Porterbryggeri has been available as draught version now since May 2007 over at "Den Tatoverede Enke" in Copenhagen. Dugges has actually made a special beer just for the Danish market and DTE in the form of; Enkens Brown Porter.

This is good trend and something that I think should be normal. Meaning that my personal opinion is that it should be natural to get a good micro beer from a neighborhood country and it should be no difference just because the beer is from Norway or Denmark.

Doing a comparison is that it is closer between Malmö Sweden and Copenhagen Denmark compared to Malmö and Stockholm or that it is very close between Oslo and Gothenburg.

So why should it be more difficult to get a beer from Norway in Gothenburg compared to a beer from the US or Belgium.

So now I am looking forward for some new great Norwegian micros, yes I know there are not so many out there, but those available are at least great.

So how about a beer from Haandbryggeriet in a pub close to me?

Getting close to the end...

Christmas has passed and we are getting close to also end 2007. Over at Oliver Twist we are also getting to the end of the OT US-draught attack.

I have personally just missed a few of them but it has been a great beer experience and a "ok" substitute for not being in the US and drinking them directly. So last night it was time for the last beer, at least the named ones (according to the list we can look forward for at least one more secret beer).

And this time it was the IPA from the Smuttynose brewery over at Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

This beer has been a favorite on the bottle a couple of years and was surely a big hit a day after christmas and much better than all the christmas beers that you are really a bit fed up with right now. So the 20l keg came and went quite fast during the evening so at 21.00 it was emptied and the US-draught could be finished and passed to the beer history books.

Now we are already looking forward for the next batch of US-beers at OT that is scheduled for January or February.

2007-12-25

Not much but...

anyway for you all out there;

A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Beer Year...


Work has taken all my time the last couple of weeks so I have not found the inspiration to fill my blog with any interesting things. Right now I have to spend a few days with my family, but I will hopefully be back in a day or so.