Legendary Beer: Could Pliny The Younger actually be as perfect as it's purported to be?

Friday night after a tour of the Speakeasy Brewery, I joined Jay and company for dinner at La Trappe. I walked into the belgian bar and restaurant to discover that the beer fairy had been their recently and left a keg of a brew I never thunk would have the possibility to taste. Well I thunk wrong. Of all the beer bars in the world, I walked into the right one. Pliny The Younger was on tap for only $8.

Why is this such a big deal? While the highly rated Pliny The Elder is relatively available in well regarded beer bars across the West Coast, Russian River only makes the Younger once a year and in small amounts. It's available at a select few beer bars for a limited time (for only 2 weeks at the brewery), and it isn't bottled. If the Westvleteren 12 is the Cup of Christ for Belgian Beers, the Younger is the Holy Grail of IPA's. Why? Because it's rated...

Which explains my reaction:

The happiest of faces on the happiest of men.

Hallelujah! Hallllllelujuah! Ohhh Gloooria. I can't believe I had found it! There was a happy dance involved too, but sadly there's no footage available. Naturally like any good friend, the first thing I did was text David and Karl and unnecessarily gloat at my blind luck. Then I got down to brass tacks and tasted my second bucket list beer in as many months (Bruery's Black Tuesday in December being the other).

My first sip yielded goodness but not greatness, which surprised me. But then the wheels started to turn. Beer nerds speak of Pliny The Younger as if they are Ponce de Leon seeking the Fountain of Youth. The proportion of people speaking about it in hushed tones vs. those who have actually had it are very lopsided, which leads to exorbitantly high expectations. Regarding my first sip of the Younger, I had heard so much about its greatness that in my head, I was expecting to be either cured of cancer, live forever, or if I was really lucky, magically transform into Sam Malone. But what I've learned from tasting beers like the Westie and Black Tuesday is that you have to reign in your assumptions, break down the different elements of the beer (malt, hops, aroma, body, etc) and take the beer as a beer, not Unobtainium.

Cheers owner Sam Malone's Fountain of Youth

The Younger has a beautiful hop infused aroma that is both fruity and piney. The malt is smooth and almost creamy, and as the beer warms the hops flavors really shine. It does not cure cancer but it is basically a perfectly balanced beer and at 11%, this is an incredible feat. There is little or no trace of alcohol even as the beer nears room temperature. So do I agree this beer deserves a perfect 100 point rating? Yes. A hundred times yes. The Younger is a Triple IPA (which is unheard of, style wise) and so this beer must have an incredibly high IBU. In the hands of lesser brewers, the intense bitterness would most likely overwhelm the malt body and compete with the alcohol. Instead, all the ingredients are as perfectly balanced as I could perceive and result in a sublime symphony of flavor. BAD BOYS rating.

And yes, I had two glasses. When will I ever have a chance to drink the nectar of the gods again? It was glorious. Thank you La Trappe for being awesome.

The Surprising Happenstance in Discovering the Bear Republic Texas Brown Ale

My esteemed parental units came into town and we set off as we often do in search of the finer things in life: alcohol. We left this behind -

- to revel in a grape soaked weekend in Sonoma that looked a little like this:

Duck with mascarpone mashed potatoes (I believe)

Saturday we hit up 7 wineries and Sunday tasted 28 different wines, including 18 from DuMol. While Sonoma is well known for wine drinkers but not to me, it quickly gained my affection. The scenery differs from Napa but is as beautiful. Their Pinot Noir is quite different from the peppery Santa Barbara Pinot's and they have some fantastic Syrah and Zinfandel.

There's a famous winemaker's proverb that goes, "it takes a lot of beer to make good wine." I have yet to partake in the grueling grape harvest that occurs every fall, but after a weekend of grapes I was ready for a beer. In Healdsburg Sunday night, we headed to a wine bar for a pre-dinner glass but the bar was closed. Amidst the signs pointing tourists to local jewelry, bakeries, and nic nac stores, I saw the logo for Bear Republic Brewery. Tucked away from the main st thoroughfare was the actual Beer Republic brewery/brew pub!

For reasons I can't explain, I thought Bear Republic was located in Tahoe, but blind luck led me to their location. I think this makes 13+ breweries visited in the last 20 months.

Bear Republic brews some gems. Their IPA Racer 5 is a fantastic West Coast IPA, and I'm especially fond of their Hop Rod Rye and Red Rocket hoppy red ale. The brewpub has a number of specialty beers they only keg for that location, including several single IPA brews. I normally would order one of those, but being from Texas, a collaboration beer caught my eye.

The Texas Brown Ale was released two months ago by Stone. The recipe was collaboration between Stone, Bear Republic, and Fathead, a brewpub/brewery in Cleveland which has won several awards at GABT (Great American Beer Festival). The TBA is not only a relatively unknown beer style, but it's also a mistitled one. According to Stone's website:

This particular beer pays homage to a relatively little–known beer style called Texas Brown Ale, which, strangely enough, has its roots in California. It originated as a hopped up version of a brown ale recipe. While delicious, these beers failed to fare well in homebrew competitions, since there was no recognized category they could be entered in. They were far too hoppy and bitter to be considered a traditional brown ale. But when a competition in Houston, TX, accepted entries for what they named the “California Dark” category, the American Homebrewers Association followed suit soon after, though they perplexingly changed the name to Texas Brown Ale.

Kinda bizarre really. This article from a local liquor shop in Houston (where I grew up) goes into greater detail about the style's creation Specs article on Texas Brown Ale. Anywho, unless you're planning an extremely geeky trivia night around beer styles, it's basically a hoppy brown ale. It says so at the bottom of the label. However, the collaboration offers a unique twist, and it's why I'm a passionate fan of collabs - good brewers come together and create something out of the ordinary. Craft Breweries are technically in competition with each other, but they're more so committed to making unique and high quality beer. The result is usually delicious, if not extraordinary.

Stone in its 15 years existence never used Cascade hops, a mild but spicy and fruity hop grown in Oregon, and similar to the English Fuggles hop and a distant cousin once removed from the Czech Saaz hop used in pilseners. After the collaboration, Stone used Cascade again in their latest Barleywine. The TBA also is also brewed with molasses and brown sugar, which gives the body a very distinctive taste. 

Overall, the TBA is heavier and hoppier than your average brown ale. Molasses is an interesting ingredient to use because yeast has hard time breaking down the type of sugar used in molasses. Instead of fermenting out most of the flavors like yeast does with Candi Sugar, a greater amount of the molasses flavor is left in the brew. I also believe this results in the heaviness of the TBA, to the beer's benefit. Another fun factoid is the brown sugar tends to caramelize in the brewpot, especially when the boil is 90+ minutes. For the TBA, the result is an initially malty beer with biscuit and roast flavors (like your average brown ale) that ends with bits of sweetness, caramel and fruit. The four different hops used in combination with the unique sugars creates a complex brown ale and inspired me to savor each sip. If you like hoppy barleywines or intense stouts like Great Divide's Yeti, you will probably enjoy this collaborative delight. TRANSFORMERS rating.

Nogne O Batch #100 Barleywine but her faces me

MIFB beer year bros are back together for a tasting! I'm back in LA for the weekend and long last able to sample one of my favorite breweries, all the way from Norway, Nogne O. I bought this bottle in December and David has held onto it. After spending a year together drinking beer this is only the third time we've sampled barley, hops, yeast and water since September. We just got back from wine tasting in Santa Barbara where I was the sober driver and still managed to leave the town with food poisoning. That's what I get for not drinking - let this be a lesson to you all.

We're at Nick's apartment where he is working on creating a side business with a series of novelty t-shirts. His first creation is a beautiful pinup with a butter stick for a face, an old play on the "but her face!" Clever stuff Nicholas. Bruce Lee approves of the sketch, but what about the barleywine?

With 10% alcohol and 80 IBU, this promises to be a big, aggressive barleywine. The paramount Barleywines for me has to be the Stone Old Guardian series or the AleSmith Old Numbskull and based on my previous Nogne tastings, I'm hoping for the #100 to join the ranks. Apparently the #100 was a small batch made for the brewery, their friends and visiting brewers, but its popularity encouraged Nogne to begin large production on it.

There's a lot of sediment and the beer pours a thick head, which probably means this beer could be aged for quite a while. The booze rises up with the rest of the aroma including dark fruit and cocoa, smelling like a dank and unrefined belgian quadruple. As the aroma teased, this beer isn't ready for the world yet. The alcohol burns quite a bit and the mouthfeel is rather lackluster. I expect barleywines to really punch you in the face with flavor, but this is underwhelming despite the molasses, cocoa and roasted grain flavors emanating from the glass. This one looked oh so good....but her taste!
TRANSFORMERS rating

Survivors of the Santa Barbara Wine Tour