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.