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.

Russian River Supplication Sour Ale turns tongues inside out on our Napa Valley trip

First day in Napa! We're here with over 16 people and staying at the same hotel as we did for my parent's 40th wedding anniversary 3 years ago, the Wine Country Inn http://www.winecountryinn.com/. I'm reallly excited about the wine and all, but the breakfast at this place is AMAZING. Make your own waffles with peanut butter and nutella and a rotating eggs casserole every morning that is to die for. Everything one needs for a good wine drinking base.

This post will be mostly pictures and the beer review at the end. Now why did Walker wait until the end of the night after drinking wine all day to drink his Russian River beer? Hmmm...is it because it was a sour ale? Mayhaps

Parents rule

Dudes rule

Miner winery has a wild yeast chardonnay, which creates a flavor profile similar to that of a wild yeast beer. Interwesting...

This is Napa on a bad day...psych, Napa doesn't have bad days fool.

This castle was fun and all, but the wine was blah. It was like going to Disneyland only to realize that Star Tours was broken after you waited in line for 45 minutes. And then a bird pooped on you.

So I'm very excited about this trip, because not only are the wines amazing, but the beer is rated highly too. Russian River makes amazing beers IPA's and Sour Ales, although I really detest Sours. All but one sour I've ever tasted made me want to write a strongly worded letter asking why they would want to put those particular flavors in someone's mouth. Tonight's beer, Russian River Supplication, is one of the highest rated sours in the world and since I'm in Napa, near Russian River, I feel compelled to heed the Sour's Siren Song.

The Supplication is a Brown Ale aged in French oak Pinot Noir barrels with three strains of Brettanomyces, Lactobacillus, Pediococcus and sour cherries. The whole gang is outside here tasting the beer. A few like sour candy, etc and somewhat like this. Others think I just poured them a cup of panther piss.They're accusing me of shenanigans but I tell them "I said that you should try this, not that it was a good." Ha. Now they know what a sour ale tastes like. Some things really have to be experienced.

I'm getting used to it, but IT IS SO OVERWHELMING. WHY WOULD YOU MAKE ANYTHING THAT SOUR THIS INTENSE. Imagine Emril saying "BAM" while kicking you in the balls while jamming sour starburst on steroids into your mouth over and over again.

Here is the Beer Advocate review, which rates it as an A. If you might like a sour ale, this review is for you because I can't say anything, good or bad, other than what I wrote. It's just too wild:  http://beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/863/22227/?ba=bros


The good news is, I also bought Russian River Pliny the Elder for my dad and others, who LOVES IT. It makes me very happy to see my dad enjoy beer so much. We're sitting out on a deck above a winery under a cloudy night drinking great beer and wine. This is an amazing.

I'm afraid to rate this beer, because it's so well regarded but I hated it so very much. TRANSFORMERS 2 rating? Nuts

The Bruery Cuadruple made with Dark Agave Syrup is fit for a king

After diving into some apocalyptic french toast at 26 Beach for breakfast, the parents and I spent the morning along the Santa Monica pier and promenade and visited the farmers market. We tasted a couple types of honey, which was really interesting, and ended up buying a 1lb of sage honey for our next Belgian IPA home brew.  Also, check out this bizzaro Romanesco Cauliflower that we came across:

When I ran down the list of activities to do in the afternoon, I included brewery tasting as one of the events and my parents loved the idea which I didn't expect. To quote my inspirational father, "I can't drink all day any more but I can drink half the day." Hahaha, those are the words of a champion! Now I know where I got my lust for beer from. So I DD'd my parents down to The Bruery in Placentia. We arrived half an hour after they opened and at 4:30pm, we were already late to the party as the place was packed.

Cuadruple rocked my socks off

Here we are and I am stoked to be here for numerous reasons, but particularily because I know The Bruery Provisions store released their latest limited run specialty beer the Cuadruple last night. The Cuadruple is a Belgian Quadruple, a type of high gravity and high alcoholic dark malty ale whose family includes Rochefort 10, St. Bernardus Abt. 12 and the Allagash Four - all of which I've never tasted. So the Cuadruple marks my first taste of this beer style. What makes this tasting even more unique for me, is that they substituted candi sugar for Dark Agave Syrup.

The Cuadruple clocks in at an intense 10% alcohol but the dark ale is exceptionally mellow and extremely delicious thanks to the agave, which also imparts a neat mild citrus flavor. I LOVE THIS. It's incredibly unique and smooth. If Borat was here, he'd say "Niiiiiiiiice!!!" If Wile Coyote was here, drinking this would inspire him to stop chasing the Road Runner and ponder what life would be like without ACME anvils crushing his face. The Cuadruple s is what the Most Interesting Man in the world drinks when he's not having Dos Equis.

It is profoundly distinctive and difficult to describe. The Dark Agave Syrup imports a very special and rich caramel flavor that must be tasted. It's cool like a wet cloth to a hot forehead. I'm buying a bottle for David and sufficed to say, I to purchased another to store under my bed for a rainy day or a more so a special occasion, like the second coming of Christ. This is really a phenomenal beer. Obviously, this deserves a BAD BOYS rating.

And the parents had a blast!

My Dad liked all the beers but his favorite was the Rugbrod. My mom's pick was the Orchard White, which is made with lavender. We leave The Bruery after some Ahi Tuna Chips and head to Bootleggers. My favorite quote along the way was my dad saying, "Somebody should drive us home and it shouldn't be me." HA.

Dad likes Rye ales, so I hook him up with a half pint of the Rustic Rye IPA and my mom with the Old World Hefeweizen. I was surprised to find that Bootleggers added around 7 new beers styles since we were here a couple weeks ago. I bought a Hopinator Hefe growler for the Super Bowl tomorrow and the Gingered Ale looks promising.

On the way home Dad regales me with stories of his younger days, which I thoroughly enjoy and hope to hear more of. Later, David joined us for dinner at Rustic Canyon where I had the best pork chop of my life. Now that's how I want to spend a day with my parents!

Duvel Tripel Hop and the parental units celebrate our Halfway Milestone

Ma and Pa Davis are in town and took Karl, David and I out to Enterprise Fish Co for some good seafood and one bomb-ass bread puff lobster bisque.

This deliciousness marks the beginning of a food filled weekend with the 'rents

It developed into an amusing dinner because I've never had a waiter who was so sardonic and disgruntled about the restaurant which he'd worked at for the past two years. He didn't take any crap and I loved it. He began the meal informing us the special Dine-LA menu was 'really stupid' unless you got the lobster (which no one did). Then he took one look at David's ginger sauce and said that it was 'god awful.' He apparently returned to the kitchen and argued with the chef until she made new sauce and the forced her to bring  it out herself (he really relished winning that power struggle). He then ended the meal by regaling us about the biggest tumbleweeds he'd ever seen in Texas/Arizona. You know, normal stories waiters animatedly tell customers.  After thoroughly stuffing ourselves, the group headed back to the marina to celebrate beer number 183 and our halfway mark through the year.

Glorious, glorious nectar

Duvel is David's all time favorite beer and we'd been eying the Duvel Tripel Hop for quite some time. David finally bought it a couple weeks ago. Friday morning I made an executive decision and 'discretely' placed the beer in the fridge and the tag on David's wallet letting him know the time has come for us to drink the nectar.

Beer nerds celebrate

Wow, HOPS! They weren't messing around when they made this with tripel hops. Take a Duvel and add Saaz (which you can taste upfront), Syrian Goldings and Amarillo hops and you can imagine what the Tripel Hop tastes like. They kept it simple and didn't change much. Sadly, Karl doesn't like Duvel but even he is warming up to thanks to this bottle's crispness. I love the bottle design too. It's fitting that Karl is here and personally happy I'm happy because he's been a major part of the last 6 months.

Very fortunate to have Platt and Carolyn in town for the occasion!

Duvel is in the hall of Mt. Olympus as one of the greatest beers in the world. The original Duvel is hard to beat, but the tripel hop is an interesting and ultimately satisfying twist on the original. BAD BOYS rating.

Fantastic way to celebrate the halfway milestone. As I went to sleep, I didn't count sheep and instead counted beer -- 182 beers left on the wall, 182 two beers left. Take one down, pass it around, 181 beers on the wall...