David and Walker are drinking a different beer each day* for an entire year, 365 beers in all, starting August 5th, 2010. We're writing about our daily regime to share the experiences and delicious discoveries with our friends and mild acquaintances to inspire YOU to bring previously unknown beers to your lips. (*limit one new beer per day consumed before midnight, no catch up days allowed)
Planning on having a little bbq tomorrow, so David and I grab Mark and Brennan to join our jaunt down to refill growler's at Bootleggers and The Bruery. I haven't been since February to either and after missing their 3rd anniversary party last weekend, I'm beyond titillated see what's on tap!
While David scopes out the Cuir for the first time, I'm pouring myself their new Provisions Series, the Bierbach. The Bierbach is an Imperial Miabock and the timing couldn't be better because I had my first maibock, a Hofbrau, exactly a week ago. I love how experimental The Bruery is, particularly how they're willing to make like Barry Bonds and 'roid up their beers. They doubled the alcohol for their Imperial Orchid Wit and here they clock in at an impressive 8.1%
And here's what The Bruery has to say about their latest and greatest:
"Meaning Beer Belly in German, Bierbauch is the Provisions Series ale for the month of May 2011, so of course we had to make a Maibock! And we're The Bruery, so of course we had to make it imperial! And why stop there when you can age it in oak barrels for a few months? The last strong beer you'll need before the heatwave of summer is upon us, this version of the traditional German lager is rich and oaky."
The oak barrels really come through in the smell and taste, in the best of ways. I'm starting to believe that for homebrewing and making high alcohol beers, using oak chips to sedate the aggressive alcohol flavors is key and the Bierbach is another excellent example. The Bierbach is a full bodied beer with a sweet bready malt with the floral notes, which are a welcome surprise. Yep, The Bruery has brewed another Provisions Series winner. THE ROCK rating.
We loaded up with more than we possibly needed, including 7 bottles of The Bruery's 3rd Anniversary 14.5% Old Ale, the Cuir. David and I each bought two to age and the rest are for friends. I plan on keeping at least one of the bottles for my 30th birthday, which is in two years (sweet Jebus did I really just say 30?).
The Bruery’s White Orchid is a pretty tasty strumpet. A Belgian wit beer brewed with orange peel, coriander and nutmeg. The Imperial White Orchid is version 2.0, bigger and bolder that clocks in at 9%. That's right ladies, it's bigger. But not every beer tastes better when it’s super-sized. What will the verdict be?
David howls at the moon
This is the first full bodied wit beer I've had. It steps up to plate and levels you in the eye and dares to be drunk. I love the spices, which match the increase in body. I like the beer but wonder if the general populace would enjoy a wit on steroids. The wit-style is usually refined, delicate and smooth. It’s regular White Orchid is a stroll down the trail opposed to the Imperial’s mountain hike. If your palate tiptoes around in your face flavors, I would stick with the regular orchid, which is also a great beer. But if your tongue doesn’t mind a full frontal assault, this is worth getting your mitts on a bottle. THE ROCK rating.
What the Scheisse is Gose beer? Apparently it’s made with some intriguing ingredients - coriander and truffle salt.
"Gose is a top-fermented beer style of Leipzig, Germany that are brewed with at least 50% of the grain bill being malted wheat. Because of the use of coriander and salt, Gose does not comply to the Reinheitsgebot (German purity law). It is allowed an exemption from the rules on the grounds of being a regional specialty."
I have a case of Bronchitus so my sore throat remedy is ice cream and beer. I’m mature like that. David picked up this up from The Bruery Provisions store yesterday during its limited production run.
The Salt of the Earth is at 5%, which is true to the style but low for a typical Bruery beer. The malt is savory thanks to the prominent truffle salt. The complexity reminds me of this fantastic chocolate they sell in wine stores and whole foods, which is a dark chocolate shell around caramel with sea salt on top. There is an explosion of flavor, and this beer packs the same punch. The salt in both beer and chocolate brings out tongue bursting flavors.
This is a really interesting beer. How many U.S. craft brewers brew with salt, let alone truffle salt. It’s an experimental beer that hits it out of the park. THE ROCK rating.
The day has finally come that Nick G can make it to The Bruery. This man is one of the biggest fans of this heavenly beer and now, he pilgrimages to his Mecca. What's the occasion? He and AJ share a birthday and to celebrate, we're doing a brewery tour. We're joining several of Nick's coworkers as well as Karl who is coming up from Temucla after wine tasting, if he's still vertical. On the way up, we listen to a birthday mix I made for Nick and AJ and in case you were wondering, Oingo Boingo was definitely on it. The video is one of Danny Elfman's finest moments -
The timing of this trip is excellent, because according to The Bruery newsletter, they're releasing their fifth and latest Provisions Series batch today (Provisions is a limited one time only release) AND Bootleggers Brewery is releasing their greatest creation ever, the very limited release Knuckle Sandwich DIPA. Victory is ours!
Best Friends and Beard Brothers - at least that's what it says on our eharmony profile
Going brewery tasting is fun for the obvious reasons, but this trip doubles the fun for me because all the people except for Nick know nothing about The Breury or Bootleggers, so I'm allowed to ramble on and wave my hands uncontrollably while explaining everything I know about their beer. Imagine if you gave a 10 year old kid Redbull and a plate of cookies and that's how excited I am. Finally, someone clubs me over the head like a baby seal and my I shift my focus to the beer of the day, the Cornballer.
Bruery has some pretty great names for their specialty brews (Gunga Galunga, a Caddy Shack reference, being the best) and this one brings back fond memories of infomercials from Arrested Development (unfortunately the above is the best I can find)
And let me tell you how much I enjoyed it...eeeeeeee not so much -
Eat sink, cornballer (I didn't flush it, but God I wanted to)
I love The Bruery. I have been there four times. I own two growlers. I have several of their beers saved under my bed. I even own a shirt and will probably buy a hat next trip. Yay merchandising. I'll probably name my second born son Mischief after their finest brew, but this beer makes me cringe.
The Cornballer is their attempt at a malt liquor and it's 50% of it is made out of corn and the other 50% made out of 6 Row Malt (2 Row Malt is typically used to make beer). It smells like citrus hops mixed with a mildew sock. It tastes similar, with a dash of sourness. There's just something rotten about it. Everyone except for Karl agrees with me. Karl likes this, but he's also high on mescaline and wine. I love so much about brewery, but not this. This was hard as a horse to put down. I never thought I would bestow the worst rating to a Bruery beer, but stranger things have happened. PEARL HARBOR rating Thanks goodness they still have the Cuadruple on tap, because I'm gonna need a 'forget me now' after this one.
On another note, happy birthday Nick and AJ! I've known them both for over 9 years and they're my two favorite people and I wish them the best birthday and in the year to come!
I bought a Loakal Red and a Cuadruple to add to my cellar/bed collection. Nick G went certifiably awesome and bought a CASE of Bruery beer, a baker's dozen to be exact. On a side note, he will soon be the proud owner of a shotgun. Who has two thumbs and can't wait to combine both? THIS GUY
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!
Karl, David and I are joined by Infamous Jamie as we head down for our third trip to The Bruery and Bootleggers. The new twist to the adventure is that we first hit up The Bruery Provisions store in Orange, which has a host of beers and cheese to sample.
We arrived to discover that two of the three Provisions brews, Gunga Galunga and Premiere, have gone the way of the pager and are now only available in people's cellars and local pawn shops. However, their third Provisions beer, the Old Richalnd, is available to taste. Whinnnna!
My taster included the Humulus Session, 7 Grain Saison, Saison De Lente, the exquisite Three French Hens and the Old Richland, beer o'day.
The Old Richland is a barelywine by style but DIPA by association. The Bruery's created a 9% barleywine then dry hopped it with Centennial, Simcoe and Sterling hops (these big boys - very acidic hops).
Old Richland
It smells super sweet. Upon tasting, the hops and malt play well together. It's a smooth but passive beer - nothing jumps out at me. Barleywine tends to put you on your ass, so if I waned a high quality 'drinking to get drunk' style of beer, this would be it. Unfortunately, you probably won't be able to find it. Check out Stone's Old Guardian instead. TRANSFORMERS rating.
Karl and Infamous Jamie sample the nectar
The fun comes after the beer of the day is drunk. I tried Karl's sample of the Belgian Mint style beer called Aurora Borealis and it smells like a hospital. It tastes just as weird. Infamous Jamie says it tastes like Colgate. There you go. David was the only person who finished their sample of it.
I'm bitching about the 7 Grain Saison so Jamie grabs my taster and throws it back. "It's not bad" she responds and thereby rejects my perspective, "it tastes like pee." HA. Exactly, nice try Infamous Jamie.
David and Karl finish off their cheese plates and we jet off to The Bruery. Low and behold they have their 10 year Anniversary beer on tap, the Coton! What a coup. It's sweet and delicious with hints of cocoa. THe Coton is like a beer equivalent of port. It's delicious but so dank that you can actually drink too much.
When I drink Coton I forget about the everything else
The rest is history, or lack there of. We bought two growlers of Michief and made serious moves with them. I tried pacing myself but patience isn't my strong suit, so how do you think that turned out? By the time Laura and Michelle showed up fresh from Temecula Wine Country, I'd forgotten all about Bootleggers. 'Wait, we're going to another brewery?! Well I'll be a monkey's uncle...' Belgian style beer has a funny way of fogging up one's memory. We refilled our growlers and had a beer at Bootleggers before they closed, followed by In-and-Out, which our group definitely caused a raucous in. Your welcome Placentia for the Saturday night antics and entertainment. From there, we returned home to more beer and hammock napping. Another successful brewery run but next time it's my time to drive, D'Oh!
Got four lobster tails from the store today at lunch. Had a really productive, purge of a day. Got rid of a bunch of old shit from my desk, organized some things that I'd been putting off, had a couple productive meetings.
Came home and started making a lobster bisque. Took longer than I expected, but Sarah, Mark and Kevin were coming over to watch Black Swan so I felt a little rushed. Took some work, but it was delicious.
Black Swan was also amazing. Again.
Smell of this is really interesting. Almost like a cough syrup, but maybe that's some misplaced nostalgia for my cold remedies? In fairness, I think it's the lime and dark malt combo.
Tight carbonation and solid black, almost stout, flavor. The lime is very present. Since I don't know what galanga is, I have no idea what it would smell or taste like. I really like this.
Mila Kunis. Probably obvious coming off the Black Swan, and still being a little lovestruck. Dark, but with a twist of lime, like a dark and stormy. Only beer. Whoa, actually, you could replace the Ginger beer in a D&S with coffee and probably get something like this.
UPDATE: I looked up galanga and it's blue ginger! I got the dark and stormy totally right.
Chalk up another reason why The Bruery is awesome; they named one of their Provisions series after a Bill Murray / Caddyshack quote. Unfortunately the internet Nazi's have disabled the audio for all the video clips of the scene so I can't post it but below is the quote. It is tummy-tickling hilarious that they actually named a beer after an improvised Tibetan phrase from a golf comedy.
Carl Spackler: "A looper, you know, a caddy, a looper, a jock. So, I tell them I'm a pro jock, and who do you think they give me? The Dalai Lama, himself. Twelfth son of the Lama. The flowing robes, the grace, bald... striking. So, I'm on the first tee with him. I give him the driver. He hauls off and whacks one - big hitter, the Lama - long, into a ten-thousand foot crevasse, right at the base of this glacier. Do you know what the Lama says? Gunga galunga... gunga, gunga-lagunga. So we finish the eighteenth and he's gonna stiff me. And I say, "Hey, Lama, hey, how about a little something, you know, for the effort, you know." And he says, "Oh, uh, there won't be any money, but when you die, on your deathbed, you will receive total consciousness." So I got that goin' for me, which is nice."
The Gunga Galunga beer is a black ale brewed with galanga (ginger), kaffir lime and fermented with brettanomyces, whatever that nanobot sounding material is.
I lost my Caddyshack box and this was in arm's reach, what can you do?
Strangely enough, it smells like icy hot. There are super dark malts with crazy fruit flavors and a little citrus thrown in for good measure. The Gunga and the Premiere have intense profiles. This beer is kiwi coffee on steroids. It's wild. I don't know who could drink this often but it's worth a shot if you're into fruity coffee beer. ARMAGEDDON rating.
Spent most of the day at home cleaning, laundering, dishwashing, etc. Still haven't shaken this cold, which has really gotten on my nerves.
Walker and I got this on a big trip down to Bootlegger's and The Bruery a couple weeks ago. They had two bottles for sale at the tasting room and this is one of them. I don't think I am a huge fan of the bourbon-aged trend/fad that's going around right now. And I particularly don't think it's works too well for a golden, better suited to a stout or red. Again, I'm going on a few days of not being able to smell anything, but I can immediately detect the bourbon casks, in both the first smell and the first sip. It's just too much, sweet maple more than anything. The way the bourbon flavor sticks to the back of my tongue just doesn't make for a pleasant and smooth drinking experience. I almost need to wait for it to leave my tongue before taking another sip.
This is Stephan Lang. Strong foundational character, with great potential, but when you throw him in an environment that he's not used to (like Cameron's Avatar), the performance can be a little over-the-top. It's still good, maybe even great, but not my favorite from The Bruery.
I'm talking about the mythology of Star Wars with David while watching Avatar. We're pretty balls deep in nerdness right now.
Speaking of balls deep, I was picked up from the airport Sunday and was greeted with more than David's ugly mug. David ordered me a replacement kangaroo scrotum for Christmas after the Great Scroatacular of 2009, in when David dog sat Kamari. Kamwow decided that my cherished captain kangaroo balls looked like a delicious snack. So she ate them and then threw them backup onto David's bed hours later. My life hasn't been the same without my scrotum. Thanks David!
Oh yeah, beer. The Bruery creates a few brews on the side that are small production and purposed to only be bought at their Provisions store > Bruery Provisions. This is a belgian golden ale aged in bourbon barrels and boy can you smell the bourbon! Like you were in a barrel factory. It ours a beauitful golden pale but the taste, whoa nelly. The bourbon is overwhelming. I enjoy bourbon too much, but not like this. They went a little crazy with this and in a sense, it's a novelty beer because you wouldn't actually drink a lots of this.
Their golden ale is so strong that it's still a decent beer, but not worth your time. TRANSFORMERS rating.
