BetterBeerBlog

I realize this post is late and for that I am sorry. I caught a cold that mainifested itself towards the end of the Double IPA festival that has kept me sidelined for a bit. To compound the matter, I threw out my back about a week and a half ago and sitting on a chair for any extended amount of time hurts like hell. You can imagine how my days are going at work. If I wasn’t hopped up on meds, I don’t think I’d get anything done. Enough of the excuses! You are here for the beer!

This year’s Double IPA (dipa) festival was awesome! Just like last year, $25 gets you a commemorative glass and 5 drink tickets. If you wanted to drink more, additional tickets were priced at $1.50. I don’t remember how many beers they were pouring last year but this year has almost 50 submissions. If you are a big fan of the hops, this is probably the premiere event for you.

There were a few changes when compared to last year’s DIPA. First and foremost, this year had much, much, much more room to move around. The festival (and most of the Bistro festivals for that matter) are usually held outside in a part of the street that is blocked off and tented. The square footage of this space rivals the interior of the Bistro itself but is only slightly bigger. This year saw the outdoor space tripled, at least. They needed it because there were a lot more people at this year’s event, probably because they used the DIPA to bookend the SF Beer Week festivities.

The second thing they changed was they had moved the ticket purchasing counter to the outside. This helped to ease congestion getting into the Bistro as well as allowing everyone more room to move around in. Hopefully this trend will continue for future festivals.

So… how was the beer? Pretty damned good. At least the ones I tried. Here’s a very brief rundown of the beers we had as well as the winners:

• Pure Hoppiness, Alpine Brewing Company, 8% ABV - The more beer I try from this brewery the more I regret not going to visit them the last time I was in San Diego. This was an excellent DIPA that exhibited many of the trademark characteristics of a West Coast Double IPA. Pure Hoppiness had an excellent balance between malt sweetness and hop flavor and bitterness. In fact, that’s what made this beer so great, it was very well balanced. ****(*) Four stars from Peter, 5 from Sammy
• Isotope PU240, Auburn Alehouse, 8.6% ABV, 96 IBU - At 96 IBUs this is one hoppy beer! Don’t let the numbers fool you though as like Pure Hoppiness above, this was another well balanced beer. If I remember correctly, Auburn Alehouse took the bronze at last years IPA festival at the Bistro. This is a brewery that is brewing up some very excellent beers consistently and I look forward to trying their future brews as well as paying them a visit. *****
• Ale to the Chief!, Avery Brewing Company, 8.75% ABV, 65 IBU - When compared to some of the other beers available on tap, Ale to the Chief! was on the lower end of the IBU scale. A Double IPA will usually weigh in between 60 - 120 IBUs. This is not a bad beer by any means. Hell, if you look at the brewing scene in Colorado, this is one of the hoppier beers brewed in the state. Still, when you come to a West Coast DIPA festival, you’d better bring the hops! ***
• Landslide, Fifty-Fifty Brewing, 8.5% ABV, 80 IBU - Fifty-Fifty Brewing Company is a brewery that is located smack-dab in the middle of nowhere town known as Truckee. As with Auburn Alehouse, Fifty-Fifty is starting to garner a lot of attention from beer enthusiasts because they make good beer, nay, dare I say great beer? This was the first beer of the day. ****
• Original Albion Ale Pale, Napa Smith, 6% ABV, 32 IBU - Okay, technically, this isn’t a Double IPA but this is the official beer of SF Beer Week. The recipe for this beer is actually the old flagship pale ale for New Albion Brewing Company of Sonoma, which happens to be the the nation’s first microbrewery. This beer is much lighter and much less hoppier than many of the beers I’ve previously tried that day. In fact, I’m probably sure I didn’t get a true sampling of this beer as my palette may have already been fatigued by some of the hop mosters I had prior to this one. From what I remember, this beer had a grainy and light malt character with an appropriate level of hop bitterness. Not a bad beer, still it’s not a true DIPA. *
• Pliny the Younger, Russian River Brewing Company, 10.75% - The quintessential Double IPA. This beer remains my standard for Double IPAs and for good reason. It’s beer big beer with big hop flavor. The hop bitterness is aggressive but not harsh or biting. The malt presence is enough to balance but the hops still run the show. This is one beer that is definitely a showcase for hops. I had asked my good friend Mario to bring me a growler but Russian River will not fill growlers that are not their own and they had run out of theirs so I was S.O.L. *****
• Hop Secret 393, Sierra Nevada, 7.1% ABV, 68 IBU - Not one of the more hoppier beers around but I found this beer to be excellent was well. The name comes from the fact that the hops they used to make this beer hasn’t even been named yet. So far, it’s just #393. Another interesting thing to note about this beer is that Bistro owner Vic Kralj helped in brewing this beer. Sierra Nevada gets overlooked sometimes because it’s one of the bigger microbreweries (regional brewery?) but Hop Secret 393 and their new Torpedo Extra IPA are proof that even the bigger guys don’t sit on the laurels but continue to brew good beer. ****
• Sublimely Self-Righteous Ale, Stone Brewing, 8.7% ABV, 85 IBU - I’m not quite sure to make of this beer. For starters, this beer was much, much darker than all of the other DIPAs I saw that day. At a quick glance, you would’ve thought this was a schwartzbier or maybe a porter but one taste will bring your feet firmly planted back on planet Hop. While it’s true that color has no bearing on the strength of a beer, it is a very good indicator of what a beer should taste like. I kept expected more roasty flavors from this beer but I basically kept getting hop character through and through. Still, it was hard to get past the color so this was my least favorite beer of the day. **1/2

Here are the winners:

• Gold: Pizza Port Carlsbad,  Poorman’s Ale, 9% ABV
• Silver: Triple Rock,  IIMAXX, 9% ABV, 80 IBU
• Bronze: Bear Republic, APEX, 7.5% ABV, 83 IBU
• Peoples Choice: Russian River Pliny the Younger

Sadly I was only able to try one of these 4 great beers. With the exception of Pizza Port, the rest of the beers are Bay Area leaving me at least with the opportunity to try them.

I can’t believe that a year has already gone by. Last year’s DIPA was the first beer festival that I covered here on the blog and of course, I had almost zero readers. With traffic growing slowly, yet consistently over the past 12 months, I actually had people coming up to me and saying, “hello” at the festival. I always ask my readers to say, “hello” to me if they ever see me in person but up until the Anchor Event, no one ever took me up on the offer. So, if you’re reading this, a big “Thank You” for coming up and saying “hello”. It’s always great to meet the readers and to chat with them, if even for a little bit. This blog wouldn’t be possible with your feedback and words of encouragement. I will often spend many an hour typing away into the night wondering if anyone every reads my crap but I guess you do. Thanks!

By the way, I do have pics but it’s nearly 3 am and being I’mstill sick, I’m up way longer than I intended to be. I’ll post them up soon enough. Thanks again for reading.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 11th, 2009 at 2:18 am and is filed under Beer Bars, Beer Festivals, Breweries, Craft Beer, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.