BetterBeerBlog

The “Wet” in Wet Hop Festival has more to do with the moisture content of the hops than the weather but you wouldn’t have known judging by our drive up to Hayward. The clouds were out and it rained some but by the time we arrived, the sun had strong armed its way through and the weather was picturesque the rest of the afternoon.

Despite being free to attend, it cost $17 dollars for a tasting glass and 6 drink tickets. Unlike other festivals, you can return the tasting glass to get your $5 back, which I found to be really cool. I survey the room and I see a couple of familiar faces: Jessica from The Thirsty Hopster and Gail from Beer by Bart. After picking up my first beer, I make a bee-line right for them. Despite being a relatively new home brewer, Jessica has a good palette and is knowledgeable about beer. She can put most men to shame. Jessica has some exciting things in the near future but I don’t think I can mention them yet until she breaks the news on her own website. I met Gail at my BJCP study group in Los Altos. Initially, we both were taking the class just for the sake of tasting and learning about beer but in the end we both took and passed the BJCP test. She also has a good palette, is down to earth and easy to talk with. I always have a good time talking to Gail.

When compared to some of their other marquee events (IPA Festival and Double IPA Festival) this was a very low-key event. For their other events, The Bistro will fence off and tent the side of their building for more room. This time, the festival was contained to their interior area and the patio area. As a result, there was a more intimate feeling about the festival, kind of like a big get together with friends versus the shoulder-to-shoulder, canned sardine feeling other, more popular festivals have. I expected more people but maybe the weather played a part for the small-ish turnout. In any event, I felt it was a great change of pace.

While at the festival, Sammy and I ran into BetterBeerBlog friend Brandon. It was good to catch up with him and get his take on what his favorites were at the festival. One of the beers I enjoyed was the 21st Amendment offering but that was a beer that Brandon didn’t like and actually ended up tossing out. While we had a pretty good laugh at our differences, I believe that was a great example of how we should let our differences open up a dialogue about beer. All to often I’ll see one person put down another person’s choice in beer and I don’t agree with that at all. Everyone is entitled to their choice and to their opinion. To put someone down because they don’t agree them is wrong to me. That’s the very definition of snobbery and that’s why I don’t particularly like being referred to as a “beer snob”.

I am not sure when it happened but I decided that for this particular festival, I would enjoy myself. This meant I would take minimal tasting notes and photos. I keep this blog to keep track of the beers I’ve had and the places beer has taken me. It’s fun but a lot of work. This time, I decided to focus more on fun and less on work.

Here are my quick tasting notes:

• Moonlight Brewing Company, Just Go Shopping, 5.1% ABV (Centennial & Cascade) - Whenever I tasted Moonlight’s beers at Flavor Bistro, I noticed they had a distinct flavor profile consistent throughout all their beers. I initially describe it as a “funk”, a yeasty sort of “funk”. After talking to Mario from Brewed for Thought, I think the better descriptor would be “bready”. I’ve come to the realization that I’m not a huge fan of bready/yeasty flavors in beer. The thing is, it’s not a cooked bready/yeasty flavor but more of a raw one, doughy, chewy even. Other beer styles have bready character in their malt profile but it’s more of a cooked/baked bread character. That being said, “Just Go Shopping” has that doughy, bready character to it as well. What I found interesting about this beer was that the balance tipped more on the side of malty than hoppy. According to Gail, this beer was made from the hops Jessica and her helped pick from the hop yard Moonlight shares with Russian River. Also according to Gail, Moonlight brewer Brian Hunt used the fresh hops in all stages of the brewing process; they’re in the mash, the boil and dry hopped. As interesting as the flavors were, this wasn’t my favorite beer by any means.
• Ballast Point, Schooner Summer Ale, 4.6% ABV (Cascade) - Grapefruit-like citrus aroma with sweet malt undertones. This beer started off malty sweet and finished with great hop flavor and medium-high/high bitterness. This was my favorite beer of the day. Even though the flavor profile of the beer leaned heavily towards the hop side, this beer showed great balance and complexity as the beer changed from one flavor to another seamlessly. If we had stayed to order a full pint, this is the beer I would’ve picked.
• Pizza Port Carlsbad, Plant 2 Pint, 6.5% ABV (Cascade & Centennial) - We missed visiting these guys when we were in San Diego so I wanted to try their beer to make up. Sure, one, little tasting isn’t going to make up for an entire visit but I gotta start someplace. This beer has great citrus hop aromas. The hop flavor is robust and the hop bitterness assertive. Despite all the hoppy goodness, the slightly grainy and toasty malt flavors still shine through. Great tasting beer.
• Black Diamond, Wet Rye IPA, 6% ABV (Chinook & Liberty) - For whatever reason, this seemed to be the surprise of the festival. I don’t know too much about this brewery. A grainy, slightly toasty malt character is up front followed by a high level of hop bitterness. Unlike the Plant 2 Pint, the malt character is more earth and grainy in character, most likely attributed to the rye. I haven’t tasted many rye beers so I can’t be 100% sure.
• 21st Amendment, Harvest Moon, 6.5% ABV (Chinook & Cascade) - Aggressive hop flavor and bitterness. Great aroma with an overall sweet profile, with pineapple and apricot notes in the aroma. Good beer but heavily balanced towards the hop side.
• Butte Creek Organic, Initial Attack Fresh Hop IPA, 6.5% ABV (Centennial) - This is a hop bomb. Almost all hop bitterness in flavor. Poorly balanced, I can barely taste any malt whatsoever. As much as I enjoy my bitter beers I enjoy a bitter beer that is well balanced. No matter what anyone says, a great beer is one that has great balance. This is my least favorite beer of the day, not so much because it was too hoppy (is there such a thing, really?) but because it was poorly balanced. I’ve talked to some people regarding organic beers and so far, the negatives have outweighed the positives. This worries me somewhat as I’m judging an organic homebrew competition later on this month. Still, I plan on going in with an open mind as I’ve had many non-organic beers that were pretty bad. In the end, I think it all comes down to the skill of the brewer to coax the most out of what he/she has at their disposal.

We didn’t stay long enough to find out who won the “People’s Choice” Award. A quick Google search will give you the answer but I’ve already saved you the trouble. According to William Brand’s website, the winner was Lagunitas’ Maximus. I didn’t try this one but Sammy did and she liked it. It looks like her and William Brand have that much in common. I did take a sip of hers taster and I found Maxiumus to be similar to Ballast Point’s Schooner Summer Ale, only sweeter. The one beer William Brand tried that I now regret not having sampled was Triple Rock’s Harvest. I heard good things about that beer from many people. Still, after consulting Mr. Wallet for additional drink tickets, it was not meant to be. Maybe I should’ve consulted the Mrs. Estaniel instead. I did find it interesting that William gave Butte Creek 3+ stars. While I do agree with his description of the beer, I would not have rated it so highly simply because I found it unbalanced.

After my last drink ticket, Sammy and I just chilled in the patio area to people watch and talk. It has been a fabulous day so far and I didn’t feel like getting drunk. I turned in my tasting glass and got my $5 back. I already knew I would be getting it back but I still thought it was pretty cool. I think it’s a great way to conserve resources so you’re not constantly printing up new glasses as well as covering yourself for loosing a glass to theft or breakage. This is a very nice event showcasing hops in another light. If you didn’t make it this year, give it a shot next time around.

With Summer but a pleasant memory and Fall coming into its own, you’d have thunk that the beer festival scene would be over and done with. Nope, not just yet. Our favorite hophead’s heaven, The Bistro, will be holding their 5th Annual Wet Hop Festival. Here are the details:

Who: The Bistro
What: 5th Annual Wet Hop Festival
Where: The Bistro, 1001 B Street, Hayward, CA 94541
When: Saturday, October 4, 2008. Music starts at 12pm.

We are planning on being there this weekend to check out the festivities and try some of the 20 or so Wet Hops that will be there. I have my own harvest ale in primary this week and I’m looking forward to having some of that soon enough. I’ll post up the recipe one the beer is done and I might even have a “tapping” of my own.

This is pretty exciting news. The west coast is already known for the quality of its craft beers but it’s nice to see the “Yay Area” getting some props. While nothing is set in stone just yet, SF Beer Week will be anchored by the Bistro’s Double IPA Festival and Toronado’s Barleywine Festival with approximately 150 beer-related events happening in-between.

We’ve signed up to receive any additional information as it comes along but we plan on trying to bring some of SF Beer Week down to the South Bay. I’m hoping to be able to put an event or two together here in San Jose. I’ll keep you all posted as to how our efforts work out.

Every good beer bar usually specialized in one thing, that’s what makes them good. The Trappist in Oakland specializes in Belgian beers while San Francisco’s Toronado has more of a craft beer flavor. The Bistro located in Hayward is another great beer bar that specializes in hoppy beers. This is never more evident in the beer festivals they hold, like last Saturday’s IPA Festival.

Having judged the San Mateo County Fair Homebrew Competition earlier in the day, we didn’t arrive at the Bistro until mid-afternoon. There was a good buzz of people in the outside, front patio and when I entered to pick up my tickets, I found it wasn’t all that crowded inside. The Bistro isn’t that big of a place and it didn’t take long for me to figure out that everyone was outside in the tented area.

For $25 you got a souvenir tasting glass, a list of participating breweries and 6 drink tickets. With over 50 participating breweries, 6 tickets doesn’t nearly seem like enough love but after judging a flight of IPAs that morning, I felt okay about that. IPAs are aggressively hopped beers to begin with but when you start talking about American IPAs, then it’s almost an entirely different beast. Americans love everything bigger, better, faster and more and it’s no surprise to see many American IPAs have an International Bittering Unit (IBU) rating above 100. For comparison’s sake, the human tongue can detect only so much bitterness, usually topping off at the 100 IBU mark. You can imagine then, a whole festival, where a good number of the beers being served are more bitter than humanly possible to taste.

Here is a quick rundown of the beers I tried with what little notes I took (I will update this post with IBU numbers when I get home and if I can find the list of brewers and beers):

• Moonlight Brewing Company “Bombay by Boat” - I was expecting a lot from the beer. I enjoy many of the beers this company makes but I was disappointed by Bombay by Boat. I didn’t pick up much piney, citrusy, floral hop characteristics the IPA style is well known for. Instead, I picked what I felt was a “cheesey” aroma. Not sure what to make of it, really.
• Santa Cruz Ale Works IPA - I’ve seen their beers at the local BevMo’s but I havent’ bought any yet. I decided to sample their IPA and… wow… aggressively hopped! Compared to Bombay by Boat, this just smacked me right in the face. I felt like the dude wearing the furry green jacket in the Foo Fighters Everlong video who got smacked down by Dave Grohl’s ginormous right hand of pimp-slapping justice. Strangely, I did not find the Foo Fighter’s drummer dressed in drag unattractive. Now let us never speak of this again.
• Mt. St. Helena IPA - This was an oak-aged IPA and the most mellow of the bunch. I found this beer to be fairly well balanced between the malt and the hops. While I have no direct evidence to support this claim, I believe the oak aging process mellowed out the hop bitterness of this beer. Compared to the beat down I had previously, this was a nice change of pace.
• Eel River IPA - This is an organic IPA. Thought this was just “ok”. Nothing really memorable with regards to flavor or aromas. From some of the folks I spoke with at the festival, this beer tastes much better at the brewery.
• Auburn Alehouse - First time participant in the IPA festival, everyone I spoke to rated this beer highly. It was strongly hopped, had a nice hop aroma and was well balanced. I could actually taste malt flavors to support the high hop bitterness.
• Butte Creek - Another organic IPA. Balanced per the style, good hop flavor, bitterness and aroma while not loosing any malt characteristics. More memorable than the Eel River.

Here is the list of the People’s Choice award winners:

• Pizza Port Solana Beach (gold)
• 21st Amendment (silver)
• Auburn Alehouse (bronze)

When I went last year, I didn’t really see too many people I knew. In fact, I basically went by myself. My best friend got sick (flu-sick, not drunk sick) and took a nap in his car. His lady kept him company which left me to my own devices. That meant I got drunk.

This year, I only drank my 6 tickets worth. I ran into Steve Donahue from Firehouse Grill and Brewery in Sunnyvale, Brian from Beer and Winemakers of America homebrew shop, and BetterBeerBlog buddy Brandon. There were a few other beer writers in attendance as well.

Overall, it was a good event. The Jimi Hendrix cover band rocked hard and there were plenty of good beer still left to try by the time we left. Hopefully when I return next year, I can bring a small contingent of folks so we can sample more beers.

Way back in my younger years, I tried to keep organized by carrying around a day planner. The plan was to get my life organized. I was to have all my contact numbers at my fingertips just in case I got a page and a calendar at the ready to properly plan my time out. Well, I didn’t need my contact numbers “at my fingertips” because I had a friggin’ pager where the number of the person calling you shows up. After the first couple of days, I realized I didn’t need a calendar to plan out my events as I didn’t have any. My youth was but a waste of both money and time.

Nowadays my cell phone has all of the numbers I need and my wife has been keeping the calendar. Time is a luxury I no longer have. Gone are the days where I had absolutely nothing to do as my weekends are pretty much booked for the next two months. You can bet this blog has kept me busy.

With so much on the horizon, I thought I’d share some of the future events we will attempt to be at in the coming days/weeks. Maybe I’ll see some of you there:

• 2008 Monterey Beer Festival
  Saturday, August 2nd, 2008, 12:30 to 5pm, Monterey Fairgrounds
  • As much fun as this sounds I am not 100% sure if we will be making it. A good friend of ours will be having her birthday part the night before so there’s no guarantees we won’t be hungover already.

• 2008 IPA Festival
  Saturday, August 9th, 2008, The Bistro in Hayward
  • Last year, I went with my best friend who ended up getting sick (summer cold, not drunk) and leaving me to my own devices. It’s amazing how wasted one can get when left to their own devices. Anyway, this is an event we will probably end up being at, just much later than I want to because…
• 2008 San Mateo County Fair Homebrew Contest
  August 8 - 17, 2008, San Mateo County Fairgrounds
  • I have volunteered to judge the beers at this competition. I don’t know how long it will take to get through everything but if we have enough time, I’ll make sure to head over to the IPA Festival at The Bistro.

August is shaping up to be a very busy month here at the BetterBeerBlog and it doesn’t look like we’re going to be slowing down until after Halloween. As always, I’ll try and take you along for the ride.

Received a quick email this morning from the good people at the Bistro. They are promoting their July events schedule as well as the date for their annual IPA Festival. Details below:

July is here with all the smoke you can ask for…………

Smoking is no longer allowed in the city of Hayward as of June 28th, 2008. But that will not change our commitment of having the best musical talent and freshest beer available all the time.

We are open Independence day Fri. 4th of July, so come on down for the festivities.

The summer street party this month is Thur. July 17th.

Mark you calendar the 11th annual IPA Festival is Sat. August 9th.

The last time we were at the Bistro was for their Hop Rhizome Festival. To date, my hop rhizomes have not even sprouted. I feel they may have gone bad sitting in the refrigerator for a week waiting to get planted. Sammy thinks they’re fine and will sprout up next year. It took our first hop plant a good year to get anything going so I still have hope. It was at their Double IPA Festival that Sammy learned to really love good flavorful beer so I’m hoping she’ll get a good kick out of this event as well.

The Double IPA festival at The Bistro is the kickoff event of Beerapalooza 2008. The Mrs. and I sent out an invitation to our beer loving friends to join us but in the end, we ended going up by ourselves. To be truthful, I was hoping to have my other beer buddies along with me for the festival. As much as I love my wife, hoppy beers are just not her bag of tea and I was afraid that she’d have a lousy time there as I sampled beer after beer. Lucky for me, I couldn’t have been more wrong!

We got a late start to the say and arrived at the Bistro about 3pm. By then, the place was at capacity. There was a crowd of people outside of the place, a crowd of people inside, and a crowd of people at the side where the majority of the beers were being served. Normally at these beer festivals, you pay a fee to participate. For some reason, I was led to believe that the fee for the double IPA festival was $25 with 5 drink tickets along with a commemorative sample glass. The fee ended up being $25 but you got 10 tickets instead of the five I thought you were going to get and the commemorative glass we got was from a previous beer festival as they ran out of the mini-pilsner style glasses. Instead we got mini-snifters which I thought were really cool in their own right.

One of the cool things about this festival was that we were given score sheets to rank the beers ourselves. Not only was this a way to keep track of what beers we liked but they also had information on the beers we were drinking as well. They listed the brewery, the beer, where they’re located, the brewery name, the ABV, IBU and blank spots for us to fill in appearance, aroma, flavor, mouthfeel, overall impression and totals. Since I am taking the BJCP class, I decided to score the beer according to the BJCP model.

Here’s how I scored the beers in alphabetical order (out of a total possible 50 points):

• 21st Amendment - Double Trouble (9.3% ABV, 100+ IBUs): 40
• 21st Amendment - Hop Crisis? (11.8% ABV, 100+ IBUs): 41
• Anderson Valley - 20th Anniversary Imperial IPA (8.7% ABV, 100 IBUs): 42. Sammy found this to be a very drinkable beer.
• Drakes - Denoginizer (9.7% ABV, 100+ IBUs): 43. If I remember correctly, this was a beer with a very pronounced hop flavor. It had a very nice nose and smooth, long lasting bitterness.
• Firestone Walker - Union Jack (8% ABV, 70 IBUs): 42
• Full Sail - Slipknot Imperial IPA(7.8% ABV, 80+ IBUs): 39 This one was probably my least favorite beer of the day but even then, a 39 makes it right there with most of the other beers I drank that day.
• Lagunitas - Hop Stoopid (8.4% ABV, 94 IBUs): 44 Our second favorite beer of the day. This beer has wonderful, floral hop aroma and a very pleasant, smooth hop flavor that was prominent, lasting but not overwhelming.
• Moylans - Hopsickle (9.2% ABV, 120 IBUs): 43 When Sammy first tried this beer, she said it made her head hurt because it was soo bitter. Knowing what to expect this time around, she found the beer to be much more enjoyable. Maybe because we had been drinking bitter beers all day, she wasn’t floored by the 120 IBU rating of this beer.
• Pizza Port - Hop 15 (7.8% ABV, 28 IBUs): 40 I really can’t believe this is beer was listed as having a 28 IBU rating. Looking on their website, I can’t find an exact number. Maybe they’re keeping that exact number under wraps for some reason?
• Russian River - Pliny the Younger (10.61% ABV, 60 IBUs): 47 The wife and I found this beer to have been the best. From what I heard, it ended up being “Best of Show” as well. Double Dog by Flying Dog ended up winning “Best of…”. Awesome nose, just as awesome taste. Really worth picking up if you can find it.
• Schooners Grill - Alpha Avalanche (9.5% ABV, 130 IBUs): 41 Sammy felt that this beer had a creamy body to it. What makes this beer notable for me is that this is the first beer where we had our tasting glass filled to the brim. Whenver I would go and pick up a tasting, I’d come back with my mini-snifter only half filled. Whenever the wife would come back, they’d have her topped off. After this, I had her go and get all the beers. See, being married does have a few perks.
• KC Jones - This is a beer that was recommended to us by Brendon, a fellow hop head we met at the Bistro. He said this was one of the hoppiest beers he had tried that day. Truth be told, we really didn’t like this beer. The aroma wasn’t memorable and the hop flavor was really sharp and long lasting. This beer was also cloudy in appearance, if I remember correctly, because it was cask-conditioned.
  

I learned about this event through the BJCP class. I was expecting more people from the class to have shown up but I only saw three others not including myself. There was Dave (who I mistakenly called Steve), Steve and Gail who also happen to run the website Beer by Bart (where they find good beer within walking distance from BART). We also made friends with a cool dude from El Cerrito named Brandon, Tom, Cherry, Chris and friends from Johnson & Johnson. Hopefully we can run into them at next week’s Barley wine festival at Toronado.

To end the evening, Sammy and I headed over to Buffalo Bills Brewing Company. This place is just a block away from the Bistro and for whatever reason, I had no idea they made their own beer until we got there and I noticed all the brewing equipment. What I also didn’t know was that they are the company responsible for one of the more popular pumpkin beers available. I really wanted to try their Blueberry Winter Warmer but to my disappointment, it was out. So was their Orange Blossom Cream Ale. In the end, I got their Tasmanian Amber Ale. I didn’t particularly enjoy the Tasmanian Amber Ale but to be fair, it really didn’t have a chance. My palette was still reeling from all the double IPAs I just had and anything short of another double IPA would’ve just tasted bland.

Sammy and I found the restaurant to be very clean and family friendly. The service was quick and attentive without being too attentive. We ordered the BBQ Devil Wings and the Buffalo Combo pizza. Despite being baked in a “spicy Tasmanian Devil, garlic chipotle sauce”, the wings had only a slight spicy heat to them. Sammy didn’t particulary enjoy the texture of the wings but I found them “okay”. The Buffalo Combo pizza wasn’t just “okay” as well. The flavors weren’t robust enough but maybe that’s because we’ve been drinking double IPAs all day and our palettes may have been shot. I’d like to give this place another try.

In any case, this was a supremely enjoyable day and we are looking forward the next beer event we go to. Until then, enjoy some pics from the event below.

2008 Bistro Double IPA Festival (click for photo gallery)

February is typically a bad month for beer. It’s a month that is in a brewing limbo, so to speak. While winter is a season for stronger, maltier beers, most breweries have already brewed their winter seasons and have started their spring seasonals. So with the strong winter beers dying out and the spring beers not quite ready, what’s a beer enthusiast to do?

Well, if you’re lucky enough to live in the San Francisco Bay Area, February is Strong Beer Month. A celebration of strong beers between 21st Amendment Brewery and Magnolia Pub and Brewery in San Franciso that showcases 12 different beers, 6 from each venue. If you’re lucky enough to have drank all 12 (they give you the entire month of February to do so, so don’t worry), you’ll have earned yourself a commemorative glass.

Toronado is having their Barley Wine Festival this month as well. This is another hugely popular event and I have been advised to arrive early as the popular beer will sell out quickly. For those of you who don’t know what a Barley Wine is, it’s basically a beer (don’t let the name fool you!). A big beer. It’s high in alcohol (8% - 12%), intense malt flavor with matching hop flavor. Check out the BJCP style guideline for more information.

Also up in San Francisco, the Beer Chef Bruce Paton will be hosting Beer and Chocolate Beer Dinner Event on Friday, February 15, 2008. It is easily one of his most popular dinner events. Unfortunately for us, BetterBeerBlog is having a Beer and Food Pairing Event that night inspired by Chef Paton’s event and can’t make it. We definitely plan on attending one of Chef Paton’s dinners this year though.

This Saturday, February 9, 2008, the Bistro located in Hayward will be holding their 8th Annual Double IPA festival. I was able to make it to last year’s IPA festival and I had a blast. Because the IPA is hugely flavorful and hoppy beer, my palette was pretty much shot after the 4th tasting of the day. I think I had 7-8 tastings at that time. I look forward to having my palette blown away by the 3rd tasting this time around.

The Bay Area Mashers Homebrew Club is currently soliciting entries for their 2008 World Cup of Beer Homebrew Competition. Entries should be received by March 8th. Judging will be on March 22nd and 29th at Trumer Brauerei in Berkeley.

Finally, Celebrator beer magazine is celebrating their 20th year Anniversary with Beerapalooza 2008! Wow. 20 years is an awful long time to be around and it’s definitely worth celebrating. Visit their website to get more information.

As you can see, there’s a lot going on in February in the Bay Area to celebrate beer. I suggest you go out and try something different. You never know what you may end up liking. Just remember to drink responsibly, drink in moderation, and to drink better beer.