Better Beer Blog

This post is way overdue, almost by two weeks. Things have been very busy “behind the scenes” here at the BetterBeerBlog and as a result, my postings have been less frequent. In order to spare you the pain that was the East Bay Brewery/Birthday recap, I’m going to break the next post down into three parts. You can read Part 2 here. It’ll be easier to read and easier to write. With that being said…

As part of my birthday weekend, my wife decided to do something different this year by booking us an excursion to Safari West Wildlife Preserve near Santa Rosa. We’ve been to the area multiple times already, surprisingly for the beer, and not the wine. Inspired by Mario, I did a pub crawl of downtown Santa Rosa.

Sweet Spot Pub & Grill was first on my list. Despite the near neon yellow-green of the walls, Sweet Spot was dimly lit. Only a handful of people were in the place. At first glance, the bar seems almost indistinguishable from any other sports bar. Then I got to the list of beers available and I instantly knew what set this place apart.

While Sweet Spot carries some commercial European beers that are descent, I came to them specifically to try their line of Lagunitas beers. If I remember correctly, Sweet Spot currently has the Lagunitas Czech Pils, Kronik, and Lucky 13. Seeing that it was a fairly warm day, I decided to order the Kronik while Sammy ordered the Czech Pils.

The Czech Pils is gold, brilliantly clear and with a white head. There’s a slight sweet malt aroma and a moderate low hop aroma that increased as the beer warmed up. The sweet pilsner malt flavors were restrained, allowing the hop flavors to take center stage without overwhelming. The hop bitterness is only moderate in strength. Well carbonated, the Czech Pils is effervescent and clean on the palette. A good example of the style and very, very nice on this warm afteroon.

The Kronik American Strong Ale stands at 5.7% ABV. It is a clear and amber in color with a low-lasting off-white head. Sweet malt flavor upfront with moderate/moderately low hop flavor and bitterness. Unlike the Pils, the malt plays a more pronounced role. This is a really good tasting beer and surprisingly refreshing. The aromas are restrained as the beer is cold. This is a medium bodied, medium carbonated beer.

It took a couple of minutes for the bartender to take our order once we got in and we didn’t hear from her or any wait staff the entire time we were there. Granted, we at at the window area, effectively segregating ourselves from the rest of the bar. Still, you cannot underestimate the positives of attentive staff, even if it’s just a casual, “Everything okay?”. Sometimes, that little phrase is the difference between me walking out the door and ordering another beer.

Sweet Spot also has a kitchen but we didn’t order any food since we ate hot dogs prior to going. While featuring primarily typical, American pub fare, I found the few items “inspired” by Belizean culture to be interesting. Reading the ingredients list, all I could tie in was that Belizean food is spicy food. Maybe those dishes are really true to culture or maybe it’s just clever marketing. I’ll have to find out next time I’m in town.

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)