San Diego Brewed: Ballast Point Sculpin

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sculpin ipa

San Diego Brewed is sponsored by Bottlecraft.

Bottlecraft is a retail shop and tasting room in Little Italy showcasing local, domestic and international craft beers. They offer hundreds of beers for your enjoyment in their onsite tasting room or to-go, as well as daily beer flights, events, glassware, merchandise, and gifts. Open Noon-10pm seven days a week. 2161 India Street, San Diego, CA 92101.

Ballast Point Brewing Co.’s Sculpin IPA is a beer that I assume most people reading this blog know fairly well. At 7% ABV it’s right on the IPA/DIPA brink. It’s 70 IBU with a pretty light body and low malt profile which makes the hops really stand out.

Sculpin took the gold medal at the 2010 World Beer Cup in the IPA category, and it’s not hard to understand why. The hops jump out at you in both the smell and taste. It’s hugely fruity and juicy with smells and flavors reminiscent of all sorts of fruits: mango, peach, and apricot. I don’t get a ton of citrus flavors from it, but some people do. It’s not overly bitter, there’s plenty of hops but they showcase flavor over bitterness.

This is a beer that folks all over the country (and world) seek out, but we’re lucky enough to be able to get it year round with ease. Get a growler filled at the source (Ballast Point has two brewery locations with tasting bars/growler fills in San Diego) for the freshest possible taste. 22oz bombers typically cost between $7-8 while six packs of 12oz bottles go for around $15. I picked this 12oz bottle up at Bottlecraft for $2.50 (broken down from a six pack).

San Diego Brewed: Lost Abbey Gift of the Magi

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Gift of the Magi

San Diego Brewed is sponsored by Bottlecraft.

Bottlecraft is a retail shop and tasting room in Little Italy showcasing local, domestic and international craft beers. They offer hundreds of beers for your enjoyment in their onsite tasting room or to-go, as well as daily beer flights, events, glassware, merchandise, and gifts. Open Noon-10pm seven days a week. 2161 India Street, San Diego, CA 92101.

Gift of the Magi, the Christmas seasonal from The Lost Abbey is a beer I pick up a bottle of every year around this time of year. As a beer it doesn’t blow me away, and I usually only have it once or twice a year, but there’s something about it that causes me to pick it up each year.

I don’t think The Lost Abbey ever defines the beer style (they refer to it as a “Golden Ale”) but general consensus (at least on Ratebeer and Beeradvocate) seems to be that it’s a Bière de Garde.

Lost Abbey describes it as such

It seems that everyone knows the story of the Three Kings. Sent to follow the star in the sky each brought a gift for the baby they sought. One King brought Gold, the other Frankincense and the other Myrrh. Many breweries produce a Christmas Seasonal beer and this is our beer to celebrate the holiday season.

 

Gold in color and bittered with the bark of Frankincense, we have even used the smallest amount of Myrrh which is an herb that has roots in ancient winemaking as well.

 

A massive Golden Ale fit for a king (or Queen) we offer the Gift of the Magi each holiday season.

At 9.5% Gift of the Magi makes a nice Winter beer even though the style isn’t the first thing I think of having this time of year.

A dark reddish brown (I wouldn’t call it Golden in color) with a small white head, an earthy smell is the first thing that stands out. I’m pretty sure there’s Brett in there, but this beer is pretty fresh so it doesn’t stand out much. I’ve heard great things about 2-3 year old Gift of the Magi, but never aged a bottle myself (note to self: pick up another bottle). There’s also a slightly sweet, berry-like smell in addition to the earthiness.

It’s pretty bitter, I’m not familiar with Frankincense so I can’t pinpoint that specifically, but it is an earthy bitterness. There’s some toasty grain sweetness and a strong alcohol kick at the end of each sip. There’s no denying this beer is close to ten percent alcohol, making it a sipper. There’s a long bitter after taste which is somewhat plastic-tasting. I expected more spice but just didn’t find it.

Gift of the Magi isn’t my favorite beer, but isn’t a bad beer. I think I’ll put one away for a year or two to see how it changes.

Photo: CC Flickr:the_photographer

San Diego Brewed: Manzanita Brewing Company Where There’s Smoke

Tags

smoked chili beer, Where There's Smoke

San Diego Brewed is sponsored by Bottlecraft.

Bottlecraft is a retail shop and tasting room in Little Italy showcasing local, domestic and international craft beers. They offer hundreds of beers for your enjoyment in their onsite tasting room or to-go, as well as daily beer flights, events, glassware, merchandise, and gifts. Open Noon-10pm seven days a week. 2161 India Street, San Diego, CA 92101.

Where There’s Smoke is a fairly new release from Manzanita Brewing Company. I didn’t know much about it before picking up a bottle earlier this week at Bottlecraft ($6.75 for 22oz). I’m pretty sure Manzanita was pouring it at The Brewer’s Guild Festival last month, if I remember right a friend even mentioned that it was one of his favorite beers at the fest, but I didn’t get to try it.

All I knew about it before picking up the bottle was that it was a smoked beer, I didn’t know it was made with rye, nor did I know it was brewed with chili peppers. While I enjoy both from time to time, neither smoked beers nor chili beers are big favorites of mine, but since I’d heard good things I decided to give Where There’s Smoke a try. And I’m glad I did, it’s a delicious beer.

It’s much darker than I expected, I’m not sure why I thought it would be a lighter beer, but for some reason I though it would be more of a caramel color. The smell tells you right away that this is a smoked beer, there’s tons of smokey malt with just a hint of spicy pepper smell.

The first sip is all smoke, it’s not overwhelming but I didn’t get much else to begin with. The heat from the chili peppers was mostly non-existent until swallowing, when a pleasant spiciness emerged. Not a taste bud scorching heat, but a good flavor with enough heat. As I drank more I started to get a bit of spiciness up front that seemed different than the chili pepper heat on the end. I’m not sure if this spiciness was from the rye or if that was just my taste buds playing tricks on me. There wasn’t any grainy or bread-like flavors that some rye  beers can have.

I’m not sure if Where There’s Smoke is a limited release, seasonal or if it will become a regular release, but I’d recommend trying it if you get the chance.

San Diego Brewed: AleSmith Yule Smith (Winter)

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winter yulesmith, yule smith, yulesmith

San Diego Brewed is sponsored by Bottlecraft.

Bottlecraft is a retail shop and tasting room in Little Italy showcasing local, domestic and international craft beers. They offer hundreds of beers for your enjoyment in their onsite tasting room or to-go, as well as daily beer flights, events, glassware, merchandise, and gifts. Open Noon-10pm seven days a week. 2161 India Street, San Diego, CA 92101.

Let me preface this by saying (Imperial) Red ales aren’t my favorite style of beer. AleSmith’s Yule Smith (Winter) is an Imperial Red. AleSmith releases two different versions of Yule Smith, this one in the Fall/Winter and another in the Summer (Christmas in July!), and Imperial IPA. Winter and Summer aren’t used on either label, but the images on the label should make it obvious which is which. (So be careful if you’re picking up a bottle at a shop that isn’t good about selling through their beers, I’ve seen Summer Yule Smith on shelves well past it’s prime).

For a style of beer that isn’t my favorite, Yule Smith is pretty good.

The piney, citrus like hops are apparent as soon as you start to pour from the bottle to a glass. The initial taste is dominated more with sweet, caramel like malts than the hops. The hops come next, pine and grapefruit really stand up to the sweet malt to balance things out — balance might not be the right word. Technically the big hops balance out the big malt so neither dominates the flavor, but balance just doesn’t feel like the right word.

One thing that detracts from my enjoyment is the high alcohol. Yule Smith is 9.5% ABV, and doesn’t mask the booze at all. The alcohol is present throughout, fairly sweet and pretty hot.

For being so high in alcohol and so sweet Yule Smith does finish fairly dry, it’s not the driest beer you’ll ever have but the sweetness doesn’t stick around too long.

San Diego Brewed: Green Flash Double Stout

Tags

green flash double stout, silva stout

San Diego Brewed is sponsored by Bottlecraft.

Bottlecraft is a retail shop and tasting room in Little Italy showcasing local, domestic and international craft beers. They offer hundreds of beers for your enjoyment in their onsite tasting room or to-go, as well as daily beer flights, events, glassware, merchandise, and gifts. Open Noon-10pm seven days a week. 2161 India Street, San Diego, CA 92101.

For some strange reason (that I haven’t really been aware of until now) I often pass up Green Flash’s Double Stout, a 8.8% ABV Double (Imperial) Stout in favor others. I’m not really sure why that is, Silva Stout, the bourbon barrel-aged version of Double Stout that was first released last year was probably my favorite new beer to come out of a San Diego brewery in 2010, but for some reason I passed over Double Stout regularly when looking to drink a bigger stout. Thankfully I picked one up recently and won’t be neglecting it any more.

Double Stout isn’t the biggest stout around, many Imperial Stouts are coming in upwards of 10% these days, but it is insanely drinkable. Double Stout is 45 IBU, but I don’t think many people would describe it as hoppy. It has a fair amount of roasty bitterness, but think dark chocolate instead of coffee.

Green Flash uses oats in the grain bill to give it a smooth, creamy mouthfeel which I think adds to the chocolate comparison. In addition to the dark chocolate roastiness there’s also some toasted malt flavors, not a grainy texture but tasting like toasted grains. This all adds up to a nice rich and easy to drink stout.

Double Stout comes in 4 packs (12 oz bottles). I picked this bottle up at Bottlecraft as a single for $2.05, well worth the price (that’s the equivalent of a $3.75 22oz bomber).

San Diego Brewed: Ballast Point Victory at Sea

Tags

caffe calabria, Victory at Sea

San Diego Brewed is sponsored by Bottlecraft.

Bottlecraft is a retail shop and tasting room in Little Italy showcasing local, domestic and international craft beers. They offer hundreds of beers for your enjoyment in their onsite tasting room or to-go, as well as daily beer flights, events, glassware, merchandise, and gifts. Open Noon-10pm seven days a week. 2161 India Street, San Diego, CA 92101.

The most recent release of Ballast Point’s Victory at Sea (an Imperial Porter with coffee and vanilla) is my favorite batch yet. It’s a big beer, 10% ABV, but it’s dangerously easy to drink. Past years releases of Victory at Sea have always been good, but there’s something about this one that’s just great. Ballast Point uses cold brewed coffee from Caffe Calabria in North Park and the roasty coffee seems to come through much more than I remember it previously.

The vanilla is still present, and comes through mid sip along with some chocolate like flavors. There isn’t much hop bitterness, far more coffee roastiness, and the alcohol is there but pretty well hidden. Like I said it’s dangerously easy to drink.

Coffee flavor in beer can fade rather quickly. But big dark beers like this can age wonderfully. I highly recommend picking up a few bottles and drinking some fresh and aging some if that’s your thing. And be on the look out for Bourbon Barrel-aged version of Victory at Sea on draft popping up around town (especially at Ballast Point’s two locations) every once in a while.

Typically Victory at Sea is released once per year and usually sells out pretty quickly. I picked up a few 22oz bottles at Bottlecraft for $7.75 each (which I’m pretty sure was cheaper than buying at the brewery). Worth every penny.

San Diego Brewed: Mission Hefeweizen

Tags

American Hefeweizen, craft beer hefeweizen, mission hefeweizen

San Diego Brewed is sponsored by Bottlecraft.

Bottlecraft is a retail shop and tasting room in Little Italy showcasing local, domestic and international craft beers. They offer hundreds of beers for your enjoyment in their onsite tasting room or to-go, as well as daily beer flights, events, glassware, merchandise, and gifts. Open Noon-10pm seven days a week. 2161 India Street, San Diego, CA 92101.

Mission Brewery’s Hefeweizen, one of the five year round beers, is an incredibly easy to drink, yet full flavored hefeweizen. I realize that could be ad copy from the label, I don’t intend it to be, but hear me out. Shortly after I drank this Mission Hefeweizen, I had another hefeweizen from an old German brewery, I won’t name it, but I’ll just say it’s considered one of the classics. I expected to be blown away with how much better the German classic was, but to my surprise I found it lacking, a bit boring and bland. That’s not to say the German hefeweizen, one of the pillar’s of the style for many years is a bad beer. It’s just that Mission Hefeweizen hit’s the sweet spot for this beer drinker raised on American craft beer.

Mission Hefeweizen has a sweet smell too it, reminding me of banana and bubblegum. There’s also some spice in there, but the sweetness dominates the aroma.

The taste is just the opposite, there’s a hint of banana but spices stand out more. Flavors of clove and maybe even something similar to black pepper mix well with the subtle sweetness. It’s well carbonated and has a good mouthfeel and isn’t too thin or watery.

Just to be clear the spices don’t dominate. You won’t mistake this for a Saison or a spiced beer, but they’re there.

I’m not saying it’s better than the classic German hefeweizen’s, but it might be better suited to the palate of someone used to American craft beer.

As you can see from the photo this 22oz bottle was $4.50 (at Bottlecraft). Photo by Chris Hammett

San Diego Brewed: Bruery / Elysian / Stone La Citrueille Celeste de Citracado

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Elysian Brewing, La Citrueille Celeste de Citracado, stone collaboration, Stone pumpkin beer, The Bruery pumpkin beer

San Diego Brewed is sponsored by Bottlecraft.

Bottlecraft is a retail shop and tasting room in Little Italy showcasing local, domestic and international craft beers. They offer hundreds of beers for your enjoyment in their onsite tasting room or to-go, as well as daily beer flights, events, glassware, merchandise, and gifts. Open Noon-10pm seven days a week. 2161 India Street, San Diego, CA 92101.

I thought I’d give pumpkin beers a second shot after last week’s SD Brewed (which one commenter called a drain pour). La Citrueille Céleste de Citracado isn’t your ordinary pumpkin beer. Sure it has pumpkin in it (grown at Stone Farms no less) but it also has yams, toasted fenugreek, lemon verbena and birch bark in it. This certainly isn’t a pumpkin pie beer.

The name roughly translates from French as The Celestial Pumpkin of Citracado. Citracado is of course the street on which Stone Brewing Co. is located (and where this collaboration beer was brewed). I say roughly because Citrueille is not a French word. The proper spelling of pumpkin is citrouille, I’m assuming the misspelling is a nod to Patrick Rue of The Bruery. La Citrueille Céleste de Citracado was brewed at Stone as a collaboration with Orange County’s The Bruery and Seattle’s Elysian Brewing.

There’s no sign of cinnamon, nutmeg or allspice here, the usual pumpkin beer ingredients, with aroma’s that waft out of the glass. La Citrueille Céleste de Citracado doesn’t smell like ordinary beers. There’s a bit of citrus, which I can only assume is the lemon verbena as well as some earthy woodiness which I assume to be the birch bark.

The taste is good, but it’s hard to pick out the distinct flavors (partially because I’m not terribly familiar with all of them). To over simplify things I’ll say overall there’s spice and herb like bitterness with just a bit of sweetness up front. I don’t think I pick up any pumpkin or yam flavors, but I imagine compared with lemon verbena, fenugreek and birch bark those are the more subtle flavors.

When cold the mouthfeel is rich, creamy and full feeling, much thicker than I expected from a 5% beer. As it warms it does become a bit sweet less pleasant. I’d recommend drinking this on the cooler side, around 45 degrees Fahrenheit.

For all the crazy ingredients (fun fact: according to Wikipedia fenugreek is a galactagogue) this beer comes together nicely.

San Diego Brewed: Manzanita Brewing Company Witches Hair Pumpkin Ale

Tags

manzanita pumpkin ale, witches hair pumpkin ale

San Diego Brewed is sponsored by Bottlecraft.

Bottlecraft is a retail shop and tasting room in Little Italy showcasing local, domestic and international craft beers. They offer hundreds of beers for your enjoyment in their onsite tasting room or to-go, as well as daily beer flights, events, glassware, merchandise, and gifts. Open Noon-10pm seven days a week. 2161 India Street, San Diego, CA 92101.

Last year, just a few short months into Manzanita Brewing Company’s existence they brewed a pumpkin beer. It wasn’t bottled and was sold only as growler fills and on draft in the tasting room (and a few select accounts). Last year Garry Pittman at Manzanita told me that the first keg they tapped was dry within 7 hours, I picked up a growler at the time and was impressed, in fact it might have been my favorite pumpkin beer out of all those I tasted last year. With all that in mind I jumped at the chance to try it again this year.

Now it’s called Witches Hair Pumpkin Ale and is being bottled in 22oz bottles for the first time this year but unfortunately I wasn’t nearly as impressed with it as I was last year and I’m left with a question: how old was the beer I drank? After I bought it I noticed in the small print on the label that it says “2010 Edition.” Unless that was a typo I’m left to believe that this beer is about a year old. Witches Hair is a fairly big beer, the label lists it at 8.8% ABV, and many higher alcohol beers will age ok for a year or two, but in my opinion this one didn’t.

The smell didn’t give anything away about how the beer might taste, pumpkin pie spices were abundant just like I expected. But upon first taste things weren’t so good. The carbonation was extremely low, not entirely flat but close to it. This lack of carbonation caused the beer to feel extremely thick, syrupy and cloyingly sweet. It seemed more boozy than I remember it, which could be another effect of the low carbonation, but I would have expected the alcohol flavors to mellow with age, not increase.

I’m hoping this was just a bad bottle, maybe it didn’t get properly carbonated or sealed? I’ll certainly be looking for a 2011 bottle to try the beer fresh again as it was one of my favorite pumpkin beers from last year.

There are some people out there that might like this beer, but I’m not one of them. If you’re a fun of pumpkin beers it’s worth a shot. I on the other hand will be out looking for a bottle of the 2011 edition.

San Diego Brewed: AleSmith IPA

Tags

AleSmith IPA, American-Style Strong Pale Ale, gabf, great american beer festival

San Diego Brewed is sponsored by Bottlecraft.

Bottlecraft is a retail shop and tasting room in Little Italy showcasing local, domestic and international craft beers. They offer hundreds of beers for your enjoyment in their onsite tasting room or to-go, as well as daily beer flights, events, glassware, merchandise, and gifts. Open Noon-10pm seven days a week. 2161 India Street, San Diego, CA 92101.

AleSmith IPA recently picked up a Silver medal at the Great American Beer Festival in the American-Style Strong Pale Ale category. It might seem weird that a beer called IPA and marketed as such would be entered in any category other than an IPA, but that’s one of the interesting things about beer judging, brewers get to choose which category to enter their beers in (although the American-Style Strong Pale Ale and American-Style India Pale Ale categories are very similar).

Until recently AleSmith IPA was bottle conditioned resulting in some sediment in the bottom of the bottle which could cause for a cloudy beer if not poured carefully. But AleSmith got a new bottling line this summer which allows them to force carbonate some of their bottled beers and results in a nice clean looking beer.

AleSmith IPA has a big hoppy smell and a taste to go along with it. There’s a lot of pine and citrus bitterness fairly well balanced by some slightly sweet caramel like malt and maybe just a bit of toastiness from the malt as well. In San Diego, the land of big hoppy IPAs this might be considered a balanced IPA, but that’s not too say that it isn’t hoppy.

At 7.25% ABV it’s a bit warm from the alcohol, constantly reminding you that it’s not a low ABV beer, but it’s still pretty easy drinking. It finishes dry with a bitter pine like hop finish.

This isn’t the hoppiest of West Coast IPAs, but it’s no slouch. No complaints here especially because it’s widely available and reasonably priced.

AleSmith doesn’t date their bottles so make sure to buy from a shop that has good turn over (I picked this bottle up for $5 at Bottlecraft and it was pretty fresh). The bottles still mention being bottle conditioned even if they’re from the new bottling line and were force carbonated, so don’t let that fool you into thinking you’re getting an old bottle. Just hold the bottle up to the light and look for sediment in the bottom, if it’s clear you can be fairly certain you’re getting a bottle from the new bottling line.