Assembly – Vegan Beer Dinner with Jolly Pumpkin at Sea Rocket Bistro

Tags

Assembly, jolly pumpkin, Jolly Pumpkin beer dinner, Josh Higgins, LOVELIKEBEER, San Diego Beer Week events, SDBW events, vegan beer dinner, vegetarian beer dinner

I’ve been busy lately which means blogging here hasn’t been happening as much as usual, but thankfully things seem to be slowing down for the next week or so leading into San Diego Beer Week. Look for an event round up, and a hopefully updated event calendar next week before SDBW gets underway.

And speaking of SDBW, I’ve teamed up with LoveLikeBeer to host an all vegan Jolly Pumpkin beer dinner at Sea Rocket Bistro. Chef Chad White is working on some amazing pairings for the four Jolly Pumpkin beers that will be featured that night.

Tickets are being sold in advance for the four course prix-fixe meal and it is expected to sell out. Last time I checked a couple days ago there were only a handful of tickets left, so if you’re interested in attending don’t wait to buy your tickets.

It’s not often you get to try four Jolly Pumpkin beers on draft side by side and from the ideas I’ve been hearing Chef Chad toss around the food menu should be spectacular as well.

In addition to the food and beer, limited edition prints (with Jolly Pumpkin beer mixed in with the ink!) will be available. They were created by local artist Josh Higgins who recently got appointed creative director for the Obama 2012 Presidential Campaign.

A portion of the proceeds will go to the local chapter of Engineers without Borders as well.

Click here for more info and be sure to buy a ticket soon if you plan on coming.

Farmhouse Friday: Jolly Pumpkin Tasting

Tags

Bam Biere, Bam Noire, Calabaza Blanca, jolly pumpkin, La Parcela, La Roja, Oro de Calabaza

Some friends and I got together recently and tried six different beers from Michigan’s Jolly Pumpkin, and while not all of them are considered “farmhouse” beers, even those that aren’t in one of the farmhouse styles share many characteristics.

We drank:

• Calabaza Blanca
• Oro de Calabaza
• Bam Biere
• Bam Noire
• La Roja
• La Parcela

I had had most of these previously, although never together and never really comparing them with each other to see how the different styles at Jolly Pumpkin differ from each other while still have that Jolly Pumpkin aspect to them. It’s hard to describe what that characteristic taste is, maybe a ‘light funkiness’, not quite sour, due in part to their oak aging and open fermentation.

Calabaza Blanca, is a white ale brewed with orange peel and corriander, it’s both more tart and dry finishing than many Belgian-style Wit’s, but pretty similar. There was quite a bit of citrus and it was pretty refreshing, good for a hot summer’s day,  but probably my least favorite.

Oro de Calabaza was the strongest beer of the bunch at 8% ABV and it was obvious upon smelling the beer, a distinct boozy aroma came off of it. This was by far the least funky and most hoppy  beer of the six we tried. While I enjoyed it enough, I don’t think I would want a full glass of it, the five or so ounces I got of it was fine.

Bam Biere is an old favorite of mine, but I like it much more with a little bit of age on it, although I’m not sure how fresh this bottles was (they use batch numbers instead of dates on bottles of Bam Biere) it wasn’t as tart as I like it. But there’s plenty of green apple and pear flavors, it’s pretty sweet but finishes dry and is mighty refreshing.

Bam Noire is a bit decieving, it’s dark and looks heavy, but was actually the lowest ABV beer out of the six we tasted at 4.3%. It has a bit of caramel or toffee sweetness, smells a bit of coffee and some plum-like flavors. It’s a bit tart and funky but not too much, if I had to guess I’d wager this was also a fairly fresh bottle.

La Roja with a bit of age on it is probably my favorite of Jolly Pumpkin’s year round beers. This bottle was a year old and it was a bit sour, although it would probably get better with more time. Plenty of wood, some cherry like tart fruity sweetness and some cooking spices I couldn’t nail down.

La Parcella is Jolly Pumpkin’s pumpkin beer but as with most pumpkin beers if I hadn’t have known I would have had no clue there was actual pumpkin in it. It’s such a delicate flavor that really doesn’t stand out. Often pumpkin beers are more like ‘pumpkin pie’ beers. This one wasn’t sweet or overly spiced, it was actually pretty acidic for a pumpkin beer which threw my expectations off a bit. Not a bad beer, but hard to tell it’s a pumpkin beer.

Farmhouse Friday: Jolly Pumpkin Baudelaire Beer iO Saison

Tags

jolly pumpkin, jolly pumpkin baudelaire beer, jolly pumpkin iO saison, red saison

One of the things that first stood out to me about Jolly Pumpkin’s iO Saison was the label. When I saw that it was brewed with hibiscus (the flower that makes jamaica or habiscus tea, the pink floral drink found next to the horchata at many local taco shops) I knew I had to try this beer. In addition to the hibiscus it also has rose hips and rose petals.

Beernews.org has a bit of info on Jolly Pumpkin’s Baudelaire Beer series and the artist behind the labels.

iO Saison is 6.8% ABV and comes in 750ml bottles. This one is labelled “Blend 5. Bottled 1-26-2011”. I received it in a beer trade from someone in Michigan, but soon after we set up our trade it showed up at some of the better bottle shops in town for around $16.

iO Saison pours a deep pink, not quite red with an off white head. The smell is tart and funky with a slight hibiscus fruitiness. The taste is similar, it starts tart and a little sweet, reminiscent of the taco shop jamaica of my youth, the sweetness reminds me of mixed berries as well, I can’t identify anyone berry I would say this tastes like, but rather it has a berry like flavor to it. There’s also some earthy funkiness and citrus and lemon flavors. The floral taste takes over, I can only assume from the rose petals (and maybe rose hips, I’m not sure I know what they taste like), and it finishes very dry, so dry I feel like all of the moisture is gone from my tongue and cheeks. There’s a pretty bitter, floral and slightly herbal aftertaste, like when you put flowers in a salad that lingers for quite a while, begging me to take another sip, but not at all unpleasant.

This is a saison that has some hints of being a sour beer, but the tartness is pretty well restrained, it’s a very mild sour. Thoroughly enjoyable, refreshing and not hard to drink at all. I was a little worried it would be too floral, but the flavors all compliment each other nicely.

Farmhouse Friday: Jolly Pumpkin Bam Biere

Tags

Bam Biere, jolly pumpkin, Jolly Pumpkin Bam Biere

Jolly Pumpkin has quickly become one of my favorite breweries. All the beers I’ve had from them (which is only a handful, but they’re that good) are funky and tart, but not overwhelmingly so, and still possessing plenty of other characteristics.

This was actually my first time having Bam Bière, one of the many farmhouse ales they brew. This 4.5% ABV beer is light and refreshing but still has plenty of character. I drank it on a cool evening a few days ago, and while I greatly enjoyed it, I think it would be much better on a warm summer day.

I purchased this 750ml bottle for $13.99 at Texas Liquor in Carlsbad, I realized later that I had over payed for it by about $4, I’ve seen it at other liquor stores for $10 since. There was no date code on the bottle but it had a sticker that said “Batch 470”. I wasn’t able to find any sort of list online that matched batches with brew or bottle dates but a bit of searching leads me to believe this is could close to a year old. If so it’s certainly held up well, but I would like to try it from a known fresh bottle sometime.

The bottle foamed up quit a bit when I opened it, but I wouldn’t call it a gusher. The foam reached just past the top of the bottle but didn’t spill. I started carefully pouring it into the glass but there was no hope, it ended up more than half foam. I spent about 10 minutes letting the foam settle and pouring more until I got what you see in the picture. The foam was a fine silky white and the beer itself was a hazy light gold color.

The smell was tart and reminiscent of green apples, Granny Smith apples to be exact. There was a little bit of breadiness in the aroma, but it was mostly tart apple. The taste was much the same. The first sip was almost overpowering with it’s tart green apple flavor. After my taste buds adjusted it got better, the apple flavor seemed to fade (or I just got used to it) and it was more of the regular sour/tart flavor you might expect. There was a lot of citrus, maybe lemon peel, and more bread flavors as well. It felt a bit thin, but not enough to detract from the beer. The thinness might help make it more refreshing when it’s warm out.

Bam Bière was far more sour and tart than most other Saison/farmhouse ales, but that is to be expected with Jolly Pumpkin. There weren’t many spices or spicy yeast characteristics that many other farmhouse ales have. This could be due to the (potential) age of the bottle. It’s a solid beer, good with age on it, but I do plan to make a point of trying it again when I know it is fresh.

Stone Brewing Co./Nogne/Jolly Pumpkin Special Holiday Ale

Tags

Collababeire Special Holiday Ale, jolly pumpkin, nogne, special holiday ale, special holiday ale vertical tasting

This past weekend a few friends (on Twitter: @RedTheTrucker, @thepegisin and @deniserat) invited me over to taste some beers. Big thanks to them, they provided all the beer, I owe them big time, and were great company to spend an afternoon drinking with.

Special Holiday Ale is a collaboration beer from Stone Brewing Co., Nogne Ø, and Jolly Pumpkin. Each brewery brewed a batch of the beer at their own facility, using the same recipe which included chestnuts, juniper berry, white sage, caraway seed and 25% rye malt. The first to be released was Stone’s in late 2008. I haven’t verified it with Nogne Ø but the general consensus is that they brewed 2 batches, one released around November of 2009 and one released around November 2010. Jolly Pumpkin brewed three batches, one in April 2009 and two in late 2009, all were oak aged and blended together before being  bottled in late December 2010.

The Stone and Jolly Pumpkin versions were listed as 9% ABV while the Nogne Ø version was listed as 8.5%. I’m not sure what accounts for the discrepency since all were brewed from the same recipe.

The Stone and Nogne Ø versions were very similar but I preferred the Nogne Ø beer. At a little over 2 years old the Stone version may have been past it’s prime. It was a bit nutty (the chestnuts?) and much sweeter than the other, the sage seemed to have faded quite a bit but the juniper was still very strong in both the smell and taste. The Nogne Ø version had much more sage in both the smell and the taste, it was much less sweet and seemed to have more balance between the spices and the sweet malt flavors.

The Jolly Pumpkin version is the most different, oak aged and soured (with Lactobacillus and Brettanomyces) it was obvious this was the same beer, just with a lot more going on. The smell was very tart and sour like many of Jolly Pumpkin’s other beers. The taste wasn’t nearly as sour as the smell let on. It had a very bitter finish, not from hops but from the other spices used, possibly from the caraway.

As far as appearances go, the beer from Jolly Pumpkin was the darkest while Stone’s was the lightest with Nogne Ø’s version in the middle.

My favorite of the three was Nogne Ø’s version. I enjoyed the Jolly Pumpkin version quite a bit, but would have preferred it to have been more tart and sour. I remember liking Stone’s version quite a bit when it first came out, and it’s still not a bad beer but it has change considerably. If you’re sitting on any bottles of Stone’s version I would say drink them soon.

You can read more about the collaboration on Stone’s blog and Beernews

This post was updated 3/23/11. Thanks to Jeff below in the comments on clarification on a few points I was unsure of originally.

A Great Weekend of Beer

Tags

black market brewing company, black market rye ipa, deschutes, deschutes the abyss 2009, infected abyss, jolly pumpkin, Madrugada Obscura, nickel bag ipa, Red Poppy, san salvador saison, stone belgo old guardian barleywine, victory, victory golden monkey, Vrienden

San Salvador Saison

I usually make it a point to have a couple good beers every weekend, but for some reason this weekend seemed to  be all about beer. Maybe it was the rain on Saturday, what else is there to do when it rains? Regardless of the reason, I drank some great beer this weekend.

Friday night I had dinner at KNB Wine Cellars and somehow managed to only have one beer. Their tap list is so good it was hard to decide on what to drink but I had Vrienden, the slightly sour and a little sweet (thanks to hibiscus flowers) New Belgium/Allagash collaboration. This wasn’t the first time I had Vrienden and I’m still undecided on it. The first time I had it out of a bottle I thought it was good but not great. I had it on draft about a month ago and really enjoyed it. This time it seemed sweeter than I remember, the fruity hibiscus flowers were very apparent. A good beer but I didn’t like it as much as I remembered.

Saturday I started the day off watching the SDSU/BYU game and opened my last bottle of Deschutes 2009 The Abyss. It’s been reported that many of The Abyss bottles from 2009 were infected and had off smells and flavors which was the case with this bottle. (The last bottle I opened before this one was last summer and the off smell/flavor wasn’t nearly as prominent.) There was a strong Brett smell and some off flavors, it wasn’t terrible but didn’t taste right. I’ve heard some people say they really like these infected bottles, and others say they can’t stomach it at all and have to pour it out. I was able to drink about half the bottle but am glad I don’t have any more of these bottles sitting around.

A bit later in the day I went to The Linkery for their 6th anniversary where they had some nice beers on tap. I started off with Ballast Point’s San Salvador Saison, which now is about five or six months old. I had a small taster of San Salvador at the Ballast Point 14th Anniversary Festival when it was fresh and it was one of my favorite beers of the day. If memory serves me it has changed a bit, but it still a great beer. It has a much stronger yeast characteristic that gives it a bit of a sweet flavor up front. There is still plenty of spice in there but the yeast is what stands out. I also had Black Market’s Rye IPA on cask dry hopped with Cascade and Amarillo hops. This was only my second time having this GABF gold medal winning beer, plenty of citrus hops and a nice mouthfeel from the cask.

Later that night I ended up at Counterpoint where they had a keg of Lost Abbey’s Red Poppy on. This is one of my favorite sours but sadly it’s pretty rare. I heard they weren’t doing too many kegs of it this year, so far I’ve seen it at Eleven, Ritual Tavern and now Counterpoint. If you see this on tap I highly suggest it. Bottles have started showing up at some of the better liquor stores in town, but they surely won’t last long. I also tried a Victory Golden Monkey, a strong Belgian-style golden ale, it was slightly sweet and fruity and had some serious alcohol heat to the first few sips but was overall a good beer.

Sunday I had to go for a bike ride to burn off all these beer calories, but that ride took me right past Pizza Port Ocean Beach where I stopped in for a few beers. Jolly Pumpkin’s Madrugada Obscura is a nice slightly tart and sour but still good and roasted stout. If only this is what the infected 2009 The Abyss had tasted like. I haven’t seen this on draft before, but I know some bottles showed up recently at some local liquor stores, I highly recommend it. It’s sour, but not too sour, so give it a chance if you like stouts and are on the fence about sours. And being a Pizza Port, I just had to try Nickel Bag, the double IPA brewed with help from O’Brien’s Pub’s Tom Nickel. This was so smooth and easy to drink (for being 10% ABV) it could be dangerous. There are a ton of hops in there, but it’s not overpoweringly bitter, it has some citrus and pine flavors from the hops and a nice malt backbone to balance things out.

And for the final beer of the weekend I cracked open a 2011 Stone Belgo Old Guardian Barleywine while watching the Oscar’s. I would have loved to do a side-by-side comparision for the Belgo and the regular, but wasn’t able to do that last night (I’m sure I’ll get another opportunity in the future). I really enjoyed the Belgo OG. The Belgian yeast made it fairly sweet, but not in an overpowering or cloying and syrupy kind of way, which took a lot of the alcohol heat off. At about $6/22oz this is a solid beer. I can’t wait to try it along side the original OG and probably put some of both versions away to age for a while.

San Diego Beer Events, January 27th- February 2nd

Tags

22nd Anniversary Vanilla Imperial Stout, automatic coffee imperial brown ale, Belgica Belgian Ale, Bloody Larry, Chipotle-Cocoa Nib version of Black Marlin, Claymore Scotch Ale, Compunction, Consecration, Damnation, Dried Guajillo Calico, Espresso Yeti Imperial Stout, firkin friday, Fresh Hop Pale Ale, Habanero Sculpin, Hades Belgian Pale Ale, Hercules IIPA, Hibernation Old Ale, jolly pumpkin, jolly pumpkin flights, karl strauss 22nd anniversary vanilla imperial stout, karl strauss changing of the barrels, miho gastrotruck, Mortification, o'brien's russian river consumpTION, Oaked Yeti Imperial Stout, Old Ruffian Barleywine, Perdition, redemption, Rejection, Roasted Pasilla Yellowtail, salvation, samuel smith brewery, Sanctification, smoked baltic porter, Supplication, Temptation, titan ipa, toronado pint night, toronado san diego pint night, yeti imperial stout

If you know of anything that isn’t on our events calendar, please email events@sandiegobeerblog.com to get it added.

Thursday, Jan 27:

Homebrew Mart (Ballast Point’s Linda Vista operation) is teaming up with MIHO Gastrotruck for a casual beer pairing dinner with a focus on chili beers. Ballast Point has infused five of their beers with chili peppers: Chipotle-Cocoa Nib version of Black Marlin, Roasted Pasilla Yellowtail, Dried Guajillo Calico, Habanero Sculpin and Bloody Larry (BP Bloody Mary Mix and Abandon Ship Smoked Lager) and they’ll make recommendations for food to pair with it. Fiji Yogurt next door will have a Mango Lime Thai Chili yogurt with Ballast Point beer. Tasters will be $1 and food prices will vary.

Friday, Jan 28:

Iron Fist Brewing Company (I’m not sure, do they still hold the distinction of being San Diego County’s  newest brewery?) has come a long way in a few short months. They’ll be at Hamilton’s Tavern for Firkin Friday with a special cask of an IPA/Belgian-style brew aged in white wine barrels with Brett. They’ll also have plenty of their other beers on draft.

Saturday, Jan 29:

It’s Russian River ConsumpTION weekend at O’Brien’s. They’ll have 17 Russian River beers on tap including 11 Belgian-style “TION” beers. They’ll have: Damnation, Salvation, Supplication, Temptation, Consecration, Perdition, Sanctification, Mortification, Compunction, Redemption and Rejection along with all the hoppy beers Russian River is also known for. They have full kegs of all the beers so they expect them to last throughout the weekend.

KNB Wine Cellars is featuring Great Divide Brewing Co. Saturday night. They’ll have Yeti Imperial Stout, Oaked Yeti Imperial Stout, Espresso Yeti Imperial Stout, Old Ruffian Barleywine, Hades Belgian Pale Ale, Hibernation Old Ale, Smoked Baltic Porter, Titan IPA, Hercules IIPA, Fresh Hop Pale Ale, Claymore Scotch Ale and Belgica Belgian Ale all on tap.

Sunday, Jan 30:

Automatic Brewing Co. (the brewery housed at Blind Lady Ale House) will be unveiling their latest beer Sunday morning for BLAH’s 2nd Anniversary. This Coffee Imperial Brown Ale comes in around 8.3% and is damn good (I got a sneak peak last weekend). For the first time they will be offering a limited amount of growlers, which are being pre-sold through Brown Paper Tickets. They’ll also be doing Jolly Pumpkin tasting flights that afternoon. (BLAH is having special events throughout the weekend, click here for more info on the rest of the events).

Monday, Jan 31:

Monday again which means local pint night at Toronado. $3 pours on all local beers.

Tuesday, Feb 1:

Throughout the month of February Eleven, Hamilton’s Tavern and Small Bar will be showcasing the beers of Samuel Smith Brewery. And they’re kicking things off with some glass giveaways to the first 25 people to buy a bottle. They’ll have different bottles at each of the bars throughout the month for $5 for 18oz.

Wednesday, Feb 2:

Karl Strauss is celebrating their 22nd Anniversary with a party to show off their 22nd Anniversary Vanilla Imperial Stout in it’s full barrel-aged form. Tickets are $50 which gets you tasters of 100% barrel aged 22nd Anniversary (the regular release will be blended with fresh beer) as well as a taste of the 23rd Anniversary beer before it goes into barrels. They’ll have food, live music and send you home with a bottle of the 22nd Anniversary Vanilla Imperial Stout and a commemorative snifter. Buy tickets in advance at the Karl Strauss website. They’re only selling sixty so this will probably sell out.