Epiphany Brewing ™

We had a long scheduled work outting to Mountain Sun Brewery for “Stout Month” on Friday (2/22/2008).  I was actually able to enjoy the stouts this time – my pallette was destroyed after going to Avery’s Maharaja release party the first time I went there (I’m still recovering from that night out!)

So here’s the line up I tried:

A warm up pint of Cherry Dip Stout (Chocolate Stout with Sweet Cherry Puree).

A sampler including: Old School Irish Stout on Nitro, Thunder Head Stout, Usurper Imperial Stout, Java Jalapeño Stout, Dog Fish Head’s Chicory Stout

Finally a pint of the Java Jalapeño Stout 

Sold out: Trickster Stout, Stoked Oak Stout, The Czar

I was a little disappointed by the number of stouts they had on their board that were “out”.   They certainly had replacements, but I had my heart set on trying the Stoked Oak Stout.  I was looking through my emails and the did send an email telling us it was running out… so you snooze, you lose.

 I have been a huge fan of the “Old School” stout on Nitro for some time now.  It’s one of the best stouts I’ve had – dry with a perfect balance of bitterness and sweetness.  I really enjoyed the Java Jalapeño Stout also.  All the stouts were very good, these two were great. 

My coworkers enjoyed some cheese fries and a heaping plate of nachos with black beans.  The food at Mtn Sun is pretty awesome.

 Update: This note just came from the brewery today.  “The amount of stout consumed the past three weeks is astounding. To date you have helped consume 102 kegs of Stout. That is roughly 12,000 pints of STOUT in three weeks! Simply amazing.”  They also announced “Mini-Stout- Month at Southern Sun” which is much easier for me to get to from my house.  Woo Hoo.  Looks like I have something to do in March now.

Update 2: I finally had stoked oak stout last night at the Southern Sun Brewery.  Damn good stuff.  Left Hand Brewing had also provided a firkin of cask condition Bourbon Stout that was absolutely fantastic.  Southern Sun is having a “mini-stout” month in March.  I’m sure it will be a challenge for them to keep stock in rotation there.

Avery has once again lured me out.  This time it was for a t-shirt.  Yes, I can be had for a t-shirt.  The event was the launching of “the society for the pursuit of hoppiness.”  They had 90 memberships available last night – and over 250 people there to join.   I’m glad I got there early.

They combined it with the Maharaja release party.   The lines were out the door, down the parking lot and into the access street.   The Avery guys were walking the line pouring from bottles just to give people something to drink while they waited… to get a drink!

The double dry-hopped Atyanta Raja (Ultra-King!) was just fantastic.  It was like sucking hop juice from the vine.  Everything coming out of my body today smells like hops!  The Maharaja is consistently great. 

I had a few too many and enjoyed some great company.  Several of the KROC people were there and I met a grad student from DU who is remarkably versed on beer.  I gave him a card for the podcast.  We ventured off to Mountain Sun for Stout month.

I also bought a case of “Collaboration” so my friends can look for packages to show up soon.  🙂 

It’s been a busy month for Avery Brewing Company Fans.  I’m truly fortunate to live in close proximaty to a nationally known and respected brewery.

Recently the guys at Avery (Peter Archer and C.V. Howe) decided to host an Insider Tasting Series.  For this inaugural event, they decided to break open their cellar and have a vertical tasting of 3 of their ales.  Apparently cellaring is a recent thing with the brewery, as they’ve been able to sell as much as they make.  It takes a concerted effort to put some away for the future.

Vertical 1 – New World Porter.  An old style english ale yeast.  Avery has it’s yeast maintained offsite and they buy it from local and national suppliers.  This beer is easily classified as a black IPA due to it’s aggressive over hopping for the style.

12/06/2005 – largest head of this flight.  Least amount of hop aroma character.  The driest beer of the flight.   Slight hints of vegetal and other characteristics of oxidation.

12/27/2007 – mild compared to the other beers in the flight.  I found this true for the entire evening – the middle beer was overwhelmed by the older and younger versions.

02/06/2008 – Dry hopped firkin transferred to keg on 12/25/2007.  Unfortunately there was an accident while tapping the firkin.  Most of the beer went to waste, but enough was salvaged for the tasting.  The carbonation was lost though.  There was a strong hop character to this beer due to the dry hopping with 1 pound of columbus hops.  C.V. provided a nice history on the term “firkin” which is derived from the middle Dutch word vierdekijn, which means “fourth”.  So a firkin is a quarter barrel or 9 imperial gallons.

Vertical 2 – Hog Heaven Barleywine Style Ale.  Based on an English traditional barleywine, which is “beer at wine strength”.  Compared to Sierra Nevada Bigfoot and Anchor Old Foghorn.  Hog Heaven is the first year round available barleywine, now in it’s tenth year.  Created before the style “Imperial IPA” became known, this beer is a direct fit for that style at 9.3% ABV.  2.5 Pounds of Columbus hops are used for dry hopping.

1/17/2002 – lowest hop aroma in the flight.  Bitter with caramel, raisins and pear characteristics.  This was my favorite for this flight of beer.

9/21/2006 – relatively small nose. 

1/24/2008 – Strong hop aroma, sharp bitterness, white creamy head.

Vertical 3 – Collaboration, not Litigation Ale.  This is a collaboration between Russian River Brewing Company and Avery Brewing Company.  Both companies have a Salvation ale and Collaboration is a blend of those two beers.  As a footnote, Adam describes himself as a “reformed Catholic” – otherwise known as “fallen away.”  Vinnie uses many spiritual names for his Belgium beers (Salvation, Damnation, Perdition, Redemption, Sanctification, Deification, Benediction, and Erudition).  Tomme Arthur from the Lost Abbey also describes himself as being raised Catholic… I’m starting to see a trend here!  Catholics like to brew beer!  Ah, back to the vertical tasting.

The way the story goes, Adam realized that both he Vinnie had a beer of the same name, so he called Vinnie and they decided that litigation was not the way to go.  They thought it’d be interesting to blend the beers – which they did at Vinnies place in CA after guzzling a few Pliney the Elders.  Then everyone got busy and the project fell through the cracks until BA magazine asked Adam about the collaboration, which he commited to.  This got published and forced the brewers to get together in Boulder to each brew a batch of their Salvation, which they then blended to create the one off collaboration.  It was such a hit, they decided to do it again!  Thanks guys.

1/11/2007 – Beautiful.  This is an awesome beer.  It’s dark and quiet.  The yeast tartness has dissipated leaving a wonderful belgian strong ale.

2/6/2008 – Bottled 4 hours before the tasting.  Lighter in color then the first Collaboration.  White creamy head the fell quickly.  Batch #2 specifics: OG 1.076, 8.72% ABV.  Yeast in suspension (RRBC is unfiltered).  Off cherry tart taste.  Fruit nose.

Proceeds from this beer pay to send the Brett Pack to Belgium every year!

Next vertical tasting is the 1st Wednesday of March.

Last night, for Valentines day, I took the wife to the 2nd annual Avery Beer Lovers Dinner at the West End Tavern on Pearl street.  The upstairs deck was maxed out with tables with white table cloths and a single flower.  Adam Avery and Peter Archer were the brewery representatives and made the food and beer pairings.  Chef Chris Blackwood prepared the food.

The meal was superb – Big tastes to equal to the big beers Adam brought.  He mentioned several times that in previous beer dinners, the beers were better then the food, but tonight he “got his ass handed to him.”  I think that’s overly dramatic – the beers were huge, over the top and down right tasty.

Adam was also at his fourth event in as many evenings.  Monday was a special vertical tasting of the ’06, ’07 and ’08 Czar Russian Imperial Stouts at the Mountain Sun Brewery which is celebrating it’s annual stout month in February (more on this later).  Tuesday was the release party of “Collaboration, not Litigation Ale” which is a blend of Russian Rivers Salvation ale with Avery’s Salvation ale.  Wednesday was a beer dinner in Fort Collins.  So he was doing the bachelor thing on Valentines day at his fourth evening out – let’s just say the enthusiasm to talk about beer wasn’t there, but he did unwind after getting a few pints in him.

Okay, on with the menu already!

First Course

Trio Of Sliders

rib eye (with wine glazed unions), blue crab and bbq pork

The Reverend (10%), Salvation (9%), Hog Heaven (9.2%)

Second Course

Biscuits and Gravy

Beer Battered Shrimp, Cheese Biscuits

Smoothered in Crawfish Etoufee

White Rascal Belgian Wheat Ale (5.5%), Avery India Pale Ale (6.4%)

Third Course

Scallops and Oysters Rockefeller

Maple bacon seared Scallops

Crispy Fried Oysters

Ellies Brown Ale (5.6%), Out of Bounds Stout (5.3%)

Fourth Course

Surf and Turf

Coffee smoked venison and lobster tamale

Roasted Sweet Corn Chowder

New World Porter (6.7%), Collaboration not Litigation Ale (8.72%)

Dessert

I Love Pie

Key Lime Pie, Satin Crunch Pie, Apple Pie

Maharaja Imperial IPA (10.54%),

The Beast Belgian Grand Cru (16.4%) and Samael’s Oak Aged Ale (14.9%)

The beer battered shrimp and biscuits smoothered in Crawfish Etoufee were wonderful. Peter shared his recipe for making beer batter for fish – beer, flour, salt and pepper.  Mix to a consistency where you can put your initials in the batter and it will sustain for several seconds.  These shrimp had a huge batter coating on them and they were fried to perfection.  The White Rascal was an excellent beer pairing.  Adam shared that he uses the Hoegaarden Yeast with orange peel and coriander – typical of a witbier.

The scallops and oysters Rockefeller were also outstanding.  The scallops were shamelessly cooked in maple bacon grease from a local pig.  They were covered with spinach and grated cheese.  Delicious.  The crispy fried oysters were flash fried cold so they didn’t get tough.

The surf and turf portion of the meal was the best.  The venison was seared on the outside and red on the inside.  The meat had been cold smoked with coffee beans!! I have never heard of smoking meat with coffee beans – it was fantastic.  There was  a sizeable chunk of lobster meat and a nice tamale.  The corn chowder was made by roasting ears of corn, stripping the kernels from the ear and boiling the stalks.  It was reduced to a creamy topping.  You could taste a bit of the charred corn – a great topping. 

The Collaboration ale is from Batch #2 which will be released this week sometime.  The story behind Vinnie (Russian River Brewing Co.) and Adam collaborating on this ale is fun.  They got together and spent an evening coming up with the best blend of the two Salvation ales.  Then the project stalled until Adam committed to producing the beer in a BA magazine interview many months later – funny how things work out.  They used available tank space in Boulder and created the first collaboration.  This beer has more yeast character the Averys Salvation ale.  It is a remarkable beer.

Finally we topped the evening with pie, pie and more pie.  Each couple got 3 slices of pie to share – my glucose goes up just thinking about it.  They combined the very sweet pies with two huge ales from the Demonic series, Samael and the Beast, as well as this years release of Maharaja from the Dictator series. 

This was the first public tasting of this batch of Maharaja and it’s going to blow you away.  The hops are as fresh and way over the top as they can be.  This is the only beer that was too much for my wife.  Anyhow, I will report more after going the Maharaja release party Wednesday 2/20/08.  Adam personally chose the Maharaja to pair with Key Lime Pie – “It’s very nice!” (say it with the Borat accent, it’s more fun that way.)

I fell in love with Samael all over again.  Adam described the brew day when they are making this beer.  They have a pallet full of fermentables – raisins, dates, molasses, honey, turbinado sugar and dark belgium candi sugar.   It has strong port character that is oh so good when combined with chocolate from from the Satin Crunch Pie.

So that was the evening. You didn’t walk out feeling bloated, but you were fully satisfied. I’m sure happy endings were had by all!