I visited Crooked Stave for their Grand Opening

Crooked Stave's L'Brett D'Or

Crooked Stave Artisin Beer Project made a great second impression today. My first impression of Crooked Stave was when I decided to join their cellar reserve society. I felt like joining was kind of a roll of the dice since not that many beers had come out when the reserve society was offered. I have been thankful I joined and so excited for every beer they've released I couldn't pass up the opportunity to try two new ones yesterday at their tap room grand opening.

Recap: Avery Sourfest 2012

Avery's barrel room

Armed with a pocketful of Tums, a camera, and two tickets, Lefty and I made a trek to Boulder on Saturday for the third annual SourFest. We arrived about 45 minutes before opening, and there was already a line of over 100 people. As we stood in line, a bearded brewer (redundant) walked up to me and introduced himself as Ron Gansberg, the brewmaster and blender from Cascade Brewing in Portland, OR. He was wondering if I brewed for Lost Abby since I wore a Lost Abby brewers shirt. What a way to start Sourfest! I unfortunately had to say no but did get to talk to Ron for awhile. This was his first time coming to SourFest, and he brought four beers with him. Since Cascade Brewing does not participate in GABF anymore, I was pretty excited to get the chance to sample some of these rare Oregon treats! 27 breweries brought beer for the event with 49 beers on tap and 10 bottled beers.

What in the World Do We Call These Wild Beers Anyway?

I've been thinking a lot about Wild Beers lately, appreciating them more and more, and also wanting to stay educated about them. I've heard brewers say they don't want people going around calling all wild beers 'sour beers' because, well, they aren't all sour. Take Trinity's TPS Report, Oakshire's Skookumchuck, or any of Crooked Stave's Wild Wild Brett series as an example, many of these could be described as delicate, rosy, lightly citrusy, and some of them have light acidity. These beers are neither Ales nor Lagers in the yeast-sense of those words, here's what Chad Yakobson says, "Brettanomyces is not ale or lager because those designations refer to a species of yeast, when you boil it down, Saccharomyces Cerevisiae ale yeast and Saccharomyces Carlsbergensis as lager yeast. Brettanomyces Bruxellensis and other species variants are a different type of yeast thereby not making ale or lager beer." So it's actually a bit strange to call one of these beers a 'Wild Ale' because it is not an ale if it's fermented with Brett...or is it an ale if it's fermented at ale temperatures? It get's confusing eh?

Chad forwarded me an email he recently sent around to some of his colleagues. He goes on,

...But what can we call it? Brettanomyces, that's the yeast.. So how to properly designate what it is like in Belgian Ale...Belgian Brettanomyces? That doesn't fit for me...But what is going to? Maybe nothing because we are so ingrained in ale and lager. Brett isn't even much of a top fermenter...and it is aged for a while (you should or else it keeps eating away in the bottle and the bottles gush unless carefully opened...(All of our beers sadly do this.. I'm working on it..) So my best comparison for Brett is actually to lagers. That is more reasonable. Flavor wise, no.. but it's not about flavor it's about fermentation characteristics and genetics.