Grizzly Growler

Widmer Deadlift IPA

When my friend Jon told me he wanted to give his Barista Manifesto at the Ignite Missoula event, I wondered how difficult it would be to give a manifesto with a five-minute time limit accompanied by a PowerPoint presentation. I still don’t know if it was easy, but it was done and brilliantly.

Jon’s a master barista, a coffee judge and an advocate for coffee farmers around the world. He works for Cup of Excellence, a Missoula non-profit with world-wide connections and influence. And as one friend put it recently, “the only people who seem to really understand what Fair Trade really means.”

But I digress. Jon’s Barista Manifesto touched many people last night, not the least of which was Missoula’s honorable mayor John Engen, who shook Jon’s hand shortly after the presentation and then proceeded to hug Jon. I thought that I might have seen a tear in the mayor’s eye briefly, but it could have been the lighting.

The crowd of mixed ages mingled casually, sipping craft beer out of bottles and enjoying the eight five-minute presentations ranging from early childhood development to how to start running when you hate exercise.

Our group, which had gathered to support Jon, moved casually from the Elks Lodge to Jon’s house, where we gorged on fresh-baked cookies left graciously by the babysitter. I really need to find one like that.

A six-pack of Sierra Nevada Brewing Company’s Bigfoot Barley Wine showed up as if by magic, and we broke out tall red wine glasses and poured a whole bottle in each glass. The foam bubbled up creamy and beige, like a cappuccino, and we swirled and talked about flavors like fig, banana, coconut and dried pineapple as we tasted the big beer.

It took almost any hour to kill that bottle, but that’s the beauty of a barley wine, it just opens up the warmer it gets. Soon you’re smelling a veritable jungle of tropical fruits and tasting rich roasted graininess and a strong hop presence. We sipped and talked, sipped and talked. We slipped through the health care debate and rehashed current events here in Missoula. We relived Jon’s awesome Barista Manifesto several times and then came back to the beer. You always come back to the beer.

Until you finish it.

Another beer appeared, as if by magic, and we poured it’s clear, bronze liquor into our wine glasses and smelled a tremendously green and floral hop presence. This was a Widmer Brewing Company Deadlift Imperial IPA, and the use of Nelson Sauvin hops from New Zealand certainly defines this beer. At a reported 9.5 percent ABV, this beer is all in the nose. I couldn’t put my glass down, and we just kept passing it around the room letting everyone stick their noses in our glass.

If I could only smell this beer and not taste it, I would rate it very high, and it’s made me far more interested in those Nelson Sauvin hops than any beer brewed with them I’ve tried before. But I did taste it, and I just wasn’t as impressed with the big-bodied beer with a funky middle to it. Something just below the tongue picks up some dark chewiness that isn’t bad, but it’s funky, and it’s difficult to describe. My friend Beau decided he liked the funk after a few sips. I drank the whole beer and still wondered whether it was growing on me or not. The funk that is.

The barley wine had better alcohol heat balance than the Imperial IPA had, and I’m a huge proponent of keep the imperial designation for beers that really deserve it. A 9.5 percent ABV IPA is good, but it’s still just an IPA. An imperial IPA should stand up for itself and take a bow in anything above a 10 percent ABV range. I see far too many in the 7.2 o 8.2 range.

We could’ve kept our conversation going until all hours of the morning, or if the beer ran out, but it was a Thursday night, and we knew there were more beers to meet on Friday and Saturday.

Prost,

GG

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