Looks like one of my favorite Big Sky Brewing beers is headed the way of the can.

According to CraftCans.com, Big Sky Brewing is in the process of adding its IPA to its canned lineup, which now includes Moose Drool, Scape Goat, Tout Slayer and, seasonally, Summer Honey.

The brewery has three new fermenters arriving next month which will allow for this addition to their canned lineup.

Look for it on store shelves sometime in the spring.

- Matt Pritchard

From Great Northern Brewing Co.’s Facebook page: “Going to the Sun IPA is now available for your enjoyment in 22 oz bottles. Just in time for the sunshine that we’ve been enjoying today in Whitefish!”

- Matt Pritchard

Here’s a nice look at this year’s 29th annual Great American Beer Festival, which was held last month in Denver. I, like any self-respecting beer drinker, love IPAs. Writer Eric Gorski of the Associated Press goes behind the scenes of the event’s most hotly-contested category, American-style IPA. Enjoy.

Veronica Bechtold of Lancaster, Pa., wears a crown of hops as she taste a beer at the Great American Beer Festival in Denver. Photo by Ed Andrieski/Associated Press

DENVER – The quest for top honors in American craft brewing has come here, to a hotel ballroom marked “restricted access.”
More than 140 bottles of American-style India Pale Ale sit stacked in donated Bud Light and King Cobra boxes, labors of hop love brewed by a cast of characters that includes an organic chemist, a man with a grim reaper tattoo and a guy who wants to make a beer that tastes like orange sherbet mixed with hot fudge ice cream.
Over the next nine hours, beer identified only by number will get sniffed, scrutinized, swallowed and spit out by judges at the 29th annual Great American Beer Festival, the world’s largest beer competition.
Only one American-style IPA will win gold, making it the craft beer equivalent of winning “American Idol.” Since 2001, no other contest category has been as competitive. “Every brewer wants this one,” as one judge put it.
It’s a simple case of supply and demand: the IPA’s popularity is soaring among brewers and drinkers alike, a testament to a maturing American beer palate and this country’s rich supply of hops in the Pacific Northwest.
“As you go through the journey of beer education and appreciation, hops and big hoppy character are something most people eventually gravitate toward,” said Greg Koch, CEO of Stone Brewing Co. in Escondido, Calif., a pioneer of the style. “They are just extraordinarily satisfying on the palate. Words almost fail for me. I feel like waxing poetic, and then my eyes sort of get soft. It’s a romantic subject for me.”
Consumers are showing the love. IPAs, distinguished by strong hop character and higher alcohol content than your standard 5.0 percent alcohol per volume beer, surpassed amber ales and trailed only pale ales this year among top-selling craft brewing styles at supermarkets, according to Chicago-based market research firm Symphony IRI Group. Eight of the top 15-selling new craft brands in 2010 are IPAs.
Vinnie Cilurzo doesn’t need market research to tell him IPAs are hot. He can’t brew enough Pliny the Elder.
The co-owner of Russian River Brewing Co. in Santa Rosa, Calif., Cilurzo compares beer drinkers stepping up to IPA to wine drinkers starting with white zinfandel and progressing to rich, dark reds.
“The craft beer consumer’s palate is becoming more educated, it’s becoming more sophisticated, it’s growing up,” he said. “And because of that, IPAs are becoming more popular.”
Cilurzo brews a handful of IPAs, starting at 6.1 percent alcohol and climbing to 10.5 percent. But beer aficionados know him best for Pliny the Elder, which is technically not an IPA but a double IPA, sort of an IPA on steroids.
Named for a Roman naturalist who created the botanical name for hops, Pliny is bone dry, heavy with pine-like hops, on the low end of the double IPA alcohol spectrum at 8 percent and a phenomenon Cilurzo never saw coming.
It also was the double IPA gold medal winner at the 2005 Great American Beer Festival.

***

The American-style IPA category is so crowded this year, competition manager Chris Swersey decides to spread the 142 entries across seven tables, with six or seven judges seated at each one, for the first round of judging.
Stewards carry in the beer on trays, like waiters. Each plastic cup has a number and an ounce and a half of beer.
The judges are experienced home brewers, brewery brewers and beer educators, with the occasional commercial airline pilot or engineer thrown in – who, of course, are also home brewers.
Their assignment in bestowing a gold medal is not to pick the best tasting beer, but the best one that accurately exemplifies the specified style – a world-class beer with a proper balance of taste, aroma and appearance.
In the case of American-style IPA, that means intense hop bitterness, flavor and aroma; fruity, floral and citruslike hop character; pale gold to deep copper color; medium maltiness; and alcohol content between 6 percent and 7.5 percent.
“It’s not like a track meet,” Swersey said. “A lot of this is subjective. If all palates were the same, we’d all be drinking the same beer. This is a diverse group of judges that reflect the diversity of consumers.”
By late afternoon, two rounds of judging had winnowed the pool of American-style IPAs to a dozen.
The task of seeing things through falls to Steve Parkes, a British transplant to the Northeast and American brewing scene veteran who trains craft brewers.
Parkes is the “table captain” on the final round of IPA judging. By that time, he already had judged a round of specialty beers – beers with molasses, agave nectar, coconut and such – and an early round of IPAs.
He figures that by day’s end, he will have drunk 46 beers, albeit less than an ounce of each on average. In early rounds, judges toss a lot of beer. And keeping judges from getting inebriated is in everyone’s best interest.
Sitting in front of Parkes is what he calls perhaps the finest selection of beers he’s ever tasted.
At this point, it’s the little things that eliminate contenders, he said. A random off flavor thrown up by fermentation, or malt character that doesn’t give the backbone needed to support the hops, or dull water chemistry.
Parkes said judges are mindful to not just honor the most extreme beers, but those with balance, nuance and freshness. Put another way, something you’d want to drink.
The back-to-back gold medal winner in 2008 and 2009 – Union Jack IPA from Firestone Walker Brewing Co. in Paso Robles, Calif. – exemplifies that, with hints of citrus and pineapple and a clean finish.
“We’re not trying to make a beer where someone curls their lips and goes, ‘Yeah, that’s good,’ ” said brewmaster Matthew Brynildson, who worked as a hop chemist before becoming a brewer. “You want to see someone take a second sip.”
This year, Parkes said the competition was so close, the winning beer was not superior. It was only a little better.

***

A walk through the giant Great American Beer Festival hall shows a beer style hardly recognizable from its meek predecessor shipped across the ocean to parched British soldiers stationed in India in the 17th century.
The American-style IPA is really that – an American reinvention of a style that had fallen out of favor.
Experimentation is the norm these days. Cigar City Brewing in Tampa, Fla., ages IPA on cedar to produce white grapefruit notes. The Alchemist Pub and Brewery in Waterbury, Vt., brews a double IPA with Curacao orange peel. Stone Brewing makes a black IPA with dark malts inspired co-owner Koch’s orange sherbet and hot fudge ice cream fixation.
When the time comes to reveal this year’s medal winners, brewers and beer drinkers gather before a stage in the back corner of the convention hall. Cheers and cowbells greet each winner.
After an hour, it is time to crown the champion in category No. 47, the American-style IPA.
It’s “Pseudo” IPA from Pizza Port San Clemente in Orange County, Calif.
Head brewer Noah Regnery, 27, wearing flip flops and a tattoo on his left arm of a grim reaper holding a dubbel glass and a vine of hops creeping up from behind, accepts the honor.
Moments later, Regnery learns he also has won gold in the double IPA category. He makes his way back to a mosh pit of brewers, exchanging high fives and hugs, his hand shaking as he texts an out-of-town friend.
The champion IPA was a happy accident, an improvisation after Regnery discovered he didn’t have the ingredients to brew another IPA. The result, Regnery said, was a beer with a big citrusy hop aroma and a clean finish, at a drinkable 6.8 percent alcohol level.
He said he named it “Pseudo” as a joke, after a brewpub regular told a bartender he didn’t think Regnery was a “real” brewer because he inherited some of the pub’s old recipes. Now, with two of the most coveted medals in American brewing hanging from his neck, Regnery can be rightly considered the king of craft brewing, at least for a day.

A friend recently told me he enjoyed an Arrogant Bastard Ale from Stone Brewing Company for the first time recently. He described it as very tasty with some sweet, malty overtones. Which is exactly how I’d describe it. But a review recently pointed out that Arrogant Bastard seems to have changed a bit from the brew it was a few years ago. I’ve never had it at the source, which is to say I’ve never had it fresh from the brewery, which is when beer is best. You remember the born on date campaign Budweiser was running on their cans? Sort of the same idea with craft beer. It’s a live product, which responds negatively to many environmental issues, not the least of which are jostling, light, storage temps, oxygen and a host of other issues.

If you go back in time many hundreds of years to when the British Empire was seeking to subdue the Indian sub continent for its rich trade in spices and textiles, it needed soldiers. And to keep soldiers happy in the hot and humid environment that is India, they needed beer. The empire had plenty of breweries back in England, but beer shipped around the horn of Africa reportedly tasted terrible to the soldiers and did nothing for moral. So it was decided to add more hops, which act as a preserver and higher alcohol content, which also tends to preserve beer, and ship this new product to the soldiers in India. Upon arrival, it was not the fresh, highly potent beer it was when left, but it was a mellow and drinkable beer that greatly improved the moral of the hot and miserable soldiers. (paraphrased of course)

My point is that as craft breweries grow and to sell their beer into other markets, they must change recipes to insure the beer still tastes good when it’s brewed in California and ends up in Florida. From my experience, nothing will ever taste as good and fresh as local beer, but it’s nice to be able to get that variety from out of state and still taste something authentic. But where is the line between what is served fresh at the brewery and what is decidedly different in a can or bottle on the other side of the country?

I’ve heard many reports that Brewdog, Scotland’s rogue craft brewery, has excellent beer when tasted at the source, but which is relatively travel worn by the time it reaches American shores. I think many of their bottled products taste amazing, at least the ones I can get in Missoula, but it makes me wonder if they taste much different at the source.

My question to you is, do you prefer your beer local and fresh, or are you good with a slightly different interpretation in a bottle or can designed to ship well?

Prost,

GG

A gentlemen handed me a bottle of Laughing Dog Brewing Company’s Rocket Dog Rye IPA while I was judging brewfest last weekend. At first I thought, “hey, you can’t influence the judges like this.” Then I realized that he was just handing out bottles to the crowd in general. And so it put my mind at ease.

Last night I had an invitation to go hang out with beer buddies Beau and Jon around their backyard campfire to sip some beer and enjoy some great conversation. Josh Decker, director of the amazing Home Resources, a local non profit that recycles building materials, joined us for a beverage and helped us frame a great conversation about living life post apocalyptically. I realize that might not sound like a great conversation, but it was, because we touched on recycling and sustainable living and many other things.

So we poured the Rocket Dog Rye IPA and settled back to let the warmth of the flames tickle our imaginations.

I was immediately impressed with the solid nature of this IPA. A big, malt backbone holds up some really nice bitterness and some astringency from the rye. But there is not an imbalance here. The bite is actually very good and offers some real complexity. The nose is all pine and citrus, with some bready yeast coming through at times.

The orange firelight played with the color a little. I would’ve like to have seen it in standard light. It made the beer appear copper or orangy. But the flavors on this IPA were very solid and worthy of finding another bottle or two of this. I haven’t seen this particular one around town yet, but beer buddy Beau has seen Laughing Dog beer at Worden’s Market.

Prost,

GG

]]> http://grizzlygrowler.com/2010/05/07/a-delightfully-solid-india-pale-ale-out-of-ponderay-idaho/feed/ 0 http://grizzlygrowler.com/2010/04/09/bridgeport-brewing-companys-hop-czar-trends-away-from-west-coast-ipas/ http://grizzlygrowler.com/2010/04/09/bridgeport-brewing-companys-hop-czar-trends-away-from-west-coast-ipas/#comments Fri, 09 Apr 2010 19:01:54 +0000 Tim http://grizzlygrowler.com/?p=2069

Bridgeport Brewing Company's Hop Czar

Oregon might be discovering something Montana has known for quite a while. Mainly that there are a lot of West Coast IPAs out there, and finding your place in the mix means being just a little different.

Bridgeport Brewing Company’s Hop Czar Imperial IPA impressed me for it’s rich and deep malt backbone, which provided a really nice ladder on which to stack the copious amounts of chinook, nugget, cascade and centennial hops. In a way, it has a more British feel to it than a lot of the overly hop balanced West Coasters.

But malt comes with a price. The hop profiles don’t sing quite as much, and the beer definitely has a heavier feel to it. You don’t get that oily, hop resin presence you get with West Coasters, and which can actually make a big IPA feel a little lighter than it is.

But I know that this style of beer does appeal to a lot of people who don’t go for the ginormously hopped West Coast IPAs.

The only thing I really don’t like about this beer is the designation as an Imperial IPA. At 7.5 percent abv, it doesn’t ring in with an Imperial feel, and I don’t like when beer companies used terms like Imperial as marketing gimmicks.

Who knows, Bridgeport may feel that this qualifies as an Imperial, what with it’s big, rocking malt body and triple-hopped status, and that fact that it’s brewed from their original IPA recipe, but the term used loosely in marketing still bothers me.

I enjoyed this beer immensely, because I love that it represents the ever-changing whims of brewers who are trying to gauge the differing tastes of the beer-loving public every day. To that end, I thought the plan of going to a much bigger malt backbone really paid off. This beer is a nicely balanced IPA that might appeal to people who don’t mind big beers but who’d rather not have something dripping with hop bitterness in every taste. It is a much more balanced beer in some ways.

And yet you still get the beautiful citrus and fruitiness from those now famous Northwest hops.

And Bridgeport earns even more points for their bottle conditioning. They put a lot of effort into packaging, and I tend to notice their standout bottles in the beer aisles.

You can find Bridgeport Brewing Company’s Hop Czar at Worden’s Market.

Prost,

GG

Hop Henge IPA and Stone IPA

It wasn’t really an Oscar-night thing, but Beau brought over some Stone Brewing Company IPA and some Deschutes Brewing Company Hop Henge IPA round about the third quarter of the big show. Can’t fault him though, he’s a volunteer for Big Brothers & Sisters of Missoula, and he spent most of Sunday afternoon hanging out with his little brother.

While Jeff Bridges was thanking his mom and dad for raising him in the “business” and cradling his gold statue, Beau and I sniffed the two big West Coast IPAs to see which one had the bigger nose. By color, the Hop Henge had a bit of a burnt caramel edge over the ripe barley color of the Stone IPA. But in smell, the Stone held a bit of an advantage with a wonderful aroma of fruity and flowery hops. I’m guessing they achieve this by the two weeks of dry hopping the beer is said to go through.

But in the glass and on the tongue, the Hop Henge comes out a bit ahead of the Stone IPA. The body is bigger and able to handle the 8.75 percent ABV like a linebacker carries his weight. The rich burnt caramel color translates to malty sweetness that plays cloyingly with the massive amount of cascade and centennial hops. My personal feeling is that the Hop Henge is probably in a different category. Perhaps it should be compared to a Stone Brewing Company Ruination IPA instead. On it’s own though, the Hop Henge is an outstanding achievement in the big IPA category. Despite using the cascade/centennial combo, it’s a very balanced beer with some exciting citrus and ground fruits on the tongue. Particularly strawberry and maybe some pineapple with a bit of summer herb garden, though I couldn’t pin it down to one particular herb.

The Stone IPA is a slightly lesser beer, but it just might be put together better. The nose blows off straight flowers and citrus with what I swear was a breeze from Northern California’s eucalyptus forests. There is a breadyness on the tongue that is decidedly absent in the Hop Henge. But the balance is where this beer scores its points. Traditional citrus and pine sit atop a balanced body like a multi-discipline athlete. Some beers are built like long-distance runners. They are built for the long haul, but they are skinny to a fault. Other beers rest on a comfortable, well-trained frame.

In the end, the Hop Henge weighs in a little stronger and with a little more reach than the Stone, but this match might just be unevenly weighted. Who knows though, another person might decide that the Stone had more than enough to stand up to the big Hop Henge.

Prost,

GG

I tried New Belgium Brewing Company’s Ranger IPA a couple of weeks ago during Super Bowl, and I was pleasantly surprised. This is not a Northwest-style volcanic IPA, but it’s something I’d definitely drink on a regular basis. I think the evolution from Fat Tire to the wide release of an IPA is interesting. Companies that don’t have an IPA as their flagship beer or prominently featured in their main distribution beers seem to be playing catchup these days. That’s simply my opinion from observation, but IPA is the logical next step on the palate after ambers and pale ales, so if the demand is there, I suppose it makes sense.

Prost,

GG

The proverbial question in Missoula, Montana these days is: When will the Kettlehouse Brewing Co.’s Northside taproom open?

There is no good answer for that, as evidenced by brewery owner Tim O’Leary’s cryptic post on Facebook recently.

Tim O’Leary I’m thinking a reasonable opening date of June 2osomething is not out of the question for the Northside. We’re canning and trying to get caught up on distributor’s orders first.

But, if you read between the lines, you’ll see that one, they are brewing and canning at the new location above the Orange Street underpass. You can also see from another cryptic post by O’Leary that the new Double Haul IPA cans are soon to be released.

So, if you’re a glass-half-full kind of person, then this is a good day for you. If you’re anything else, go have a beer and try to relax a little.

Prost,

GG

I’m not going to assume all of you have seen the movie “Beer Fest,” but if you have, then you know what I mean. I’ve always wanted to drink from a boot, and thanks to beer buddy Beau, I can now say I have.

Oh, by they way, that boot is filled with Bent Nail IPA from Red Lodge Ales. Mighty awesome stuff that there beer. And, I believe it’s available by the keg at Wordens.

Prost,

GG