Month: December 2013

Last week, out of the blue I received a direct twitter message asking what the best bars/tap lists/brewpubs in Boise were.  The sender was @revnatcider a fairly new hard cider maker from Portland and was headed this way, talking to bars retailers and distributors in his effort to expand a bit.  I along with a few others replied with our suggestions on where to visit and who to talk to and as it turned out, he stopped by Eagle’s Brewforia during our home-brewers monthly meeting.

The HB club meeting mostly consisted, as it always does,of everyone bringing 1 or two items they had brewed and talking a bit about how they were made.   Including  Jim’s 3 year vertical of his hoilday imperial porter that was very tasty and was a great example of how late/fresh/dry hops flavors can fade over time.

The star of the show this moth,however, however was Nat and his hard cider he brought from his Portland shop.  “Sacrilege Sour Cherry”, a lacto only  8.5% ABV cider with cherry juice.  Big pie-cherry aroma and just the right amount of sourness.  Quite dry but it somehow kept a lot of that cherry flavor and was very tasty.  His website  is right…  “Expect Kreik Lambic” when you taste this.  The “standard” straight up cider he also brought was also very good.  Clean, dry and flavorful.

This is clearly top notch stuff.  I think the Reverend’s sermon will be well received out here and hope that a cider revival will then soon be upon us.  Hopefully soon his flip-top bottles and distinctive newsprint style labels will start showing up on the shelves of area bottle-shops.

Amen

I’ve written before, and mentioned several times since, about the recent craft beer explosion in the Boise area.  What I often tell people is 4 years ago there were 4 on premise brewing BrewPubs in town…now there are 9…I think..with 4-6 in various stages of planning, funding, building whatever.

I try to visit each regularly.  10 Barrel, one of the new kids in town, gets a lot of my beer business mainly because they cater to my obsession of seeing something that I’ve never had before, and with 19 or 20 taps, there is a good chance that anytime I stop by there, something I don’t recognize will be on tap that demands my attention.

I have a sentimental thing in my heart though for Sockeye Brewing.  It was the first BP I visited when I saw the light of CraftBeer back in 2004 and the fact that it is just 2 miles and a straight shot from my house, it right away became a bit of a regular.  I fairly quickly had gone through their regular line up and I had come to find out much later that they had all the work they could handle keeping up with demand at their onsite, brewing facility.  I suspect this was probably  why I didn’t very often see many experimentals and “one-offs” from them.

Over the last 10 years, I’ve had almost 50 different beers that have come from the original Ustick/Cole location. The Dagger Falls IPA is their flagship beer,also Purple Haze espresso stout and Wolly Bugger Wheat are  usually on and they are a few of my favorites.

Their new facility a few miles west, will allow some expansion and has already provided the benefits of a canning line and much greater production.  Spotting some of these regular offerings on the shelves of local bottle-shops and grocery stores in the last year or so is a good thing.

Just today I stopped in at the original site after a few hours of Christmas Shopping and was pleasantly surprised to see a new beer on the chalkboard.  “Lightning Creek” Belgian White IPA.  It was delicious and it was good to see an old friend have something new on tap.

Cheers to old friends