Month: June 2016

Typically on a Friday afternoon, I will liberate myself from work a little early and hit a few of the local breweries, brewpubs and bars known for their tap selection. The point is to find beers that I don’t recognize and so, logically, need to try. My endeavors and exploits on this Friday afternoon missions will be documented here.

This week’s edition, Whole Foods, Bier:Thirty, Boise Brewing and Woodland Empire.

Whole Foods has a nice little café upstairs they call the “River Room”, and I am often impressed if not surprised by the tap selection they have. Not very many, by today’s standards, but someone is looking out for and buying good beer there. Today they had Backwoods’ Brewing “Blueberry Wheat“. A very mild and faintly blueberry American wheat. Pleasant though not particularly interesting, and Ballast Point’s “Sextant Oatmeal Stout” A lovely smooth roasty beer with nice chocolatey flavors. This one was on Nitro which only added to its pillowy palate. Although I think there was something wrong with the tap today as if foamed like mad and there was not much carbonation left in my snifter. One of the other thngs I like abut this place is the option of getting a “half-pour” since as I stated before, the goal is to try multiple offerings before moving on.

Bier:Thirty had several taps occupied by Boise’s own Payette Brewing, when I stopped by, but they were all ones that I had tried a week or two ago at the Payette tap takeover at Bittercreek. Sadly I had to move on as there was nothing new to conquer here today.

Boise (don’t call me Bogus) Brewing was my next stop and they had a couple of their own beers on tap that I did not recognize. The brand new “The Big LeBoise Lager” turned out to be a classic, clean, Pale Lager but a bit more hopped and bittered up and the “Syringa Pale Ale“, a great beer with a lot of fresh up front hop flavors and a smooth easy feel. I like Boise Brewing with its cozy but open, and somewhat industrial atmosphere.

Next time will be some different locations and some new beers.

Cheers

@boisebrewblog

Too many choices?

The Boise craft beer scene has been exploding for the last few years and I and many others have been riding the wave of new interesting, and frequently good beer all along the way.

This proliferation of new craft beer options been showing up in 2 basic forms.  Either a new brewery opens up and offers a line-up of 6-10 of their wares on tap, or alternately, a place that while doesn’t brew on premises, offers a lot (40-50 sometimes) of taps pouring beers from around the region or across the country

Recently, it seems, I’ve seen a few posts, tweets and Facebook updates disparaging these high-count tap beer bars.  Mainly bringing to bear the “lots of taps is nice but stale beer is still stale” shtick.

Not only do I not have a problem with this problem but I take particular umbrage with the snobbery or “beer elitism” this sort of smells like.  These are the same people that send back a beer telling their server that the carbonation is not within .5 volumes of being correct for the style. I suppose these nay-sayers would prefer to have Dagger Falls, Rustler/Outlaw IPA, Black Butte Porter or for that matter Widmer Hefewiezen on every other tap in town.  Because since it moves so fast, you are always guaranteed to get a pour from a keg taped only hours ago.

Keep in mind, distributers or rather the brewers themselves, often have what’s called 1/6 barrel kegs that are deployed to tap-houses and beer bars. For those not in the know, that means these vessels are only slightly more than 5 Gallons. As the historical and rather anachronistic moniker “Barrel” is 31 gallons.  That means about 80 pints.  And unless the establishment you are at really does pour a full pint…that’s probably more like 100 or so servings.

How long does it really take to pour 100 glasses of a particular beer?   Breweries know better than to package their Cognac Barrel aged Brett Basil Grapefruit Fig Berliner-Weisse in 15.5 Gallon kegs and drop them off at PreFunk or Starvin’ Sam’s minimart Growler fill station.  I’m not sure even I would try more than a 4oz taster of something that weird.  A year later if I wanted to try it again….it would probably still be there….right where I (and everyone else) left it.  Mother earth, Lagunitas, Melvin, Fremont, Terminal Gravity, all have offerings that all but the most casual beer enthusiast would spot and go for.  If you cant move 100 glasses of Pelican’s Tsunami Stout in a reasonable time, well then maybe you should turn over your lease to the nail salon.

There are plenty of nerdy beer samplers or “tickers” out there that will try something just because its new.  Having 40 taps pouring interesting, rare, or one-offs is just fine and the Boise Beer nerd collective (yours truly included) will take care of it. ThankYouVeryMuch.