Category: BrewPubs

The most exciting part of this new brewery will be the beers that come out its doors.  There will be a regular lineup including a drinkable IPA that is a pale golden, example of the style focusing on lots of fresh hop flavor and keeping a nearly sessionable  6.2%.  A bane of contention with Rob, he confesses, is that there are plenty of bitter IPAs around but not so many with as much attention paid to body, aroma, and fresh hop flavor.  The malt bill on this one is a simple 2-Row with a 5% crystal for sweetness.  Just enough to “buoy the flavor of the hop”. That being Chinook, Centennial and Cascade, classic west coast IPA varieties.

A traditional ESB will also be offered year-round.   Made with 2-Row, and Crystal-80 added for a little sweetness and color, hopped with the traditional noble variety, Kent Goldings. That’s it.  Clearly following the “KISS” principle here.  With a pretty low final gravity, it will be dry, but with plenty of nice toffee and fruity, earthy and peppery flavors.

A  3.4% ABV English “Dark Mild” will also be a regular at Woodland.  Made with Doma coffee.  A session beer, Rob describes it as kind of a  “baby porter”.  Sounding a lot like what BJCP calls a “Southern English Brown”.  A lot of “porter” character, toffee, chocolate, and the coffee, giving it some nice complexity.

OK, now quickly, name me any Belgian beers brewed in Boise….  times up.   Save for the long running “Big Creek Trappist”, a Belgian Trippel, (and a pretty good one) that Sockeye has been making for years, there really isn’t much.

Woodland, will have one.  I didn’t get the details on their recipe, but if it is somewhat true to style it will not be so session-able.  (Not that Woodland Empire feels particularly bound by BJCP style guidelines) Trippels are typically 8-9% but light to medium bodied and light in color.  Making them an interesting contradiction to folks not familiar with the style.  The fact that not many area brewers are doing Belgians is not lost on Rob and this could be a great flagship beer that helps puts him on the map, so to speak.

Seasonal drafts will be more classic styles, a “winter warmer”, for instance, that hopefully there is enough time for this year.  Limited releases and one-offs will include a lot of Saisons, and Belgians.  Planned is a Bock for next fall, and an Octoberfest will go into the kettles in March in time for the Autumn festival.  A Bohemian Pils with be the spring seasonal in several months.  A twist on this being that they will be using all Idaho Cascade hops instead of the traditional Saaz.  Thus making it an “Idaho Pils”.  An example of “flipping tradition on it’s head”

A big part of how Woodland Empire will be trying to separate itself form the pack is their quarterly release of special edition one-off bottles.  As far as this “Bottle Program”, roughly, the calendar is shaping up like this:

First is an an Imperial Porter with cocoa nibs and vanilla bean hopefully available this winter after it has conditioned in the bottle long enough.  Later in March or April, we will see a Berliner-Weisse that will likely be one of the first beers they make.  A non-GMO, Idaho grown white wheat, and Idaho 2-Row malt bill but with an interesting local twist.  This tart wheat beer will get it’s sour culture from the new local bakery in Garden City,  “Acme Bakeshop”.  And since Acme’s sourdough culture is a geographically unique “Boise Air” culture, you could call this beer a “Boiseinner-Weisse”  Just another example of tradition meets local artisan influence.

The Imperial Stout that they plan to brew this coming March includes malt smoked over cherry wood, and also cherries from Emmett will be thrown in secondary and then bottle conditioned for several months to let that smoke and bitterness settle down for a December release.  This, I cannot wait for.

Rob was explaining also that when they make wheat beers, like the Wit that he talked about, they will include some spelt in the grain bill.  While the percentage of this contribution would probably not qualify it as “gluten reduced”, the qualities that it brings to the beer make for an interesting fruity raw wheat flavor and it will be the spin that they put in that style.  Also, instead of the traditional orange peel in this recipe, coriander and local lavender from Silver Fox farms in nearby Emmett. So, next fall when they have their lavender harvest, expect to see a special bottle run of a Lavener-Spelt-Coriander-Wit.  Another example of tradition meets…  well… you know.

Some great stuff to look forward to, ambitious and interesting.  These beers that are planned are going to make ripples in the Boise beer scene and the sooner they start coming out the better.

-Cheers

As most are aware by now, the craft brew scene in Boise if exploding, still.  And a couple breweries are opening in the next month or so.  Woodland Empire Ale Craft and Edge Brewing are the two about to open their doors this fall and I got a chance to visit Rob of WEAC the other day to chat about his new down town facility.

Plans for setting up shop back in March on Grove st  in the linen district downtown fell through and the site had to be moved a few blocks away to Front st. between 11th and 12th.  This pushed back their timeline a few months, but the building they landed on has some great local history. It was built in 1905 as a blacksmith’s shop where they would shoe horses for cavalry troops stabled next door, and also the original home to Yankee Machine Shop back in the ’30s.  So, horseshoes, to parts for B-17s and now artisan craft beer.  It’s nice to see evolution at work.

It will be a 15 Barrel system, Rob explaining that a lot of planning went into having room for growth as production needs are expected to increase over time.  Seating for 65 in the tasting room, with customer access to a viewing area where we can gaze in wide wonder at all the brewing equipment doing what it does.  Locally reclaimed lumber making up the 20′  bar, high end European flow-control faucets and special glassware, are just some of the details that will be making this place a cut above your standard watering hole.

A different kind of beer experience is what they are shooting for and more of a “coffee shop” atmosphere in the tasting room is the plan.  Lots of plants and original artwork on the walls including photos of the building from it’s past will be the decor.   A combination of being reverent to the old school continental beer culture, but also having a local twist to the historical styles and methods, are going to be employed…with a grand total of zero big screen TV’s.

With opening barely a month away, and most of the brewing equipment coming in a bout a week or so, all the remaining work is some electrical and plumbing.  Final inspection is November 18th and Rob feels like they are on track for that date.  It will be a great addition to the growing craft beer scene and in the next part, well talk more about the kinds of beers that these guys are planning to release, including some very interesting and esoteric brews, with a lot of focus on locally sourced ingredients.

-Cheers

I’ve been here before but it was a date with my wife on one of those coupon things. We got a “flight” of samplers and a pint each, plus a lovely commemorative “pint” glass to take home. It was a good deal I guess. But today I am by myself and having their version of a CDA.
It’s not very dark, kind of a dark brown actually. So I guess it’s a CnvDA

Actually “Cascadian Dark Ale” is not even an officially recognized style by the BJCP  It just kind of evolved a few years ago, and there is even some debate on weather it should be called a “Black IPA” since other than it’s nearly black color, the fairly bitter and hoppy flavor is it’s most prominent characteristic.  Typically they are made by adding some roasted malt into the mash of an otherwise, standard hoppy pale ale or IPA, right at the very end just long enough for the color to come out of it.  So you get a dark nearly black beer with just a little of the roasty flavor.  Like any style, some examples are very good, others, not so much.

Beer style analysis aside,  it’s a little bit awesome I must say to look across from my table at see row of 600 gallon, stainless steel fermenters lined up like missile silos, knowing that barely a week or two ago, one of them had in it, this very beer I was drinking.   Kind of the beer version of “farm-to-table”

It’s a small place, Payette. Seats 30-40 maybe, with a few TVs.  It’s just a tasting/tap room, and not intended to be a restaurant, per se.  Local food trucks come by and set up shop outside on a rotating basis, though for the busies time so you can get a bite to eat.

With fermenters that big, you cant move beer fast enough out of a little tap room, and Payette has a mobile canning unit come regularly to crank out thousands of cans of their Mutton Buster  Brown and what ever other brew they have ready to package.

It’s good to see Idaho representing a bit and to see cans on the shelves in local supermarkets, that were filled just right down the road.

See what I did there?…”hopping” up…and I’m just barley getting started…try the veal…I’m here til Tuesday…”

But seriously,  they are just coming out of the woodwork around here.  We are up to 13 or 14 breweries in the Boise/Meridian/Garden City metropolis (getting harder to keep track these days) and one of the latest to throw its hop-hat in the ring is “Edge” Brewing.   The local newspaper reported last week about this new player and I have it on good authority that the recent new Brewmaster at Table Rock will be making beer for Edge as well.  Possibly as a guest or a regular/rotational brewer.

Marcus Bezuhly, the owner of Garden City’s “HomeBrewStuff”, west Boise/Garden City’s go-to home-brew supply shop, is behind this new project and it will be off of Emerald in West Boise.  Reports are that this place will be focusing on experimental, one-off recipes that will be here and gone forever, to be replaced by the next hair-brained concoction.  I can’t wait to see how Edge will push the envelope of what we have come to consider beer is and isn’t.  Who’s to say you can’t make a fig porter or a radish-cucumber pale ale.  Who knows…who cares.  Let’s do it !  I’m in!

On my travels a few weeks ago I finally managed to stop by this place. For some reason it has evaded me in the many times I have driven by during my many Boise-Western Washington trips. Maybe it’s partly because “tri-cities” is a nearly perfect half-way point where I stop for gas and I cant convince myself to make another stop so soon, trying to make good time.

This trip, I was coming south from Ellensberg and had planned to turn off and head south on hwy 97 to Bend, OR the mecca of craft brew towns this side of the coast. As it turned out, the highway I wanted to take was closed due to wildfires somewhere. So 40 miles or so down the road was Prosser, WA. Hometown of former BSU all-everything Kellen Moore, and Whitstran Brewing Co.

I got there about 4PM and was tired and starving from the triathlon I had just run earlier that day in Ellensberg. I ordered a burger and fries and asked about a sampler tray. The beers were tasty and I was nearly finished with my food when another couple came in. I overheard the gal mention that she was a home brewer and she had a few questions about what they had on tap.

About that time, an older guy came out from the back. Late 50’s or so, wearing shorts, a bandanna and a wild tie-tied T-shirt, drinking beer from a mason jar. I took a wild guess and assumed he was the brewer. I walked up to the counter and asked our server loud enough so the other folks could hear “hey, what are the chances a couple of home-brewers could get a little tour of the back”?

Tie dye guy perked up and said no problem, c’mon back. The three of us chatted a bit while a kid was weighing out grain for the next batch.  I asked if he’d ever done any ciders with all the orchards around, but no, he sticks to his dozen or so regulars and a few rotation seasonals.  He can hardly keep up as it is and cant afford the fermenter space for too many experiments.  I thanked for the tour and the chat, and paid my tab and was on my way.  I will have to try harder to make this a regular sop on my travels in the future.

This is my 3rd time here, if I recall correctly.   Max Power IPA…how can you NOT try something with a name like that.  The fact that their menus claims it to be 100+ IBUs means they don’t even KNOW how to measure how bitter it is.  Supposedly the human tongue cannot detect anything over about 100.

That doesn’t scare me though.  the valiant tastes of death but once, right?

Ordered my food and and after chatting the the waitress, found that Max Power was NOT on tap right then.  Apparently they sent most of what they had to a near by brewers fest and didn’t leave enough at the restaurant and they ran out.  Very disappointing.  They did have the Sundown Saison and the Righteous Indignation Red with were both good. and I left there expecting to make a return visit sometime.

My server was friendly and we chatted a bit about the brewpubs in the area and even specifically about the newer ones in Boise when I mentioned I was from there.  PS is definitely on my list of must stops.  Good food, relaxed atmosphere, close to the highway and good beer.

-Cheers

Situated 2.5 hours from Boise, in La Grande, OR   Mt. Emily Alehouse is strategically positioned at just the right place for a cool beverage on my way west.  In this case, Ellensberg, WA.  It is a basic brew house with a small menu, but brewpubs are just cool no matter what, and this one is on the I-84 corridor that I travel a few times a year.

Stopping there this time, on the way to Ellensberg, WA, I timed it so that I would arrive right when they open at 11AM and it worked out just about right.

They had a Strawberry honey ale there that was the only one of theirs currently on tap that I hadn’t had yet.  It was tasty but a bit of a girly beer.  I was in a hurry and needed to get back on the road so I didn’t have any food

They had a oak aged barely wine there as well but it was their last 3 gallons and they weren’t giving out tasters of it.  Since a pint was $8, and 11% ABV, I passed.  Very strange that they didn’t offer a smaller serving for something that strong, that expensive and so low on supplies that they wouldn’t even let you taste it.  Tactical error in my opinion.