Tag: Beer

My Favorite Boise Beer Spots #002 – Mother Earth Brewing

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Mother Earth Brewing, has been a southern California company for about 13 years. They moved to Idaho August 2016 as part of an expansion, with the construction of a production site in Nampa. A small tasting room is inside as well, where you can try a couple of their beers right where they are made. This all whilst sitting amongst towering pallets of empty aluminum cans, just waiting to be filled. This facility helped make ME the largest brewer in the state, muscling past indigenous Idaho outfits like Sockeye and Payette.

Several years later, Mother Earth opened their taproom in downtown Boise proper, on 3rd just a couple blocks down Broad st from Boise Brewing. This was back in December 2021, when we were all just extricating ourselves from the Covid fiasco, and frankly needed an outlet like this. I was there opening week and their full lineup of beers was on line. The place was an immediate hit. Part of the site includes a large outdoor/patio seating area, which didn’t really see much action until it warmed up a few months later. Nevertheless, the outdoor area provides a great view of the currently active and changing downtown Boise skyline.

Great Beer

Mostly I love their hoppy beers. Particularly Boo-Koo, Heavy Cloud, and the Project-X series. Other main line offerings like Sin-Tax, Cali-Creamin and Milk-Truck are great also. Their premium line “Four Seasons” is…well… seasonal, and the heavy hitter Triple IPA has recently made a return. Called “Big Mother” this is a beast of a bear, you have been warned. Since its very beginning, ME has seen terrific growth with a line-up like this.

I read just this past week, the Boise taproom announced that “half pints” would also be available. Perhaps not of their high-octane selections that already are in a smaller serving size, but still the option of a “shorty” is great. A big part of my beer hobby is being able to try many different beers. Having to put down a full pint at a time can drag you down a bit.

Right in the heart of downtown, it is yet another nice craft beer destination, and is one of my regulars.

-Cheers

The Great Outdoors

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The Boise area is a pretty good Beer town. Like most of the rest of the country, the craft beer scene exploded here in the mid 2000’s and the options are wide and varied.
About this time of year the temperatures really start climbing, the snow line in the foothills is receding, the Boise river levels come right up to and sometimes over the Greenbelt in places, having a beverage outside in the sun and fresh air becomes a real thing.

Some Boise area beer spots with good patio/outdoor seating are sprinkled all over, these are some of my favorites:

During covid a lot of places expanded their seating area to outside their walls, in order to improve spacing. The block on 8th st between Idaho and Bannock is a good example, with BitterCreek and its neighbors essentially commandeering the sidewalk. Since then it has been built up a bit and now offers open air seating when weather permits.

GreenAcres

The Yardarm on 35th near the greenbelt has a covered bar area but otherwise exclusively open air seating, with a backyard/beach feel with lots of plants bordering the area. Another is Franklin House, a BnB tucked away in a mostly residential area on 15th and Franklin with a big backyard beer garden. Green Acres is at the end of 14th on the GreenBelt and hosts a couple of food trucks and several craft beers on tap.

A few spots are roof-top themed. Zees RoofTop Cafe has their outdoor seating set up for the season up on, well, the rooftop. They’ve great view of the city and foothills, on the penthouse of the CW Plaza building on 5th and Front. The James Kitchen $ Bar on Broadway has rooftop seating within site of Boise State’s football stadium.

Wepa Cafe, on 35th in Garden City features roof top seating and Purto Rican cuisine, and Green Acres is a food truck park on the green belt at the end of 14th with a craft beer bar and a nice grasy area full of picnic tables.

All are great spots if you like your beer and snacks “al Fresco” and all of them are also “Buddy Hubs” If you are not a card-carrying member yet, why not?!

-Cheers


“Growler” Fill Station in Boise

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Historically, “Growlers” were galvanized “pails” in which folks could bring beer home from pre-prohibition small town local breweries.  They called them growlers because they supposedly made a growling noise as the CO2 escaped from the lid while they were bringing it home.   Today, they are typically glass bottles with screw top caps (to keep all that carbonation where it belongs)  and is still a convenient way to get good beer right from the tap,  “to-go”  Typically they are 64oz but there are also 1qt “growler-ettes” out there as well and some are double-walled stainless steel containers that do a pretty good job keeping the beer cold for quite a while.

Most, brewpubs offer growler fills for 10-15$ depending on the brew, plus another 5 or 10$ for the empty one if you didn’t bring yours in.  Some places are even specializing in growler fills.  Dedicated growler “fill-stations” they are calling themselves.  I think it is a great idea.  There is one opening up here is Boise called “PreFunk”.

The site for "PreFunk" in Boise
The site for “PreFunk” in Boise

They are even planning on offering a call ahead and online check-in service with your order so you can drive up and they have it ready for you.  This is sounding better and better all the time.  Not to mention that is in a perfect location.  Every 9-5’er leaving downtown west bound drives right by this place just as Front street funnels into the west bound “connector”.   Their website is not quite ready yet, nor could I find a Facebook page for them after a quick search.

It will be interesting to see what beers they are able to get. With 20 taps, they plan to have half of them representing local Brewpubs, according to a recent Statesman article.  I’ll be checking the place out this week

 

Pumpkin II This time it’s Chocolate

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+++ Well, it has been a month and it is still technically Autumn, so I am having another Pumpkin ale.  This time we have for our evening sipping pleasure, something called “TREAT” from Midnight Sun Brewing, out of Anchorage, AK.

+++ It is very highly rated for is style on RateBeer, and as i am about to open it, I can only hope that it has calmed down suffeciently from me droping it when I got out of the car.  It banged a few times as it fell eventually hitting the pavement with a loud “Clink”.  The head space was solid foam when I got it inside so I put it in the fridge for an hour before I dared get it out and open it.  Here goes….  We’re good.

+++ Alaska is famous for, among lots of other things, giant pumpkin growing.  Apparently the long daylight in teh summers and the lack of most of the pests and diseases that the lower 48 states have just do not exist in AK.  a 700 pounder was grown up there a few years ago.  I wonder how many of those Midnight Sun Brewing would need to make a batch of this beer.

But I digress….

+++ Very dark Brown/Black pour with a small milk chocolate colored head that quickly faded but maintained a thick ring around the edge of the snifter.  Like onof those oil spill clean-up floats they use to corral spilled crude oil onthe ocean.   A roasted aroma but sweet, like chocolate cookies and instant cocoa, and some classic pumpkin pie smells as well.  Cinnamon and allspice maybe.   Lots chocolate imediately on the first sip, that quickly morphs into a more smokey, scalded chocolate milk or like the little bit that burs on teh bottom of the pan when you forget about the chocolate pudding you are making.  The spices a re mild, and the pumpkin even milder.   I guess they are ballanced.  it is not a pumpkin pie bomb, that’s for sure,  but I was hoping for a little more.  Quite heavy, thick pallate that seems to coat your mouth.  Softly carbonated. Very low bitterness, the lable says 30 IBUs, that even seems high.  But with these big sweet roasted flavors, they would taste knocked down a bit I suppose.

+++ Last month when i had one of these Pumpkin ales I asked “where’s the Pumpkin” we I can’t say I found it but this one is pretty good but closer to a sweet British porter than a pumpkin ale.

Southern Tier

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I must say,  this beer is already at a dissavantage in that my hopes and expectations are riding pretty high.   I have had a dozen Souther Tier offerings over the last few yeare and have loved all but a few of them.  The Pumking, Jah-Va, Imperial Oat and Creme Brule Stout,  all were fantastic.

Picked this up yesterday at Brewforia’s new Meridian, ID location and it’s label  claims to be simply “A Stout Brewed with Chocolate”

While I respect craft beer, I still find it a bit pretentious when I notice a blurb on the lable telling me how cold or warm it should be when served.  The reputation that this brewer has with my tastebuds, demands compliance however.  Turns out, Iam about 5 degrees over the RST.   Deep brown/black with a lively and disappointingly short-lived, tan head.   This quickly settles out to just a thin ring around the circumference of my snifter.

Aroma is unlike anything I can remember.  My first thought is of Tootsie Roll-Liqueur or Fudge Brownies and Kahlua.  But the tootsie-roll thing keeps coming back.  I can even imagine the wax paper wrapper they come in.  Or used to anyway.   Whatever classic dark roasted aromas that are otherwise common for an Imperial Stout are pretty much sacked by the sweet chocolate and subtle mocha notes.

At 11% ABV the “burn” does cut through a bit, but it’s not too much and goes well with the bold roast  and chocolate.  After a few sips, the smooth roasted, slightly charcoal flavors are really working well with the bittersweet chocolate.   It smelled like it was going to be biting off a chunk of Toblerone, but this is nice.  As it warms up a bit more I can taste vanilla, hazelnuts and a bit of  leather tag-teaming my taste buds.  A scoop of vanilla ice cream would be a great match for this.

The label says 27 degrees  Plato.  This translates to an original gravity of about 1.135 ! !  and if my calculations are correct, and they sometimes are, the claimed ABV of 11% means the final gravity of this thing is about 1.035.  That is quite a bit of residual sugars.  But I suppose if it was not sweet enough, the chocolate thing just wouldn’t fly.  Even still, the feel is smooth, almost silky, but not very heavy.  The rather soft carbonation is just right for this brew and the late lingering bitterness is a touch sharp, but not hoppy.   More like bitter chocolate or a little espresso.

Well done, Southern Tier.  Not my favorite of theirs, but that claim would be a tough nut to crack as their line up, as I mentioned earlier, is terrific.  At $10 for this 22oz bottle, I am glad that I won’t be buying it again soon, but even gladder that I got to have it tonight.   A great way to cap a Friday night and kick-off the weekend.