With the Holiday Ale Festival going on concurrently I'll take a wild guess and say that this Brawl at Concordia Ale House is getting a lot less love than most of them. However after visiting HAF twice early in its run and being asked by a buddy to join him at Concordia yesterday I found no reason not to do just that.
For those unfamiliar with Concordia's Brawls, they are basically blind beer tastings where each tray has 10 - 12 beers and people vote for their favorite. Sometimes the beers are all one style (i.e. IPAs), sometimes the beers are specifically from physical locations (i.e. half from Oregon, half from Washington) and sometimes there is a combination of things going on. Snow Brawl, unsurprisingly, was a tray of winter beers - 10 beers representing breweries in Oregon, Washington, California and Colorado.
Overall I was unimpressed with the majority of the beers, which is a departure from most Brawls I've been to. However winter beers tend to go lighter on the hops than I'd like so there is a good chance that's the reason. That's also the reason that I chose #1 as my favorite. It was the hoppiest of the bunch and I unabashedly chose it.
Concordia is great about getting the results out, usually in the wee hours separating Sunday from Monday, and I'll be even more interested than usual to have the beer and brewery names revealed. If you haven't stopped in yet you still have all day today. As a bonus, breakfast will be available until 2:00 p.m. and football will be on the TVs.
Yesterday kicked off the 18th Annual Holiday Ale Festival at Pioneer Courthouse Square. It was an appropriately chilly day but between the bright sunshine and the heaters, it was cozy inside the tent.
I came armed with my trusty cheat sheet of beers I wanted to try and determined to drink them in the pre-thought out order that roughly started with the lowest alcohol, most mild tasting beers. Right away my resolve was put to the test as I was told by multiple people that the High West Whiskey barrel aged Cappuccino Stout from Lagunitas was amazing. It was one of the highest alcohol beers at 12% ABV and the one I had designated to be last on my list.
As I started in I did take into consideration the input of my fellow, trusted beer friends and ended up skipping a couple of beers I had intended to try due to poor reviews. I mean, heck, it wasn't like there would be any lack of beers to try. In fact, I knew that it would be surprising if I tried all of the ones that I wanted to on this first visit.
Of the 12 beers that crossed my lips my favorite, and one that I ended up getting a full glass of, was The Twerking Elf from Stickmen Brewery & Skewery. This 7.2% ABV Northwest Sour Brown was the second beer that I had and was an excellent example of the style. For every person that told me about the Lagunitas, I told them about the Stickmen.
Other beers that I enjoyed included:
- Old Town Brewing Pa Rum Pum Pum Pum, a 7.5% rum barrel aged old ale. I hope that Bolt made more than the amount he sent to HAF because I'd love to have this again, served at a more appropriate, warmer temperature.
- Coalition Brewing Shenanigans, a 9.8% barleywine. The same goes for this beer, it was good at the festival but I think it would be even more enjoyable warmed up a bit.
- Lagunitas High West Whiskey barrel aged Cappuccino Stout, a 12% stout. My friends were right, the aroma was intoxicating, the flavor even more amazing. Michael hit the nail on the head when he said that it was, "the Velvet Merkin of two years ago."
There are still four more days of the festival so there's a fair chance I'll make it back. One beer that will be on my visit #2 list will be McGuinness from Nation Brewery. Mag really enjoyed this 9.2% imperial milk stout that was aged on Kahlua-soaked oak. I'll also be keeping my ears out for what you, my beery friends recommend.
In this final installment of beer and cereal pairings we get to the cereals that I figured would be the most challenging. From what I learned in the first and second rounds I suspected these two would require mild beers, not something that I usually drink. However like many a beer geek, the intrigue of a beer I've never had before often outweighs the known satisfaction of a favorite brew so there was the possibility of finding new beers to enjoy.
Silver Moon Voodoo Dog ISR was my first chance beer of the night and when I found it underwhelming I turned to the Apple Jacks. The cereal was sweeter than I remembered but the overpowering sweetness was tempered by the beer. In return, something about the apple-cinnamon flavors in the cereal enhanced the hop profile of the beer, a definite improvement.
My next beer selection, Fire Mountain Cold Cold Billy, went similarly although it came as more of a surprise. Deviating from the standard look of most Fire Mountain labels, Cold Cold Billy was billed as a double IPA, something that should be right up my alley. It wasn't. I suspect that it was the variety of hops used that failed to wow me so I looked to the cereal for some assistance.
Since the Apple Jacks were already opened I started there and quickly decided it was a solid, "NO." Moving onto the Froot Loops I was pleased to find that the sweet, artificial fruity combination in the cereal managed to sharpen the focus of the beer, pushing whatever flavors were "meh-ing" me to the background, allowing me to enjoy the beer more with the cereal than on its own.
The moral of this edition of the story was that two very sugary cereals managed to improve two disappointing beers. Had I not tried both the Apple Jacks and the Froot Loops with Cold Cold Billy I would have suspected it was merely the sweetness of the cereals that worked. Instead something about the apple-cinnamon flavors worked far better with that beer while the fruit flavors spoke to the other better. Go figure.
