Making my way back on BART from the the 11th Annual India Pale Ale fest at the the Bistro in downtown Hayward, CA. Wow: 51 IPAs from all over the West Coast, liberal tastes, great music, more than 800 people.
A bangup day. It was hard to leave. The winners in the professinally judged blind tasting:
Gold: Hop 15, from Pizza Port, Solana Beach (San Diego County). 7.5 percent ABV..
Silver: 21st Amendment IPA, 21st Amendment, San Francisco: 7.2 percent, 80 IBUs ( by comparison: Sierra Nevada Pale Ale’s about 39 IBU). Yes this is the one in cans being sold at Beverages and More.
Bronze: Gold Digger IPA, Auburn Alehouse, Auburn, CA., 68 IBU, 6.7 percent.
People’s Choice: (A vote by everyone who cared to vote.) Rockslide IPA, Fifty Fifty Brewing Co. Truckee. Rocslide was 70 IBUs, 7 percent.
I sampled a lot of IPAs and I can see why this one won. It was a brilliant light copper with a big, creamy head that lasted. Hoppy nose, but the beer had great balance. Lots of hops in the taste and follow, but well-balanced by a substantial malty taste. Can’t make a beer like this at 5 percent. You’ve got to add malt to balance the hops – ergo lots of alcohol.
Ann McNulty, who drove the Pizza Port and Port Brewing entries to the Bistro from San Diego County, said the beer was brewed by Tomme Arthur at Port Brewing. But Vic and Cynthia Kralj, the Bistro proprietors, who hammered out the festival sheet, said it was from Pizza Port Solana Beach (one of three Pizza Port brewpubs, San Clemente and Carlsbad, also in San Diego County) and the brewers were Greg Peters and Brandon Edwards.
Hops were Galena for bittering, Centennial and Cascade for aroma and dry hopping – hops added in the fermenter – were Centennial, Cascade and Amarillo.
Other brewers were speculating that the beer included hop oil, the concentrated essence of hops. I don’t know. Don’t really think so. But many of the IPAs in this festival were pushing the limits. Great beer indeed.
Sad note for me, when I dragged in around 3:30 the Fifty Fifty Rockslide IPA, the People’s Choice winner was already gone. Damn. At least a dozen people told me “be sure to try the Fifty Fifty.
The brewer, Todd Ashman, has great credentials. He grew up in Sacramento, lived in Sonoma in the 1980s as the craft beer revolution really got underway. He learned to homebrew with help from The Beverage People and Byron Birch, took the brewing course under Dr. Michael Lewis, UC Davis professor at the American Brewers Guild in Woodland, CA (now closed).
Brewing jobs included Kegs in Alamogordo, NM, then Flossmoor Station in Flossmoor, a suburb south of Chicago.
When Andy and Alicia Barr took early retirement from Hewlett Packard and decided to open a brewpub in Truckee, CA., they (wisely) hired Todd to handle brewing. The pub opened in May, 2007 and a month after it opened Tim White, a Hayward guy who loves beer, called me and said I should visit.
A dozen people have said the same thing. Gotta’ get up there and do just that soon.
PHOTOS: Top: The patio at the Bistro , 1001 B St., Hayward during the fest.
Below: 21st Amendment’s Shaun O’Sullivan, head brewer, co-founder, left, and Tiodd Ashman, Brewmaster at Fifty Fifty Brewing, Truckee, CA.
I can't get enough sour beers lately, and usually when talking about sours you hear Russian River... Cantillon... even Lindeman's. But do you ever hear about Hanssens? I don't think I would have any time soon if it weren't for a mention of it by Rick at Pacific Brew News on one of his archived podcasts. I've been seeking them out, with my first opportunity to try their Oude Kriek at the Stone Sour Fest, which in my small sample seemed like an excellent sour beer. This time I was able to get a bottle of their Oude Gueuze and had that with some salmon baked with lemon last night.
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