Beer Brief #15 - Cherry Bean Coffee Stout

Brewery - Brau Brothers Brewing Company, Lucan, Minnesota

Beer - Cherry Bean Coffee Stout

Style - American Stout (made with coffee beans)

ABV - 7.5%

Color - Black with a tan head

Aroma - Roasted coffee beans, chocolate, hint of fruit

Flavor - Sweet malt, touch of cherry, dark chocolate, coffee bitterness

Verdict - Very good stuff, especially if you like stouts and coffee. Beautifully rich mouthfeel with coffee aromas and flavors balanced perfectly with a sweet malt backbone. I would drink this all the time if it was available year-round.

The Brewery I Enjoyed Most in Portland...

Since I've returned from Oregon, I've been extremely busy with my day job and making an effort to relax when I get home from work. Believe it or not, taking a week-long beer trip that involves visiting 22 locations (breweries, brewpubs, and beer bars) in 7 days can wear out even the most enthusiastic beer appreciator. Thinking back on the trip, it wasn't too hard to pick out my favorite location of the journey: Hair of the Dog Brewing Company.

I had been pretty excited to visit this brewery, especially after reading, hearing, and watching (a documentary) so much about it. Then, I saw the beer menu after sitting down at the bar...

After tasting all the beers in a sample-sized glass, it wasn't hard to realize that every single one was phenomenal. One of them definitely stood out above the rest in my mind, though. I enjoyed this particular brew so much that I asked the bartender for a piece of paper to make a note of it.

 
Cherry Adam from the Wood. Wow, what an amazing beer. At 14% ABV, it definitely helped to get me buzzing quick (which I was trying to avoid on this trip, so I could make sure to remember every sample). However, the flavor was worth it. This decadently rich and aromatic brew was a sipper, but also the most flavorful beer of my trip. Eventually, my buddy and I decided we each needed to order a full glass of tasty brew before we left. Of course, I chose the Cherry Adam from the Wood. He chose the Blue Dot double IPA, which was also fantastic.

As we walked out the door of this spectacular establishment, I decided I had to run over and take a quick picture through the viewing window to the brewery.

I will definitely remember my visit to Hair of the Dog for a long time, even though they'll probably never distribute all the way to Minnesota. In fact, I think that fact makes this memory even more valuable...

Widmer Gasthaus

On my beer journeys through Portland, I thought it would be appropriate to visit one of the oldest and most well know craft brewers in the city: Widmer Brothers.

Part of one of Jeff Alworth's pub crawls, the Widmer Gasthaus was an easy option. However, what I didn't realize is that the actual production brewery is located right next door. They offer free tours, but we had missed both timeslots. Oh well, just another excuse to find my way back to Portland...

Onto the Gasthaus. When we stopped in at 3pm, it was a pretty busy place. We were seated and took a look at the beer list. Since Widmer beers are easy to find in MN, I had already tried many of the brews on the list. However, there were enough which I hadn't had, so we ordered a taster tray. The waitress gave us a slip of paper that allowed us to create our own sampler.

The first 5 were the ones I hadn't tried, and my buddy chose the last one.

All the beers were good, but I liked the Marionberry Gose and the Spiced IPA for my top 2. I ordered a tasty pastrami sandwich with a side of spaetzle (which seems to be popular around here). The food was delicious and the beer was tasty. Overall, a good experience at the Widmer Gasthaus.

Upright Brewing

Part of the reason I decided to visit Oregon for my beer trip was the wonderful beer writings of Jeff Alworth. I've mentioned in a few of my last couple posts that I visited places based on the recommendation of another beer blogger. Well, he is that blogger. His blog, Beervana, is my personal favorite and I read it on a regular basis.

On his blog, Jeff had created a series of 4 "craft beer crawls" in Portland. They each contained no more than 4 places to visit, so as to keep things reasonable. After checking those out, I also emailed Jeff. He was kind enough to help me as I played with other ideas for exploring Oregon's beer scene. Thanks Jeff.

Yesterday, we started with Jeff's crawl titled "The Northern Expedition". This took us to Upright, Widmer Gasthaus, Hopworks, and Lompoc Sidebar.

I was really looking forward to visiting Upright brewing, as their house yeast is a saison strain. Hidden in the basement of a multiple-story business building, they use open fermentors and do a lot of barrel aging.

Yep, this seemed like my kind of place. I was extremely excited to taste these brews.

They had 9 brews on tap and, as usual, we went with the sampler.

All the beers were great and I could have stayed their all day drinking more tasty goodness. My personal favorite was the De La Seven. They took their Seven (which is a more traditional saison), added Brettanomyces, aged it in wine and gin barrels, and blended it to taste. They did a great job, at least in my opinion. It was tasty, tasty stuff.

Full Sail & Double Mountain

After visiting Everybody's Brewing and Big Horse on Thursday, we still had another 2 breweries to check out in Hood River. One was a big factor in my choice to visit this city, while the other was highly recommended by many Oregon beer lovers.

Full Sail's main production brewery is located in Hood River. I have been a fan of their beers for a while; especially the LTD and Brewmaster Reserve Series. My familiarity with their brews was a large factor in my decision to travel to Hood River. The brewery offers free tours at 1, 2, 3, and 4pm, and we hit the 4 o'clock timeslot. Surprisingly we were the only 2 people on the tour, so we got a very detailed version reserved for home brewers.

After the tour, we got the sampler of their Brewmaster Reserve and Brewer's Share beers. (The Brewer's Share series lets each employee of the brewery take a turn creating a beer.)

Here's how the tray looked after we decimated it.

All of the beers were tasty (as I expected), but my clear favorite was the Top Sail Bourbon Barrel Aged Imperial Porter. Delicious, especially if you're a fan of bourbon like I am.

We left Full Sail happy, and moved on to our last brewery of the day: Double Mountain. I chose to visit there based on the recommendation of a Portland beer blogger. When we got into Oregon, everyone I talked to about Hood River breweries highly recommended Double Mountain. Nobody even mentioned Full Sail. This led me to believe that Double Mountain might just be the local favorite...

When we stepped into Double Mountain, it was immediately apparent that this was a popular place. I believe "packed house" might be the best descriptor. It was a hoppin' atmosphere with dim lighting, lots of conversation, and roller derby on the big screen (sorry for the picture quality - like I said, the lighting was dim).

 
Believe it or not, we didn't get a sampler at this brewery. One of the bartenders said he could just give us a taste of whichever beers we were interested in so we could make our full beer decisions. Here's a look at the beer list.

Based off the samples, I was quite impressed with their brews. I ultimately settled on having a Peche Mode and a Devil's Kriek. Both were awesome, but I think the Peche Mode is my favorite beer of my entire Oregon trip thus far. Yep, this may be a tough one to beat.

Yesterday was our transition day. We left the beautiful countryside of Hood River and moved into the urban beer environment of downtown Portland. This has been a great trip so far, and I'm looking forward to continuing the beer saga today. Alright, I'm off to the next brewery...

Everybody's & Big Horse

Ah, day two of my beer trip to Oregon. We hit four breweries yesterday, two of which will be quickly covered in this post.

To start off, we crossed the Columbia River to visit Everybody's Brewing in White Salmon, Washington. Even with proper directions, the place was hard to find. There was minimal external markings, which made it hard to identify the building. I think we drove past it 4 times before we decided to park and do a walking search. This eventually led us to the appropriate location. Stepping into the brew pub, we grabbed a high-top table near the bar and were quickly served.

As was going to be the theme for this trip, we ordered the beer sampler. They provided a handy laminated guide when the beverages were delivered.

How was the beer? To be honest, I wasn't all that impressed. I considered the majority average at best. The only one I really enjoyed was the Country Boy IPA. I definitely wouldn't consider the visit a bust, though. If we hadn't journeyed across the river, we would have missed the extremely scenic view of Mount Hood. I took a couple pictures, but they didn't do it justice.

We left White Salmon and returned to our hotel in Hood River. The plan now was to walk to the other three breweries. We set off with an awesome 64° temp and the sun shining amongst the beautiful landscape. The first stop on our hike was Big Horse Brew Pub.

Even with only one person working at the time, we were immediately welcomed and treated very well. We ordered the sampler and enjoyed the view of the river while we waited.

Now, this was some tasty stuff. I really enjoyed all the brews and had a hard time choosing a favorite. The flanders red was great, but there were two I loved more. For ultimate flavor, I'd go with the 5-year aged Phat Dog Barleywine. For a delicious brew that will allow you to put down more than one pint, I'd choose the Dwed Piwate Wobberts Pale Ale.

We finished our sampler, each drank another pint, and then set off to the next couple breweries...

Walking Man Brewing

Yesterday, my friend and I arrived in Portland, Oregon. It was the first day of our week-long beer journey in this state. Needless to say, I was pretty excited. As a part of our Oregon beer experience, I rented a car so we could drive to Hood River for a couple days. On the way there, we took a slight detour and visited Stevenson, Washington, based upon the recommendation of a fellow beer blogger. The reason for going out of our way? To visit Walking Man Brewing.

Walking up to the entry door, I was immediately intrigued. After taking a quick pic, we stepped inside to a small, but very cool pub atmosphere. I took a quick video that shows the layout, which I may post at a later date. There was a giant chalkboard listing the 10 brews they currently had available and, of course, a list at every table. Here's the selection:

Without question, I knew I had to get the sampler. I tried all 10 brews, and every single one was very well done. To go with the beer, I ordered some of their IPA braised chicken wings. Tasty beer and delicious wings; I was definitely having a great time on my first day of the trip. Here's a look at the sampler (after a couple had been tasted):

After chatting with the bartender for a bit, he gave us a bonus taster of his favorite: a blend of their IPA and pale ale. Very good stuff. If this experience is any indication of how the rest of my trip will be, I can't help but be ecstatic.

8-Bit Release Party

Please excuse the infrequent posts lately, as I've been quite busy. I am quite excited about one of the things that has been contributing to that busyness. I'm organizing a trip to visit Beervana (Portland, OR), and you should be seeing a few posts from me while I'm out there. More on that soon...

Last night, I visited the Nomad World Pub in Minneapolis. I was there to attend the release party for Tallgrass Brewing's latest creation: 8-Bit Pale Ale. While the event was planned for this new brew, there was so much more to enjoy.

First, the beer. 8-Bit might just be my new favorite beer from Tallgrass (sorry, Oasis). It flows down my gullet easily and is quite sessionable at 5.2% ABV. Don't let the word "sessionable" confuse you, though. This brew has big flavor and aroma thanks to the Galaxy hops Tallgrass used. If you like big hop smell and taste but don't want to get buzzed too quickly, try this beer.

With a name like 8-Bit, the release party had an easy theme to go with: old school NES (or Nintendo Entertainment System, for the non-gamers). There were 5 NES stations set up in the pub where everyone could take turns playing their old favorites. Throughout the evening, I saw Duckhunt, Double Dragon, Contra, Mike Tyson's Punch Out, Battletoads, Tetris, Blades of Steel, and Super Mario Bros 3. Of course, I was lucky enough to play most of those titles. There was also a Tecmo Bowl tournament, with the winner getting some Tallgrass schwag as a prize.

There was an awesome band playing the event: Nerd Enhanced Sound (NES). Yep, they did it. They named their band so they could use the NES abbreviation. "Why would they do that?" you may ask. Well, it's because of the music they play. See, they use a projection screen to show a recorded play-through of a classic Nintendo game. While the game is being shown, they perfectly play the music for the title screen and each level. It was amazing (at least for an old game geek like myself). If you like old-school Nintendo games, you owe it to yourself to watch this band perform sometime.

Last night was great fun. Now I have the urge to go out and find a 4-pack of 8-Bit so I can return home and fire up my NES. That would be awesome...