Fun in the Sun

This past weekend I escaped the heat and headed over to San Diego to go to the 8th Annual Real Ale festival held at Pizza Port in Carlsbad. The fest was a 2 day fest going on Friday and Saturday that featured about 40 Real Ales that were served through a beer engine and a couple of beers that were served straight out of the cask. Real Ales in case anyone is unfamiliar with them are beers that are supposed to be unfiltered and naturally carbonated in the cask from which they get served. It is basically the way all beers were served before forced carbonation allowed for draught style beer. These days when someone speaks of Real Ales they usually think of British style beers like Bitters, Porters, Stouts, Pale Ales, etc. At this fest the majority of the beers also fell into these same categories although most of them were shall we say 'West Coasted'. By that I mean they were beefed up in alcohol and most especially in the use of hops.

And Hops there were...With names like Pure Hopiness, Hop Juice, Lou P Lin, Hop Ottin, Hop Knot and of course, my favorite, Hopfather anyone who considers themselves a hop head was bound to have a good time. Most of the brewers add extra hops to the casks which is called dry hopping. One of the biggest dry hopped beers was Stone's Ruination (Which we will be tapping the un-dry hopped version of this Saturday.) The beer had so many fresh hops in it that it was extremely grassy tasting, so much so that the only way I can describe it is to imagine putting in a handful of fresh cut grass in your glass. There were many good hoppy beers, Lagunitas Maximus and Russian Rivers, Pliney the Elder were two of my favorites. Granted, I am biased but I thought the Papago Hopfather was one of the best balanced and one of the better beers at the fest and I think the crowd agreed with me since it was one of the first beers to run out.

Surprisingly the first beer to run out wasn't a hoppy one, nor was it an ale but it was a Pilsner from Back Street Brewery. Back Street Brewing is the brewing arm of a California based chain called Lamppost Pizza. Another lager that was pretty good was brewed by an old homebrewing buddy of mine name Todd Peterson who is brewing for Craftsman Brewing in Pasadena who made a smoked black lager beer. The other thing I was surprised at is that there weren't that many beers that were aged in oak barrels but one that was that was excellent was an Imperial Stout from Santa Barbara Brewing.

Apart from the beers at the fest I had a great time visiting with other beer industry people. I ran into Gail Simon who is a Boston based beer distributor whom I had met in Belgium last March. When we start getting our Papago Creek beer from Belgium later this year she may start distributing it in Boston. Adam Avery was there and he agreed to come out to Papago again later this year to participate in a brewers roundtable that I want to put on with Sam Calagione of Dogfish Head, Derek Osborne from BJ's and Tomme Arthur of Pizza Port. I had some interesting chats with the owners of a couple of other great beer places, the Liars Club in San Diego and Toranado in San Francisco. The three of us had a lot of things in common and it was interesting having the three owners of some of the countries better beer drinking establishments share stories and seeing how much we had in common. If you are going to visit Toranado I would do it soon, they just lost one of their better Belgium beer distributors so their beer selection may go down a little bit until someone picks up the brands they lost, I feel sorry for him and can't imagine what withdrawals we'd go through if Little Guy or any of our other good distributors went out of business. Oh, and if you go to the Liar's Club don't get the nachos (inside joke-sorry).

Prost, Ron