Where the Wild Beers Were

October 17 was the...is it the third?...annual Where the Wild Beers Are.  Or at least the third in the Twin Cities.  The founders and organizers of the event, our-fearless-leader Jeff Halvorson and ex-St. Paul guy Tim Stendahl, also have a parallel event in Brooklyn.  (Tim confided that the beer scene is better in the Twin Cities, but shh...don't tell the Brooklyn hipsters that, they might get mad and wave their glowstics and man-scarves at us.)

A nice little crowd at Stub & Herb's appreciates a pour of sour beer.
The gathering loosens up as the day goes on.

Thanks once again are due to Stub and Herbs for hosting the event on their patio. Rather than do a formal evaluation of the beers (well...maybe a few...and I actually wrote them down rather than mumbling into my phone...old skool), I thought I would share a few pics and say how much I enjoy the atmosphere of the event. Halvorson and Stendahl have done a really smart thing in making this collaborative. Sour-and-wild beer lovers are few, those willing to plan ahead are fewer yet.

Kris-10 and ERok take charge at Pouring Station 2

Rather than pay a gate fee and drink what's available, they pull together a few nice beers, and then ask everyone to bring a commercial version themselves. That's the entrance fee. You get a designated number of "tastes" depending on how much you bring. The beauty of this is that it puts the quality of the event in the hands of the participants. The geekier the beer crowd, the better the beer. It's like the difference between a seminar and a lecture class. And even with the smallish crowds this event brings, there's more beer than a reasonable human can get through without a lot of Tums.

The crowd loosens up, but stays intently focused on good beer.
Michael (left) is still not entirely sure about the "sour" thing.

The crowd loosens up as the day goes on. Interest is really intense during the announced pours of the special-est of special beers early on. (Look at the faces in the first picture).  But things loosen up as the day goes on.  The conversation wanders, but people really do appreciate the beer. I hate to say this, but it really is a very much more "European" spirit than a lot of beer festivals. I also love that it allows people to try a range of beers that they have often never had before.

Halvorson and Stendahl lined up a couple of kegs to start things off. I chose the Oud Beersel Framboise over the Flat Earth. Nuff said, except that the framboise was lovely and it complimented the day perfectly -- sunny but with a chill of fall in the air. The beer was a lovely deep pink, with a well-balanced tartness rather than a full-on sour acidity. It comes across like a raspberry lemonade, very refreshing.

Quite a few of the memorable beers were classic sour beers as well. The Oud Beersel Oude Geuze Vielle was sadly lightstruck, but was probably nice once. The Drei Fonteinen Oude Geuze 1999 on the other hand was nice, funky, sour and slightly vegetal, but deep and refreshing. The Cantillon Iris 2006 was very floral, hoppy-bitter, quite sour, and really delightful.

Some rare and often vintage beers make it to the table.

Other beers were wild experiments I would not have expected. Allegash Confluence 2009 is like a bright pils with a tart edge provided by what I think is Brettanomyces Lambicus. The Odell Sabateur was deep brown, with a strange mix of chocolate and sourness battling for flavor. It was kind of like a Flemish style chocolately porter, if you can imagine that.  Really weird, in a good way. Several brewers had their own twists on collaborations with Belgian production brewer De Proef, and it was nice to see the range and try them together. All very different, and I don't think I had a bad beer out of the bunch. De Proef does not have a "beer geek" reputation, but they've got a nice niche going with the collaborations.

One of several De Proef collaborations.

Other beers I had didn't quite fit the bill, but were worth trying anyway. Brooklyn Local 1, pale with some haze (it's been open a while by the time I get to it) and orange highlights. Not really sour or especially wild -- its really like a saison. This is one of the issues with a self-organized event: sometimes beers outside of the obvious "wild" range will sneak in. But I wouldn't have otherwise had it, and I'm glad I did. Same thing for Lagunitas' Little Sumthin' Wild, despite the name. It's like a Belgian IPA. But then, sometimes the stomach needs a break from sour.

Autumn Brew Review Review

Oh man.  Where did October go?
Now that we are in November, it's time to revisit some of the Twin Cities' beer events from October.  And the Autumn Brew Review is by far the biggest.  And a great time.  Especially if you go early, and avoid the crush of the crowd later.  I wasn't there late enough to find out which beers and brewers got the most-popular votes, but here are some of mine.  For me the dominant theme here is beers I was really surprised by.  I've gotten rather jaded as a lot of "experimental" or "artistic" or "extreme" beers are also not pulled off particularly well.  But there are some exceptions, and it's such a nice thing when a beer brings an idea together with technically excellent brewing to just blow you away.

Early crowd, lovely day.

Best beer: Jubel (Descutes).  10% abv, 55 IBU.
What a revelation.  Deschutes is distributing in Minnesota now, but it's relatively new.  So I know I'm late to a (now very large) party with this.  But I've been really impressed with everything that I've had.  But this was something altogether different -- it was one of those beer revelations that happen a handful of times in life.  It wasn't "oh, that's good."  More like my tasting note, which just says "SUPER GOOD."

Sadly, I only had half a pour.  Descutes had this on tap, and Nicole got it.  I was hesitant.  The writeup had all of the big-beer cliches that I've come to be wary of, all jumbled together.  "Behold something so deep and crimson and swirling with spice, malt, earthy fruit and oak that it is barely tethered to the term beer" they said.  Then they added that it is aged in Pinot Noir barrels.  Sounds like an overly elaborate, overly sweet, overly alcoholic trainwreck, thought I.  "We'll run out, you sure you don't want a pour?" said the Descutes guy.  Nah...I'm trying to stay relatively sober since I have to pour for Dark Horse later.

To say I was wrong doesn't come close.  The thing about this beer is that it wears its size very well.  Unlike every other huge "special" beer monstrosity I feel like I've had recently, this one is ... well attenuated!  It's tasty, it has a lot going on.  But it has no alcohol club hidden behind it's lean body.  No overly sweet finish to make you want to scrape your tongue.  It's just lovely.  Which is probably why the modal review of this incredibly lovely beer on Beer Advocate is something like a B+.  ( "Seems like they were targeting and old ale or an English Barleywine" says one numbskull.  No, because then it would taste like every other "special" beer that I guess gets you out of the B range in these people's sugar addled heads....)

Sorry for the rant. This beer is incredible.  Buy it if you can.  And thanks a million for blowing my expectations out of the water, Descutes.  I need that from time to time.

Best brewery: Dave's BrewFarm (Wilson, WI).
I had met the eponymous David Anderson a few months before, at the second-round judging events for the American Homebrewers Association national competition in Madison.  We were all way too tired to take him up on his offer to show us around if we stopped by on our way back to St. Paul.  They have a really interesting stable of beers though, and they are all very well brewed and very tasty.

"Wheatless Wonder" is kind of a neat idea: can we make a beer that's like a weizen but with all-malt?  It's a nice, approachable beer, and a lot more interesting to taste than to describe probably.  Nicole was very taken with this one.  Their hoppy "Lupulo Noir" was a very smart twist on the creeping trend of black IPAs.  Here, it's pils malt, deeper caramel malt and chocolate, alongside a host of hops -- but not all of them usual suspects for this beer (think both Amarillo and Northern Brewer).  Oh, and a Belgian yeast strain.  I really liked this one, and what I liked most was the surprise of it.  Like Jubel, in lesser hands this could have been a trainwreck.  But Dave has a deft touch as well as an experimental spirit, and it was both surprising and elegant instead.

The dandelion and clover saison was, they said, "our fairwell to summer."  But in truth it was both summery (saison) and leaning toward fall (noticeable hints of the brown sugar and Victory malts they list in the overview).  They had a host of other interesting beers lined up that I didn't get to try as well.  Oh, and did I mention that they are a wind-powered brewery?  How cool is that?

It's a happy little beer.

Best beer concept: Jazz series, Bell's Brewery (Kalamazoo, MI).
Bell's put out a series of variations on the Biere de Garde style this fall.  Here the idea was to draw inspiration from the idea of the Jazz trio.  Normally I wouldn't get to try them all in sequence, but this was a perfect opportunity.  Le Batteur ("the drummer") was the dryest, crispest and lightest of the three.  Le Pianiste ("the pianist") was the most classically "to style" of the three, and my favorite.  This one had the toasty Munich malt notes that went along with the dry finish extremely well.  Le Contrebassiste ("the bassist") added in notes of roast and smoked malts.  While I liked this one less well, it was a great set of beers taken together, and a way to explore a style largely ignored by American craftbrewers.

The author in an agreeable state of mind.  People love the Dark Horse shotgun tap handles.
"Where's Dark Horse?"  It's in Marshall, MI.  "Where's that?"  Near Battle Creek.

To top the day off, we had the pleasure of pouring for Dark Horse, another of my favorites.  By that point, it was starting to get a bit late in the day and the beer-geek crowd starts to give way by sheer force of numbers to a crowd that cares a bit less about the beer.  Some were legitimately (and quite rightly) upset that they missed Dark Horse's excellent Double Crooked Tree IPA, poured through a Randall of both Cascade hops and orange peel.  Say what you will about gimmicks, but this actually brought a lovely floral/citrus punch to an already great beer.  Others, especially later on didn't care what they ordered.  "Hook me up, bud!"  Okay, here's a nice Imperial stout!  (And to be fair, the stout too was lovely, nicely attenuated, less brutally roasty than some of the Dark Horse beers.)  Proud to say we ran through three kegs in not much time.  Of course I like to think that was due to the magnetic personalities and deep beer knowledge of myself and Nicole rather than the other assets of the two comely young ladies that were pouring before us.  Anyway, hope some of you got there and had as good a time as we did.

What were your favorites for the year?  Any obvious ones I missed?