Monthly Archives: July 2014

Tasting Room

Triple Horn Brewing – Seattle Washington

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Though it is only a few miles away from Redhook, most people visiting probably only ever stop by Redhook. That is quite a shame because Triple Horn has some solid brews available that are much more flavorful than Redhook. When I stopped by I tried the blood orange wheat, IPA, session ale, oatmeal porter, and double IPA.

The blood orange wheat was quite refreshing and unlike any beer I have tried before. The infusion of blood oranges really gave it a strong citrus flavor that was very tasty. The session ale had a nice light citrus kick and yet was still solidly bitter. The IPA was certainly on the darker maltier side but it was well-balanced so the floral and pine flavors came through nicely on the back end.

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The oatmeal porter was much more flavorful than the one at Redhook and had much more noticeable coffee and chocolate flavors. The Double IPA was seriously bitter and also quite heavy on the malts. Thankfully this one also has some enjoyable hop flavors at the back end leaning towards tropical fruits and citrus.

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I ended with the Barrel Aged Belgian Strong Ale, aged in Jim Beam barrels. I expected to love this one but I actually hated it. The flavors of the underlying beer were far too heavy on tart fruit flavors along with the spice flavors you tend to find in some forms of darker Belgian beers. The spice and fruit flavors overpowered the rest of the beer. The whiskey flavors didn’t particularly help because they were added pretty lightly.

Overall, Triple Horn is a solid smaller brewery that you should absolutely check out if you are in the area and don’t particularly like wine. The IPAs are fantastic as well as the blood orange wheat.

Paul McGuire

Paul McGuire is a craft beer enthusiast. He likes to travel with his husband and enjoy the great outdoors. In his day job, Paul is a divorce attorney serving clients in San Diego California.

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Brewery/Restaurant

Redhook Brewing – Seattle Washington

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Redhook is such a big name that I thought it might be disappointing. After all, many of its bigger brews make their way down to San Diego and so I have had them before. But I had hoped that I might encounter some interesting smaller batch beers that were only available at the tasting room. Sadly, they required me to buy a flight of tasters at once so I had to try almost everything even though I prefer to stick to a few styles when there are a lot of beers to taste. I tried the Wisecracker Wit, ESB, session ale, ale, porter on nitro, IPA, and double IPA.

The wit had a nice sweet Belgian flavor and a light enough ginger flavor that didn’t overpower the rest of it. The ESB you have probably had before. Even on tap it was largely an easy drinking beer without any serious amount of flavor. I was glad that the malts didn’t overpower the hops too much but it was largely a bit weak for my tastes.

The session ale was a slightly weaker version of the typical session IPA. It had some nice light citrus hop flavors but again was not particularly strong tasting. The audible ale pretty much tasted like a typical northwestern pale ale with cascade hops and not a lot of flavor.

Enjoying the outdoor seating area with my taster flight.
Enjoying the outdoor seating area with my taster flight.

The porter on nitro was nice and smooth but again pretty lacking in flavor. I didn’t get much of the coffee and chocolate it was described as having. The IPA was nice, sporting good citrus and pine flavors. It was clearly a fresh batch and had a nice sweet finish. Still I couldn’t help compare it to the Bellevue Brewing IPA I had the day before.

The double IPA was on the sweeter side, far too sweet for me. I didn’t particularly care for it because it did not seem to feature the hops very prominently and wasn’t particularly bitter. Redhook was an interesting place to stop and visit if you are going with friends out to Woodenville Wineries but none of the beers were particularly impressive.

Paul McGuire

Paul McGuire is a craft beer enthusiast. He likes to travel with his husband and enjoy the great outdoors. In his day job, Paul is a divorce attorney serving clients in San Diego California.

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Tasting Room

Bellevue Brewing – Seattle Washington

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I visited Seattle recently and recently with the hope of visiting some local breweries. Sadly, I only ended up visiting four. Still, I will provide my thoughts here on Bellevue Brewing, Redhook, Triple Horn, and Fremont Brewing. 

Bellevue Brewing was the first place I visited near Seattle and some of the beers were quite impressive. I tasted the pale ale, ESB, scotch ale, oatmeal stout, IPA, Triple Wheat Ale, and Malt Liquor.

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The pale ale was slightly sweet with a nice citrus back to go along with the typical pine hop flavors. The beer was nicely balanced so that the malts did not dominate like they do in some pale ales. The ESB was a bit too light on the flavor for my tastes. It didn’t have any interesting flavors that I noticed.

The scotch ale was interesting because the first thing I tasted was a sort of sweet grape juice flavor. I didn’t really detect much of the caramel and toffee flavors the brewery described it as having. The oatmeal stout was quite nice on the lighter end of the stout spectrum. It was good and creamy and sported some light caramel flavors.

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The IPA was bursting with flavors. I found out that this beer is brewed fresh every six days, which explains why it had that fresh taste. The IPA was on the lighter side and bursting with citrus and floral flavors. It reminded me of the San Diego style of IPA I had previously missed while visiting Seattle.

The triple wheat IPA was a powerful brew and had plenty of intense flavors from similar hops as the IPA. I also got a nice tropical fruit flavor from it. The use of wheat malts kept it from being overly malty like many triple IPAs tend to get. The malt liquor was very strange because despite its 8% alcohol it was very light in bitterness and had almost no body to it. Perhaps some people will enjoy having a strong beer that has very little taste but it seemed like a total waste to me.

Overall Bellevue Brewing was a fun place to visit and had some fantastic IPAs. When I found out that my sister had not yet visited there despite living in Seattle for quite some time now we stopped in for a pint a few days later. They had added a rye version of the IPA by then and it impressed me so much that I had a pint of that rather than the regular IPA.

Paul McGuire

Paul McGuire is a craft beer enthusiast. He likes to travel with his husband and enjoy the great outdoors. In his day job, Paul is a divorce attorney serving clients in San Diego California.

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Beer Education

Introduction to Craft Beers Part 7 – IBU and ABV

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For the final part of this series on craft beer basics, I thought I would explain some common acronyms. You commonly see IBU and ABV listed on the menu but you might have been embarrassed to ask what they meant.

Why do breweries list ABV on the boards?
ABV stands for alcohol by volume and sometimes you will just see a percentage of alcohol listed. Though technically not all beers need to display the percentage of alcohol, and thus the mainstream brewers don’t bother to post it, it helps you as the consumer to understand something about the beer before ordering it.

Though higher alcohol content does not always equal better flavor, it tends to lead to bolder flavors. It also makes a big difference typically in the thickness of the beers, with beers over 8% typically tasting quite a bit thicker. Once you become familiar with a style of beer, then it tells you quite a bit about a stout to see that it is 5% vs 12%.

It is also important for you to pay attention so you can try to keep track of how much you are drinking. Gone are the days when you can simply count the beers. You will typically see beers with higher alcohol content served in smaller glasses because that helps reduce the amount of alcohol in one serving. If you drive to the brewery be especially careful to limit your intake so you don’t drink and drive. Most breweries will serve you beer to go in a growler so you can finish enjoying your favorite beer at home without getting into an accident or getting pulled over. When I take friends out to visit breweries, I like to bring home a growler so that I can drink when I get home.

Why do breweries list IBU? What is that?
Not all breweries list IBU but many do because it gives you a lot of information that you might not realize. IBU stands for International Bitterness Units and it is an easy way to check that the beer you are ordering is not going to be too bitter for your tastes. Some smooth light porters might list an IBU of around 30, sometimes even lower. This is typically a level at which the average drinker probably won’t notice any bitterness at all.

At the middle end, a lot of IPAs and pale ales come in at around 50-60 IBU. This might be too much for some people but it is still in the middle range and a hop head might demand even more. Imperial IPAs and sometimes extra strong stouts can be from 80-120 IBUs. These beers are going to be noticeably bitter and are not good to try for your first time. You can see for yourself if bitterness is something you like as you drink more beer. I tend to enjoy beers at all levels of the scale but I do have a soft spot for the seriously bitter brews.

I hope you learned a lot about beer in this educational series. You should now be able to recognize the differences between the different styles of beers. Slowly you will start to differentiate between malt and hop flavors in your favorite beers.

Paul McGuire

Paul McGuire is a craft beer enthusiast. He likes to travel with his husband and enjoy the great outdoors. In his day job, Paul is a divorce attorney serving clients in San Diego California.

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Beer Education

Introduction to Craft Beer Part 6 – IPAs

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When I first started to get into IPAs, I thought they were all going to be amazing but it turns out there is a huge spectrum in which you can have a variety of different flavors of IPA. At the low end, you have English style IPAs that represent how the beer was originally made. They tend to be closer to a pale ale and lower in alcohol. Then in the middle there are different styles depending on area of the US where the beer is brewed. Northwest style IPAs present serious pine flavors from the local varieties of hops and frequently are on the lighter end of the alcohol scale, sometimes as low as 5.5%.

Then there is the West Coast style which features heavy citrus and floral flavors with little emphasis on balancing the hop flavors with the malt flavors. This sometimes leads to delicious light colored brews that focus almost exclusively on bright hop flavors. West Coast IPAs typically hover around 6% alcohol with some approaching 7%. West Coast style IPAs also tend to be more bitter as well because the brewers are trying to push the envelope.

It is common to see the term American IPA. These frequently tend to be darker brews with a lot more toasty malt flavors balanced with the hops. For me this means I need to taste it before ordering a pint because I don’t care for very dark IPAs. Then you have the double and triple IPAs that have become especially popular in San Diego where the brew typically starts somewhere around 8% and goes up to 13 or 14% at the high extreme.

Double IPAs vary significantly between breweries with some focusing on the heavy malt character to balance the hops and others pushing all limits by presenting the most bitter brew possible with malt flavors that you can barely recognize. If you tend to prefer darker colored IPAs or lighter colored IPAs it helps to do some research before buying a six-pack because not all beers feature clear descriptions.

The other distinguishing thing in IPAs is the type of hops used. Flavors can vary widely depending on the variety of hops used. Learning specific types of hops is not easy but asking breweries about the hops in your favorite brews is the first step.

If you explore more, you might notice a lot of different labels thrown on IPAs such as Belgian IPA, Black IPA, Rye IPA, etc. Pay close attention as you order these and you might slowly start to recognize the way in which they are different. Typically a Belgian IPA is made with Belgian yeast and it has many of the distinct flavors of a Belgian style beer. Black IPAs tend to have a lot of roasted malts so they often come across like a hoppy version of a porter or stout. Rye IPAs tend to focus on the spicy flavors of rye as it interacts with the hops. It is a flavor that you will learn to recognize over time but is fairly hard to describe.

Local IPA favorites: Societe The Apprentice, Council Chazzam!, Pacific Bomboro, Alesmith IPA, Stone IPA, Ballast Point Sculpin, Saint Archer IPA, Rough Draft Southern Triangle, Helm’s Wicked as Sin, New English Humbly Legit IPA,

Local Double IPA favorites: Green Flash West Coast, Green Flash Green Bullet, Ballast Point Dorado, Stone Enjoy By IPA, Karl Strauss Tower 20, Saint Archer Double IPA, Rough Draft Hop Therapy, Alesmith Yulesmith,

Paul McGuire

Paul McGuire is a craft beer enthusiast. He likes to travel with his husband and enjoy the great outdoors. In his day job, Paul is a divorce attorney serving clients in San Diego California.

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