Sierra Nevada and Russian River BRUX

Sierra Nevada and Russian River BRUX - Domesticated Wild Ale (2012)

Limited Collaboration.

25.4 fl. oz. / $13.99 USD / 8.3% ABV

About: "What began as mutual admiration between Sierra Nevada’s Grossman Family and Russian River’s Cilurzos has grown and progressed into genuine friendship. Brux began as an idea and has grown into something altogether different: The liquid manifestation of change over time. Refermented in the bottle with Brettanomyces bruxellensis, Brux will change and develop over time. Copper-colored, dry and complex, with slightly tart notes of green grass, pear, spice and lemon - this ale will progress in the bottle for many years."

Thoughts: The cork popped off with a fair amount of pressure and smoked like a gun out of some kind of Film Noir. BRUX poured a really light yellowish, apricot color with a huge erupting head of tiny bubbles that faded damn near instantly. While the beer is a total haze, you can still see vast amounts of carbonation bubbles rising up like crazy.

Smells really crisp, really sweet, with some lighter Belgian yeast... spicy notes, and there's a little bit of an apple cider-like spice to it. Very fruity and tart with a hint of pear, but mostly a green apple crisp type of thing going on.

Intense first gulp! A blitzkrieg to the mouth, even with the smokey aftermath. It happened so fast. Let's try it again... it tickles. The carbonation in this is off the fucking charts here and just attacks the tongue viciously while the tartness and flavors pounce all over the place. It really is "wild". It doesn't let up either. Every single gulp has a tang to it, a haze to it and it's just fucking raw tasting. I like it. It's like, almost fuzzy feeling. The finish is really dry, but not super drying.

This really reminds me of a mead. With that cider like consistency and a little bit of a honey flavor in there at least. After adjusting to the immense blasts here a little bit more flavors start to come through. Earthy leaves, bundles of hay, and a lot more of that yeasty base. It's not really funky, but there is a degree of funk there, only it's not really unpleasant by any means. I did let this sit in my fridge inside a paper bag for about six months or so though, since I heard it was pretty rough upon initial release.

I was really expecting that wild yeast to be a huge factor and very up-front in the beer, but perhaps it's fallen back a little bit because it is blending rather awesomely here. It's pretty cool how it starts out like a hard cider / farmhouse type brew and ends up tasting a bit like a spiced ale. I guess this one really played a lot of mind tricks on people. For me I waited the right time, since well... any time I open a beer it's the "right time". But I'm pleased that I got a bit of the strange along with the unusual here.

Mistransformed, transforming or just malformed to begin with, well, who's to say? Some people online try to act like they're the shit, or shiznit if you will, saying that they drain pour $14 bottles of this, that, and other beers. You wanna know what I think? They're a bunch of lying fags. Yeah. I don't drain pour nothin', especially bottles over three dollars no matter how horrid it may be. This one wasn't bad at all though, just saying, so keep rolling with those cheek punches babies.

Mixing Brews #2

Russian River Pliny The Elder "VS" Knee Deep Hoptologist (July 7'th 2012)

WHAT'S GOIN' ON: I'm sure a lot of crazy shit went down during San Fransisco Beer Week (February 10th through the 19th) - a smorgasbord of events all up and down the Bay Area for beer lovers and pretentious beer nerds alike - but you know, I didn't really hear too much about it. Sure, I'm out of the loop! I wasn't even there at the time, but I wish I was. And hell, who's to say that people can even remember what happened that week with all the booze that was consumed? Not many would be my guess. Aside from a few small circles probably... oh, and of course, if your establishment was throwing a tasting competition where gold medals are handed out and placed around bottle necks! That shit is as serious as a rape scene with Dakota Fanning.

A lot of people were buzzed on the night of February 11'th In Hayward, California at The Bistro (Home of Extreme Beer and Live Music), but it wasn't until a little later, when the word spread of their 12'th Annual DIPA Festival Gold Medal Winner, that a larger buzz would rage, (and not only) online! Beating out 42 other Double IPAs, including Pliny The Elder (Silver) and Ruination (Bronze), was the newcomer to the group: Hoptologist. I got back down to California at the end of June after a moving to the dead end of the new earth, long after these festivities had ended, and the madness was just the starting to heavily build at this point. Being from the area all my life, but just a kid and too young and into love and other drugs, I had never actually tried Pliny. So after getting caught up in "the scene", I naturally wanted some.

By this time, the clerks at Total Wine and More seemed to be pretty fed up and/or apathetic with all the Pliny whores (That was the vibe I got, and I wasn't trying to be one - I just wanted a single bottle if possible), so they were quick to pimp out Hoptologist to the fullest. Knee Deep just released a 'Gold Medal Winning' poster (displayed very apparently) to go along with it, and they were very supportive of it. I of course got my hands on a few bottles of Pliny, and after I drank my bottle of Hoptologist, I went right back to BevMo! and bought another one to bring home with me. When I got back home and once again had access to the web, I read up on both of these brews a little more just for my own personal enjoyment and more so, to see what people had to say about Hoptologist. I've already heard enough about Pliny to know that people are all over it, just like my sperm on a photoshopped nude of Saoirse Ronan.

But I digress! When I started reading reviews of Hoptologist, what I noticed was that people were just going on 'certain sites' rating it and talking mad shit! Unwarranted shit, mind you. They weren't even really reviews either, and most of the people who wrote them seemed as if they didn't even drink the f'n beer. "I can't believe this beat Pliny, I give it a 1" or "Pliny 4 Lyfe! hoptolgish suxxsz..", and so on. It was some childish bullshit and I must of course scoff at it. I understand fanboy-ism, and I understand favoritism, and I understand territorial pissing... but I've never really been one to understand stupidity and general annoyance. Can I deal with it? That's a different discussion. People like to separate things so much. "This one's better than that one." "That one's better than this one." And so on. Well... fuck everybody who does that, because I AM MIXING THIS SHIT TOGETHER! Just for the hell of it. Not to piss anyone off either (much like Dr. Blood, I could care less about the abhorring, diseased, simple-minded and stinky people of Wal-Mart, which are quite frankly, below me - and I quote). I was going to drink them both the same night anyways, so I figured, why the beer knot?! 

HOW IT WENT DOWN: Both of these similar looking brews formed a clear, pumpkin shade of orange and it had a long lasting bubbly huge head atop of it.

While both of these beers smell incredible on their own, and (as expected) together as well, it's also pretty awesome when they're mixed. Smells a bit like Torpedo actually. Hey, I could have bought a whole shitload of Torpedo for a fraction of the price of this and it would have been all good. Pay no attention to the man behind the pint glass! Hoptologist has a bit more of a creamy candy-like smell, while Pliny has more of a prickly and piney. They mix together quite well. 

I guess similar's attract too. This combo starts off with a fluffy cloud inside the mouth that rapidly expands and explodes. There's extremely peppery caramel, a haze of strong booze and leafy, piney hops burst all over. It's bitter, bittersweet and a bit stinging. There's not much more to it than that aside from the subtle fruitiness. Just two righteous DIPA's mingling together. Nothing to see here!

Lot of foam on the mouth first off. It settles down eventually... like two beers at war, eventually making peace. Perhaps mankind, and idiots aspiring to become some kind of man, should take note. So how did I feel overall about the whole thing? Well, it felt good in spirit. Would I have been just as happy to walk down the block and grab a Southern Tier Gemini and mix it with a Sierra Nevada Torpedo? The answer is yes. But then again, the Hops fell off before these beers were even bottled right? ...so well, fuck it.

Russian River Pliny The Elder

Russian River Pliny The Elder (2012)

Brewed and Bottled by Russian River Brewing Co., in Santa Rosa, CA. USA

Year Round Brew (Very Limited Availability).

16.9 fl. oz. / Gift (x7) / 8% ABV

About: "Pliny the Elder is brewed with Amarillo, Centennial, CTZ, and Simcoe hops. It is well-balanced with malt, hops, and alcohol, slightly bitter with a fresh hop aroma of floral, citrus, and pine. Best enjoyed FRESH! That is why we make it in such limited supply. Actual bottling date is printed on each bottle!

Where did we come up with this name? Back in the year 2000, our friend, Vic Kralj, who owns the Bistro in Hayward, California, decided to have his first ever Double IPA festival. Vic invited 10 breweries, 6 of whom (including us) had to brew something special for him since we had nothing that would fall under this style category. Vinnie had made a Double IPA at Blind Pig in 1994, but was not brewing one at Russian River Brewing at the time. He had an idea for the recipe, but not a name. After much research in beer books, brainstorming, and deliberation, we came up with "Pliny the Elder". Pliny, the man, lived in the first century- 23 to 79 A.D. According to our brewing references, he and his contemporaries either created the botanical name or at least wrote about Lupus Salictarius, or hops, currently known as Humulus Lupulus. That was a very early reference to an important part of any Double IPA! Pliny the beer has now become one of our flagship brews!"

Pre-Thoughts: When traveling back to Cali, I had merely a few things on my mind: Find some Pliny, drink some Pliny, swim in an ocean of Pliny, ect. Of course, I had all sorts of fun shit planned and did a lot, but I made it a priority while on the way anywhere I'd sniff out those dastardly liquor stores and find liquid treasure! I was met with the same answers from every single one of the seven shops in two different counties, including BevMo!, which was along the lines of: "We don't stock that any more because we had a fight with the distributor.." and one guy even added that it was "...over refrigerated trucks." What in the fuck! There was only one massive shop called Total Wine that claimed to get shipments in, and told me to come back Friday morning. Upon my return that fateful morning, as the employees were shelving tons of bombers from various boxes, I was told that no Pliny had come in.

Later that morning while driving to the river for a fun day of drinking beer while on a speedboat, my sister called up this restaurant in the city of Sac called The Shack (Reviews: 1, 2), claiming that they've got all sorts of strange rare beer there. "She says they've got Pliny the Elder, but not the Younger." I became horribly excited, before the ultimate realization came that I could have possibly tried bottles of Elder and Younger back to back sunk in. We got to The Shack around 8PM and requested multiple bottles of Pliny. "We're all sold out." the guy tells us, all hearts drop. "No, we just got some in this morning.", a girl says. Awwww Yeahz! Turns out the dude was just so used to saying that so much it just comes natural. The Pliny bottles we got were exactly one month old, which is strange since they had "just got them in". I pondered for a moment whether we should have DRAIN POURED THEM ALL!!1, but I was far too deep in once I caught a whiff.

Thoughts: Pliny poured a light yellowish-gold and had a fluffy-topped, rapidly growing and very bubbly slightly off-white head. There's a fair amount of graininess to it, causing a slight haze.

It smells pretty damn good! Spicy with a sweet candy quality to it, and a hint of zesty lemony bitterness. It reminds me a little bit of the ocean: cold and misty. There's a resiny pine, and that hint of grapefruit... and it's got a crackling presence to it, as if every time I smell it something bursts open.

That first gulp was madness... madness I say! But seriously, the taste is soothingly sweet at first with popping hops that hit from beginning to end. After the swallow there's a bittersweet, almost buttery sensation. It reminds me of natural honey, but with a strong edge to it. There's a sharp bitter finish and it's peppery on the throat which is attacking, and pretty fierce. But it's got a very nice balance to it and honestly, I was expecting it to be way more hop dominant than it is. While the hops give off the flavor and scent initially, the malts blend instantly upon the taste, and never does any one factor of the brew outshine the others.

Mouth is a medium. It's a bit frothy at first, but smooth and creamy, and goes down super fucking easy so it's really filling. If water tasted this good I'd probably be a waterholic, and not what I am today... I can see why so many people like this, as there really are no negative aspects about the beer. It tastes good, smells good and makes you feel good. There's no bad aftertaste to it and it finishes quite nicely. I had my first three Plinys with my dinner from The Shack, which was a massive Cajun Blue Cheese Burger, extra pickles and I skipped most of the fries on the principle of fuck fries. Needless to say, that meal was the bomb.

Post-Thoughts: Pliny the Elder is indeed an excellent DIPA, there's no doubt about it... but with Russian River's over the top advertising combined with their supremely anal distribution within the California state, (not to mention the fanboys that go out of their way to snag every bottle they can just because it's hip as fuck to do so) it's become quite a bit over-hyped, and not to mention, a real hassle to go through just to drink a fucking beer!

Whether or not this is the best beer in California, is up for debate, but the real fact about this beer is that it's ultimately a quality product. It's surprisingly balanced and tastes awesome right to the last drop. Is it the best IPA I've ever had? I don't think so. Is it in the top 5? Well, I haven't actually made a list and there's still a lot more out there for me to try. Ballast Point's Sculpin and Alchemist's Heady Topper for instance, which I can't seem to find anywhere. But when it comes to IPA's, there really hasn't been a middle ground for my personal tastes. Either I really fucking like it, or it's been a horrible letdown. When I think of quality American IPA's I think of Southern Tier's Gemini, or Wachusett's Larry, Sierra Nevada's Torpedo, Hoptimum and Celebration. Pliny the Elder fits right in with the rest of the best.