Peaks and Pints is spent this week, folks. We’ve got nothing for our beer flight today. We’re like our 12 pack of Sierra Nevada Beer Camp Across The World — torn, trampled, and empty except for one pathetic, half-drank, beaten bottle. We’ve got nothing witty to offer and no tangents to lead you down. We’ve been sitting in front of this computer for hours, trying to come up with good stuff — and good sentences — with only mild success. As night once again turns to morning and this is all we have on paper for today’s beer flight, it’d be easy to freak out. Luckily, we’re professional and have been at this for long enough to know there are ways around such roadblocks — celebrations. Today’s beer flight is dedicated to anniversaries. Beer release anniversaries are different from wedding anniversaries. No one gives brewers “paper” on their beer’s first anniversary. Giving “cotton” on the second anniversary would be strange. If memory serves correctly, giving ELO’s Out of the Blue Double LP Gatefold (Blue Vinyl) on a 15th anniversary is tradition, but weird in the beer world. Um, see, we don’t know where we’re going with this. Without further ado, we present Craft Beer Crosscut 6.30.17: A Flight of Anniversaries. Enjoy …
Three Magnets Second Anniversary Sour Red Rye Ale
7.2% ABV
Three Magnets Brewing Co. is an appropriate name for the downtown Olympia brewery. Their strengths have pulled large crowds since their opening in November 2014. Three Magnets’ Second Anniversary Sour Red Rye Ale is aged in red wine puncheons for 18 months and then bottle conditioned. An aroma of mixed berry fruit emanates from the glass — attributed to both the mixed fermentation of Brettanomyces and Saccharomyces and the generous use of chocolate and rye malts. Ripened chocolate covered marionberries coat the tongue with a thin veneer of tart lychee. The subtle sourness invites you in for more and the moderate carbonation works perfectly in combination with the red wine barrel treatment.
Dogfish Head Beer To Drink Music To 2017
6.8% ABV
It’s the 50th Anniversary of the Summer of Love, and to celebrate Dogfish Head drew inspiration from the sights, sounds and experiences of 1967 California to brew the Official Beer of Record Store Day, a tropical blonde ale called Beer To Drink Music To ’17. This tropical mash up prominently features hibiscus flowers, inspired by the unofficial theme song of the 1967 movement — “San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair)” — and kiwi juice, an ideal flavor complement grown in California, the epi-center of the Summer of Love. Tune in, turn on and drop into strong citrus fruit aromas, hints of grapefruit and floral notes and a crisp, dry finish.
Dogfish Head Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew
9% ABV, 38 IBU
To celebrate the 40th anniversary of Miles Davis’ album, Bitches Brew, Dogfish Head took a stab at making a beer as complex as the album that shares its name. The brewery created its own Bitches Brew — a bold, dark beer that’s a fusion of three threads imperial stout and one thread honey beer with gesho root, a gustatory analog to Miles’ masterpiece. If you’re looking to get a little weird quickly on your keyboard or if you’re expecting a few of your closest horn, standup bass, and timpani playing friends to drop by for a little improvisation, then you’ll dig this, cat.
Avery Twenty Four
9.4% ABV
In 1993, Adam Avery’s brewed his first professional beers in a garage off an alley in Boulder, Colorado. In 1996, Avery was among the first breweries in Colorado to offer an IPA. Twenty-two years after launching Avery Brewing Co., Avery and his dad, Larry, built a $30 million production facility with the goal to brew upward of 70,000 barrels a year. Twenty-four years later, Avery brewed an imperial IPA with Idaho 7, Simcoe, Vic’s Secret and Columbus hops for notes of pineapple, mango, kumquat with edges of wood. The 9.4 percent ABV doesn’t play a major role in the flavor. Likewise, bitterness is restrained for this style.
Port Brewing 11th Anniversary Imperial IPA
10.5% ABV
Every year, Port Brewing crafts a special IPA to mark their anniversary. For their 11th, the San Marcos, California brewery created a complex Imperial IPA incorporating Columbus, Amarillo and Simcoe hops and dry-hopping with Columbus, Amarillo and Citra for an intensely hoppy body with fresh tones of pine and citrus. It sports a heavy body with lingering bitter hop and malt after taste but with enough toffee malts to keep the sweetness from becoming sticky.
