How to Premier a Beer (Bearded Isis Nashville Debut)

Despite all the assertions that the craft beer market still has room to grow, those of us who came to age when Sam Adams and a few regional brews made up the entire craft beer market in the grocery aisle still marvel at the choices. The options proliferate with every trip down the beer aisle.

With the American craft brew market exploding and breweries numbers finally nearing pre-Prohibition heights, it's getting harder for a new brewer to stand out from the pack. In a major metro like Nashville, where more than a dozen local brewers compete for tap and shelf space.

Brewers need to step out, make splashes in the local market, not ripples. They have to go beyond "brown, blonde, pale and wheat" to show some early ingenuity. That could prove tough, since many brewers have quality issues to resolve. Some debut before the recipes have been really tested (it's a more common problem all the time).

With its first public pour, Bearded Iris Brewing showed it has worked out the kinks with one mighty beer. The brewery's name comes from Tennessee state flower and not the product of some drug-induced word association. The new Nashville brewery debuted at the Hop Stop, an East Nashville beer bar. Nancy and I had never seen the place so crowded. Every seat was taken and a dense crowd ringed the L-shaped bar.

Bearded Iris stepped up with Habit, their double IPA. While common in most markets, screwy alcohol laws leave Nashville bereft of big IPA options. Cool Springs Brewery is the only brewery bottling high-gravity IPA; I'm sure a few small batches that have been poured at local taprooms.

To my taste  buds, the best Southern double IPA hails from Birmingham, Good People Brewing's Snake Handler, which has attained a cult following (it was just recently introduced to Tennessee).  So double IPA offers the right Nashville brewery a niche it can claim.

Habit's flavor closely resembled Great Lakes Brewery's wonderful Chillwave Double IPA, which is high praise, not a complaint. The big nose strikes quickly with pine needles, resin, grapefruit, orange and tangerine. For  7.5 percent ABV beer, Habit is light and nimble, letting the hops do the grunt work. The malt backbone is just that, giving Habit a framework for the massive hop character to fill in. 

After the Bearded Iris guys and Hop Stop staff poured everyone a Habit, they did a toast (ours were half-gone by then). A locally made double IPA as delicious as Habit could be habit-performing (thanks, thanks, I'm here all week).

Of course Habit could be habit-forming. The combination of Simcoe, Citra and Amarillo hops produces a tremendous beer.

A beer premier needs a bold beer, and Bearded Iris delivered. They had to go big with an event like this -- if the debut were a pedestrian beer style, the crowd would not have been half as thick. No one who was there would forget that experience. it builds in an audience when the taproom opens. It makes Bearded Iris more enticing when perusing the beer menu elsewhere in Middle Tennessee.