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.

A Southern Tier Imperial Triumvirate

This little brewery pours massive beers in Western New York along the Southern Tier Expressway, and deserves admiration far from the shores of Chautauqua Lake.

I grabbed three of its high-octane craft brews on my last northern journey. Only their brewery - and high quality - binds them. All three own alcohol contents that plead the drinker to take care with them (Heavy Weizen is lightest at 8 percent) and there's not a clunker in the bunch. All come in 22 oz. bomber bottles, and I sampled the trio on Sunday, Nov. 25 at lengthy intervals to ensure a clean palette and a clear head.

Drink cautiously but joyfully. This is fine-tuned beer experimentation.


Big Red Imperial Red Ale
All red, all the time - surprisingly, that is fine, because Southern Tier produced a smooth complex ale that avoids the trappings of "extreme" American brews.

It signals "red" on all fronts - cherries, apple, oak tones emerge in the nose that's amiably perfume-like. A host of red fruit flavors pop up, with a bitter grapefruit taking the reins immediately, then tapering into a slightly sour finish. Big Red certainly doesn't go down like an ale with 9.5 percent ABV.

There might be copyright trouble if a certain chewing gum maker ever gets wind of this beer's name, but Southern Tier never struggles to back up that name. Not my regular pour, but a pleasantly strong take on an overlooked style.
Rating: 7.5/10

Heavy Weizen Imperal Wheat Ale
Heavy Weizen tempted me to knock off points because its brewers recommend a lemon wedge when served, but this wheat has no need for accompaniment.

The nose erupts with orange, but passion fruit quickly tempers it - mango, strawberry, and bananas march in, with vanilla and peppermint oil flavors on the finish. Heavy Weizen sometimes taste more like a fruity wine than a wheat ale; its alcohol content creeps in early and hangs out for the duration.

Incredibly sweet but not obtrusively so, Heavy Weizen curls innocently from all those strong flavors into the finish's well-matched malts, where the clove taste isn't over the top.

Drank on the same day as Pyramid's Imperial Hefe Weizen, I'm comfortable saying Southern Tier has a strong wheat success on its hands and not everyone can churn out one of the same quality.
Rating: 8/10

"Unearthly" Delights
Hopheads love the Imperial India Pale Ale designation and so do I - but not for the extreme beer reasons usually offered. To my taste buds, they're similar to barley wine yet more flowery, complex and subtly strong. Southern Tier's Unearthly Imperial IPA is among the more stellar examples.

Reddish-brown in color, From the initial floweriness comes the flesh of apples, plums, then a massive wave of alcohol content; you can only hide 11 percent ABV for so long.

It's almost shocking that a beer this strong retains its drinkable nature. I don't get to make paint thinner analogies, but that's a bearable trade-off. It eschews the orangier directions of many Imperial IPAs, staking out firm ground in red fruit territory. Unearthly ventures into parts unknown to most craft brewers, and those who imbibe will be thankful for the ride.
Rating 9.5/10

Hoist returns: IPA Experiments

I haven't touched this blog in four months, but still accumulated a fair amount of reviews in my notebooks.

Here's a few recent nuggets from the IPA spectrum's opposite ends.

Stone XI Anniversary Ale: If not for a closing-time cooler search from the Grand Cru Wine & Spirits staff, I'd have never gotten within a nose of this limited release in Stone's customary 22-oz. bomber bottles. Because it was already chilled I had little recourse but to sample immediately.

With one sniff of its lush roasted nose, I became a believer.

Black IPA, or as Stone dubs it, India Black Ale, is a bold pairing of IPA and stout. It pours dark brown, almost opaque, with a creamy stoutish head crowning it. The creaminess goes on, with the roasted malt sticking out firmly and crisply. The alcohol content isn't shy; at 8.7 percent, some traces of fruits both tropical and Mediterranean emerge (I swear I caught the scent of figs). The 11th Anniversary exhibits a stunning level of balance and complexity.

I'm not a big Stone drinker, but adding this limited release to its regular rotation, would goes a long way toward making me a fan.
Sampled: Sept. 27, 2007
Rating: 8.5/10

Houblon Chouffe IPA Dobbelen Tripel:
My excitement soared at sight of a new entry to the Brasserie d'Achouffe line; the quirky Belgian brewer and its mythic gnome brewers won me over with a Christmas pack in 2003.

It squandered all that good will with this entry by branching onto soil few Belgian brewers till -- imitating American brewing trends. This IPA was created in response to the American extreme beer craze, the doubling and tripling of hops and malt in recipes to force International Bitterness Units to palette-searing heights.

From that vantage point, Houblon Chouffe IPA succeeds. Yet the beer tastes like their normal blonde ale with a heavy hops infusion interfering with the familiar flavors and spice bouquets. This is a Frankstein of a beer -- taste the IPA enough, and it's easy to see the parts from which d'Achouffe cobbled it into a whole.

By tossing a mountain of hops into its normally august ales, d'Achouffe falls prey to the worst tendencies of American microbrews. The ale feels hastily assembled, and suffers strongly for it. (Purchased at Midtown Wine and Spirits, Nashville.)
Sampled: Aug. 5, 2007
Rating: 3/10