The first time I ever came across the Bear, he was pretty sweet to me.  We were on his home turf, and a bar I was at had extremely fresh kegs of Racer 5, their “session” IPA, on draught.  For undisclosed reasons I was afforded copious amounts of this beer for free, which went down smooth and truly gave me an appreciation for fresh, bright, amazing West Coast IPA.  Since then I’ve flirted with the Bear some more, finding some on tap here and there, drinking the bottles that I could, with Racer 5 and Hop Rod Rye far outweighing the others in terms of what I consumed.

Needless to say I was not prepared for the intensity of the beers that The Gate had on that night.  There were TWENTY lines of Bear Republic to choose from, plus three casks which were tapped in series.  Having chased the fabled Racer X for so long after loving it’s younger brother, and having none of my friends around to discourage me from burning my mouth with hop insanity before I drank anything else, I had to go for it.  A pint of Racer X is as close as I have gotten in a long time to the completely sublime freshness of IPA on the West Coast.  There was a clean brightness about Racer X that sets it apart from the other big IPA, Apex, that I had at the Blind Tiger a few months back.  A beautiful amber color that belied the beer’s easy drinking finish, Racer X is perfectly carbonated, relatively light bodied without being thin, and finishes with an insane hop wallop dryness that is damaging but not tongue destroying.  Of course the nose on this beer is what I was after and I was not disappointed.  Didn’t have the wherewithal to try and figure out what kind of Hops went into it, but there were massive amounts of resin, citrus, and just insane fresh Hop aroma.  Wow.  I tried to drink this slowly but that didn’t go so well.

Next I was encouraged by Pat and others to try the cask, Hop Rod Rye, already mentioned as one of my favorites from the brewery.  It took me a few minutes to warm the beer up and try to recover my taste buds, but both kicked in in sufficient time and I was pleasantly surprised by how great the cask treated this beer.  Or rather, how untreated it was — it was a beautiful ruddy brown, hazed and dark.  Regardless, the natural, light carbonation and preserved freshness did wonders for the round Malt flavors, and the lack of heavy carbonation allowed the Rye to come across in a gentler, less astringent fashion.  This Rye IPA is a great example of how malt, bitterness, and spice can all come together to form a sessionable IPA without leaning to far in any one direction.  Bear Republic is masterful at balancing these properties…when they want to.

When they don’t want to be balanced, they aren’t.  After not taking it easy for my first two selections, I went for the 11% ABV Barrel Aged Old Scouter’s Barleywine next.  As shocked as I was by the first two beers, I could never have expected how perfect and wonderful this barleywine is.  I was literally walking around stunned, telling everyone who would listen that I would rather “frame this beer than drink it.”  Massive amounts of malt and barrel funk are the first thing you smell when you bring this beer up to your gullet.  The malt was so thick and heavy on the nose that I couldn’t stop smelling it, like the time I visited a sugar shack in Massachussettes and wanted to bathe in the steam of the Maple Syrup cooking down.  Touted as 120 IBUs, Scouter’s didn’t dissapoint in the bitterness department, but as unbalanced and insane as this beer intentionally is, it actually finished pretty clean.  Delicious, warming malt coats your palate first, which is then washed away by strong bitterness.  Genius moves all around.  I’m not sure how old or how common this is, but wow, wow, wow.  One of the best Barleywine’s I’ve ever had, and definitely my #1 Bear Republic beer, even though I don’t think I’d have the heart to drink another anytime soon.

Bear Republic completely mauled all of us at The Gate that night — and I learned a lot about beer in the process.  Honorable Mentions go to EZ Ryder, a 100% Rye Beer (yes, and it was…balanced, ridiculous) and Pete Brown’s (a winner as always).  For more action, check out Beertender Pat’s pictures from the event for completely superfluous heavy crew shots.

Half Time is a well known and renowned Home Distributor who carries a great selection of Domestic and Foreign beers, specializing in a lot of great stuff from Belgium and right here in the states.  A typical kind of home distribution center with a great selection and a depressing amount of floor space devoted to selling shitty yellow beer, Half Time nonetheless came through with some awesome selections including a couple bottles of Fantome Chocolat, some cellared Saisons from the Late 90s, and a couple other domestic treats which made it well worth the trip.  If you’re headed upstate from the City, you should definitely check it out — great prices, friendly people, and pretty easy to find. Hard to beat.

After settling in and drinking our requisite quota of Flower Power, recently reintroduced to a city way parched after missing out on a few summer months with our favorite “local” session IPA, we decided to go for something pretty heavy — the Dark Horse Double Crooked Tree Imperial IPA.  Topped with green wax, and adorned with unreadable languages, scary trees, and other forboding imagery, this beer promised to be heavy at 13.6% ABV and it certainly was.  Consumed as it was without the clearest head, this took a while to hit us, but when it hit, man did it hit! This is an absolutely gigantic beer, which pours with a very small head and a dark copper color.  Enormous and complex smells follow – a variety of hop odors that I’m not qualified to pick out individually.  A truly heavy malt backbone takes time to melt away into a very satisfying amount of malt flavor.  This beer is pretty syrupy and enormously heavy, but at 13.6% ABV, what would you expect? Nicely packaged, and insanely bitter as it warms up, this is one that is really worth tracking down.  An incredible beer by an excellent brewery.

About a week before we hit the woods, I sampled Dark Horse’s “normal” IPA, the Crooked Tree.  According to Dark Horse’s website, they took the Crooked Tree recipe and “doubled everything except the water” to produce the Double Crooked Tree, and I can beleive it.  A toned down, lighter copper version of the Double with a slightly thicker head, slightly less bready malts, and a lot more aromatic and bittering hops available up front, this is more of a standard Session IPA at 6% ABV.  There’s definitely some harsh bitterness here that makes it less pleasant than even a higher ABV IPA like Flower Power, but an interesting and pretty well-balanced brew is there if you let it come through.  More hops love from Michigan — there’s definitely something in the water in Kalamazoo.

Three Floyd’s is one of those breweries which is legendary in NYC for a variety of reasons — Dark Lord, their Imperial Stout, is said to be one of the best American examples of the style, very ageable and very delicious. Their hoppy beers are also quite well regarded, and additionally, you can’t get any of them here. The Dreadnaught DIPA was part of a trade I conducted and I was very excited to get my hands on this, one of my favorite current styles of beer. Alternating between overwhelming hoppy beers and overwhelming yeasty and sour beers is messing my head up, but I’m enjoying the challenge. I’m quite sure you pity me.

Dreadnaught is pretty much everything I look for in a DIPA. It pours a gorgeous almost orange color with a fluffy head and is one of those DIPAs that just stinks right out of the bottle. Enormous hop character on the nose runs the gamut from Piney to Citrusy and back again, hitting all the notes right on time. Ever since downing a Southern Tier Unearthly a few weeks back, I have been paying close attention to the body of these huge beers, and Dreadnaught does skirt the syrupy line a bit too hard for me. If it was thinned out a bit, it would be more drinkable, but hey, what can ya do. Massive alcohol (9.5% ABV) is pretty well masked, but does drink pretty hot by the end of the bottle. All told, this is a pretty drinkable DIPA which balances the malt well enough to not make it hard to drink, but keeps the Hops forward. I have a few other FFF beers in my fridge (still haven’t scored a Dark Lord — any volunteers?) that I look forward to jamming on as this was a very successful and immensely enjoyable brew. Don’t let the punning ruin it for you.