The fact that Lagunitas has not gotten a lot more play on this blog is a testament to how dense the American Craft Beer scene is these days.  Lagunitas is one of the first craft breweries I got into after Sierra Nevada, and I enjoyed discovering that I indeed like to drink Pilsners, Copper Ales, and a variety of other flavors by making my way through their catalog.  Since being introduced to the brewery, I have had the opportunity to drink a lot of their seasonal offerings.  The latest release for summer, available in 12oz 6-packs, is somewhat misleadingly named “A Lil Sumpin’ Sumpin’ Ale.”  I half-expected a low ABV session beer until I remembered I was dealing with Lagunitas — so the result is a nearly 8% ABV Pale Ale/American Wheat Beer hybrid, intensely hoppy both in aroma and flavor, with a delicious smooth maltiness provided by the combination of wheat, base, and specialty malts.  With this awesome combination you get the great mouthfeel provided by the wheat, the aromatics provided by Ale Yeast and Hops, and the flavor provided by all of the above.  “A Lil Sumpin’ Sumpin’” turns out to be quite a beast of a beer if you knock a couple back — the alcohol is very well hidden, and this copper colored beer is a great choice for a warm, celebratory day.

Jolly Pumpkin is no stranger to the pages of this blog, and being that it’s essentially my favorite American Brewery, it’s always a pleasure to cover another of their brews in the ranks of the Brew Dog Blog.  Bam Noire is their “Black Saison,” a style that doesn’t really exist aside from a few examples.  The concept of Seasonal Saisons comes from the Fantome brewery in Belgium for the most part, and Jolly Pumpkin’s version, although a deep reddish black and adorned with Halloween motifs on the bottle, holds its own just fine in the heat of the summer.  Light, refreshing, dry, and perfectly fruity and tart, Bam Noir brings just about everything to the table in terms of being a fantastic A+ Summer drinker.  A lot of complexity in the nose and on the palette makes it more than a chugger, and takes it into the slow sipping realm, if you can make it last that long.

Chelsea Brewing Company disproves the notion that many people have that there are no Craft Beers produced on the sainted “Money Makin” island of Manhattan. While most of the brews they pump out are highly drinkable, delicious beers, none are particularly mindblowing, yet they exist as examples of good, fresh beers you can regularly get around bars and at the brew pub over on the west side.  Recently Bierkraft, a big seller of Chelsea beers, sourced a cask of one of Chelsea’s new offerings, the USA, which was dry hopped and being served in 64oz growlers.  Stinky brought one out to the barbecue and I was really glad he did.  It was a low ABV, not quite brilliantly clear golden Ale in the English style, and it had an enormous hop presence both in the nose and in the spicy, fruity flavors.  Low carbonation emphasizes the delicious maltiness of this beer also, altogether a hell of a summer drinker too and the growler disappeared quickly.

Hard to believe there’s still a Captain Lawrence beer that I haven’t written about, and one of their flagships, no less.  Freshchester Pale Ale is a very, very good East Coast style Pale Ale, from a dude who worked at Sierra Nevada and can brew any kind of beer well.  It has the perfect balance going on that is the SN trademark, and a delicious blend of hops (definitely some PNW hops in there) and malt (2-row and crystal) is extremely satisfying.  It starts bubbly and fresh with awesome hop aromas, and finishes nice and dry with a malty, rounded finish.  Not too bitter, not too sweet, just how I like it.

The first Stone beers that really caught my attention were its massive, insane IPAs.  Ruination is one of my all time favorites, and the regular Pale Ale and IPA are no slouches either.  Once I got hooked on their brews, though, I was able to see how many different things they were capable of, and their obsession with Belgian Yeast flavors has been evident in their Vertical Epic series.  Cali-Belgique is an attempt to marry the massive citrus and floral hop aromas of West Coast IPAs with the tropical, warm fruit nose of Belgian Yeasts, especially evident in their Golden Ales, but prevalent in various forms all around the Motherland.  Without a doubt, Cali-Belgique is a huge success, managing to skirt the line between the two styles in a way that is both uniquely Stone and unequivocally Belgian influenced.  Cali-Belgique pours a bright copper color, like a classic west coast IPA, with tight bubbles and a quickly dissipating head.  The nose is an awesome mixture of Belgian Yeast and West Coast IPA hop aromas, with almost no malt noticable at all.  Sipping this beer gives off great fruit and citrus from the hops which mixes very well with the fruit flavors from the yeast. An assertive yet transparent malt backbone which is a tiny bit thin for my tastes with a bitter beer like this, but they seem to be taking the dryness cue from the Belgians on this.  I was really glad to hear that Stone would be making this a year-round style, and this represents a very successful volley in the Belgium-influenced-us-and-then-we-influenced-them-and-now-they’re-influencing-us-again thing.  I’m glad New York City is smack in the middle between California and Belgium — we see a lot of good crossfire.

One other way that Stone is exploring the possibilites of brewing and stretching the boundaries of commercial beer is to participate in collaborations with other breweries.  Collaborations are all the rage right now, both in the US and in Europe, where “gypsy brewers” like Mikkeller wander the continents and collaborate with brewers they admire.  In this case, Stone is collaborating with BDB favorite Jolly Pumpkin and Norweigan trailblazer Nogne 0.  The popularity of collaborations has been overwhelmingly positive, resulting in a bunch of new beers that wouldn’t have existed if certain juggernauts had not put their heads together in a creative way.  The Stone/JP/Nogne beer is a holiday ale, meant to highlight indigenous ingredients from each brewery’s environment — Chestnuts from Michigan, Juniper Berries from Norway, and Sage from California.  This beer is also brewed with 25% rye malt, which gives a lot of spicy balance to this otherwise pretty huge beer.  This ale pours a dark brown with red highlights, accompanied by a small, quickly fading white head.  The aroma is fantastic — hints of Sage and Juniper berry come through, and a hint of spiciness from Hops and Rye.  There’s a good deal of body in this beer, which makes it appropriate for the style, but there is dryness on the finish that doesn’t make it difficult to get through the 12oz bottle. Relatively high ABV makes this a sipper, but the flavors that run through this beer, especially as it warms up, are fantastic.  The juicy quality from the Juniper berries stood out most for me, and I don’t get much Chestnut at all, but I’m not sure what to be looking for there.  Overall, this is a successful beer that has a lot going on, and is about as focused as a collaboration between three brewing luminaries could really be.  Each wanted their say, and they got it — the result is a great beer, a step forward for craft brewing, and a unique flavor and aroma profile that would be very difficult to recreate.  Check each brewery’s website for accounts of the brewing process — it sounds like it worked out quite well.

So yeah, this is pretty much exactly what it sounds like, a sour Witbier, but one that is very nicely balanced, very dry, and very Champagne like.  This is not an easy thing to pull off and once again Jolly Pumpking doesn’t disappoint.  They manage to create a drinkable, even sessionable beer here with a less than 5% ABV and a truly refreshing finish.  Another Infected Session beer that you would be super stoked to have a six pack of at a barbecue or for a hang out day in the yard.  Glad to have grabbed a six pack of this at State Line Liquors on the way back from a trip down to Maryalnd, which by the way, lives up to its reputation for having great craft beers in what is quickly becoming an exciting part of the world for beer in general.

Belgian Saison or Farmhouse Ale is one of my favorite styles of beer and American breweries can have a wide range of success with it. Sometimes, in an attempt to make it very traditional, they end up producing something bland. Sometimes, in an attempt to make their mark on it, they completely blow the style up. Jolly Pumpkin, as usual, nails the style by providing a great base Saison and adding a disorderly amount of yeast and funk on top that is really undeniable if you have a taste for “infected” beers. The first of these 5 bottles I opened smelled so strongly of barnyard/horse manure that I almost couldn’t believe it. I’ve had 3 so far and they all have a varying amount of this over the top nose, which when you pour the beer out and let it sit a bit really mellows. Bam Biere pours a beautiful reddish gold color and the head is chunky, foamy, and leaves all kinds of crazy sediment on the side of the glass. The beer is smooth, crisp, and dry, with all kinds of awesome flavors coming through as it warms up. It’s a bit thin, which is fine, because any heavier and it would really lose some of its drinkability. For me, this is a very drinkable, truly great American take on a Belgian style, which if you have read this blog at all you know really gets me going. So yes, hit this beer with a car as many times as you want, because it’s only going to get better.