On dumbing it down

When Mick Ward and his partners opened The Irish Embassy Pub in downtown Durango in 2008, it was a truly unique place within the context of the local bar scene.

An Irishman who came to Durango by way of Chicago, Ward insisted on authenticity. The furnishings and decorations were imported from Ireland. He brought in an Irishwoman to design the interior, and an Irishman to manage the pub.

The beer taps reflected this. Of the 20 taps, not one pulled a beer brewed in Durango or a macro-brewed lager. It wasn't out of spite; Ward simply wanted his pub to be something different. The beers were almost exclusively imports like Guinness, Harp, Murphy's Stout and several Paulaner taps. It was a place you might find a couple of good German pilseners on tap.

"I hope it'll be unique," Ward said at the time. Tragically, he died a month later of a heart attack. His partners and some of the same staff he hired have carried on for almost three years since.

Unfortunately, it seems like the pub is straying from Ward's original vision, particularly on the beer taps. Sure, you can still get Guinness, Murphy's, Smithwicks — the basics. But no longer do you see the unexpected, offbeat European import.

Instead, the Embassy has given over a tap to Coors Light. And another to Blue Moon's spring seasonal (which has little more flavor than Coors Light, and I say this as someone who appreciates regular Blue Moon). And a few more to local brewers.

It's understandable. Customers ask for — demand — what they know. I feel sorry for the brewpub bartender who has to keep telling tourists, no, we don't sell Bud Light, we make our own beer here (a conversation I've witnessed at Carver's).

It must be irresistible for a publican to throw his hands up and simply sell people what they want. Even Lady Falconburgh's, easily the best beer bar in Southwest Colorado, seems to sell just as many shots of sugary-vodka garbage to college students as it does pints of the fine beers it keeps on tap.

Durango makes it even tougher. It has a small year-round, permanent population that is heavily augmented by Fort Lewis College students and especially tourists. They do not have time to get to know and appreciate an establishment that tries to do something different. Most of them want what they're accustomed to.

I happened to be in the Embassy one night during Snowdown, Durango's Mardi-Gras-on-ice. The restroom was strewn with broken glass, the shards of expensive imperial pints sitting in a disgusting mess. This is a business that's trying to treat its customers like adults, and the customers aren't holding up their end of the bargain.

It would be sad, but not at all surprising, if the Embassy went to red plastic cups instead of the nice, 20-ounce pints it now sells.

Some customers in Durango seem intent on encouraging the unique and special places we have here to regress to the mean. Coors Light and vodka-Red Bulls for all.

Review: Papago Brewing Oude Zuipers

On my annual trip to Phoenix to watch baseball's spring training, I like to stop in Papago Brewing in Scottsdale. It has an extensive and interesting tap list and if you don't like any of the 30 craft and craft-quality import beers on tap, there's a wall of refrigerated bottles that allows you to choose one to buy there and drink on-premises.

Besides, they let you throw darts as you drink beer.

I took home a bottle of Papago's Oude Zuipers, a Belgian-style tripel. Actually, it's brewed for Papago by Brouwerij Van Steenberge in Belgium, so it's not so much Belgian-style as actually Belgian.

Last weekend, I brought the bottle out as I contemplated whether I wanted to drink 25.4 ounces of 11 percent alcohol beer. I removed the cage but not the cork, and decided better of it and put it back in the fridge.

A few minutes later: pop. And my decision was made for me.

You don't want to let a $12 bottle of beer go to waste, and without its cork, it was time to drink it or pour it out.

As I needed some food to soak up such a big beer, I made an emergency trip to Guido's Favorite Foods, an upscale deli in downtown Durango, for some pancetta and olives. Then a quick stop at City Market for oyster mushrooms and cherry tomatoes.

Back at home, I poured Oude Zuipers as I made my pasta dish. The Belgian ale is a reddish brown color, with a substantial off-white head of foam. The carbonation sticks around nicely.

It's a touch sweet on the palate, and carries that great Belgian yeast complexity. It finishes with a warming character from the strong alcohol content. Oude Zuipers is quite wine-like, actually.

Oude Zuipers was as good as any Belgian-style tripel I've had. Popping the cork accidentally sent me into a minor panic, but when you have all afternoon to cook a fancy pasta dish and drink Belgian beer, you're doing pretty well. A-

Sometimes, you get lucky

Ska Brewing Co. cans on sale at Super Market Liquors, Fort Collins, Colo. Photo by Dustin Bradford

Review: Great Divide Colette

The saison is a beautiful thing. Dry, crisp, light, bubbly, flavorful — this traditional Belgian style is the true Champagne of beers (apologies to Miller High Life).

Up till now, however, drinking saison was an expensive proposition. You could get a bottle of Saison Dupont or, my personal favorite, Ommegang Hennepin, but you'd pay something like $10-$12 for a 22-ounce bottle (or the slightly larger 750 ml Champagne-style bottles).

Delicious!

Great Divide Brewing Co. has upended this situation with a game-changer: a truly tasty saison bottled in a six-pack.

Colette just showed up on liquor-store shelves in Durango, packaged in regular 12-ounce brown bottles. It has enjoyed a well-laureled young life, winning a silver medal at the 2010 Great American Beer Festival.

Colette is brewed with barley, wheat and rice and fermented at high temperature with four yeast strains. Like most saisons, it's relatively boozy at 7.3 percent ABV.

It pours a straw yellow, with a healthy, frothy white head of foam that quickly recedes against the strong alcohol content. A tip: when pouring Colette, maybe leave a little bit in the bottle, as mine had a thick layer of yeast gunk on the bottom. Or don't; it's a free country. (And it wasn't due to age — my Colette was bottled on March 3 and poured on April 2).

A wonderful, earthy aroma introduces a dry funk on the palate. The wheat and rice — arguably nontraditional ingredients for this style — are actually nice additions, rounding out and strengthening the flavor. The carbonation pops.

Saisons are not usually hoppy, and Colette follows suit, with very mild hopping laying down a backbeat while the yeast solos up front.

Saisons are just a great summer style, light but very flavorful. Colette is a seasonal release, April through July.

A brewer friend of mine not long ago bitched about how trendy saisons have become. I fail to see the problem.

Colette costs about $9 for a six-pack of 12-ounce bottles. That's 12.5 cents per ounce. Compare that to $10 for a bomber, which comes out to 45 cents per ounce.

Great Divide has made drinking saison much more affordable. Colette is a fantastically tasty beer. You should buy it and drink it. A

Make beer

Ska Brewing Co. is once again hosting a homebrewing competition that serves as a preliminary round for the Great American Beer Festival Pro-Am Competition.

The entry deadline is May 9, and beers must be received between April 25 and May 11.

Previous winners include Clancy's Black Beer, a schwarzbier brewed by Clancy Calhoun of Aztec, NM, and a "Merlo" Stout that was aged in oak barrels.

Entries will be judged May 20-21. If the winner joins the American Homebrewers Association, his (or her) winning beer will be sent to Denver to compete in the Great American Beer Festival.

Good luck to this year's entrants. Now get brewing!

More on Ska's expansion

The Durango Herald has a fine story on Ska Brewing Co.'s recent expansion. (The expansion was also covered, with a slightly different focus, by this post on Beer at 6512).

It's nice to see Ska getting more attention for its growth. Sometimes companies grow too fast for their own good and lose control of quality, but I think Thibodeau and Co. are aware of that danger and are concentrating on satisfying the demand in their existing markets.

These new fermenters will help them do so.

Another round at Marble

I'm not a gusher. When I review beers or discuss breweries, I try to temper my praise so I don't sound like a fanboy. If beer bloggers aren't careful, they can sound a little like Justin Bieber fans reviewing a new single.

Which brings me to Marble Brewery. A few months ago, Beer at 6512 took a look at Marble, noticing the Albuquerque brewery's range of solid and often excellent beers.

Still, Marble hasn't gotten much attention. The only national attention it's received, really, was a mention in Draft magazine's top 25 beers of the year list for From the Wood, a ridiculously smooth barrel-aged ale that the lucky among us sampled at Ska's 15th anniversary party last summer.

Marble's beers are available only in New Mexico, for now. Marble was just founded in 2008 and is still expanding in its own backyard.

For Durangoans, the closest place to find a selection of their beers is Distil, a high-end liquor store in Farmington. Marble has its production facility and pub in Albu-quirky, and another pub on the plaza in Santa Fe.

Recently, after working up a thirst touristing around Santa Fe, Marble beckoned. I'd already enjoyed their well-crafted IPA and stunning Red, so I was looking for something different.

An imperial pint of Marble Brewery's English-style
pale ale at the pub in Santa Fe.

The pub had two pale ales on tap; one called Marble Pale Ale, the other was an English-style pale ale. A sample of Marble Pale Ale was bracing; it was just brutally bitter. It reminded me of the first time I tried Modus Hoperandi — way more hop presence than you would expect even for a frequently hoppy style. Hopheads no doubt would love it, but I was looking for something a little more refreshing.

So I opted for a pint of the English-style pale ale. It was caramelly and nutty in a beautiful amber body, with a nice balanced hop profile. It was an accomplished and flavorful English-style pale ale.

I took home a few bottles of various Marble beers, and was most impressed by their Oatmeal Stout. The style isn't always pulled off well, and can be so characterless that it turns boring.

Not Marble's. As I've come to expect from them, it was superb. Creamy all day long, and carrying more depth and flavor than one has a right to expect.

Every one of Marble's beers is flavorful, even the pedestrian styles that can be found at most craft breweries. Head Brewer Ted Rice does not do boring, mediocre or average.

I've been circling around it for a while now, and I'm ready to sit: Marble has surpassed Santa Fe Brewing as the best packaging brewery in New Mexico, and their beers would go toe-to-toe with what you would expect from consistently high-quality Colorado breweries like Ska, Avery, Left Hand, etc.

It's time to sit up and take notice of Marble Brewery.

New fermenters for Ska

Today, a new batch of brewing equipment is scheduled to begin arriving at Ska Brewing Co., where it will give the Durango brewery room to grow — for a little while.

Ska purchased three additional fermenters and a brite tank. The fermenters are massive 240-barrel tanks that together will increase Ska's brewing capacity by nearly 70 percent, said Dave Thibodeau, Ska's president and co-founder.

"It didn’t take long to fill our existing capacity," Thibodeau said in an e-mail. "Even after acquiring Steamworks’ tanks last summer, we still managed to max out. We’re doing really well in our existing markets and demand continues to grow. In short, we needed them."

He added, "We intend to fill the existing pipeline and really get a measure on where our existing sales ceiling might be. Right now we have no intention of entering any new markets in 2011, but we do have a number of other fun things in the works, such as the release of Mexican Logger in cans in April. These tanks will take the pressure off and allow us some flexibility in production as we spend a few years growing into them."

This follows epic growth for Ska ever since they moved into a new brewery in September 2008. The new brewhouse, coupled with canning and introducing Modus Hoperandi IPA, have turned Ska from a sub-10,000 barrel a year brewery to one that eclipsed 15,000 barrels in 2010.

The new tanks will put Ska's capacity at well north of 20,000 barrels.

These new tanks will give Ska room to grow and hit their existing markets, like Denver, Illinois and Texas, a little harder. And it's just one more reminder that Ska is not such a small brewery anymore.

Ska presents "Brew Minions"

Brew Minions, A Parody from David Thibodeau on Vimeo.

Ladies and gentlemen, Ska Brewing Co. has produced a 22-minute video parodying the Discovery Channel show "Brew Masters."

Dogfish Head's Sam Calagione makes a cameo in Ska's parody. It follows the story of Thibodeau & Co. as they try to deliver a beer to their idols, the ska band The Toasters.

If you have 22 minutes to spare, this is totally worth watching. It's really pretty entertaining, and the production value is impressive.

Ska's press release follows:

Brew Minions follows Dave and his team as they flawlessly execute a project to make a 30th Anniversary beer for the long-running NYC Ska band The Toasters. Along the way they cross high mountain passes and travel almost across town, pioneer techniques to produce beers (and short films) of questionable originality, and ignore advice from Sam himself, who makes a cameo, but was otherwise not harmed in the making of this video.

From Rainbo Bread to bagels to bits of British bees, Dave is constantly pushing his team and himself to keep going, even though it’s not clear that anyone, including the Toasters, wants them to. The imagination of the Ska Brewing team is matched only by their obliviousness, which they wear like a badge. Attending beer conferences with Sam, glamorous product launches with rock stars, ripping off ideas and making toast, it’s all in a days work for Brew Minions.

“It’s easy to make fun of ourselves,” said Dave Thibodeau, Ska Co-Founder and President. “It’s hard to make a video that makes fun of us though, even a short one. It was supposed to be short. And it’s expensive. If anyone thinks this is funny they owe us.”

“Brew Minions” was written, directed and produced by Ska Brewing Co. and Marc Snider / Exposure Productions in Durango, Colorado. The post-credit video was produced by Red Tettemer and Partners.

Impressive dubbel on tap at Steamworks

A good Belgian-style beer is a wonder to behold, and Steamworks Brewing Co. has tapped one.

Steamworks has D'Deuce Dubbel on tap. It comes in at approximately 7 percent alcohol and 20 IBUs (I lost my notes and the figures come from memory, but they're about right).

It pours a dark amber with a small but persistent head of foam. It comes in a little 10-ounce glass for $4.

D'Deuce has a very nice balance and yeast character. Some Belgians go way too far on banana esters, or sweetness, but this is just a really solid dubbel.

If you like Belgians at all, this is a good one to try.