Silverton Rockin' Brews on tap for this weekend

Our high-altitude friends in Silverton will host Silverton Rockin' Brews this weekend on Sat., June 11, 1-6 p.m.

This small annual beer festival features a dozen Southwest Colorado breweries (with a couple of northern Colorado exceptions) pouring their ales. It'll be nice to have them all in one place since they're pretty far flung, tucked among mountain passes and tiny towns.

The festival costs $30 ($25 when purchased ahead of time) with live music, no dogs and proceeds benefitting the San Juan County Historical Society. Here are the breweries scheduled to be there:

- Ska Brewing Co., Durango
- Durango Brewing Co., Durango
- Carver Brewing Co., Durango
- Silverton Brewing Co., Silverton
- Ouray Brewery, Ouray
- Ourayle House, Ouray
- Horsefly Brewing Co., Montrose
- Pug Ryan's Steakhouse & Brewery, Dillon
- San Luis Valley Brewing Co., Alamosa
- Gunnison Brewing Co., Gunnison
- Aspen Brewing Co., Aspen
- Main Street Brewery, Cortez

Soggy Coaster's pithy guide: Definitely check out both Ouray breweries, which have been turning out some great beers in the last year or two. I'll also be eager to check out Horsefly, Pug Ryan's and Aspen (founded in 2008), all of which have escaped me so far.

I assume Steamworks is missing this one because they're hosting the their annual Half Marathon in Durango the same day.

Review: Ska Big Shikes Orange Blossom Imperial Pilsner

Ska Brewing Co.'s latest Local Series release comes as the result of a project with Old Chicago restaurants. The restaurant chain asked Ska to come up with something unique for them to put on tap as part of an effort to reconnect with craft brewing.

Ska invited Jonathan Shikes, managing editor and prolific beer blogger at the Denver weekly Westword, to help design and brew the beer

This project follows an earlier blogger-brewer collaboration Ska did with myself and Jeff Hammett, formerly of Beer 'N Bikes and currently writing at San Diego Beer Blog.

Ska also bottled Shikes' batch for release as no. 18 in its Local Series, which is distributed only in and around Durango. Ska has been doing the Local Series for many years (a list of releases is here), brewing at its whim special creations. It gives the brewers a chance to experiment, and Ska's customers a chance to try something new.

Shikes' beer was tapped May 16 at Old Chicago in Denver, timed to coincide with American Craft Beer Week.

Now on to Shikes' beer itself. It's a big recipe, an imperial pilsner that comes in at 8.7 percent ABV and 73 IBUs (incidentally, Ska brewed a standard pilsner as no. 3 in the Local Series in 2005).

It pours a pale yellow color, topped by a short froth of white foam. The taste is bready and heavy on the palette, with a little citrus and sweetness from orange blossom honey.

Strong lagers are tough to brew well. Often, they end up syrupy, overly sweet and difficult to drink. Unfortunately, this describes to an extent this Imperial Pilsner.

Ska sometimes falls into a common trap for ambitious craft brewers: beers that are too big, too much, too flavorful. Looking back at the few Ska beers that seemed to miss the mark, it's been one ingredient that dominated the taste: too much Scotch in the barrel-aged Scotch ale, too much lemongrass in 2010's DIFF, too much hops in Ska Sour.

For Big Shikes, it's simply too big to really enjoy. It's not a bad beer, but neither does it leave you wanting more. About 12 ounces is all you really want to drink; a 22-ounce bomber ought to be shared. I ended up drinking the 14 ounces or so pictured here and pouring the rest down the drain.

Ska makes some great beers: their ESB, Ten Pin Porter, Modus Hoperandi IPA and Mexican Logger, in particular, are superb examples of their styles. But while I look forward to trying their next Local Series effort, Big Shikes I can do without. C

(P.S.: This seems to be the consensus on this beer).

Townsend wins Ska homebrewing competition

Catching up on some news, a fellow by the name of Seth Townsend won Ska Brewing Co.'s GABF Pro-Am Homebrew Competition with his Organic Dubbel.

Townsend won "Best In Show" and also took top honors in the Belgian Strong Ale category.

As with past winners, Townsend will have his beer entered in the Pro-Am category of the Great American Beer Festival – the nation’s largest beer competition and festival. The beer will also be brewed on a commercial scale for release as part of Ska’s popular Local Series, which is distributed around Durango and Southwest Colorado. Townsend will have the chance to participate in the commercial scaling and production of his recipe for the Local Series.

Last year's winner, Clancy Calhoun of Aztec, N.M., brewed a tasty Schwarzbier, a dark German-style lager. The nice thing about competitions like these is the winning beers tend to taste good.

Ska has its own roots in homebrewing: the three co-founders all got their start as homebrewers.

“Homebrewers have the kind of DIY spirit that drove us to keep growing and improving," Ska President and co-founder Dave Thibodeau said in a news release. "We really respect that. That’s how a lot of craft breweries — including Ska — came to be."

Townsend is understandably excited at the leap his homebrewing career has just taken.

“My goal this year was to earn a spot in the GABF Pro-Am, so I focused on homebrew competitions that were selecting beers to enter it,” Townsend said. “The best part of this is that I’ll get to work with one of my favorite breweries, right here in Colorado. Honestly, I can’t think of a more fun brewery to be collaborating with to scale up my Organic Dubbel. I think it also shows that organic beer can stand up — and out — in a crowd.”

Chris Swersey, GABF's competition manager, had this to say about the Pro-Am category: “Because so many professional brewers began as homebrewers, the GABF Pro-Am competition is a great reflection of craft brewer unity at all levels. The Pro-Am serves to keep professional brewers and homebrewers in touch with each other, and serves as an exciting competitive forum for both AHA and BA professional members. But most importantly the Pro-Am is fun.”

Complete judging results for Ska' competition can be found here.

This is your weekend, Durango

Memorial Day weekend is a big one in Durango, with 2,500 bicyclists coming for the Iron Horse Bicycle Classic, a grueling 40-mile climb to Silverton.

Motorcyclists come, too, as does every other stripe of tourist. Fortunately, our local brewers have several events on tap this weekend. The studies say beer is good for recovery after exertion:

* Steamworks Brewing Co. continues its Firkin Fridays today, tapping the beer cocktail “Skip and Go Naked” at 3 p.m.

“Unlike the quick and dirty fraternity house versions, Steamworks’ Skip and Go Naked firkin uses our Colorado Kölsch as a base, and in the brew process we’ve added fresh lemon juice and zest with a peach simple syrup,” Ken Martin, Steamworks head brewer, said in a news release. “This is another fresh and delicious cocktail, perfect for savoring on Steamworks’ back deck as the days get warmer.”

Steamworks initiated its Firkin Fridays to introduce a range of specialty craft beers not suited to large draft production. Each month one of these beers is tapped, coordinated with the season or holidays.

“Serving a firkin beer requires a special tap and it’s gravity-poured,” said Spencer Roper, Steamworks assistant brewer. “Folks also need to remember that a firkin is served at about 55 degrees - cool but not cold. Because it contains no preservatives, it’s also designed to be consumed after tapping. We expect the Skip and Go Naked to be especially popular.”

* Steamworks and Ska Brewing Co. release Face Plant Ale at 6 p.m. Friday (tonight). It's an amber hefeweizen that's been brewed for 16 years in what's got to be one of the oldest and most durable brewery collaborations around. Incidentally, it's quite tasty, if memory serves.

Bicyclists can meet at Ska at 5 p.m. and pedal to Steamworks, if you want to work extra hard for your beer. I'll just stroll the six blocks from my place. Winning, as Charlie Sheen would say.

* Less momentous, but worth a note: Carver Brewing Co. has a great lineup right now. A new IPA is on tap, brewed with Cascades and Centennials. The Dandelion Saison is almost gone, but it's much improved from last year. Erik Maxson, Carver's head brewer, said they dialed back on the dandelion a bit this year and added a nice herb mix. The result is a very well-balanced and smooth saison. I quite like it this year. Also, the fine Power House Porter is back after a long absence. As always, the Cascade Canyon IPA on cask is a good bet.

* Finally, Oskar Blues Old Chub, a beautiful Scottish-style ale, is on tap at The Irish Embassy. It's 8 percent ABV, so please fasten your kilt.

Stylish beer in Oregon

In Oregon, as in Colorado, just about every small town has its own brewery, and the larger cities have several.

I just spent more than a week traveling around Oregon, getting a sense of the beer landscape along the way. Things are good, and in some ways a step ahead of what Colorado craft brewers are doing.

Craft brewers in Oregon, having mastered the arts of the hop bomb and barrel-aged strong ale, are looking farther afield for inspiration. Most remarkably, I had three beer styles I'd never before encountered: Gruit, Gose and Berliner Weisse.

Gruit is perhaps the strangest and most unusual of the three, a hopless beer with a markedly different flavor profile from most ales. Gruit needs something else to stand in for hops, balancing the malt and making the beer drinkable.

Oakshire's Mountain Rose Gruit

The Gruit I had was Mountain Rose Gruit from Oakshire Brewing in Eugene. Oakshire used a crazy variety of herbs to spice the beer: mugwort, dandelion root, dandelion leaf, burdock root, licorice root, milk thistle seed, blessed thistle, chamomile flower and grapefruit peel.

The result was an herbaceous, almost sweet beer that finishes dry (7 percent ABV). It's not totally dissimilar from a saison brewed with herbs, or even rose tea, but you do notice the lack of any hop flavor whatsoever. Interesting, and a good sipping beer, but not a beer you want to toss down your gullet.

The Oakshire Gruit was pouring at The Bier Stein in Eugene, which beer journalist Lisa Morrison says has the biggest selection of bottles between Portland and San Francisco. Gazing at the stocked refrigerators, it's easy to believe. 

Perhaps the best beer I had on the trip came from Upright Brewing, a small brewery in Portland that makes innovative farmhouse ales meant to be paired with food. The Gose, a spring seasonal, is a slightly tart wheat beer brewed with a light touch of salt and coriander. An old German style (detailed information here from the Portland blog Brewpublic), Gose is seeing a minor comeback on the West Coast.

Upright Brewing's Gose

Upright's version (5.2 percent ABV) was fascinating: refreshing like a hefeweizen, but much more complex and flavorful due to the lactobacillus tartness. The salt and coriander were deftly restrained.

I've had about a half-dozen Upright beers now and been impressed by each, but I think the Gose was the most interesting.

Finally, Block 15, a relatively young brewpub in the college town of Corvallis, had several noteworthy beers on tap but most unusually a Berliner Weisse.

A very pale and low-alcohol summer beer style that also hails from Germany, Berliner Weisse looks and tastes a little like lemonade. In fact, it's popular to mix with syrups.

At only 3 percent ABV, Block 15's Berliner Weisse showed that beer doesn't have to be strong to be flavorful.

Block 15 Berliner Weisse

Rest assured, ridiculously good IPAs continue to proliferate in the homeland of American hops. But I quickly found myself tiring of hop bombs after visiting Double Mountain Brewing in Hood River and Walking Man Brewing across the Columbia River in Stevenson, Wash.

After a couple of sampler glasses, my palate could barely distinguish anything. Walking Man alone had a strong pale ale, two IPAs and an imperial IPA on tap. My taste buds were beaten into submission.

Fortunately, some of the little craft breweries in Oregon continue to stretch the definition of craft beer by reintroducing and reinterpreting some very old beer styles. After all, given the highly evolved state of American craft brewing, what's left to be discovered?

Malt and matrimony

On Saturday, I'm getting married in Portland, Ore. In addition to the bride and guests and such, the wedding will feature six Northwest craft beers on tap.

The wedding is at Meriwether's Restaurant, a farm-to-table restaurant that focuses on local food. The thinking extends to beer. The restaurant's six taps are all either Oregon or Washington-brewed beers. It's also noticeable whose beers are not included — the biggest Northwest breweries like Deschutes, Rogue and Redhook. The restaurant obviously prefers to choose the smaller guys.

Here's what Meriwether's currently has on tap:

* Hopworks Urban Brewery Organic Lager
* Fearless Brewing Scottish Ale
* Alameda Brewing Klickitat Pale Ale
* Ninkasi Total Domination IPA
* Double Mountain India Red Ale
* Hale's Ales Dublin Stout (nitro)

As you can see, it's a good mix of beers with one lager, two hoppy beers, two malty English-style ales and a stout. Ninkasi is the largest brewery represented here. It started in Eugene, Ore., in 2006, and has grown quickly by focusing on intensively hoppy ales. The extent of their reach — market penetration, in business-speak — is exceedingly impressive. They're everywhere in Oregon.

Hopworks Urban Brewery, known as HUB, is a Portland brewpub (with some bottling) that has won a slew of awards. Their beers are very well done, and HUB has gone as far as any brewery in emphasizing bikes and trying to minimize its environmental impact.

Double Mountain is the operation of two brewers who broke off from the much larger Full Sail in Hood River, Ore. I've heard a lot of good things about Double Mountain, and it wouldn't surprise me if the honeymoon involves a stop at the tap room (luckily, I've found a lady who's open minded about craft beer, particularly Belgians and dark beers).

It's indicative of the Northwest beer (and food) scene to have a menu like this. Some Durango restaurants, to their credit, have embraced local food and beer. (Seasons Rotisserie and Grill and Cocina Linda come easily to mind).

In places like Portland, menus with locally raised pork or leeks harvested nearby barely warrant a mention. It's assumed that if you care about your food, you do these things.

P.S. Blogging around these parts might be light for the next two weeks. I might blog from the road, but I might not. It's a free country, as they say.

Ska to host beer dinner

I'm going out of town for a little while, so of course Ska Brewing Co. has decided to hold a beer dinner. This was after I harangued President Thibodeau to hold a beer dinner in Durango after seeing they had held similar events in Denver and Texas.

Oh, well, I suppose the show will go on without me.

For those of you who might actually be able to go, the dinner is Thurs., May 19 at the Palace Restaurant in downtown Durango. It includes a four-course menu at the Palace and dessert at the Back Space Theatre for a private screening of the documentary film I Am, which in which a film director finds an inspiring story — himself.

The menu (which you Facebookers can read here) features a Ska beer paired with each dish. The Ten Pin Porter paired with wild mushrooms and polenta in a truffle cream sauce sounds especially appealing.

The other beers used in the pairing are Mexican Logger, DIFF, Dubbel Blonde and Steel Toe Milk Stout.

Tickets are limited, so Ska suggests you stop by or call the tasting room to reserve your seats. Tickets cost $95 per couple or $50 per person.

Update: Ska's full list of American Craft Beer Week events is here. Also, the latest Ska Local Series beer, Big Shikes Orange Blossom Imperial Pilsner, is on the shelves in Durango in bomber bottles. It's also being tapped Monday at Old Chicago in Denver's LoDo neighborhood.

Ska-B-Q launches today

Today marks the official beginning of summer-ish in Durango with Ska Brewing Co.'s first Ska-B-Q of the season.

Zia Taqueria is open again on the side of Ska's building, charging $2 for tasty little tacos. Mexican Loggers will also be $2 for the Cinco de Mayo event.

The band Ten Cent Raise will play some sort of tunes as drunken Americans celebrate some battle in Mexico a long time ago. Awesome.

It's a 5-7 p.m. thing.

Review: Ska Brewing Mexican Logger

Until now, Ska Brewing Co.'s Mexican Logger has been merely a local's favorite, a beer appreciated by a few of us in Durango while barbecuing, rafting, hiking and watching the thunderstorms roll down the Animas Valley.

Photo courtesy Ska Brewing.

This is changing. Ska recently began canning Mexican Logger, its summer seasonal, and distributing it widely. No longer will the lager be our little secret.

Ska is brewing about 900 barrels of Mexican Logger this summer, double last year's production, and distributing it to all of the brewery's markets.

Ska began brewing Mexican Logger in summer 2001. "We had been going through a multi-summer Pacifico phase, sometimes even drinking it instead of Ska beers when it was particularly hot out," Ska co-founder Dave Thibodeau said in an email. "Well, that couldn’t fly for long so we decided to brew our own beer to put limes in."

Mexican Logger  (4.2 percent ABV, 18 IBUs), is brewed with a yeast strain from Mexico City and a light helping of Saaz hops. It's Ska's lowest booze beer, and the only lager it regularly brews.

It comes in bright green cans that will probably attract lots of eyes on the shelves of liquor stores (there's some in bottles, too). Amusingly, in the fine print next to the UPC code, it says "Ale, in Texas," even though Mexican Logger is, of course, a lager.

"As we all know, Texas likes to make up their own rules despite facts, i.e. creationism vs science," Thibodeau said. "Contradictory to the actual definition of 'ale,' Texas defines it as beer over 4 percent ABW. Beer under 4 percent ABW is called 'beer.' Because the Mexican Logger is a lager we couldn’t get it approved to sell in Texas, unless we called it 'ale,' so there you go, it’s 'ale, in Texas.'"

Anyway, Mexican Logger pours a pale yellow with a white, fluffy head of foam. It's fairly strongly carbonated. Despite the low booze and hopping, Mexican Logger is surprisingly flavorful. Corona, it's not.

Mexican Logger is a middle-aged beer in Ska's history. It's not as old as True Blonde and Pinstripe, which date to Ska's founding in 1995, but nor is it a young buck like Modus Hoperandi IPA (born in 2009).

Ska seems a little anxious over how Mexican Logger will be received in its newer markets like Missouri and Texas. It's not a hop bomb, nor barrel-aged nor sour.

But it's clear that people enjoy Mexican-style lagers. Corona is the no. 1 imported beer in the U.S., and more and more American craft breweries are doing their own. One worth mentioning is Del Norte Brewing in Denver, which brews a whole lineup of Mexican-style lagers.

For a decade, Mexican Logger has been a well-liked summer seasonal in Durango. I bet it'll do fine out in the big, wide world. B

Durango Wine Experience approaches

The Durango Wine Experience has continued to grow from its inception. Now in its fifth year, the wine fest has an expanded schedule.

Although the May 5-7 event understandably focuses on wine, it's not restricted to oenophiles. There's a beer and food pairing event set for 2 p.m. Friday, May 6 at Steamworks Brewing Co.

According to the official Wine Experience website, chef Sean Clark and brewer Ken Martin will lead participants through food and beer pairings that go well beyond burgers and pizza. The seminar costs $30 per person.

Another seminar, also $30, at Lost Dog Bar & Lounge, focuses on tequila.

There are also several package passes that range from $99 to $285 for all events.

It's not cheap, but the events should be fun and educational.