Still celebrated after all these years

Where to find Sierra Nevada Celebration in Denver, Colorado

Sierra Nevada Celebration isn’t too hard to find in Denver these days

Doug Veliky has written an ode to Sierra Nevada Celebration Ale that could be the chapter of a book. No reason to repeat much of what he wrote.

Instead, a bit of history, because obsessing over Celebration goes way back, at least in craft beer years. In 1995, Sierra Nevada brewed only 35 percent of the amount of Celebration they knew they could sell. Meeting demand for its core beers — Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, Porter and Stout — meant they wouldn’t be shipping any Celebration east of the Rockies or making almost any 1996 Bigfoot Barleywine.

“We can’t run out of pale ale,” marketing and sales director Steve Harrison said at the time. “It’s on menus in restaurants, it’s a permanent product in chain stores . . .”

As a result:

– Ken Ficherea, a Brooklyn accountant, used his frequent-flier miles to fly from JFK International
to San Francisco and back in the same day to pick up four cases of Celebration.

– Understanding that there were only 140 barrels of 1996 Bigfoot (compared to 11,00 in 1995, Ken Papai and Charlie Gow, two Bay Area residents, made two road trips to Sierra Nevada’s Chico brewer to buy Bigfoot.

In the first, they formed a three-car caravan with Dan Brown. “Dan couldn’t wait,” Papai said, and as a result, Brown was pulled over by a state police officer, although he didn’t receive a ticket.

Two weeks later, Papai and Gow realized they needed more beer — most of it was earmarked for friends across the country — and headed north again, this time in the same car.

After they filled the car with beer and had a few pints at the pub, they tried to take a shortcut during the 200-mile drive home, missed a turn and ended up stuck in the mud in a wildlife preserve. (Papai’s longer version of this story was quite entertaining, but the tl;dr version is that Gow passed a sobriety test, and the car was towed from the mud.)

Back in 1996, the year after Sierra Nevada had only 30 hours downtime and managed to produce 201,000 barrels, Harrison was not predicting how much Celebration would be available later in the year. “We will not contract brew, and we will not change the way we brew,” he said. “Just think how much noise they (in online beer forums) would make if we started contract brewing.”

Monday links: Hotbier, side pulls & best beers

Very hot rock plunging into wort at Scratch Brewing

Hot bier at Primitive Brewing in Lafayette, ColoradoMany, many breweries and events are showcased in Breweries Are Turning Up the Heat on Winter Beer, including Scratch Brewing in Southern Illinois. The photo at the top is a very hot granite rock plunging into wort when a team from Jester King visited Scratch in August six-plus years ago.

This Imbibe story about winter activities. “To attract more customers to taprooms, festivals, and holiday markets, breweries are turning to longstanding European traditions that turn up the thermostat on beer drinking.”

Primitive Brewing’s Hotbier Fest, here in Colorado is not mentioned. It is Dec. 21, and here are details (scroll down a bit). The photo on the right was taken last year in Lafayette. Or checkout this video on Instagram to see exactly what happens when a hot poker meets beer.

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QUOTE OF THE WEEK

“The Lukr [side-pull] faucet comes to mind. Don’t get me wrong, we have three of them [on-site] and we use them all the time. But the faucet worship to me is kinda silly. It assists in foam breakout and makes for softer foam, and you should get one. But don’t worship these things, because they’re a tool, just like many other items in your brewery or bar arsenal. It’s only beer, folks.”

          — Todd DiMatteo, Good Word Brewing
           From What’s the Most Overrated Beer Trend?

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LEDE OF THE WEEK

With summer in the rear view mirror and dry January less than two months away breweries and taprooms are falling off like fresh hop ales in the fall. The turning of the season means change, not all of it is bad news as much as it is metamorphosis of a saturated beer culture always looking to the next thing whether that’s a winter warmer or a non-alcoholic IPA. But while we were distracted by the latest triple double hazy release and brewery pop-up, a few Portland-area breweries and taprooms succumbed to their wounds.

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Not exactly a dive bar

Hopper Pub & Pizzeria, Rio Rancho NM

Hopper Pub & Pizzeria, Rio Rancho NMFrom NYC’s craft beer scene faces sobering challenges as closures and mergers reshape the industry:

In the early years, many breweries were so beer-centric, they ignored decor, food concepts and beverages beyond their own beer and refused to even hang televisions — an approach that is no longer effective, said Aaron Gore, who has consulted with over 70 breweries on three continents.

He said while the spate of New York City brewery changes now feels jarring, it’s actually a “typical adoption curve.” Approaching a decade since its peak, craft beer is now a “normal good” that can be found even at many dive bars, said Gore.

The Hopper Pub and Pizzeria is not a dive bar, but it is also not what Suds Korge and Dregs Donnigan would have called a fern bar. It’s located in a strip mall behind a gas station in Rio Rancho, N.M. (shout out to Glengarry Glen Ross), and the walls are decorated with silly signs as well as beer signs and neon. A particle board floor is utilitarian.

However, the crust on their wood-fired pizza is perfect and the beer list has something for pretty much everyone. That they post the names of the beers are listed sans breweries indicates a certainly level of customer knowledge. Bone Shaker? From Second Street Brewing in Santa Fe. You know if you know.

There was live music last Monday, Veteran’s Day. That, it seems, is celebrated year round at the Hopper Pub.

Monday beer links: Passion, cask ale & elk scat

Foam on a pint of beer at Hogshead Brewing in Denver, Colorado

Proper foam on a proper pint at Hogshead Brewing in Denver (see Quote of the Week I)

This, too, could have been a quote of the week: “We had every intention to be here for another 157 years. However, that was an unfortunate decision. I am just incredibly sorry that this is happening. I’m sorry for our family. I’m sorry for this community, and most importantly, I’m really sorry to the employees who have done so much for us over the past, you know, several decades.”

Molson Coors last week announced it will close the Jacob Leinenkugel Brewing Co. main brewing facility in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, which has been operating since 1867.

But, because nostalgia still pays, they will keep Leinie Lodge open. Visitors will still be able to sample beer, browse in the gift shop, and spend time in a mini-museum that showcases more than 150 years of brewing history. Everything they used to do while waiting to take a tour of the expansive brewery and grounds. That, obviously, will also be history.

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QUOTE OF THE WEEK I

“[Cask beer] is something that has always been important to me. As soon as I was educated on cask beer, it was something that I knew was special. it’s something that’s not readily available, it’s something unique, that sets us apart from pretty much any brewery in Colorado, not to mention most breweries in the United States.”

— Robert Bell
From And Cask For All — Hogshead Brewery in Denver, Colorado

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LEDE OF THE WEEK
“Here,” says Ken Jauval. “You had a white bar and you had a black bar.”

Jauval is talking about the Breakspeare Arms in Brockley, Lewisham in South East London, which closed around the mid-90s. He is part of a large community in the area with Caribbean origins – Saint Lucian in his case – and is with his friend Kilroy Gladstone, who came to Britain in 1957 from Jamaica. Unlike Gladstone, Jauval has a London accent as you’d expect from anyone who grew up in this country from the age of nine and is aged 60 (he told me he was “nearly 60″ in August last year).

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Monday beer links: Tipsy animals and other drinking companions

Cannonball Creek Brewing T-shirt

Back side of Cannonball Creek Brewing T-shirt

First up, two links:
– Deschutes is an Underrated Treasure
– Cannonball Creek is best brewery you don’t know

As the headline on the first suggests, Jeff Alworth has written a tribute to the Deschutes breweries. I’m going to focus, instead, on something else he brings up, winning medals at the Great American Beer Festival. The Deschutes breweries (plural) have won 50 since 1990. Pretty impressive.

And the Portland brewpub won six in the last three years, a time frame Alworth focuses on, comparing what Deschutes has won with awards captured by 20 other “older, established regional breweries.” Also impressive. On the other hand, Deschutes won zero medals between 2015 and 2020 (six years).

Winning medals is not arbitrary, but it is very easy for an excellent brewery not to win. Figueroa Mountain Brewing in California and Cannonball Creek Brewing in Colorado have definitely beat the odds by winning a GABF medal every year since they opened. Figueroa Mountain, which operates multiple breweries, has won 14 years in a row. Cannonball Creek, close enough to our house that we share a ZIP code, 12 years in a row.

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