Janx
Well-Known Member
Wow! I hit a great pub last weekend that I can't believe I have never been to before. It's in downtown Santa Rosa, California in Sonoma County. Real nice room. Big bar. Good pizza.
The most unique and amazing thing about this place is their selection of barrel-fermented Belgian beers. They have many unique and unusual beers that use a combination of traditional yeast and Brettanomyces and other strange yeasts. And obviously fermenting in barrels is unusual.
The bottles of the primo stuff are very hard to come by. The barkeep tols me they sell out of cases almost instantly, and I can see why. Everything I tasted on tap (and I tasted all the Belgians) was great. They have a list of probably 15 Belgians that are available at different times.
But that's not all! They have another list of beers that also must have 10 beers in it that are more standard fare. One of their IPAs is called Blind Pig. When I was there, they were celebrating the end of Prohibition, so you could get a mason jar and a beer for like $5 and refills of the mason jar were cheap. I can't tell you how many jars I had.
In short, Blind Pig was possibly the most perfect IPA I have had. It is clean, hoppy, aromatic, and basically flawless. I bet it's a straight 2-row mash with little if any adjunct grains. I'd guess Centennial for hops, but it definitely isn't Cascade. Nothing extraordinary about the recipe - it's a very simple beer, but it's made very well, and if you like hops, you'll love it. What a beer! Perfectly hopped at every layer. Dry, crisp, delicious.
Stop in if you're going through Northern California!
The most unique and amazing thing about this place is their selection of barrel-fermented Belgian beers. They have many unique and unusual beers that use a combination of traditional yeast and Brettanomyces and other strange yeasts. And obviously fermenting in barrels is unusual.
The bottles of the primo stuff are very hard to come by. The barkeep tols me they sell out of cases almost instantly, and I can see why. Everything I tasted on tap (and I tasted all the Belgians) was great. They have a list of probably 15 Belgians that are available at different times.
But that's not all! They have another list of beers that also must have 10 beers in it that are more standard fare. One of their IPAs is called Blind Pig. When I was there, they were celebrating the end of Prohibition, so you could get a mason jar and a beer for like $5 and refills of the mason jar were cheap. I can't tell you how many jars I had.
In short, Blind Pig was possibly the most perfect IPA I have had. It is clean, hoppy, aromatic, and basically flawless. I bet it's a straight 2-row mash with little if any adjunct grains. I'd guess Centennial for hops, but it definitely isn't Cascade. Nothing extraordinary about the recipe - it's a very simple beer, but it's made very well, and if you like hops, you'll love it. What a beer! Perfectly hopped at every layer. Dry, crisp, delicious.
Stop in if you're going through Northern California!