Beachwood Tovarish Espresso RIS Release: 12/27

Made a Bruery trip for Mai-Tai Sour in the Rye (tell my you don't love the name) and then dinner at Seal Beach w/ Tovarish. Mai-Tai was really promising. @mattolesh please strong arm the Bruery crew to toss a batch of this into a dark rum barrel for 12 months (if for nothing else than a random party). The flavors were all there but needed a little of the Orgeat/almond and sweetness. Could be an amazing project.

At Seal Beach, Tovarish was amazing. Really rich smooth coffee flavor, I almost thought it was a mocha beer because it almost tasted chocolatey. Planned on grabbing a few bottles to go and was told there was a line at 3:30 and nothing made it past opening besides kegs. Still happy to try it, and will gladly enjoy another if we cross paths again.

 

Jesus. I'm glad I went to Long Beach. Got in line after having some happy hour appitizers around 4:47 and was about 20 in line. When I left around 7ish, they still had plenty left. The shirts pretty sweet as well.

 

Got to the SB location just after 3. Not sure about the LB location, but SB had 4 cases. It was busy at 5. But I got my glass of Tovarish and 3 bottles and was out of there by 530. I did not stick around for the 5pm release of Seven last week but heard it was all sold out within the hour at both locations. Even though Tovarish release is big but not as big as the Seven release. I would pay 16 for Tovarish. Age it for at least a year and it will be even better. Thanks to the SB crew for all their hard work last night.

 

Got to LB at 7pm and there was no line for bottles, although it did take us 45min to get a table. They had Seven on tap as well last night. By the time we left around 9, there still seemed like there were plenty of bottles left for sale.

 

I have t say that tovarish with some age on it is awesome! Matt brought a bottle last night of the 1st release and I thought it was better than one year old speedway...that's saying something...

 

Tried a bottle last night, and agree this should age quite well. Though, the espresso flavor right now is really nice.

 

Oddly enough there was a paper at the waitress counter that had all the info to the servers about the beer. Jullian suggest that it be drank fresh. It can age, but the coffee character will diminish. And to age it in the fridge.

 

When I talked to Julian last year about aging Tovarish he said the same. Should be enjoyed fresh and wasn't sure on how the taste would be a year later. Well I thought it tasted better almost a year later.

 

Just because he is the brewer it doesn't mean his suggestion for drinking the beer is the best suggestion. Surprisingly, the one year old tovarish had a lot of coffee profile still. Its possibly because portola roasts their beans very lightly, as most 3rd wave coffee spots do, while Peets (which was used for the 1st tovarish release) roasts the shit out of their beans. So we will see how the new batch holds up a year from now....

 

Got some delicious food and ordered several pours last night. Took home a couple of bottles. Definitely going to age one as I prefer the coffee to be on the tamer side but as it is right now, it's incredibly rich and complex. Often times coffee stouts have a stale coffee ground component to them and I'm happy to report Tovarish didn't exhibit that flaw.

 

Massive turn out for this brew at the LB location. Wasn't as easy trying to get a pour at the bar after picking up my bottles.

 

What are you referrring to when you say "1st Tovarish release?" Are you talking about the first time brewed at pizza port? First time brewed that went on tap at SB? The first time on tap at the official LB brewery? Or the first time bottled? I am not sure what coffee was used on the earliest incarnations of Tovarish, but I think that the first (and maybe only) batch to use Peet's mocha Java, may have been the first tap version at LB, or maybe even the first Julian /pp that went on tap years ago at SB. The first bottle run was with Portola. That is why some people like myself were looking to see if there was going to be a return to peets.

 

100% correct. Aging coffee beers is like aging IPAs. Age IPAs if you don't like hops, age coffee beers if you don't like coffee.

 

I was talking about the first bottle release. I thought it was Peets but I guess I was wrong, either way the bottle we drank that was a year old was great and still had a strong coffee profile. So, if he used the same portola coffee in this batch I'm sure it will hold up great as well.

 

Coffee profile does not fall off anywhere close to the way hop profiles in beer do. And there are many who would say BA speedway and regular speedway are great with age and these are people who like coffee and I am one of them. I must respectfully disagree with your statement.

 

Noted, but I hope that you also respectfully notice that the brewers of such beers (including this one) tend to side on drinking them fresh. I had Surly's Cacao Bender a week off the coffee bean aging and then just months later and it was a completely different beer, with the coffee being upfront at first and taking a quick back seat to the chocolate a couple of months later. From my experiences, coffee does a very quick fade in the first month and then plateaus for about 8 months and then does a slow fade even further and depending on the process for introducing the coffee in the brewing (there are at least three distinct processes) the resulting product does have dramatically different results after a year or so. I am not sure if you were at Beachwood for the last bottle release, but they actually had a year old batch of Tovarish on tap and it had faded considerably, especially in side by side tastes, as most people were doing. Given that I now live in MN, I wasn't there this year, but did they again save kegs of last years, to offer side by side with this years? My guess is that they probably did not and that is probably based on what the results were from aging it in house the last cycle and also why Julian recommends drinking it fresh.

But of course, age yours as long as you want, if that is what you enjoy. Hell, I am one who actually ages Hopslam, because I believe that the resulting beer after the hops fall back behind the honey sweetness, is a great beer in and of itself. But I recognize that I am in the minority of people who like aged Hopslam versus fresh. Similarly, I think that most people would like fresh Tovarish versus an aged version, simply because there is more things fading than developing in a beer that is intended to be coffee forward.

 

There were no kegs from last batch. At the end of the day it's a great beer fresh, and it hold up with a little time. So cheers to the brewers and to Beachwood !

 

Those still interested in finding this will see it hit local distro either late this week or early next. I was at the SB location for the release and the bottles were gone in 20 minutes. The next day I was at LB and they had plenty left, citing that they only sent a limited amount to SB due to the space restrictions. The LB crew did advise that the distro on the Tovarish would be much smaller than 7.

 

still at LB as of last night.... snagged a few more bottles

 

^fuuuuu really? i thought it was gone..i would have went to get some