Alpine Brewing Thread

A giant bright light from the heavens should shine down over Alpine when this happens.

 

Yea, it's called the sun.

 

Needs to be brighter. =P

 

A green flash of light?

 

Ha! I get it.

 

They just posted Bad Boy is on tap at the pub, too. Wish I could get down there. Sounds like an amazing time to stop in.

 

Bad Boy has been on for almost a week I think. It was delicious, especially with the fried pickles.

 

Why would Green Flash's beers be that different from Alpine's? I would expect that Pat walked them though the process and made should they were able to replicate the beer.

Green Flash is a competent brewery and make some great beers regardless if you personally don't like them.

I am just curious why people are so certain that Green Flash is make a "shell of it's shelf nelson"?

I've only had a few bottles of alpine and duet once on draft so I can't add a valuable opninon between the two beers. I just can't imagine that GF is really f'in up the beer.

 

Brewing is like baking to me. If you want to make a batch of something 5 times the size as the recipe states, you simply can't multiply the ingredients by 5 and expect it to taste the same. Using different ovens, Water, etc. all have an affect on the final outcome.

 

Moving from one system to another is not linear, it can take a brewery a year or two to fully dial in their own recipes when they switch brewhouses, let alone someone else's recipe. A major factor in this specific case is that Alpine tends to do a ton of late hopping while Green Flash loads up on bittering hops and is more restrained with aroma hops and dry hopping, and I would imagine there's some back and forth about how to best achieve beers like Nelson at a much bigger scale, without just throwing a shit ton of hops in at the end of the boil (which gets pretty expensive at bigger scales). You can achieve the same number of IBUs a whole bunch of different ways, but the results end up drastically different.

I think Nelson has gotten the closest, but Duet and HB have both been markedly different beers.

 

Can you elaborate a bit on how they differ? What qualities do you note a difference? Mouthfeel? Bitterness? Aroma? Etc.? Not questioning, just trying to understand where folks who really perceive a difference are seeing it.

 

GF HB I only had once and it just tasted like a totally different beer, no desire to give it another shot. GF Duet has been less aromatic and more bitter. The GF batches haven't tasted alike though, so your mileage may vary.

 

Green flash on their lineup of beers are very heavy on bittering. The beauty of Nelson and Duet is they have a tone of hop flavor and aroma but low bitterness. I hope GF can dial it in over the years because I am seeing so many alpine tap takeovers, in Orange County. However, if they are as good it kinda defeats the purpose.

Thanks for the insight.

 

To follow up on his point, when i was up at alpine at christmas time Steve in the brewery said this basically. They have two different ways of hopping and he said they were getting closer and closer but still had some tweaking to do.

 

Me, too, but I'm afraid it will indeed take years. Green Flash already has struggled to scale up its own recipes after moving from Vista to its much larger location and that's been, what, three years now?

Just look at the West Coast IPA, which used to be their flagship beer. (Lord only knows what their flagship beer is now.) After making numerous batches that were off point, they overhauled the recipe, raised the abv, and now call it a double IPA. Totally different beer.

 

I so miss the original WC IPA. Interesting if that's why they changed the recipe. I thought it was to revamp slow sells not because of "off" batches.

 

I could be wrong about why GF changed the WC IPA. I'm just some guy on a message board, after all. Maybe it had to do with hop contracts or something. Regardless, the batches they brewed at the new facility before they overhauled the recipe were not nearly as good as what they brewed in Vista.

 

I've tasted Duet twice, both on tap at local LA bars within the last 4 months. Both times it tasted like a completely average beer. I was wondering what all the hype was about. Therefore I completed passed on buying a bottle of it in a local shop. I also passed on tasting it when I went to Alpine a month ago.

Now that I'm realizing those kegs were probably brewed at GF I'm thinking I should have given it one more chance from the official source. Maybe next time!

 

Duet = most

edit: not sure about least, but GF Nelson is delicious

 

This is not true, the recipes do not scale up proportionately. There are programs that help you do this, but there is always tweaking involved.

Edit: Never mind, I miss read the original post.