Pittsburgh - New Beers & Local Breweries

The 3rd bottle is Haviken ?

 

Those look sharp indeed.

 

Why? (Never been there / never heard of the place)

 

Just a guess, but Rock Room and Gooskie's, two of Pittsburgh bestest diviest bars are smoker friendly. And since all other places are now smoker un-friendly that means there is a consistent level of smoke 7 days a week at these Polish Hill staples. On lightly patronized days, the walls, furniture, and air conditioning just redeposits the excess smoke from the more well attended evenings.

 

If anyone's interested, rye battle axe and kbs are both still going at fatheads. No more zeus juice.

 

Free beer:
I'll likely be able to do a meetup Saturday evening someplace in Pittsburgh for some ipa. Prefer to share a growler rather than fill a bunch of bottles if at all possible.

Let me know if we can make this work.

 

Yeah that's a great leap in production. Love the handful of their beers I've tried before but they were the dullest labels.

 

Spoonwood is literally the only brewery in the city area I've been to still and the beer was eh, the set up was kind of awkward, but the bustle through the door was pretty impressive. Considering what is in that particular area I guess it scratches that "something different" itch pretty well.

 

Had a Draai Laag Haviken last night. It's only the 2nd Draai Laag beer I've had aside from one of the Briars. Was pretty damn good. Very different. Big fruit on the nose, alotta brett character, big carb, a little thin on the body but overall a cool beer. Can't say I've had anything quite like that before.

 

Most of the (several) times that I've been in there, it's been slammed too. And I'm not knocking their beers--for me they've been consistent, just not exceptional; they are great gateway beers for an area (Bethel and points south) not saturated with craft beer geeks--the average age is greater than you'll likely see at a beer bar. It seems a smart place for an investment to pay dividends, which would potentially allow the brewer (based upon some of his comments here) to gradually take more risks with bolder beers.

I can envision my uncle ordering a bunch of flights and telling me the chocolate IPA is "one of my fancy beers" that he likes.

The exception for me has been their Strong Ales, which I've enjoyed the most.

 

Our Sour IPA (LOLZ at calling a beer this) is on tap right now at the brewery if anyone is interested in drinking terrible beer.

 

Visiting Hershey this weekend and my brother is always bitching that I never bring him beer. May grab a growler of this and shut him the hell up for a few minutes. Barbarian still on too? He doesn't fancy wilds/sours as much as I.

 

What the hell is it? An IPA that you pitched with wild yeast?

 

My guess is a lacto kettled soured IPA, maybe a hoppy Berliner since I know Andy just made one of those which is supposed to be good. And I'm intrigued.

 

You should consider renaming your brewery Self-Deprecation Brewing Co...

Seriously though...the only other sour IPA I ever had was from Tired Hands...and while it wasn't terrible, I remember thinking that it just shouldn't have existed.

 

I've had a few tart beers with big hop aroma and it seems to be a winning combo for me. The ones I've had weren't very bitter though. Pizza boy eternal Sunshine is a good example. Haven't had a true sour ipa. I've always heard that bitter and sour clash.

 

At risk of suffering an onslaught of "Brett isn't sour" comments (please don't), marketers and labels sometime balk definition, and, given Andy's LOLZ, I though it might be an intentional misnomer (like Sour Monkey). Often people lump into "sour" Wild Devil, Enjoy After and the yet-to-be released Wild Elf.

 

It is a kettle sour with the same Lacto culture we used in our Berliner and fermented with Chico. Only hop additions were at flame out and then dry hopped. Bitter and sour certainly clash, tried to keep the bitterness as low as possible. The first drink is where the bitterness comes in but not off putting, after the first sip it fades a lot to me. It is definitely the most interesting beer we have made here. It expect to be very polarizing.

 

Barbarian is still on and the best batch to date, that being said as always still a work in progress.

 

It sounds like it needs some smoke malt for balance.

And salt.

A lot of salt.