Russian River's Elusive Pliny the Younger

I have long wondered about Russian River's legendary Pliny the Younger, a ghost beer of such surpassing rarity that it appears only via single, tiny kegs in lucky pubs immediately thronged with beer geeks no less ecstatic than 14-year-old girls at a Justin Bieber concert.

Or maybe, like the ivory-billed woodpecker, the whole thing is a hoax perpetuated by those who don't want to admit such a beer doesn't exist, to cop to the fact that they didn't actually score a pour. Of course, what with my slow reflexes and advanced hermitism, I was never able to verify one way or another whether the beer exists and, if it does, whether it's worth a damn.

Until last night.

Fortunately, the good folks at Roscoe's were the winners in this year's PtY lottery. Located at 81st and Stark, with the beer tapping at five sharp: the stars aligned for me to do a stealth strike--in and out before the throngs could descend after work. (Congrats to Roscoe's and thanks for the head's up.) And indeed, on a day suffused with the first real light of spring, I finally managed to taste this beer, to test the hypothesis that it granted omniscience, youth, and bliss.

Russian River is justly famous for brewer Vinnie Cilurzo's funky forays into wild ales. It is likewise famous for Pliny the Elder, its imperial IPA. I have many times extolled that beer and would place it in the top five hoppy beers brewed on American soil. The beer is named, aptly, for the Roman naturalist purported to have first identified hops (disputes exist). The beer is a hop lyric, a hoppy bacchanal in a bottle. Whether or not the history is accurate, the evocation is appropriate: to even smell the intensely piny aroma is enough to provoke a hophead to shiver--never mind actually tasting the stuff.

But Pliny the Younger? He was not a naturalist and had nothing to do with hops. A man of moderation and reserve, he is famous for his letters which include passages like this, extolling the virtues of illness to tamp down passions:

Where is the sick man who is either solicited by avarice or inflamed with lust? At such a season he is neither a slave of love nor the fool of ambition; wealth he utterly disregards, and is content with ever so small a portion of it, as being upon the point of leaving even that little.... These are the supreme objects of his cares and wishes, while he resolves, if he should recover, to pass the remainder of his days in ease and tranquillity, that is, to live innocently and happily.

The beer is bigger and hoppier than Pliny the Elder, an 11% "triple IPA" that is "hopped three times more than our standard IPA, and is dry hopped four different times." Look elsewhere for moderation.

Tasting Notes
Let's just say right up front: I'm not a big fan of imperial IPAs. Whenever I taste them, I have the sense of a kind of molecular density, like they're comprised of dark matter. The flavors are so compressed you can't actually taste them individually: it's a wall of force that blasts you back in your seat. (I suppose this is exactly the quality that makes them so popular.) I actively enjoy Deschutes Hop Henge, but few other massive hop bombs.

Nevertheless, I carried to the experience an open mind: perhaps the Younger was just like the Elder, but more so. Indeed, the first impressions were good. As you can see, it's a gorgeous beer, and the aroma definitely has the Pliny family character--a bouquet of pine and juniper, woody and resinous. Ah, but then we encounter the dark matter. One can detect, under the rather violent alcoholic pop, a candy-orange sweetness and those smooth, velvety hops. Yet everything is cramped and compressed. I wondered if it might not do to be diluted a bit--which would of course turn it into Pliny the Elder.

You can only go north so far. Once you hit the pole, you're heading south again. Pliny the Elder is a perfect beer--there's no "more so" to be found. In amping everything up, Russian River heads south. (Obviously, this is a minority view, but that makes it no less correct.) Save yourself the bother and have the Elder: there, friends, lies bliss.

Hat Tip to Vinnie

Someone just tipped me off to this interview with Russian River brewer Vinnie Cilurzo. It starts out with fairly fluffy content, but then there's a passage about how a commercial brewery must handle brettanomyces yeast and what the costs are to hand-craft barrel-aged beer. It's worth reprinting, if only underscore Russian River's commitment to good beer.

This brewery is not that large. How do you keep the yeast from spreading into the other beers?

We keep two of everything, if not more. And what I mean by that is, we have a separate pump just for the funky beers. Different hoses, different valves, different gaskets for hoses and doors, and even the rubber gloves we use for cleaning and handling. And we keep the barrels of aged beer in a separate room.

How did you first decide to start experimenting with aging beers like wine, in barrels?

The first beer we made with Brett, Temptation, was also our first aged beer. It was made in 1999 and released in 2000. It’s a blond ale aged in Chardonnay barrels. You don’t have to ferment in barrels if you use Brett; you can do it in stainless steel. In fact, my very, very favorite beer, [the Belgian] Orval, is made that way. But I wanted to put Temptation in wood, because Brett is a yeast that’s so strong, it just wants to keep on eating. If it runs out of sugars in the beer to keep eating, it won’t die. It’s almost impossible to kill. But if you give it a place to live in the porousness of the barrel, it can keep eating the sugars in the wood, and keep kicking out all these interesting flavors while it’s doing it.

How long do you age your beers?

Consecration is aged 6 to 9 months, Temptation 9 to 15 months, Supplication 12 to 18 months. The average brewery is on a 24- to 25-day cycle. It’s a pretty big financial hardship for us to make beer this way. Our biggest-selling beer, accounting for over 50 percent of our sales, is the [unaged Double IPA] Pliny the Elder. We could make a lot more [unaged] beer in here if we didn’t commit this much space to funky beers, but that’s my passion.

Full interview here.

Russian River Supplication

I arrived at Belmont Station within twenty minutes of the Supplication tapping and thought it was going to be standing-room only. Fortunately, there were a couple spots at the bar (Sally was with me), which had the added benefit of giving me a front-row view of all the people coming in and placing their orders. Not that I'd flatter myself that this lil' ol blog spread the word--but something did. The Supplications were flying.

As you can see from the picture, it's not an oud bruin--or any brown, for that matter. It is rather a golden-red, and captured the refracting August sun beautifully. This concludes the criticism portion of the review.

It has an extremely tart, lactic nose, and the cherries are more suggestive than overt. So intense is the aroma that you reflexively brace yourself. Wisely, it turns out, for this beer bears more resemblance to a lambic than a sour brown. There are two axes for sour beers, sour and funky, and Supplication is all sour. It is an intense and dry beer, tart and sour, and the cherries accentuate this. They also provide a nice sweet note in the middle, though it's also suggestive. Finishes bone dry, with an alkaline quality and a goodbye pucker. Long after a swallow, though, a strange thing happens: a dry-cookie, biscuit flavor pervades my mouth. I can't account for it. If there's pinot in the palate (it was aged in noir casks), it eludes me--subtle flavor components would be necessarily flattened by this tour de sour.

I loved the beer, and it was very much an authentic Beligian. Host a sour beer tasting of only Belgian-brewed beers, and this one would never be exposed as an imposter. It's aggressive but rewarding and to my palate, delicious. If I were the brewery, I'd dispense with the crazy "brown" descriptor (it's about half Rodenbach Grand Cru and half Boon Kriek, and no Liefman's) and call it a red or something that won't indicate any precursor--"sour" ale or something like that. Otherwise, thumbs way up (an A-, if you forced a judgment from me).

[Update: I have included the sour-o-meter reading for Supplication: a 4.5. Mmmm, puckery.]

Mark Your Calendar

Dunno if this has an Olympics tie-in, but Belmont Station is tapping the much-anticipated Russian River Supplication on Tuesday. It is a (Flanders?) brown ale "aged in Pinot Noir wine barrels for one year with sour cherries, Brettanomyces yeast, and Lactobacillus & Pedicoccus bacteria." Yes, bacteria--and it's intentional! It is a two-time GABF silver medalist, and I have heard it spoken of only in the sotto voce of those who know. Erase Pliny the Elder from your memory--this is not your pappy's strong ale (unless your pappy's a Flemish brewer).

Thanks partly to a harmonic convergence of brewing trends and also the lack of hops, this has been a banner year in Belgian experimentation in the US. By all accounts, Russian River is one of a handful of breweries that have attained some mastery over the art. Put it on your calendar--Tuesday the 12th. Actually, you better put it down as Wednesday. You wouldn't want to rush into anything. Go Wednesday, for sure. That way your trusty blogger will have gotten the lay of the land for you.