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.

Reviews: Widmer Deadlift and Double Mountain Porter A Go Go

You might imagine that a 5% porter and a double IPA have precious little in common and normally, I'd agree with you. But there is something surprising that unites these two beers, and so I've grouped them together. (Originally it was going to be Deadlift and Highland Ambush, but plans change.) Through a strange combination of hops, malt, and yeast, both have managed to produce interesting berry flavors in their beer.

Double Mountain Porter A Go Go
Double Mountain released Porter A Go Go a week or two ago, and I tried it at the Horse Brass. I'll give more detailed notes in a moment, but what really intrigued me was a predominant blackberry note. Sometimes we say a beer is fruity or has "raisin" or "plum" notes. These are metaphors to hint at the kind of flavors we detect. But when I say there was blackberry in Porter A Go Go, I don't mean it metaphorically. It was a pure, clear note. (It wasn't, however, sweet or dominant, more like the way blackberry tastes when its baked in a scone.) I shot DM's Matt Swihart an email, and he wrote back at length about the beer.

I’m a giant fan of porters, they don’t get the attention they deserve, and often end up being pretty timid from a large brewer market perspective or way too big into the stout range from the little guys. I found myself seeking a rich, dark beer, ruby black translucent with a noticeable hop nose, yet not zealot-hopped, or accused of being a new beer style with black or India in the title. I wanted the alcohol level to be more moderate than typical beers I produce, as this beer was designed specifically so I could have a couple at the end of the day in our pub in Hood River. The beer had to have some crystal malt sweetness to balance the roast, so I could throw in my hop back desires (also known as large amounts of whole hops). The hops are US challengers, which I find to have a tad of that US citrus, which can be a blessing and a curse, of course. But UK hops can be quite variable in quality, I find, so as a brewer 2 hours from Yakima , I tend to brew with what I can drive to between taco shack breaks.

I think the blackberry note you are getting is likely more from our Abby yeast strain. I underpitched the brew to drive the esters up a tad, but kept the temperature of the ferment lower. I’ve been having some good success with that lately. Could also be a combination with the dark malts, again that I didn’t want a giant roast presence so you can achieve some greater subtlety at lower levels.

I, too, am a giant porter fan. Porter was one of the first beer styles I brewed, and one of the first I consider when I arrive in a new brewpub. Porter is a flexible style, with version ranging from the sweet, gentle and nutty to the smoky, burly, and bitter (which Denver styles "brown" or "robust"). I think the style actually runs more along a continuum, and Porter A Go Go is one of those versions that falls just in the middle.

On the one hand, it's a gentle 5% and has that sweet, light body you like in a nice brown porter. The nature of the sweetness is characterized by that blackberry note, which I think takes something, in addition to the yeast, from the chocolate malts. On the other hand, it's a pretty hoppy beer, and the bitterness plays on the roastiness of the malts and gives it more of the charcoal quality you get in robust porters. Not your average porter by any means, and a beer you should try to track down. On a day like today--low forties, drizzly--it's really hits the spot. I might have hopped it a tad less, so on the ratings scale, I'd go B+ (though of course, that extra hop oomph is exactly what will recommend it to some drinkers.)


Widmer Deadlift
If Widmer hadn't lost a batch of Deadlift to a power outage, I wouldn't have known about it before receiving a four-pack in the mail. (Yes, federales, I was comped.) A strangely stealthy release. What we have in Deadlift is a further evolution of the Widmer style. House character can be achieved in a lot of different ways, but against all expectations, Widmer seems to be doing it through their use of unusual hops--especially Summit, Citra, and Nelson Sauvin. And Nelson Sauvin are leading the charge.

Deadlift utilizes four hops: Cascade, Alchemy, and Willamette--but the signature comes from the Nelsons. This is a hop the brewery started working with in it's "Nelson" trials (Half Nelson, Full Nelson), and which it later used in Drifter. Nelson Sauvin is a very distinctive hop and one for which I have no great love. The brewery describes its character variously as citrusy, or berry-like, and I have heard others call it piney. All true, but my nose finds some chemical that smells and tastes like sweat. Based on the commercial and critical success of Drifter, I'm in the minority, though, so take that for what it's worth.

So how do the Nelsons work in Deadlift? Widmer's approach is interesting. it comes in at only 70 IBUs, which for a Double IPA is pretty low. Instead of bitterness, they've gone for a tea-like infusion of hop flavor. From the moment it splashed into my tulip glass (beautifully, too--a sunny, bright gold), I could smell the Nelsons. They come across as more orange-citrus, but there's that characteristic Nelson-ness. The beer's not super strong, but a lot of volatile alcohol vents from the beer, too, lifting those aroma compounds, almost like wasabi. On the tongue, that Nelson-ness isn't so pronounced. The flavor they describe as berry I might call spruce, too. As the glass warms, the bitterness fades back a bit more and it almost gets too sweet--though the alcohol just keeps it in balance.

Not totally sure what the reaction is going to be to this beer. Because of the Nelsons, I'm having a hard time rating it. The early reviews on BeerAdvocate are positive, though.


Update. More reviews of Deadlift: It's Pub Night, 999 Beers, Portland Beer and Music, Bulls and Brew.

Addendum, 2/12/10. Sally got into the Deadlift last night and drank two (!). I snuck a couple of swallows and while the beer keeps me at arm's length personally, thanks to those Nelson Sauvin hops, I became more and more impressed. If it didn't say "double IPA" on the label, I would have a hard time characterizing it. There are ways in which it bears some resemblance to strong Belgian ales: full effervescence, the volatile alcohol nose, even the deep golden-orange color. It definitely isn't cut from the same cloth as most double IPAs, and this is to its credit.
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