Beer of the Week: NW Peaks Esmeralda Ale

By Iron Chef Leftovers

Sorry for the delay in posting some beer reviews. Seattle Beer Week and a few personal issues kept me from keeping up with the posting. I am back now, so you get to “enjoy” my reviews again.

Having been a member of the MountainBeer club at NW Peaks for over a year now, we are starting to see some of the beers make a return appearance. Since they are only brewed once a year, they warrant inclusion in my beer notes as well as posting here, just so I can compare how the beers and my tastes changed year over year. I posted a review of the Esmeralda Ale a mere 9 months ago and that was actually 5 months after I drank the beer. This time I am posting a review of it just 2 weeks after I drank the 2014 version. I am getting better at timely reviews.

From the NW Peaks Website:

The name. The mountain. Esmeralda is located in the Teanaway River drainage just S of Ingalls peak and SW of Mt Stuart – one of our favorite areas. It’s on the other side of the Teanaway River from its beastly neighbors and is a much easier approach/climb than that of it’s neighbors. The “class 2″ trek to the summit offers some great views of the massive Mt Stuart and the Stuart range and is part of a great loop for a day hike.

The story of two experiences. Because of its popularity from past renditions, we bring Esmeralda Ale back for another late winter mountainBeer. Of course it is always fun (or not) to remember the comedy of errors that was our first batch brewed on our current system (Esmeralda Ale), while now we have everything dialed in.

The Beer. Esmeralda is one of our ‘adjunct’ beers for March. The adjuncts in Esmeralda are corn and molasses that create a unique character. The corn provides a nice sweetness and smoothness and complements the molasses notes. Esmeralda was fermented with an English ale yeast adding a smooth fruity flavor on top. With very little few hop notes, the slight grain sweetness and dark sugar properties are uniquely featured.

Malts: ESB, munich, corn, special B, biscuit, carafa 2. Hops: Apollo and Goldings. Fermented with British Ale yeast. OG/TG 1.058/1.016 ~5.5% ABV

The beer pours light mahogany brown in color with a thin tan head. The beer has a significant up front nose of corn and grain with hints of spice and grass and just a touch of bread. It starts out on the palate with a slight grain and corn sweetness before bringing in a very light hop bitterness that stays until the end of the beer, when it couples with a pleasant note of corn cakes, molasses spice and an almost pilsner maltiness that linger in a crisp, long fade. This is a full-bodied beer and different from almost anything out there, this beer brings hints of fresh corn to the party in a well-balanced and easy drinking way.

NW Peaks Esmeralda Ale travels down the yellow brick road with 4 flying monkeys out of 5.

Mythcrushers – The NJ Edition

By Iron Chef Leftovers

A friend recently posted a link to an article titled “11 Things Only People from New Jersey Understand.” Being a long-removed Jersey boy myself, I thought it was an interesting list, but one, alas that definitely had some misconceptions, even if it was written by a Jerseyite. What does this have to do with a blog on food, sports and games, you might ask? Well indulge me a minute.

2. There Are Certain Foods You Can Only Eat When You’re In New Jersey

The list of things I have to eat when I’m in New Jersey, and try not to eat anywhere else are:

Bagels

Pizza

Corn

Tomatoes

Salt Water Taffy

I’m a total Jersey food snob because the rest of the country just doesn’t make them the same. And then there’s the ultimate NJ dish that doesn’t even exist anywhere else…

Ok. I want to bust this myth completely since I have heard it all of my life and it is simply not true. First off, corn and tomatoes make no sense. Yes, NJ is called the Garden State for a reason, but you can get stellar corn and tomatoes IN SEASON just about anywhere these days. The in season label applies to NJ also. Let’s face it, unless you spend half your year in the southern hemisphere, there is about a 2 month window for getting good tomatoes, and rarely they are from the local meagmart. Any farmer’s market will carry great produce in season, or just do what Coltrane and I do – grow them yourself.

Anyone that says you can’t get great pizza or bagels outside of NY/NJ is just being a snob. I actually know people who would laugh at the idea of eating pizza and bagels outside of NYC as a silly concept, so there are levels of snobbery here. Everyone who grows up in NJ has their favorite pizza place, most likely one that is currently being run by the 4^th or 5^th generation of an Italian family. I can think of at least a half-dozen excellent, non-Neapolitan pizza places in Seattle that make a pretty good version of a NY/NJ pizza. I have had some truly terrible pizza also, but that is another story. Is it exactly the same, no, but I never expect that someone is going to make a pizza exactly like Pompeii Pizza in Bayonne, NJ. Heck, none of the other pizza places in Bayonne (and there are a ton of them) make a pizza exactly like Pompeii. I guess what I am trying to say here is that, while pizza in NJ may be the best on the planet, there are plenty of excellent versions of it in other cities, you just need to spend time looking. The same thing applies to bagels.

I will just skip salt water taffy – it isn’t something I particularly love to begin with and I have had equally uninspiring versions of it elsewhere.

3. The Mere Mention Of Taylor Ham, Egg, And Cheese On A Roll Activates Four Different Regions Of Your Brain

Taylor Ham is the single best brand of pork roll available on the market. Taylor literally invented it. For this reason, it is not appropriate to call it pork roll–you must call it Taylor Ham in homage to John Taylor. Calling it anything else is disrespectful to the master.

Taylor Ham is definitely something that you will not find at a restaurant/deli anywhere else in the country. Heck, you are hard pressed to find anyone outside of the NYC/NJ/Philly area that even has any idea what Taylor Ham is. It is, for lack of a better description, a bastardized version of Canadian Bacon (the meat, not the movie). Strangely, while I can’t remember seeing it on any menu anywhere I have ever been outside of NJ, I can occasionally get it and scrapple (a hyper-local Philly specialty) at Ballard Market in Seattle. I have no idea why, but I can if I want to make it at home.

9. The Best Time To Eat At A Diner Is 2 a.m. When You’re Drunk With Your Best Friends

There’s only one type of non-chain eatery that has consistently good food at any time of the day and that’s a New Jersey diner. I remember going to the Chester Diner at 2 a.m. after working the late shift at the Chester Movie Theater and meeting friends for a gyro and pancakes. And you know what, they would taste exactly (amazingly) the same if I went at 2 p.m. on a Sunday after church. It’s a marvel of modern Americanized Greek technology.

Diners are just the best. Period

I grew up a half block from a diner and yes, there were many drunken late nights with friends eating really crappy food at 2 AM. Diners don’t seem to exist much outside of the east coast and are pretty much non-existent on the west coast and I do miss them, especially when I want breakfast for dinner. Like pizza places, everyone in NJ has their favorite place that has been there forever and still probably has the 40 year old personal juke boxes mounted to the wall in the booths.

10. Worshiping Bruce Springsteen And Bon Jovi Is Just A Natural Part Of Growing Up

Ok, this has nothing to do with food and maybe things have changed in the 25 years since I moved from NJ, but Bon Jovi was always considered to be a bad joke, not an idol. The Boss however, that is a different story. Springsteen is just about as close to a god as you can get in the state. I have seen The Boss play in 7 different cities, and none of those concerts came close to the energy of the 4 hour marathon he played in 1993 in NJ on the Human Touch/Better Days tour in front of the home crowd. Did I mention that the show I went to happened to be the 8^th of 10 shows in 12 days he played in NJ, and he played for 4 hours? Yep, it was the most energized concert I have ever seen. Either way, it should tell you where Springsteen ranks in the NJ idol list – he is The Boss. When you say The Boss in NJ, everyone knows who you are talking about. I can honestly say that I have never had a conversation with anyone in NJ about how great Bon Jovi is.

Beer of the Week: NW Peaks Spickard Spiced Ale

By Iron Chef Leftovers

The Mountain Beers from NW Peaks in November had a decidedly seasonal tone to them – Thanksgiving dinner. There was a pecan pie beer (review forthcoming) and a beer that invokes the flavors of stuffing – the Spickard Spice Ale. You don’t see too many beers that use savory (herbs) rather than sweet (nutmeg, cinnamon, etc.) spices, so I was really excited for this one.

From the NW Peaks Website:

The name. The mountain. Spickard is juxtaposed to Mt Redoubt (the namesake for our red ale) and is a great alpine destination, although accessibility is limited to put it mildly. To get to Ouzel lake located at the base of Spickard, you have to travel through Canada and then hike back into the US to Depot cirque. The waterfall en route is one that might not be matched by another in the N cascades. Truly a splendid location.

The Beer. While many breweries are doing pumpkin spice beers in October, we decided to wait until November. And instead of using Halloween spices (pumpkin), we went towards Thanksgiving spices/ingredients. We started with a base that includes more than 25% maize giving the beer a thicker, sweeter flavor. We then added some spruce, rosemary, and thyme that give the beer a flavor reminiscent of thanksgiving stuffing. A great beer on its own and a perfect accompaniment to Thanksgiving dinner.

The beer pours and amber reddish brown with a cream colored head. The nose is dominated by strong notes of rosemary and sage with hints of corn and grain supporting the herbal character. The beer leads off with solid herb flavors of sage and thyme with supporting notes of wood (not oak – think tree branch) and rosemary (probably the spruce in the beer), before moving into a slightly sweet middle, supported by grain and a mild corn character before finishing long with notes of yeast joining the herbs and corn. The finish is long and all of the flavors integrate perfectly, forming a liquid cornbread stuffing beer. The beer drinks well on its own but it truly shined with a traditional thanksgiving meal where its depth of flavor truly stood out when paired with turkey and stuffing.

NW Peaks Spickard Spiced Ale makes a glutton out of itself, rolling in at 4 turkey induced comas out of 5.

Beer of the Week: NW Peaks Esmeralda Ale

By Iron Chef Leftovers

One of the best things about joining the NW Peaks Mountain Beer club with a friend (in this case Annie S.), is that you don’t need to decide which of the 2 beers that NW Peaks is producing that month you are going to take home, you just take both. The added benefit is that when they are 2 similar beers, you get to try them side by side. Back in March, they did “adjunct beers”. I know the term, thanks to Budweiser, has a bad connotation, but the reality is that any beer brewed with more than just grain, water, yeast and hops contains adjuncts and many of them are delicious. This project gave us the Granite Oat Ale (reviewed here) and the Esmeralda Ale.

From the NW Peaks website:

The name. The mountain. Esmeralda is located in the Teanaway River drainage just S of Ingalls peak and SW of Mt Stuart – one of our favorite areas. It’s on the other side of the Teanaway River from its beastly neighbors and is a much easier approach/climb than that of it’s neighbors. The “class 2″ trek to the summit offers some great views of the massive Mt Stuart and the Stuart range and is part of a great loop for a day hike.

The story of two experiences. Because of its popularity from past renditions, we bring Esmeralda Ale back for another late winter mountainBeer. Of course it is always fun (or not) to remember the comedy of errors that was our first batch brewed on our current system (Esmeralda Ale), while now we have everything dialed in.

The Beer. Esmeralda is one of our ‘adjunct’ beers for March. The adjuncts in Esmeralda are corn and molasses that create a unique character. The corn provides a nice sweetness and smoothness and complements the molasses notes. Esmeralda was fermented with an English ale yeast adding a smooth fruity flavor on top. With very little few hop notes, the slight grain sweetness and dark sugar properties are uniquely featured.

Malts: ESB, munich, corn, special B, biscuit, carafa 2. Hops: Apollo and Goldings. Fermented with British Ale yeast. OG/TG 1.058/1.016 ~5.5% ABV

The beer pours amber/orange with a fizzy white head. Strong notes of molasses, corn and malt are on the nose, giving this beer an almost syrup like character. The initial taste is slightly sweet with hints of molasses yielding quickly to strong notes of corn before transitioning into a malty finish that lingers and has notes of caramel interspersed. Nicely balanced, flavorful and different; probably not a beer that everyone will enjoy, but it should appeal to a larger audience because of a distinct lack of hop character. This beer is very different from just about anything that is on the market from any other brewery in the Northwest, so I would highly recommend trying this one if it every makes another appearance.

NW Peaks Esmeralda Ale gathers up a crew and skips in with 3 yellow brick roads out of 5.