Beer of the Week: NW Peaks Black Eldorado

By Iron Chef Leftovers

NW Peaks is a nano-brewery located in Ballard, literally inside of a converted trailer. They are a brewery with a small production system and are only available on tap at their brewery and a few select locations (check their website for details). What they lack in size, they make up for in flavor, brewing a number of the styles that you would expect (Pale, Stout, Saison, etc.) as well as a few interesting beers for their Mountain Beer Club (check it out here), in an ever rotating tap list. One of their recent beers was their take on a CDA which they called Black Eldorado (their beers are named after mountains).

From their website:

The name. The mountain. Eldorado is a majestic mountain and stands at8,869′, the 25th tallest peak in the state. Many hikers will be intimately familiar with cascade pass trail at the end of the Cascade River road. The commonly used climbers path leaves the road about 4 miles short of the cascade pass trail head. The relative burly trail climbs several thousand feet through forest, talus, and rock leading to the Eldorado glacier with great views of the summit and the rest of the cascade river basin. While these views are excellent the real treats come at the top of the eldorado glacier where you get views of the Klawatti-Inspiration-Mcallister icecap and is knife-edge summit ridge.

The Beer. We took our pale ale recipe, a nice light pale with citrus notes, and threw in some Blackprinz and chocolate malts to it to add some color a a slight roast note to play off of the citrus hops. Black Eldorado presents itself as a light, nicely balanced version of a cascadia dark ale. Light on the palate with a nice combination of light hops and roasty malts.

Malts: Pale, ESB, Wheat, blackprinz, chocolate. Hops: Apollo, cascade, chinook, centennial ABV: ~5.25%

This beer pours brownish-black in color with a short, white head. Lots of roast and chocolate with a floral citrus hop background that hides itself nicely behind the stronger aromas of the beer. The initial taste yields a good amount of roast malt and overtones of chocolate lingering nicely on the palate before yielding to the hops. There are light notes of grapefruit and citrus peel appearing magically after the initial roast fade and they continue to linger for a long while before finally yielding to a pleasant bitter ending. More roast and malt flavors with less hops than most CDA’s but a delicious treat to enjoy when it is on tap. Incredibly well balance and easy to drink, it has all of the hop character of a big IPA, the roasted qualities of a dark and the drinkability of a pilsner coming together in a beer that you could easily knock back a few.

Black Eldorao self-arrests at a final rating of a perfect 5 Ice Axes out of 5.

The Other (Tastier) March Madnesses

By Iron Chef Leftovers

March Madness is upon us and there is more going on than just basketball. There are at least 2 beer related competitions going on in Seattle.

First up is the Thirsty In Seattle Beer March Madness. This is just a paring of 64 beers in a bracket and you vote on the better beer. It seems to be somewhat random parings and I don’t think I agree with some of their selections (some breweries have multiple entries, some do not), but it is what it is, so vote early and often.

If you happen to be voting, please consider voting for my friends at the newly opened Populuxe Brewing in their matchup against Foggy Noggin’s Bit O’ Beaver. Populuxe is getting smoked right now and they could use some help. If you haven’t been to the brewery, you should stop by. They have really good beers and the owners are nice people. You can also stop by Ballard’s only wine tasting room, Domanico Winery, across the street (OK, my shameless plug is done).
Also consider their Ballard neighbors, NW Peaks, in a tough matchup of their Redoubt Red vs. American Brewing’s Caboose Oatmeal Stout. Both are fantastic beers and worthy of moving on in this competition.

The other pairing that was tough for me was Reuben’s Imperial Rye IPA (which has been previously reviewed on this site) against Anacortes Old Sebastes. If it was any other Anacortes beer, I probably would have voted for Anacortes, but Old Sebastes is their beer I like the least, and I have a beer crush on the Imperial Rye, so you can guess how that one went. I feel like a guy cheating on his hot wife with an even hotter girlfriend with this matchup.

Opening round voting ends March 22nd at 10 PM

The other and, in my opinion, more fun March Madness is going on at the Latona Pub. Their annual March IPA Madness started last night. Each Monday and Friday for the next couple of weeks, they will be tapping 3 beers. The most popular beer from those 3 advances to the final 4. You will most likely find yours truly at the Latona on March 25th when they are tapping the Anacortes IPA. It should make easy work of its 2 competitors – Triplehorn IPA (although I have never actually had it, I may have to size up the competition) and Laurelwood Workhorse IPA. The Final Four tapping is April 2nd.

The Ballard Beer Revolution

By Iron Chef Leftovers

Holy hops, Batman! Ballard is really becoming a hotspot for beer. I saw this on myballard.com, yet another brewery opening soon. That means when Peddler Brewing opens, we will have the following breweries in a 1 mile radius:

Hale’s Ales
Maritime Pacific
NW Peaks
Hilliard’s
Reuben’s
Populuxe (if they ever get their act together and finally open)
Peddler

I am not surprised that a brewery moved into the old Maritime space. I think it is a good location for a small operation.

If beer is not your thing, there you can always visit my friend Jason at the fun tasting room of Domanico Winery. Now if we could just get a distillery….