The Uncanny Foresight of Oskar Blues

Sometimes you’ve gotta take a roundabout route to get back to where you started.  Sometimes things are popular because they’re just good ideas to begin with. 

Oskar Blues started the shift to canning craft beer.  They happen to make really good beer, too, & that’s by no means beside the point.  Of course they want to be known for their beer, but everyone knows them because they made cans legitimate as a package for that good beer.  The fame that they earned is because they make good beer, and they put it in a can.  The quality of the beer is necessarily an equal part of that equation, but people didn’t always realize it.

Canned craft beer was an oxymoron until these guys started doing it.  Oskar Blues started as a grill in 1997, then started brewing on-site in 1999, & when a canning system manufacturer approached them a few years later, they said “Sure, what the hell?” & history was made.  That was 2004.  How bizarre was it to consider canned craft beer eleven years ago?  I didn’t buy it myself at first.  The can seemed like a gimmick, & the name ‘Dale’s Pale Ale’ was too corny (& remains endearingly so).  But the beer – I tried it, & the beer was good!  So I thought we might see this one decent beer made by a company I’d never heard of, in a can.  It would remain a novelty, & that’s it.  I remember hearing the guys on Craft Beer Radio say that the cans didn’t even register on their visual field at first – they’d scan the shelves & their eyes would automatically pass over them, a sort of subconscious aversion to the format.  That’s how little respect cans garnered for the good beer vets – at first…

Then Oskar Blues stuck around.  They rolled out Gordon (now called G’Knight), a solid, strong red, & Old Chub, a strong, malty Scotch-style.  We saw the first ever canned imperial stout in Ten Fidy, with a body that fit the name.  These were not light beers for slamming & crushing the can on your forehead.  These were serious beers with some depth & personality.  A few double IPAs followed: Gubna & Deviant Dale’s.  And why not throw a pilsner in there, too? 

So the much-maligned can, vessel of the industrial swill so despised by the New Brew Order, found some redemption.  The myths about the metal “tainting” the beer were dispelled.  More & more breweries - & drinkers – found cans to have some significant benefits: lightweight, recyclable, transportable, protective.  More & more breweries adopted cans as a means of packaging (props also to 21^st Amendment as another big, early proponent).  The world’s highest-rated beer is packaged in aluminum, & actually instructs the drinker to imbibe straight from the can!  Boston Beer Company once said they’d never can their beer, but even Jim’s miraculously seen the light. 

And had the beer been crappy, it would’ve stayed a gimmick.  But Dale & the crew make some damn fine brew, & it showed those paying attention that, yes, this can be done!  I want to stress that the beer saved it from being a gimmick, & now it’s just accepted, part of the norm.  Maybe Oskar Blues didn’t realize what they was doing at the time – the way they tell the story, that first system was purchased as kind of a lark.  One could draw parallels to pop art & connecting the high & low, too, but that’s a whole other tangent…

Of course it’s all about the beer.  Which, by the way, we’ll be featuring at our upcoming pairing dinner this Thursday, when we match the beers of Oskar Blues (served out of giant aluminum cans called “kegs”) with some inventive cuisine.  On hand will be their new Pinner Throwback IPA (“Throwback” as in, “I’m going to throw a few back”), low alcohol with a sweetly dank hop profile; the afore-mentioned Old Chub Scotch-style ale, malty, caramelly, with a hint of smoke; Gubna, their imperial IPA made with a mountain of Cascade hops; Ten Fidy, the OG (get it?) of viscous, canned imperial stouts; & a newcomer in their Belgian-style IPA, Icey PA.  Can’t wait to see how Chef Brian’s menu accompanies this line-up!

So whether they like it or not (& I don’ think they mind), Oskar Blues will forever be known for a formal, technical contribution to the movement.  Rest assured, though, it never would have survived without some good liquid to fill it.

Top Shelf Thursday, March 2015: BIG BEER

As with any trend, craze, or movement, craft beer has a pendulum.  On one end of the arc, it swings toward the conservative - sessionability, cleanliness, simplicity, tradition.  This kind of balance is necessary, lest we get too carried away with ourselves & lose our heads.  The boat rocks in an effort to regain stability & find a center.  The force toward sensible ABV, recipe, scope, etc., is natural &, at times, much needed.  Keeps us sane.

But what would the new world of beer be without the other end of the spectrum?  Craft beer was born of a desire for freedom, to break boundaries & shed the oppressive restrictions of the beer-industrial complex, the tight dimensions of old-style lager.  Craft beer just wouldn’t be itself without the big, crazy extremities!  We gotta embrace the bold, the overstated, the indulgent, & flex those creative muscles.  Most of the time, more is still MORE!  We’re House of 1000 Beers, dammit - why not go BIG?  We chose to roll out our BIG BEER Week to celebrate the aspects of beer that make it fun - BIG flavor, BIG ABV, BIG BEER!  Seemed as good a theme for a Top Shelf Thursday tasting as any, so we highlighted some of the BIG BEERS from our selection (okay, I’ll stop with the caps now).

Belgians know big beer, & American-Belgian intersections are ripe for ramping it up.  We started with a style novel to Top Shelf Thursday - Belgian-style IPA.  Clown Shoes’ Muffin Top showcased some in-your-face American hops, shaped into a whole other animal through the use of Belgian yeast, amplifying fruity esters & colliding worlds.  

One of the grandaddies of big beer is barleywine, a style whose name belies its own heft.  The first in a trio of barleywines this evening, Central Waters’ Kosmyk Charlie’s Y2K Catastrophe Ale hit a pleasant niche between hoppy & malty, with a mellowly citric hop profile & some round, full toffee & caramel notes.  Nogne O’s #100 benefited from time spent crossing the ocean along with some “shelf-aging” - the hops transformed from bitter to a kind of peppermint character, holding up the bready malt base well & showing some of the beauty of a maturing strong ale.  And Great Divide’s Old Ruffian gave us a taste of fresh American barleywine, with an assertive bitterness verging on that of an imperial IPA.

A new little sister to an old name, Gulden Draak 9000 Quadruple was brewed in honor of Gulden Draak’s 25th birthday.  This strong Belgian golden was comfortably homey: sweet, fruity, a little hot, a little doughy, landing it snugly in the territory of many classic, well-crafted Belgian ales.

The tasting’s second half was a barrel roll, as so many big beers marry perfectly with wood.  Thirsty Dog’s delicious imperial stout, Siberian Night, warmed us up with bourbon notes coming through from 11 months spent in bourbon barrels.  The second offering of the night from Clown Shoes didn’t disappoint either.  Ride the Lion matched the caramel notes of a Scotch-style wee heavy to the toasted oak & vanilla of the bourbon barrels in which it was aged.

FiftyFifty Brewing’s Eclipse series required some explanation.  This California brewery takes an 11.9% imperial stout brewed with honey, divides the batch up, & ages it in name-linked barrels from different whiskey distilleries.  We tasted Eclipse in barrels previously used for Four Roses bourbon, a delicious pairing that would make a cool exercise when tasted in sequence with others from this line.  And we played hop frog with stout & wee heavy, landing next on Thirsty Dog’s Wulver.  Whereas Ride the Lion had a strong heat intensity to it, Wulver was all about smoothness & seamless blending, finishing with an aftertaste that just went on & on.

And speaking of blending, the final course showed us what happens when you blend two world-class big beers into one delicious package.  Taking parts from bourbon barrel-aged Serpent’s Stout & brandy barrel-aged Angel’s Share, Lost Abbey’s Deliverance drank like a glass of chocolate cordial, bringing a notable heat to the table but letting it play nicely with the deep malt & barrel flavors.  

This tasting was a prelude to our BIG BEER Week, & by the time this sees light, we’ll be well into a fun week of strong, full-bodied, savorable brews.  Thanks to all who came out & raised a glass to the freedom & pleasure that is big beer.