Fire in the hole

June 15, 2012

One of the best things about summertime is all of the great seasonal brews that are released for sipping in the sunshine. From saisons to fruit-flavored beers, breweries lighten up their stocks and peddle their sessionable, refreshing wares. If you’re tired of throwing back the same old pilsners, wheat beers and lagers, try reaching for something a little different this summer: chili beers. There are only a handful of Colorado brews to choose from now, but the category is growing in popularity and new ones are popping up all the time.

Justin Tilotta, wrangler of logistics, linguistics and statistics at Twisted Pine Brewing Co., said that when it comes to brewing their two popular chili beers, the process is a lot like making tea. The brewery originally used a bung keg to experiment with chili flavors. This old-style, oval-shaped keg is flat on both ends and has a hole in the side that is stopped with a wooden plug called a bung. A bag of cut chilies is shoved into the keg through the hole in the side and steeped in a base of wheat beer.

“The problem with doing it that way is that the flavor changes every day,” Tilotta said. “It’s like a bag of tea in a cup. It took a few tries before they got the proportion right and how long the chilies should stay in the beer.”

Once Twisted Pine had Billy’s Chillies dialed in, it was apparent that the beer wasn’t spicy enough for those lava-hot, heat-freak palates. So the brilliant minds in Boulder decided to play with a new type of chili: the ghost pepper. This beauty ranks at about 1 million heat units on the Scoville scale; as a comparison, your standard Tabasco red pepper sauce rates at a measly 5,000. Dubbed Ghost Face Killah and labeled the hottest beer this side of hell, this is the beer for that friend who douses everything with Sriracha, Tilotta said.

If the thought of mouth-burning beer is a little too far off the beaten path for you, try a mole-style chili beer with a milder flavor or trot your six-pack into the kitchen and start experimenting. Chili beer is a great companion to recipes that need an extra kick, playing a spicy role in everything from soups and chilies to sauces and marinades. Choose the pepper-beer flavor profile that fits your needs, and dump a bottle into the crock pot.

From the Fridge: Twisted Pine Billy’s Chillies

Billy’s Chillies has come a long way from its bung-keg days. Twisted Pine now uses 120 to 140 pounds of chopped peppers in the bottom of each batch of beer and lets it steep for a week before packaging it.

“We played around with putting the peppers in the boil, but you don’t get that crisp pepper taste that tastes like fresh chili peppers,” Tilotta said. “We do that cold-conditioning style. … Putting it in cold, it seems to stick better.”

That fresh flavor comes from mild Anaheims, which contribute the green chili taste, and a mix of red Fresno, jalapeno, Serrano and habanero peppers. The peppery zip is strongest on the aftertaste, making your mouth water when you breathe that bit of spiciness out through your nose. Billy’s Chillies has taken off in the past year and a half, Tilotta said.

“We’re making 30 barrels at a time instead of just a couple of kegs’ worth,” he said. “It competes with our amber and raspberry wheat to be our second most popular beer.”

Get your fix

This year's Snowmass Chili Pepper & Brew Fest showcased some great chili beers, but if you weren’t able to attend and get your taste buds on some of the fiery stuff, take a sojourn around the state to one of these breweries and check out what they have to offer.

• Amicas Pizza & Microbrewery, Salida — Green Chile Ale; www.amicassalida.com.

• Aspen Brewing Co., Aspen — Habanero Pilsner; aspenbrewingcompany.com.

• CooperSmith’s Pub & Brewing, Fort Collins — Sigda’s Green Chile; coopersmithspub.com.

• Dillon Dam Brewery, Dillon — Dam Chili Lager; www.dambrewery.com.

• San Luis Valley Brewing Co., Alamosa — Valle Caliente; www.slvbrewco.com.

• Twisted Pine Brewing Co., Boulder — Billy’s Chillies, Ghost Face Killah; twistedpinebrewing.com.

• Wynkoop Brewery, Denver — Patty’s Chile Beer; www.wynkoop.com.

Krista Driscoll

Hophead

Vail Daily Weekly 

How big is too big to be a brewpub?

May 18, 2012

In Colorado, brewpubs operate under a different set of rules than their big-name manufacturing counterparts. What applies to Miller-Coors does not apply to Twisted Pine and vice versa. But a handful of Colorado’s microbreweries aren’t so micro any more, and they are struggling with legislation that prohibits them from occupying a new niche in the state beer industry.

Guzzling seasonal brews at the Breckenridge
Brewery brewpub. Photo by Devin Schow.

According to the Denver Business Journal, the Colorado legislature recently dropped House Bill 12-1347, a proposal that would have increased the production cap for brewpubs. The bill was allowed to die due to opposition from industries along the pipeline, from beer birthing to distribution to retail, all of which complained that increasing the cap would give brewpubs an unfair advantage in the overall beer market.

So pending the passage of some revision of the dead bill, these breweries are faced with a choice: shut down their brewpubs and switch over to manufacturing licenses, thus avoiding the production cap, or build new breweries outside of the state to increase production. These guys don’t want to abandon their freedom to conduct research and development at the consumer level through their brewpubs — they don’t want to eliminate that personal connection between those who brew the beer and those who drink it — so a lot of growing breweries are looking at option No. 2.

Both New Belgium and Oskar Blues in the past few months have announced plans to propagate their operations in North Carolina. But Breckenridge Brewery is the only brewpub currently teetering on the edge of making too much beer for its place in the Colorado rulebooks.

Breck Brewery public relations maven Terry Usry said that brewery is still looking at ways to stay within Colorado, and the option of building out of state is just that — an option. Breck is still dedicated to its Colorado roots and the culture of craft brewing. She said that though Breck beers can now be found in 33 states, the company is still rolling out a small-batch line that allow its brewers to be creative and give consumers options that range from mainstream brews such as Avalanche Ale to its numbered-bottle, barrel-aged series.

So though it’s disappointing that the Colorado legislature failed to enact a provision that would allow our beloved craft brewpubs to grow and prosper right here in the state, brewers are creative, and Breckenridge, and other brewpubs that follow, will figure out new ways to expand and thrive and keep doling out the tasty brews we crave.

 

From the Fridge: Breckenridge Brewery 471 Small Batch

I have a couple of Breckenridge Brewery beers in my fridge at the moment, but in the vein of celebrating this little-big time brewpub’s continued dedication to its small-batch roots, I decided to drill brewmaster Todd Usry about his 471 Small Batch IPA.

“We just wanted something that was big and hoppy, high in alcohol but balanced,” Todd Usry said of the beer, which was first released in 2006. “We have a wide variety of styles, but we stay true to balance as much as possible. I was inspired by Russian River’s Pliny the Elder and Avery’s Maharajah. I wasn’t necessarily trying to emulate them but create something that had that kind of balance and flavor.”

The big, piney-citrus hop flavor comes from a blend of Chinook, Centennial, Simcoe and Fuggles hops, with an enormous malty wash on the back side that works well with the hoppiness up front, creating a great finish for every sip, Todd Usry said.

“A lot of double IPAs are over the top one way or the other or they’re overly boozy,” Todd Usry said. “You get that alcohol burn on them.”

Breck douses that after burn with cold conditioning. The beer is held at 34 degrees for five weeks to scrub out the harsh alcohol volatiles found in other imperial or double beers. The result is a potent 9.2 percent alcohol by volume beer that’s still very drinkable.

So what’s next off the line at Breckenridge Brewery? Todd Usry said to look for a re-release of the 72 Imperial Chocolate Cream Stout and a new collaboration with Stranahan’s on the heels of the Well Built ESB. This time, Breck will be whiskey barrel-aging and bottling its main line Vanilla Porter.

Krista Driscoll

Hophead
Vail Daily Weekly