Entry the first, or A Fishing Expedition

Hunting the wild local beers. A creditable Pale. Imperial Stout, how we love thee.

For my first outing, something local. Fish Brewing is a local microbrewery here in Olympia with an attached alehouse/restaurant. In addition to Fish beers, they also produce the beers of the former Leavenworth Brewery (the two merged) and Spire Mountain Ciders (my wife's favourite). The alehouse itself was remodelled about a year ago and is both spacious and comfortable. Lots of wood, very warm and inviting while being both clean and modern in appearance. Plenty of fish related art on the walls, including a spectacular wooden fish sculpture right above the bar.

The bar itself is central to the first floor, and is overlooked by the mezzanine. From a business standpoint, the central bar is probably one of the best set-ups an alehouse or brew pub can have; it gives the most bar frontage for a given footprint, and cuts down on the distance that bartenders have to walk. The less walking, the happier the bartender. The happier the bartender, the happier the customers. A good thing, this. Fish bartenders seem quite happy; service was prompt and cheerful.

"The beers, son", you say, "What of the BEERS?" Now we get to the meat of it. This trip I tried two of them.

Organic Wild Salmon Pale Ale

Pale ales are one of those craft brewery standbys, the touchstone of the industry. They're easy to make, and surprisingly hard to make stand out. There are just so many of them that it can be hard to tell one from another. Wild Salmon is good, but not amazing. It's a nice, medium amber colour, and it's obviously well filtered as it's completely crystal clear. The head doesn't stick around long, and as you drink it there's no "belgian lace"--the tracery of suds clinging to the sides of the glass. Lace is a good indicator that there's a fair amount of protein lingering in the beer, as that's what holds the foam together. Many brewers add wheat to their recipes to boost the head retention--without seeing the recipe I can't tell if Fish has done so.

The aroma is quite hoppy for a pale ale. Pales are supposed to be hoppy, but there should be some malt sweetness to balance it and I couldn't smell much. The hops smelled nice, though; citrus-like, almost grapefruit. That's a clear sign that Cascade hops have been here--which is to be expected, since they're pretty much the go-to hop for West Coast pale ales.

Drinking the beer, again, the flavor was mainly hops. At first there was very little sweetness to the beer, although it started to come through a bit more as the beer warmed up and the hop flavors started to dissipate. If I were brewing this, I might have added a bit more caramel type malt, in order to balance it a bit. The mouth feel of the beer was fairly astringent and drying; again, probably due to the heavy hopping.

All in all, this was a fairly decent example of a West Coast pale ale. Not really stand-out, but definitely a drinkable and sellable beer. Too many breweries try for weird, experimental beers and neglect the fact that we're brewing for the customers, not for ourselves. This beer is brewed for the customers. It might not win medals, but it'll show a profit.


Poseidon's Imperial Stout (Cask conditioned)

Now *this* is a good beer. Cask conditioning is still a bit unusual in the US, although it's becoming more common in beer-geek areas. Simply, it consists of allowing the beer to mature in the serving keg, and then dispensing it using an old-style hand pump and displacing the beer with ordinary air. It lets the beer's flavor mature much more than simply serving it on CO2, while also allowing it to be served at cellar (not room!) temperature; high 40's to very low 50's. Remember that it's a British service style, and Brit room temperature tends to be a bit...lower...than Americans are used to. The carbonation tends to be lower as well, resulting in a far smoother beer--but it's not flat either, just not what Americans have come to expect. In my opinion, cask conditioning allows much more of the beer's natural flavor to come out. This is at least in part due to the fact that the lower the carbonation, the higher the percentage of malt flavor that shows through. Hop flavorings are quite volatile, and high carbonation tends to strip them out of the beer and make them the dominant aroma; this also tends to allow them to dominate the flavor since taste and smell are tightly linked.

Again, the dark tan or khaki head on this beer was somewhat uneven; it had many larger bubbles and tended to settle fast. The aroma was strongly of raisins and caramel, with a hint of smoke--perfect for this style of beer, which was originally brewed in England to be shipped to the Baltic. The high alcohol was intended as a preservative. Often the high alcohol level (8%-10% in this case) comes through in the nose of the beer--but not here. The color was perfectly typical--black and opaque.

Flavor wise, I got burnt caramel and a bit of raisin--and no alcohol burn; this is a sign of beer that has been aged well. Very smooth, served at just about the right temperature All in all, a very nice beer.

That's it for this round. In the future, I'll be reviewing other breweries and returning to this one. I'll try to explain from a brewer's point of view not just how the beers taste, but *why* they taste that way. I may get into chemistry, I may get into sensory analysis, I might even get into the economics of beer and the engineering of brewing systems. We'll have to see.