Friday Beer Blogging – The Best Beer You’ve Never Heard Of

Colorado has an almost obscene density of microbrewers, brewpubs, homebrewers and any other kind of small-batch brewing you can imagine. You’ll find some incredible gems if you poke around long enough, or anyhow the poking around itself is fun enough to put a positive burnish on the whole experience. It’s no surprise then that, insofar as you can even call brewing a competitive sport, unknowns from Colorado periodically walk off with major awards.

Credit goes to Dierdre at the Oakland Mad Mex in Pittsburgh for turning me on to the award-winning Dale’s Pale Ale made by Oskar Blues in their brewpub/restaurant in Lyons, CO. Served on tap Dale’s pours clear amber with a satisfying light-brown head that lingered for the half-hour that it took me to drain the beer. Pleasantly hopped (read what the pros say here), Dale’s has a depth of flavor that I don’t remember from great pale ales like Sierra Nevada. If there is a ‘Colorado taste’ – aggressively hopped, woodsy with a hint of pine – Dale’s gets it right.

(We’ve exceeded our server upload limit so you’ll have to settle for a link to pics of Dale’s in its natural habitat – aluminum cans)

Dale’s took the New York Times by storm:

Although we all said we preferred the subtler style, our top selection, Dale’s Pale Ale, made by Oskar Blues Brewery of Lyons, Colo., was one of the more aggressive ales in the tasting, with assertive floral and citrus aromas. But the ale was so well balanced, so lively and dry, that its extroversion simply did not matter. The same was true of our No. 3 beer, the Flying Dog Classic Pale Ale, which was clean and precise, yet with great personality. By contrast, our No. 2 pale ale, from Otter Creek, was subtle and complex, though also with that distinctive bitter signature.

Here a problem that I hadn’t heard of before – bottle aging.

In our tasting, ales from well-regarded brewers like Stoudt’s, Dogfish Head, Bear Republic and even some that made our list showed signs of poor handling. One possible solution to the light problem, at least, was staring us in the face right after the tasting, when the identities of all the brews were revealed. Our No. 1, Dale’s Pale Ale, came in a can.

A can! Not long ago, cans represented all that was wrong with the assembly-line American beer industry. No craft brewer worth a copper brew kettle would even consider putting his precious ale in a can. But times have changed, and some brewers say that cans are lighter and easier to recycle than bottles, and offer complete protection against light.

Rumor has it that the crunchy folks at Dale’s bought a Canadian small-scale canning system so that they could have good beers when they went biking, backpacking or golfing. Having done two of three there’s no doubt that with my own brew pub and startup capital I might have considered doing the same thing. Among other outdoor advantages cans don’t shatter, they cool faster when you sink them in a stream and you can crush them when the beer’s gone. The other advantages – and it looks like there are plenty – apparently came up later. That doesn’t mean that Oskar Blues is a bit shy about selling their technological superiority over the rest of the microbrewing world:

[T]here’s no reason why big beers can’t live and thrive in cans, said Oskar Blues founder Dale Katechis. Ratebeer.com bears him out: Oskar Blue’s Old Chub is the top-rated Scottish ale on that Web site, and Dale’s Pale Ale is the No. 8 American pale ale.

“Cans eliminate light damage,” he said, “and they hold far less oxygen than bottles. So our beers stay fresher longer — plus cans are less fuel-consuming to ship and recycle and they make it possible to enjoy great beer outdoors.”

Light damage and oxidation are two enemies of packaged beer. According to Beeradvocate.com, ultraviolet light destroys hop-derived molecules called isohumulones, and creates sulfur compounds — the reason that light-struck beer is called skunky.

…Oxidation is caused by air trapped during packaging. It creates a stale, wet cardboard flavor in the beer. Although air trapped in a can could actually oxidize beer more quickly than in a bottle because of the greater contact area, modern canning systems purge air with a blast of carbon dioxide or nitrogen before the can is filled and the lid crimped on. In recent tests of Dale’s Pale Ale, the levels of dissolved oxygen were too low to be accurately measured by the test being used.

Jim Mills of Caldera Brewing is impressed with the difference between even mass-market beers in bottles and cans. “Taste a Heineken from a bottle and then from a can,” he said. “The malt and hops are so much more present in the canned beer. When a friend first tried canned Heineken against bottled, he said, ‘Whoa! That’s not Heineken — but I like it.’ ”

Canned beer? Boxed wine? If you don’t pick up anything else from Balloon Juice, you’ll pick up the idea that conventional wisom is usually hooey. Try a Banrock Station Shiraz (2003 was particularly tasty) or a Dale’s Pale Ale and I’m sure that you’ll agree.