Firestone Walker is one of those breweries that always seems to have something exciting up their sleeve.  Their ongoing experiments with barrel-brewing has led to some of my favorite beers, and some very special one-offs, such as the keg they brought to NCHF.

Now they are releasing Firestone Walker XII, their anniversary release.  It’s a blended ale with a distinct oaky flavor.  To celebrate, they threw a party at Toronado, and brought up the new release, along with some other special goodies.  Toronado quickly filled to capacity with beer geeks of all stripes, striving to try this years offering.

 

   

  

Matt, the brewmaster – pictured above on the left, explained that they happened to find a keg of X, from two years ago, hiding in the back of their cold storage area.  It provided a great opportunity to compare and contrast against this year’s release, and really examine the effects of aging beer. 

XII is a big, big beer.  It’s dark and malty, with a bit of alcohol heat, and a distinct oak finish.  In contrast, the X had aged nicely, allowing the heat to dissipate slightly, and mellowed to reveal a distinctly smokey character.   Both are exceptional.  Eventually, someone produced a bottle of Firestone Walker XI as well, completing the vertical tasting set for the night. 

 

 

Sean, the Homebrew Chef (seen above checking the first glass of XII out of the cask) was on hand, and came with snacks in tow.  He had cured coho salmon roe in Firestone’s Union Jack IPA, along with some salt and sugar, and was serving it with crackers and a touch of creme fraiche.  Normally, I find salmon roe a little too briny for my taste.  But in this case, the cure had worked wonders, and the resulting roe was delicious.  Still briny to be sure, but the cure had taken the aggressiveness of the flavor down a few notches, and I loved the finished snack. 

 

 

 

A few other great beers from Firestone were available on tap.  Big Opal, their wheat wine, manages to sidestep the problems most wheat wines I’ve tried have: many are overloaded with phenolic flavors from the yeast, and taste like nothing but cloves and bananas.  Firestone’s has a light phenolic touch, and balances it with slight sweetness.  Also on tap was their Ibarra Buzz, a dark ale infused with coffee.  It smelled with freshly roasted coffee, and tasted like a morning cup of joe (in a good way.)  I’ve been toying with wanting to try making a coffee infused porter, and this is exactly what I’d like my own coffee brew to taste like. 

 

 

 

Overall, it was a great event, for a great beer.  If you get the chance, be sure to pick up a few bottles of Firestone XII, and follow Bill Brand’s advice: drink one for now, and a few to lay away for a few years to see how they age. 

Tags: Firestone Walker, toronado, XII

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 13th, 2008 at 6:51 pm and is filed under Stories, Taste Test. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.