New Beer Friday 4/24/20

Grid City is finally selling their suds from the brewery. In what has to be the worst timing in in local beer history, Grid City was unceremoniously required to close 48 hour before their soft opening, due to the pandemic. Get out and support the new guys and hit up some of these other great breweries offering up beer this week.
 
Grid City - House Pilsner: The nose is a nice malty base that has hints of peppery hops and and faint hint of apples and fructose. The flavor is a greatly hopped and like the nose there is a fold malty foundation that has some complex peppery hops riding on top then notes of fruit, nutmeg and lemon peel. 4.5% - Available at Grid City.

Grid City - Hoppy Pilsner: This one does smell pretty hoppy. Herbaceous, lemon, maybe a bit of grain, straw, grass and grape. Fairly hoppy with a hit of fruit up front before the malt edge takes over. Hits on the green grape and grassy notes. Aspirin like bitterness in the end. Malt begins to show as the beer warms. Getting a slight breadiness. Still, this one is pretty hop dominant. Finishes sharp before completely drying out. 4.8% - Available at Grid City.

Templin Family - All Together: This beer will be released today at noon. No tasting notes yet. 100% of the profits from this beer will go to the employees of TF to offset their financial burdens. 6.5% - Only at TF Brewing

Heber Valley - Hefeweizen: Missed this new beer from Heber.

Wasatch Guava Rosa: Murky and turbid peach color. The aroma is mostly guava. Flavor-wise the guava is fairly subtle, with some hibiscus like tartness. There's a medium amount of bitterness in the finish. 7.1% - Available at the UBC's Beer Store.

2 Row - Belgian IPA: Missed this one as well. Look for spicy yeast notes with a good dose of citrus and tropical fruits.

Shades - Magna-tude: Made with orange ginger and honey. The tart base enhances the citrus qualities with a subtle amount of spicy ginger. the honey gives it a slight dryness. Quite tasty, try it with sushi. 5.7% - Available at Shades.

Returning 

Hopkins - Stonewall Sour Saison: If you missed it the first time around, stop by and check it out.  3.7% - at Hopkins.

Cheers!

New Beer - Brewery Friday 2/28/20

Utah, you are getting your first brewery of 2020 this week, though the beers are in extremely limited availability. Grid City debuted three of their beers last night at a "Tap Takeover" over at the Commonwealth Room last night. Grid City's tap room and kitchen still has a couple of weeks to go before it's ready for customers, but I did get your first preview of what they have.

Grid City - Honey Cream Ale: This is loaded with local honey and you can definitely taste it. The hops are floral and light and the whole beer finishes quite dry. If you're a fan of honey ales, this one may go straight to the top of your list. 5.0%

Grid City - Pale Ale: A biscuity pale with caramel malts generating a filling malt profile and the hop profile that covers an equally profound bitterness. Flavors of pine resins, fruit and pepper. Finishes with a lingering fruity and spicy hop profile and moderate bitterness. 4.6%

Grid City - English Brown Ale: The taste here is pumpernickel, burnt malts: chocolate, caramel and molasses with roasted nuts and a touch of dark fruit. A floral hop smack rides in the back. Aftertaste is malty and toasty. This was probably my favorite. 4.2%

The Rest of your New Beer Friday is quite stellar. There's quite a few new local option and some very tasty out of market stuff.  

Epic - Super IPA Me: This big ass IPA is made with apricots, Citra and two of the hottest new hops on the market Grüngeist and Styrian Dragon. The  Grüngeist hops add flavors of Passion Fruit, Melon, Berries, Fleshy Fruit and Sweet Pepper. Styrian Dragon offer intense floral character and moderate herbal and citrus tones. All of this is wrapped up in a hearty 12.0% IPA. This one goes on sale Leap Day (2/29) and will available in 32 ounce crowlers. Very limited availability in SLC. So, don't wait too long to snag this one.

Hoppers - Burnout Brown: This is a German-style lager made with Utah grown Solstice barley malt, German Munich and dark caramelized malt. Well hopped at 24 IBUs, and late hopped with US Sterling hops and German Perle hops. A nice combination of spicy and floral hops with toasted and caramel malt. Dark but drinks light.

RoHa - Millennium Falcon: This is a red ale dry hopped with Falconers Flight hops. It has a slight tropical nose with malty notes. The flavor is toasted malt up front with a slight lemon finish. This is the first in series of dry hopped reds that will be available on draft at RoHa. 5.0%

Proper - Belgo-Blitz: Tropical flavors abound in this Belgian-esque NEIPA. You get some citrus peel as well with the slightest amount of clove from the yeast. Generally not my style, but I did enjoy this one. 5.0% - Available at Proper.

Proper- Plum Sour Ranger: The sourness of the version seems slightly tuned down to allow the tartness and sweetness from the plum to shine. It all comes off as nice balanced drinkable fruit sour.  5.0% - Available at Proper.

Proper - Guava Lamp: The guava is potent, but it’s not being a dick about it. There’s not a lot of wheat, but what is there is nice and biscuity. 🤘 5.0% - Available at Proper.

Bewilder Kellerbier: Missed out on this one, but I'll post an update later this afternoon. on Utah Beer's Instagram 5.0%    

Uinta - Blueberry Unicorn Glitter Ale: Missed out on this one, but I'll post an update later this afternoon. on Utah Beer's Instagram 5.0%  

Salt Flats -  Bombshell Belgian Red Sour: Missed out on this one, but I'll post an update later this afternoon. on Utah Beer's Instagram 5.0%  

Hopkins - Black Sesame Stout: Roasty stout profile with a toasted sesame finish. 5.0% -Available at Hopkins. 

Hopkins Small Batch Friday Beers:

Raspberry Wine Ale

Root amBeer

Autobahn Ale

Strawberry Peach Saison

WTF Jalapeño/Garlic ESB

House Roadhouse Rye

Horchata Cream Ale

Chocolate Peanu butter Stout

Revision/Shoe Tree - Disco Ninja: This collaboration beer between two of Northern Nevada's favorite breweries is a NEIPA. The nose is very mild with melon and citrus along with floral hops. The taste follows with more grassy hops, mango and peppery orange peel. Very little bitterness. 7.0% - Found at Slackwater (Sandy) and Angry Goat.

Slaapmutske - (FLOSS) Kriek: The aroma is subtle with cherry, vinegar, lemon and oak. Some sweet malts up front in the taste, with sour fruit notes of blackberry, cherry and apple cider. Finishes quite dry with 'oaky tannins' (the name of of my bluegrass band). 5.0% - Exclusively on draft at the Bayou.

De la Senne Narrenvat: This is a brown ale, aged for 10 months in oak barrels with Brettanomyces. It is inspired by the English beers of the past. Look for flavors of red fruits (alcohol preserved cherries) and notes of malt (biscuit, brown candied sugar, caramel, and roasted hazelnuts). It's lightly bitter and sour, with wine accents. 5.8% - Exclusively at the Bayou.

Garden Path - The Curious Mix Methods: Missed this one. 6.9% found at the Bayou.

Cigar City - Margarita Gose: Missed this one. MAde with orange peel and lime essence. 4.2% Found at the Bayou.

Cheers!

Grid City Beer Works Preview

Utah's next brewery will be here sooner than you think. If all goes well, you'll see Grid City Beer Works in early March 2020. I was invited to check out the new South Salt Lake City brewery, and have some interesting things to report.

The brewery occupies the old, Tile for Less building located at 333 w. 2100 s., right across the street from Home Depot. The real estate has undergone a complete transformation from top to bottom. The building's lid was removed and a new one was constructed so that it could support a new roof top patio and an additional bar area.

The brewery is showcased behind a horseshoe shaped bar that is open - without glass barriers that allow for the full sensory overload from the brewing process. Adjacent to the brew house is a full kitchen that will deliver a full range house-designed, pub fare to pair with the house beers.

Speaking of beers: Grid City will be debuting with four beers. A pale ale, brown ale, a pilsner and acream ale. A fairly simple offering, however, what will make this presentation different from any other brewery anywhere, is that all four of these beers will be served three different ways – conventional carbon dioxide, nitrogen and on cask - via  four separate beer engines. Owners, Justin Belliveau, Drew Reynolds, and Brewer, Jeremy Gross believe that providing these time honored, age old formats; on top of everyday CO2 will educate and stimulate their customers palates and will keep them coming back. Right now the plan is to provide draft options but cans are in the works down the road.


There are a lot of secrets that I've been asked to withhold. Normally, I'd provide some more detailed photos of the bar and other interesting aspects of the brewery to help give you a better feel. However, the Grid City boys would prefer that you experience the brewery that they've worked so hard on with fresh eyes, for your first visit.

I can reveal that they've acquired some Czech made, side pour, Lukr faucets for their pilsners. You may be familiar with these if you've been to the Templin Family Brewing Co. These provide a quicker pour with better head retention. It's real nerdy shit, and we love real nerdy shit. 

I know that you're all excited to get another brewery/brewpub to add to your weekly brewery crawls; this will be South Salt Lake City's fourth brewery and its location actually begins to bridge a gap between the South Salt Lake beer district and the downtown Salt Lake City district.

As soon as they nail down their opening date, you'll see it here. I promise. Again, thanks for bothering to waste your bandwidth here at Utah Beer.

Prost!

Photo (right): Grid City -  Jeremy Gross, Drew Reynolds, Justin Belliveau