While outsiders may only think of Sonoma County as “wine country,” beer aficionados are aware that this is also home to some of the finest craft beers available. So in the spirit of the holidays, local brewers are stepping up to create unique ales with a Sonoma County twist.
“We do an event every year in Portland that features unique beers and last year we did a beer called Old Saint Chongo,” Bear Republic’s Public Relations Coordinator Clay Grosskopf said. “It’s like a banana split in a glass.”
Old Saint Chongo is a “winter warmer” style ale brewed with two types of dark chocolate and sugar using a hefeweizen yeast, so it doesn’t have the hoppy flavors that have come to define the “California style” beers created by Bear Republic.
“Hops are very prominent to our beers: Red Rocket Ale, Racer 5 IPA or Hop Rod Rye.” Grosskopf said. “Some of those beers have a difficult time making it into competitions because they don’t fall into a specific category.”
Grosskopf said the seasonal ales are popular both at the brewpub in Healdsburg and at outlets throughout the county. Racer X, a double IPA weighing in at 8.3 percent alcohol, is available in bottles from October to January, but Old Saint Chongo is available only in draft.
“Racer X leads us into winter,” Grosskopf said.
To the north, at Ruth McGowan’s Brewpub in Cloverdale, Brewmaster Tim Gallagher has created a seasonal beer he calls Oatmeal Raisin Cookie Stout.
Gallagher, who was raised in Sebastopol from the age of eight and was proprietor of the Sebastopol Cookie Company for several years, has been brewmaster at McGowan’s for three years now. This represents his second attempt at a seasonal ale.
McGowan’s has done an annual collaboration with Barley & Hops Tavern in Occidental, an Oktoberfest Marzen style lager known as Pimpsnhosenfest. Gallagher has also created a citrus ale for Cloverdale’s annual Citrus Festival that has become a regular at the brew pub.
“I wanted to do a big, boozy winter beer,” Gallagher said. “It’s our first full winter beer and it has a hint of cinnamon with a raisin finish…. I wanted to give a little nod to the Cookie Company,” he added.
The stout is made with actual cookies from the Sebastopol Cookie Company — Gallagher added three cookies to the mash — from a recipe he created at home when he was beginning to learn his craft.
Gallagher said that after a late start this year — the beer didn’t hit the shelves until the first part of December — he’ll try to get it out by Thanksgiving next year.
“We didn’t want to rush it,” he said.
Oatmeal Raisin Cookie Stout will be available from now until late February or early March and is both on tap at McGowan’s and in 22 oz. bottles at various retailers throughout the county.
Aside from the local beers, there are legions of special holiday or seasonal ales from brewers around the world.
From the Sierra Nevada Brewery in Chico, featuring Celebration Ale and a thick and spicy Harvest Ale, to jubelale from the Deschutes Brewery in Bend, OR, there are flavors and textures to fit all palettes and to match up with just about any holiday meal.
There are even novelty beers — Bad Elf, Very Bad Elf and Insanely Bad Elf, from Ridgeway Brewers in the U.K. comes to mind — that are more than just novelties; they are even good beers.
“People definitely like the holiday ales,” said Zach Shelton, who oversees beer purchasing at the Bottle Barn in Santa Rosa. “Around Halloween, the pumpkin ales come out, then there is a cut off until Thanksgiving. Sales-wise, if you don’t get them out by Christmas, people stop buying.”
Shelton doesn’t have the exact percentages of seasonal beer sales, but said the niche has become popular enough that “everyone is doing winter beer.”
“There was a time when beer sales would slow down in the winter months, but brewers shifted to cater to the consumer,” he said.
According to Shelton, some of the winter beers came about by mistake, such as eisbock a traditional German beer made by partially freezing doppelbock and removing the ice.
The style was discovered when kegs of beer were accidentally frozen — either left in the snow or frozen in transit by horse and wagon. The remaining beer is stronger — 9- to 13 percent alcohol — and has a more concentrated flavor.
Another accidental seasonal beer is Brown Shugga, brewed by Lagunitas Brewery in Petaluma.
“Lagunitas’ Brown Shugga is by far the most popular of our holiday beers,” Shelton said. “It’s almost is almost like eggnog: It’s one of those things where you get it whether you like it or not.”
Brown Shugga began as a barley wine but everything went wrong.
“We started making it in 1996,” said Ron Lindenbusch, Lagunitas’ director of marketing. “In ’97, we didn’t put any honey in it. I asked (the brewer) how much honey they put in and he said, ‘what do you mean, honey? That wasn’t on the brew sheet.’”
So Lagunitas staff went around Petaluma buying up all the brown sugar they could find.
“We ended up getting 200-lbs. of brown sugar and (the beer) went berserk,” Lindenbusch said. “It really kicked the alcohol up, but it sure as hell wasn’t a barley wine.”
Brown Shugga was unavailable last year, due to a major expansion of the brewery, and was replaced with a beer called Lagunitas Sucks
“We called it Lagunitas Sucks because we felt bad that we weren’t able to make our Brown Shugga Ale due to capacity constraints as we awaited the arrival of our new brewing system,” Lindenbusch said. “We sucked and we knew it.”
But the beer is back, with sales this year of about 50,000 cases from October to the present. Lagunitas Sucks will remain and run from now through March.
