Category: Beer Reviews
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Ballast Point Aloha Sculpin – Beer Review
Aloha Sculpin starts with one of the most decorated IPAs in San Diego history and asks a yeast strain to do the tropical work. Ballast Point brewed its award-winning Sculpin IPA with Brux Trois yeast, which throws off mango, pineapple, and guava notes without any fruit actually going into the beer. The idea is clever,… Read more
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Ballast Point Ale Nog – Beer Review
Ale Nog is Ballast Point’s answer to eggnog, poured from a tap instead of a punch bowl. It takes a cream ale, adds nutmeg, lactose, and vanilla, and serves the whole thing on nitrogen, so it arrives looking like a holiday dessert and drinking like a beer. It shows up on draft around the holidays,… Read more
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Anchor Steam – Beer Review
Few beers in America carry as much history in the glass as Anchor Steam. It is the beer that defined a style, kept a forgotten San Francisco brewing tradition alive through decades when nobody else cared, and still tastes like nothing else on the shelf. Lager yeast fermented warm, Northern Brewer hops, and a process… Read more
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Anchor Christmas Ale 2020 – Beer Review
Every year since 1975, Anchor brewed a new Christmas Ale under a new secret recipe and a new hand-drawn tree on the label. The 2020 vintage, the 46th in the series, was a milestone: the first Christmas Ale from newly appointed brewmaster Tom Riley, and the darkest and strongest the brewery had ever made. It… Read more
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Anchor Liberty Ale – Beer Review
If American craft beer has a founding document, Liberty Ale is a strong candidate. First brewed on April 18, 1975 to mark the bicentennial of Paul Revere’s ride, it was the first modern American IPA brewed after Prohibition, the first modern single-hop ale, and the first to revive dry-hopping in America. It introduced a generation… Read more
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Anchor California Lager – Beer Review
Anchor California Lager is a history lesson you can drink. Released in 2013, it is Anchor’s re-creation of the lager brewed by Boca Brewing in 1876, widely considered California’s first genuine lager beer. Made with two-row California barley, Cluster hops, and Anchor’s own lager yeast, then krausened and lagered in the brewery’s cellars, it is… Read more
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Anchor Fog Breaker IPA – Beer Review
Fog Breaker was Anchor’s love letter to its own neighborhood. Released in 2018 and named for the sunshine that breaks through the fog over Potrero Hill, where the brewery sits, it was also a first for Anchor: the first beer developed at its Anchor Public Taps pilot brewery to graduate to full-scale production. It is… Read more
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AleSmith Black Velvet Nitro Stout – Beer Review
AleSmith has built its reputation on big, bold beers, and Black Velvet Nitro Stout is the softer side of that same house character. It takes the classic oatmeal stout, a style built for smoothness, and pours it on nitrogen, which turns an already mellow beer into something closer to silk. This is a stout for… Read more