I know it’s Saturday, but we’re going to keep talking about Thursday night, because I didn’t just go to MoMo’s and crush mad food. Part of ‘Friends dinner night’ is that after the dinner, we like to roll out to 12 Gates Brewing, which is about a 4-5 minute jaunt from the restaurant. 12 Gates is great, their flagship ‘West Coast IPA’ is a delight, and their distribution game is getting serious. What I love about 12 gates is that the brewery and tasting room is a hidden gem. There’s no sign out by a major road, there’s no real clear understanding of how to find it using google maps – unless you’ve been there before, then it makes sense. If it’s dark out, and you’re taking a friend there for the first time, which I’ve done a couple times, the reaction is always the same – “I thought for a second there, that you were taking me somewhere to kill me”.  12 Gates is in the back of a business park, in close proximity to the airport. Thursday night, there was a fog in the air, so it was extra spooky for my friend Tyler who was going there for the first time. This was a shot from the front door – looking towards the airport:

Once inside, you’re not confronted with a huge space, there IS enough room for a bunch of people, but it’s not like some of the other breweries in town where they’re trying super hard to be a destination brewery. That to me, is part of 12 gates charm. As I mentioned, 12 Gates’ distribution game seems to be their main focus, which is great – but yes, you’ve got to have a place to get that real-time feedback from your end user, and this intimate setting is certainly the place. If you want to get into a hardcore discussion about ingredients and technique, and possibly with one of the brewers themselves, that can happen here.

The other great thing about 12 Gates’ tasting room is their extra options. Every Monday, they have what’s called ‘Micro-Batch Mondays’ where they release a new beer from a pilot system, to test out with their customers. The last time I was there, they had ‘Lava-Flow IPA’ which was made with Ancho chilies, and I thought was absolutely amazing I purposely brought a growler this time thinking I might get a fill of that action, but it was gone. A new IPA was on the menu though – called Wind Forge IPA. It was Monday release, so I was in – also managed to grab a snapshot of the ingredient list when no one was looking!

I’ve heard of most of those hops, but Rakau and Waimea are new to me-  just goes to show that the ‘strain train’ party that’s infected the marijuana culture has spread to hop culture. The two are very similar in DNA, there was an urban legend going around about Hop laws being in place, requiring permits for growing hops because it was so easy to graft cuttings from pot plants onto the bines of hop plants, what would look like a glorious hop plant would actually end up being a hop bine serving as camouflage for glorious medicinals. I’m not going to do the research for that right now, you can if you want.

The Wind Forge IPA was delicious. Perfectly balanced, and changing in complexity throughout the entire glass. What I mean by that is that as the beer warmed up, there were aromatics that were hidden in the beginning that were more noticeable towards the end. This is the case with a lot of the higher flavor beers out there. We love a cold beer, but an artisan microbrew should really be served at 40-45 degrees if you want to experience the full dynamics of a beer. Coors light? Blue? Bud? Serve that action as cold to frozen as you can get it – it’s awesome. Summertime, I will kill 18-packs of Blue Light to the face as I run my smoker in the back yard, play my music loud, and piss my neighbors off – it’s just what I do. You gotta take a break from these more expensive beers sometimes, so you can remember why you pay more for them.

I was certain that I was going to get a growler of the Wind Forge IPA, but I was also certain that I wanted to make certain that I was certain, by trying all the other IPAs. West Coast, Ales for ALS – they were awesome as well, but I promised my coworker and beer-mentor Neal a beer from 12 Gates that he hadn’t tried yet for our happy hour Fridays at work. Wind Forge did not disappoint!

Bank on Buffalo rock glasses! (new Bank in town )