Beer review: Coronado Idiot

"It's a Double, it's pretty intense"

That was the waitress's warning at the sports bar built into the San Diego Hyatt.  I was in town for work, and using the opportunity to sample a local craft I'd found on the menu.  

My beer was not served by a topless woman with flowing red hair.

Here's the thing: Coronado Idiot is a double IPA - and as any of my partners in brewing-crimes would warn you, I'm not a hoppy beer drinker.  

Or, at least, I wasn't.

Don't get me wrong - I'm not any hop-madder now that I was two weeks ago, but my eyes have been opened to the possibility that "hopped to pieces" and "tasty" might not be mutually exclusive.  For years, I've shunned hoppy brews, and - since I've started homebrewing - have always felt like I was missing out on something.  Other people seemed to love the ugly little green bastards, but I never had it in me.

Coronado Brewing is a family operation out on Coronado in San Diego Bay.  Two brothers started the brewery in 1996, and have made it work for over ten years.  With a product like this, I can see why.

Idiot is intensely bitter to my tastes (90 IBU - International Bitterness Units.  A typical American lager is 10-15 IBU, and most American IPA's are 40-70 IBU) but delicious despite.  It's a rich beer, with a wonderful mouthfeel - an almost malty feel - and a hard whack of earthy and citrusy hop flavor and aroma.  By the end of the pint, the hops were beginning to overpower me a little bit, but I enjoyed every drop and would love to go back for more.

Rating: Don't buy a plane ticket for it, but if you're in SD, or see one in your bottle shop of choice, grab it and give it a try.

Homebrew preview: No. 1 Squadron English Brown Ale

First all-grain batch!

The first homebrew on the new Unlicensed Bulldog page will be my first all-grain batch, "No. 1 Squadron."

My buddy Nick and I put it together a few weeks ago - it's just taking me a while to get to writing about it!  At the moment, it's in secondary for another couple of weeks to settle.  I've also got about 2 liters siphoned off into a separate flask along with a handful of leftover Northern Brewer hops I had on hand.

At racking, it was a little... bland, so we'll see what the dry-hopping does for it, and hope for the best.  I think my efficiency was way off, too, but I got sidetracked and never got a good record of OG.  Definitely need to pay better attention next time.

If it does make it out of secondary alive, it'll wear this label:

The little bulldog is wondering if the RAF would mind

if he hot-wired this beast and just took a short hop.  Just

over to Bristol for a couple of hours...

That's a reference to both the first all-grain batch - "No. 1" - and to No. 1 Squadron RAF, one of the first combat aviation squadrons in the world - and one that (coincidentally) flew brown-painted SAE5a fighter biplanes in WWI.  A good heritage for a good English Brown.

A writeup of the brew day will come soon, as will tasting notes once the beast is finalized.