Beer Sherpa Notes: Tasty New Releases
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I have three tasty new beers to share with you today. They all come from legacy breweries, and I can’t help but see how they fit into each company’s trajectory. Every beer in a brewery’s line becomes a part of their story, and they can tell us a lot about where the brewery is headed (intentionally or inadvertently). It’s impossible to miss that context when you try the beers below.
Deschutes Squeezy Rider
First up we have the unfortunately-named Squeezy Rider from Deschutes, the latest segment in their “squeezed/fresh” line of IPAs. That family has become the centerpiece of the brewery’s attention since Fresh Squeezed became a surprise hit after its 2013 bottle release. It was possibly the first fully “juicy” major release, and fueled growth and territorial expansion. When I was touring the country in 2015, it was pouring everywhere.
A few years later, sales started to flag and Deschutes leaned into Fresh Squeezed. They decided to create a whole line of IPAs around it, and it now includes Fresh Haze (6.5%), Royal Fresh (9%), Lil’ Squeezy (5%), and now Squeezy Rider (7%). The earlier beers in the series are fine efforts, but they seemed less necessary than obligatory—beers engineered to fill out a line. That’s a shame because Fresh Squeezed itself was anything but pro forma: it was well ahead of its time and sparkled with character and individuality.
I’m happy to report that Squeezy Rider is the best Deschutes IPA since Fresh Squeezed. It’s a juicy example that ignores the haze, and offers a winning package of aromatics, flavor, and drinkability. Rarely does one focus on mouthfeel, but in a sea of IPAs, that’s the element that ties everything together here. It’s soft and velvety without being overly sweet or viscous. It gives those rich hop flavors a sensual tactile quality, so the experience is immersive. The hops (Strata, Cascade, Mosaic, and Galaxy) highlight stone fruit and white wine grape flavors, but the savory Mosaic addition scents the beer, which finishes with a lush, almost overripe tropical fruit undertone. The yeast is a big part of the show as well, and its English character is in line with the first beers Deschutes made. It seems at once new but also, because it’s so smooth and easy to drink, somehow familiar as well.
I’m not really sure what they were shooting for with the name, which seems to have something to do with surfing while confusingly echoing “easy rider.” That may put off people who will expect another derivative beer. That’s unfortunate, because it is actually fresh in the sense of being new and unexpected. Deschutes has spent years lurching from release to release with no strategy, trying to fill in gaps where they perceive consumer demand. Squeezy Rider feels like the first beer in a long time that came up organically. I have no idea if that’s true, but in any case it’s a welcome development. This feels like a first step back toward the kind of beers that made the brewery one of the nation’s most popular.
A brewery built to make Belgian ales.
Ommegang Neon Lights
If Deschutes’ latest release feels like a return to form, what to make of Ommegang’s new Neon Lights? It is the second in an unfolding series they’re calling OMG, which started with their first hazy, Neon Rainbows. Almost everything in the preceding sentence seems wrong for a brewery that was built, literally and figuratively, to make Belgian-style ales a generation ago. I am dismayed to see this direction, which Michael Kiser and I discussed last October on an episode of the Good Beer Hunting podcast.
But before we bury Ommegang, let’s celebrate this beer first: it’s really good. As is typical (if not 100% intentional), I decanted the beer without studying the label or material the brewery included with the mailing. What my senses discovered was a light, summery palate, all zingy with citrusy notes and a bit of citrus rind—and Mosaic in the nose. The hops are perfectly calibrated in intensity, and the recipe is spot-on. They’re not a muddle in the way of so many newer IPAs, in which the brewer hasn’t fully dialed in the new hop varieties. What my senses didn’t tell me was how low the alcohol was—just 4.3%. This is a very hard trick to pull off, and no American brewery of my acquaintance has done it as well as Ommegang has with Neon Lights. There’s no compromise here. It’s not a hazy IPA miniaturized to satisfy calorie-counters. The body is full, so there’s none of that hollow dropping-out mid-palate that is the hallmark of the American session IPA. More cleverly, all that electric citrus fools the trigeminal nerve into thinking it’s got more alcohol than it does. I would love to test drive six of these on a long summer afternoon.
But here’s the 64,000-barrel question: how much does the overall Ommegang brand—one built not just around Belgian styles, but a European sense of elegance and tradition—diminish as a result of this:
I mean, those are really ugly cans. They seem like a direct rebuke to the classic styling of the rest of the line. A hazy IPA was a startling departure when Neon Rainbows first came out, but at least it looked like an Ommegang product. The “OMG” series—which marketing could, I suppose, tepidly defend as a “fresh” nod to the name—worsens matters. The whole thing feels like a middle-aged parent trying on their kids’ high school slang, with predictable results.
pelican AnniversAry Collab #1
Speaking of dad jokes, Pelican has released the first of their “bird-day” collaborations. But you know what? When your kid turns 25, as Pelican does this year, you get to make as many gleeful groaners as you want. It’s a hokey pun, but you can almost see Darron Welch winking at you when you hear the word.
And unlike Ommegang, this beer is pure Pelican. Made with alumna Whitney Burnside, who’s now at 10 Barrel, it’s a stout brewed with passionfruit and cacao nibs. But this is no modern pastry stout. You’ll strain your find overt notes of either in this beer. Instead, the cacao deepens the rich, indulgent bass notes even while the acid of the fruit brightens and sharpens the highlights. The result is literally one of the tastiest stouts I’ve ever encountered. Sometimes describing a beer is an injustice, robbing drinkers of the experience of first contact. In that spirit I’ll say no more, except this: find a bottle. As I mentioned in my anniversary post, Pelican is a legacy brewery that knows itself and trusts its brewers, using all that experience to its advantage. You can taste it in this beer.