November 9, 2015

Four Brewers | Russian River: Pitch Please

Four Brewers Dr. Bill, Four Brewers, Fruit Beer, Russian River, Sour Ale 0

Season 2, Episode 45 – This week on the show, we’re drinking beers from Russian River Brewing Company. BOOM.

If you’re a craft beer drinker, you’ve heard of Russian River Brewing Company. Craft beer drinkers far and wide seem to adore Russian River and their beers, ranging from the somewhat hard to find and ever-so-hoppy Pliny The Elder, to the hard to get beers like the tart and acidic Beatification.

Russian River has roots in the Inland Empire of southern California, originally hailing from Temecula, California, but moved up the coast to Santa Rosa, California, which is where they call home today.

We’re kicking off the show with the legendary beer geek-hoppy-holy-grail, Pliny The Elder. Bottles of this beer tend to be hard to find outside of central California, so getting some bottles for the show this week was a bit of an endeavor for us. Luckily, we have a few friends in high places, and were able to score a couple bottles, one from La Bodega Wine & Spirits in Riverside, California, and at the last minute, El Cerrito Liquor in Corona, California.

Pliny The Elder is a beer that is best enjoyed fresh, due to the copious amount of dry hops used in secondary fermentation. IPA in general should always be consumed as fresh as possible, and Russian River goes out of their way to make sure you know this by plastering it all over the bottle’s label.

We’re drinking A LOT of Russian River beers on the show this week, so we’re not going to get too in depth on the blog post about them. We tried to get as many as possible, going as far as San Diego the day before the show to pick up a bottle of 2013 Framboise for a Cure from the legendary cellar of “Dr. Bill” Sysak. We also got a bottle of Beatification from our good friend, Cougar Steve, which he brought back from a recent trip to Russian River Brewing Company.

Huge thanks once again to Kim at La Bodega Wine & Spirits and Jazz at El Cerrito Liquor for the Pliny, as well as Dr. Bill and Cougar Steve for the whalez hookups. It takes a village to do a beer podcast, you know…

BREW THE SHIT OUT OF IT.

Beers from this week’s episode:
Russian River Brewing Company: Pliny The Elder
Russian River Brewing Company: Damnation
Russian River Brewing Company: Salvation
Russian River Brewing Company: Sanctification
Russian River Brewing Company: Framboise For A Cure 2013
Russian River Brewing Company: Supplication
Russian River Brewing Company: Consecration
Russian River Brewing Company: Beatification