New Brewery in Eagle – Gem State Brewing

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2024 has barely gotten off to a start, and the Treasure Valley has another new brewery. This one is in Eagle and has been a long time coming.

Location Location Location

Gem State Brewing opened its doors officially Jan 6th to a full house and a line nearly out the door. At 293 E. State, two and a half blocks east of Eagle road, it’s strategically placed. While nearby Garden City has gained quite a reputation for breweries, they are all several miles away. The local Eagle folk, I expect, will welcome a beer neighbor like Gem State. They open at 3 during the week and at Noon on the weekends. Closed on Tuesday.

Chris and Kristl McGinnis, run the place. Chris has been involved with at least a couple beer spots locally in recent years, including County Line (now Clairvoyant) which is where I knew him from. As I recall that was about the time CL was making some of their best beer…not coincidentally.

Beer Style Diversity

Well, we all have our favorites, but variety is the spice of life after all. Chris is on record as having a bit of an affinity for dark beers. As you might expect a few of his initial offerings definitely qualify. An Oatmeal Stout is on the tap list, along with an Espresso and Raspberry variant. A quite flavorful “4.5%”Session” IPA, a Pilsner and a few flavored Kettle Sours round out the opening tap list.

I missed, or rather avoided the mayhem of opening day and instead stopped by on a wednesday afternoon, 4 days after the grand opening. I arrived shortly after 4pm and the place was already near capacity. The crowd slowly dissipated over the next couple hours as I tried most of what was offered. The Stouts were smooth and roasty, with the coffee and raspberry, respectively not overwhelming. I thought the IPA was quite good, and was surprised to see it at under 5% ABV.

This new construction building is neat and clean and seems to fit well in the central Eagle commercial zone. I didn’t have any trouble finding nearby parking. Inside, tall ceilings, exposed ductwork and simple but comfortable seating fills out the space for 70 or so. Reports on the plans for the new beer spot have been circulating since as early as May 2019, and in case you forget what WAS in this location before work began, below is the “Before” pic.

The brewing equipment they had installed looks capable of ramping up production as needed. Im looking forward also to plenty of small batch and “one-off” recipes, along with whichever turn out to be their “Flagship” beers. It looks like Gem State Brewing will be a great addition to the area. It will definately be on my shortlist for a cold pint after work in the days ahead.

An “Old Dog” with some new tricks

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Sockeye Brewing has been in Boise since the early ’90s. One of Boise’s original breweries and for most all of that time has produced some well know quality beers we’re all well familiar with. The classic, and their flagship beer Dagger Falls IPA is one the the best selling brands in the region. A hoppy sturdy IPA that has been making appearances at backyard bar-b-ques and BSU tailgate parties for nearly 3 decades.

When the craft beer explosion, renaissance, awakening…whatever you want to call it, took over in the mid 2000’s, breweries starting popping up in the area every several months it seemed. Many of these places had to find their own niche, establishing their unique foothold in the growing local craft beer economy. Some were largely experimental and esoteric, others focused on German styles etc. Sockeye seemed to stick with what they already knew they did well. A standard line-up. An IPA, a Brown, an American wheat, an Amber and a Pale. These and a few rotating seasonals, the menu didn’t change that often and when something new did show up, it was pretty few and far between, It also disappeared…usually for good after a short time.

I’ve often told people, and written about this on numerous occasions. The most interesting part of the craft beer industry, for me as a consumer and beer nerd is the never ending variety of what I can get a pint of at a local brew-on-premise. With this in mind the now 30 some breweries in the area, out competed for my attention, and business. Over the last several years Sockeye had dropped off my frequent rotation due to what seemed to me, a strategy of sticking mainly to just their regular lineup.

Catch and Release

I’m happy to report that evidently this is no longer the case. Something clearly changed several months ago. There are now, and have been, regular appearances of uncommon, or lesser known styles and recipes. Rogenbiers, Italian Pilseners, Saisons, Vienna lagers etc, have all recently shown up on their new “Catch and Release” list. I have to think this change was at least partly set in motion from feedback and suggestions that reflected my own view.

I had a conversation with Derek at the West Boise location recently and he confirmed that this was/is an intentional change. Maybe it is a bit of “keeping up with the jones’s” or maybe just livening things up with some “fresh blood”. Either way, I’m loving it. I’ll still order a Dagger Falls at a local restaurant, with dinner, when I see it. These experimentals at the brewpub are just a lot of fun. I’ll be trying as many of then as I can as they are released.

There is also rumored to be a rye-barrel aged “Baklava Russian Imperial Stout” on the horizon. It still has at least a few months to go, before its ready for prime time. I’ll be watching for that one especially. But with these small batch experiments coming out more often, this Idaho craft beer icon is back in my wheelhouse.

-Cheers

Bert’s Brewing to open its doors

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Boise, for a long time had been home to 3 or 4 breweries/Brewpubs and in the mid 2000s everything craft beer sort of took off. Garden City seemed to be the epicenter of that explosion, partly due to the favorable utilities rates offered to commercial tenants. Payette, Crooked Fence, Kilted Dragon, and Barbarian were the early ones. A bit later, County LIne, Powderhaus, Western Collective, Twisted District and most recently Ida Wild, and Brown Beard came in. All setting up shop on the 3 mile stretch of Chinden, from I-184 to just past Glenwood.

A few of those establishments, sadly are no longer with us, but this year a couple more have popped up. The newest, “Bert’s Brewing” on Brown st near the Orchard down ramp is poised to open its doors. Its public opening is set for next week but myself and a few other “family and friends” were there this evening to check out the place. I have to say it will likely be one of my favorites going forward.

A modern but comfortable facility, plenty of natural light, small tables and comfy chairs for a couple dozen. Room for 8 or so at the bar. Garage doors for sunny days and/or warm evenings, and an outdoor patio. All tucked in up against the mini-connector carrying commuters down Orchard to Chinden from Fairview above. At first I thought that the hustle and the bustle of the nearby commute traffic would be a bit “present” but it actually feels like you are up under most of it. The natural landscaping and geography, sort of shields you from it all and somehow feels not so near.

I immediately ordered a flight of their current offerings, and thought all their beers were well done. Clean, light and tasty and just “professional”. I thought the West Coast IPA was fresh, hoppy , though not particularly aggressive. Balanced, fresh and easy to get along with. The Porter I had was smooth, lightly roasty and just a very nice pint. They are staggering their prices with the light Mexican lager a meer 5$. Up to a couple dollars more are charged for the bigger hoppier beers. Definitely a welcome price point, especially for a new venue in these times and this area.

I got to chat with Sidney, one of the owners and she told me their story. It could not have been more charming. A young couple, Robert and herself, each with several years of beer industry experience. Robert in the production, packaging side and recently completing brewing training in Chicago and Germany. Sidney on the restaurant and commercial side managing restaurants and tending bar. They met at a brewpub in Orange, CA and must have quicky sensed that the universe was speaking to them. In short order, they agreed, the best plan was to get married, combine their experience, move to Boise and open a brewery. Now, a year or two later, I for one am glad they did.

The tradition of Garden City’s “Brewer’s Row” has thus increased its craft beer presence, and in a very good way. West bound commuters on Chinden , will pass no less than 8 or 9 craft beer establishments on their way home. Ill be one of them, and will be stopping my Bert’s on a regular basis.

-Cheers

How clean is your beer glass ?

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When we order a pint of our favorite beer we like it to come in a clean glass. A good barkeep will even take a second and hold it up to the light, looking for any specks or dishwater marks before he/she fills it. There is another part to this, however. While we want the inside of the glass clean… the out seid e of it is important as well.

Sometimes an aggressive pour will cause a bit of a “foam-over” and sometimes this is OK. That’s what coasters are for. Other times we want this cleaned off so we don’t get beer on our hands. The question is HOW do they clean the beer off of the glass after a bit of a “cup-runneth-over” event.

Wipers and Squirters

In my experience and observations, there are two main methods. The squirter, and the wiper.

The former, usually involves a plastic squeeze bottle with a fine tip. They will hose down the outside of the glass with a little (presumably clean) water after the pour. When the glass is delivered, is still wet, but at least it is only water. Sometimes it is a little kitchen-sink style push button sprayer. I suppose the advantage with this is that there is no bottle to refill every 20 min on a busy night.

The latter, simply is that after pouring the beer, the server will pick up a dish rag, sometimes called a “bar mop” and wipe down the glass. I have a couple problems with this.

One is that unless, and there is very little chance of this, that is the FIRST use of this towel, the beer is just more evenly spread out all over the glass. Thus there are no remaining dry spots left on it. Secondly, I likely did not actually witness that towel being deployed to this service. I then have no way of knowing how long its been since they swapped it out. Who knows what may be growing on that beer damp towel. It likely smells like a medley of stale beer and the colonies of bacteria that have been feeding on it.

Maybe the place is a bit more conscientious and they have the towel is in some sanitizer solution. Slightly less obnoxious, maybe. But now my pale ale just smells like clorox every time I take a drink.

I have a preference here, obviously. Perhaps the best way to illustrate my point, when I see a wiper, is to ask the server it they are willing to lick that towel.

-Cheers

End of Summer – Outdoor Boise Beer Venues

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The summer season and warmer weather is coming to a close in the Treasure Valley area, and with it, many of the popular outdoor beer “patios” and food truck sites will be closing for the season. I’ve listed below, some of the popular locations and their end of season schedules, as posted on their respective social media pages. We’ve only got a week or two left for most of them, and after last weekend’s rainy weather, another week of late summer warm sunny days are in in store.

Switchback – FoodTruck park located on Perrault way near the Park Center and Warm Springs intersection, is open for their normal Thurs-Sun set this week, Next week they are finishing the season Thursday – Friday (the 13th) only.

GreenAcresBoise

Green Acres -Food Truck park and live music spot on the greenbelt just past the end of 14th. Typically open 11-8 Wed-Sun with October 15th (Sunday) being their last day of the season. They have frequent updates on their Facebook page showing which food trucks are there for that day. “First Thursday”, Idaho beers are 1$ off today.

Franklin House – I always feel like I’m in someone’s back yard, when I visit this place. On the corner of 15th and Franklin, Boise’s only “Bed and Beer” is open until Saturday the 14th 10PM. Pluss, they have Hammocks !

Yardarm – Boat/beach themed patio area serving beer out of a renovated shipping container and an on-site taco-truck…boat. This Saturday the 7th is their 8th annual season ending “Kill-The-Keg” with Big-K-BBQ on location.

Stop by these great Boise outdoor beerspots as you can, the season is nearly over.

My Favorite Boise Beer Spots #002 – Mother Earth Brewing

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Mother Earth Brewing, has been a southern California company for about 13 years. They moved to Idaho August 2016 as part of an expansion, with the construction of a production site in Nampa. A small tasting room is inside as well, where you can try a couple of their beers right where they are made. This all whilst sitting amongst towering pallets of empty aluminum cans, just waiting to be filled. This facility helped make ME the largest brewer in the state, muscling past indigenous Idaho outfits like Sockeye and Payette.

Several years later, Mother Earth opened their taproom in downtown Boise proper, on 3rd just a couple blocks down Broad st from Boise Brewing. This was back in December 2021, when we were all just extricating ourselves from the Covid fiasco, and frankly needed an outlet like this. I was there opening week and their full lineup of beers was on line. The place was an immediate hit. Part of the site includes a large outdoor/patio seating area, which didn’t really see much action until it warmed up a few months later. Nevertheless, the outdoor area provides a great view of the currently active and changing downtown Boise skyline.

Great Beer

Mostly I love their hoppy beers. Particularly Boo-Koo, Heavy Cloud, and the Project-X series. Other main line offerings like Sin-Tax, Cali-Creamin and Milk-Truck are great also. Their premium line “Four Seasons” is…well… seasonal, and the heavy hitter Triple IPA has recently made a return. Called “Big Mother” this is a beast of a bear, you have been warned. Since its very beginning, ME has seen terrific growth with a line-up like this.

I read just this past week, the Boise taproom announced that “half pints” would also be available. Perhaps not of their high-octane selections that already are in a smaller serving size, but still the option of a “shorty” is great. A big part of my beer hobby is being able to try many different beers. Having to put down a full pint at a time can drag you down a bit.

Right in the heart of downtown, it is yet another nice craft beer destination, and is one of my regulars.

-Cheers

BrewDay – Batch #2301 – Summerwind Pale

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  • A nice clean hoppy Pale Ale is one of my favorites, particularly in summer. Not too heavy, plenty of fresh hop flavor and not so big, you can have a couple-few. I tend to just wing-it as far as a recipe goes. I know that about 12# of grain will get me a 1.055ish OG. I’ll get 30 or so IBU hit for the long boil, most hop additions happen in the last 15 min. Today we are going with mostly Cascade and Simcoe.
  • 8# Pale Malt
  • 3# Pilsener
  • 1.5# White Wheat
  • .5# Crystal 15
  • Plus a couple pounds of rice hulls just to keep the grain bed fluffy.

For hops, .5oz of 14.8 Columbus for most of my bitterness, an ounce of 9.4 Cascade at 10min to go, an ounce of 12.5 Simcoe at 5 min to go, an ounce of 9.4 Centennial at flame out, and another ounce of Simcoe as it began to chill at about 190F

Years ago when I was a regular participant in trading craft beer amongst other beer nerds around the country, I was sent a 22 of something, one day called “Double Simcoe IPA”. It was produced by Weyerbacher brewing near Allentown, PA and was the best tasting hoppy beer Id ever had. It just captured the flavor and bite of what I imagined as the goal for the style. Since then I assumed Simcoe was the hop that was the center the flavor profile i liked so much. Every hoppy beer I’ve made since then has featured this hop variety. To varying degrees of success.

My mash temperature came in right at 152F, a temperature that generally favors a more complete fermentation stage. So that was good. Calculated for one big batch sparge and finished with just over 7 gallons of 1.044 this also was just about according to plan.

An hour boil, per the above hop addition schedule got me to 6gallons of 1.052 chilled. A little lower than I planned, but it somehow always seems to turn out that way.

I didn’t bother with making a stated the day before, so in when the yeast right form the pouch/envelope thing. Gave it a good shake for a few minutes, and set it inside in a cool dark place.

Next morning there was plenty of activity so I knew we were off and running. By the end of the week, I transferred to secondary and saved most of the yeast into a large sanitized mason jar for later. Even though I whirlpooled the chilled wort and left much of the hop sludge behind, there was quite a bit in with the yeast form the primary vessel.

My next beer will likely be a big IPA with a similar hop blend, so pitching this leftover yeast I think will be fine even if it has some left over hop sludge in it.

Nearly a week in secondary and measured its final gravity at 1.010 A tad higher than I hoped… but again this is typical for my process and equipment. Into the cony keg it went and siphoned of a litel for myself. The first (warm and flat) sample was promising and I thought absent of any obvious flaws or mistakes.

After a couple days in the keg and in the refrigerated kegerator, at about 25psi, took my first sample. Hop flavors was about what I was hoping for, less bitterness than I expected and the beer was a little sweet and a little full/thick. Was hoping for something a lite more dry and crisp. Finishing out at the slightly lower gravity that I was aiming for probably would have got me closer to this.

Anyway, over the next week or so, as the carbonation has come up and a little more sediment has come out, I think it “passes mustard”, as my grandpa used to say. I dont filter my beer so it is a bit cloudy. It has good fresh hop flavors and sits right at about 5.2% ABV. It will be a god summer beer to have at the house and to share with friends. Next up, will probably be a big 8% IPA. Similar recipe, just taking it up a couple notches.

2C or not 2C

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At the risk of burring the lead, the answer is sadly, the latter.

2C Family Brewing is no longer with us as of April 4th. The brewery, along with a couple other spots made “downtown” Nampa a fun and interesting hub of Food and Beer destinations. 2C Occupied the historic 115-some-odd year old Dewy Scales building at 1215 1st Ave. It was adjacent to Mesa Tacos, Paddles up Poke and across from Holy Cow, Messenger Pizza and the last remaining PreFunk beer bar.

Mark Shiebout and Alvin Mullins, long time homebrewing buddies, opened their doors in late June, 2019. 2C seemed from the beginning to specialize in continental European beers, German lagers, Bocks, Belgians and Saisons etc. In August 2021 Tyler Vanden Heuvel came on board as head brewer and tweaked the beer lineup a bit. He had been at Meriwether Cider and Mother Earth before, bringing considerable experience with him.

From then on there were more offerings and typically a few more North American traditional styles included in the mix. Overall that last year and a half or so saw an improvement in the better selection, and quality, frankly. The more recent “Hop Projekt” IPAs and hazy pales were particularly good. Tyler should land somewhere else hopefully soon as I hope to keep drinking beer he makes.

There wasn’t a food menu at 2C, but you could always of course bring in your own. Sometimes there was a grill going with hotdogs and what-not, for a couple bucks. There was frequently live music on the weekends as well. The rustic long tables and original hardwood floor and high ceiling contributed to the casual friendly “beer-hall” atmosphere.

For whatever reason, after nearly four years, it just didn’t work out and the first weekend in April, they closed they’re doors for good. Its a shame, 2C really added to a vibrant and fun city center and was the beginning of a little resurrection of downtown Nampa. Such as it is.

Unknown at this time, what will become of that site, or who will take it’s place. I doubt it will be as fun and tasty as 2C was for the nearly 4 years they were there. There is some local chatter that suggests nearby Crescent Brewing is purchasing much of 2C’s 10-Barrel capacity brewing equipment.

It’s always sad to witness the sunset of craft beer destination. Nampa only has a few, Mother Earth, has its major production facility a mile North with a nice tap room. Crescent Brewing is about 3 blocks west. But that is about it as far as “brew-on-premise” craft beer sources in the immediate area.

We are all sad to see them go.

-Cheers

My Favorite Boise Beerspots #001 – Woodland Empire

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As I’ve mentioned before, Boise is a pretty good beer town. There are a few dozen breweries, taprooms, growler stations and dedicated beer-bars in the Treasure Valley and I’l be featuring one every so often. Not so much a review per se’ just my thoughts and observations on whichever location I find myself at that day.  Some key characteristics, my likes and maybe not lo likes and some details that make it unique. Every spot has a niche, or rather the good ones usually do and Ill focus a bit on that for each.

Today I’m at Woodland Empire. A Brew-On-Premise site that opened nearly 10 years ago in early 2014. I posted about that at that time, and you can read it here. It was a great time interviewing owner/brewers Keely and Rob Landerman.

Since the beginning, WE has had a sort of an irreverent, Bohemian, “Portlandia”, laid back vibe that I imagine would fit in well somewhere in Greenwich Village, maybe across from the record store between the body art shop and the funky coffee joint.

Coming up on a year ago now, Woodland was sold to Boise area group with local restaurateur Dave Krick and a few others including Lost Grove Brewing owner Jacob Black. You can read that story here, on BoiseDev. I’ve been in several times since that change-over and I can tell you the place still feels the same and the promised intent of staying loyal to what the Landerman’s had envisioned, seems to hold true. While my gut doesn’t necessarily love, fewer people owning more craft beer spots, the deal, as mentioned in the article on BoiseDev just seemed to make sense. The right thing at the right time for both parties involved.

Woodland, not long ago, sacrificed some of their parking (not that there was much to begin with) for a patio seating area. While hearing the rushing of home-bound commuters flooring it to catch that last light before the connector is not ideal, it is still a nice option.

There are barley 12 taps here, including a couple guest taps: ciders and Kombucha. There are always a few odd balls that are fun to try and typically few regulars that everyone knows. Namely the Big Sticky, and City of Trees, a couple of IPAs that were here from day one. If you can find a bottle of their Ada County Stout, it is a must have. A real local gem. A couple of coolers are here as well for some of their packaged offerings to go. While you are having a beer, there are even a few old-school machines here if you fancy yourself a bit of a pin-ball wizard. Check it out.

Woodland Empire is a good Beer-Spot

-Cheers