Russian River Night

My friend Steve took a trip this weekend to visit his girlfriend's family in Vacaville, and that is good for me because he made the ~75 mile trip over to Santa Rosa to pick up some growlers. Today he decided to open up a Sanctification and IPA growler. I'm still sayin, I like the regular old "Russian River IPA" more than Blind Pig IPA, although Blind Pig is still a damn fine beer. He still has a couple growlers which we will take for our Rose Bowl tailgate on Thursday morning.

Sancitifcation was very strange. This has been my favorite beer since I discovered it in the summer of '07 in Santa Rosa and I had it a few times since then. This batch however, which I think is batch #3 or 4, is crazy funky. Before it was just very light and sour, and I could not really describe it any other way. No fruit, not much funk, just nice and sour. This batch though was crazy funky. The minute we poured this thing it smelled like something straight out of a barn, I guess. Very nice, still. I actually think I like it better the other way though, with less funk.

Russian River IPA is still awesome. If you think about it, it's Russian River's fourth most popular IPA. Younger, Elder and Blind Pig are all more popular than regular old "Russian River IPA." I wish breweries on the East Coast could brew something half as good as Russian River's 4th most popular IPA, so that when I'm out there some day I can enjoy a fairly good IPA. They are still ways away though.