Thank the Beer Gods for Abu Nawas! They are responsible for getting Iowans a chance to try Crooked Stave whose beers always challenge and satisfy the palate. Crooked Stave specializes in barrel aged sours, wild ales, and saisons. When there’s a Crooked Stave delivery day, I’m usually in line to pick up a few bottles and I just so happened to be at Winestyles at the Iowa River Landing in Coralville doing a little beer shopping when I came upon their L’Brett d’or. Dry hopped sour aged in oak barrels? Yes please! Here’s more on this beer:
A dry hopped surreal golden sour ale aged in oak barrels that comes in at 7% ABV.
There have been a few variants released of L’Brett d’Or, none I’ve seen in Eastern Iowa but this dry hopped is excellent in many ways.
#1: This is the perfect gateway beer for those who are not 100% into sours/wild ales yet. It’s not too tart, don’t get me wrong, tartness is there, but an acidic vinegar bomb it is not. It’s sweet enough for fruit fans to get on board with and the Brett is very present but doesn’t dominate the flavor.
#2: For Brett fans, once you open up that bottle and get the aroma of Brett and oak you will be ready to dig into this beer. The sweetness of peaches and apricots mesh perfectly the with oak and you get a little bit of an herbal taste that I’m guessing comes from the hops.
#3: The complexity of flavors: As this beer warms a bit it brings out the peaches and apricots as I said above but there is some green apple and faint balsamic vinegar.
Would I buy again? Absolutely! I was happy to share this with some people but regret that I didn’t buy another bottle to selfishly drink by myself. I really want more of this and it would pair perfectly with a warm Iowa 4th of July weekend.
I’m not sure if Winestyles still has it in stock but check out Benz in CR as well, they carry quite a few Crooked Stave beers. If you find some, let me know where it’s at because I need more! If you are not satisfied with it and purchased multiples, get a hold of me and I’ll buy the rest from you. Get out there and Drink This!
Kickshaw Barrel Works’ owner/founder Bill Heinrich has the list of accounts that will be selling Kickshaw’s first release which is scheduled to be happening the 1st week of August. Very excited for this release and to see what Bill has in store for us! Here’s the list courtesy of 
Big Grove Brewery will be invading Mosleys this Saturday June 25th as part of the Pig Pedal Classic Bike Ride. This ride raises money for Children’s Cancer Connection and Mosley’s is one of the stops on the tour. Here’s more info on how to become part of this great fundraiser:
Along with those stops, at Mosleys, Big Grove Brewery will be taking over the lines with these 12 offerings:
This past weekend my wife and I were traveling to Dike for a fundraiser and decided to set some time aside to travel to downtown Cedar Falls to visit SingleSpeed Brewery. I had never been to SingleSpeed but only had their white IPA at a beer festival, which I found refreshing, so I was looking forward to checking out another Iowa brewery.
Here’s what we tried:
Single Speed will be opening up another brewery in what was the Wonder Bread building in Waterloo. I believe they will still operate out of their Cedar Falls brewery as well. More on the new brewery 
Sierra Nevada’s popular Beer Camp Across America hits Reds Ale House taplines tomorrow night! (Tuesday June 14th). The 6 one-time only beers are West Latitude, Stout of the Union, Moxee-Moron, Family Values, Pat-Rye-Ot, and Sweet Sunny South. Get to Reds tomorrow night and check them out! More info on the press release below!
I should have probably done a post about something a bit easier to get a hold of, but I think many Iowa beer lovers make the trek to Decorah a few times a month to get the latest and greatest for TG, so why not talk about the latest double IPA I really enjoyed that you can get in Decorah as well?
Prairie will be releasing 3 beers this month. 2 of which we’ve seen and 1 that is new and going to be added to their year round lineup. Here are the brews:
**Prairie Apple Brandy Noir –
for a Pop-Up Taproom Takeover at Blackstone in Iowa City. Sam Hall once again making it happen by getting one of Iowa’s newest and hottest upcoming breweries to take over his lines at Blackstone. I hope to see some people there, if you attend, stop by and say hi! Here’s the list:
Official Press release:
