{"id":16698,"date":"2017-03-17T08:00:25","date_gmt":"2017-03-17T15:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/archives.csusm.edu\/westcoastersd\/?p=16698"},"modified":"2017-03-10T15:05:28","modified_gmt":"2017-03-10T23:05:28","slug":"beer-of-the-week-rock-bottom-devils-thumb","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archives.csusm.edu\/westcoastersd\/2017\/03\/17\/beer-of-the-week-rock-bottom-devils-thumb\/","title":{"rendered":"Beer of the Week: Rock Bottom Devil’s Thumb"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Rock Bottom La Jolla’s Devil’s Thumb Belgian-style golden strong ale<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

From the Beer Writer:\u00a0<\/strong>As I wrote a short while back, many are the brewers who tell me, “I brew beers that I like drinking.” Judging by the quality of her hoppy offerings, particularly her\u00a0Mosaic-heavy IPA, I’d say\u00a0Rock Bottom<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>head brewer\u00a0Carli Smith<\/strong> has an affinity for lupulin-laced ales.\u00a0I like when brewers do right by their taste-buds, but find it particularly impressive when they defy them, crafting styles they aren’t as fond of so others may enjoy them. Case in point,\u00a0Rock Bottom Devil’s Thumb<\/strong>. This\u00a0Belgian-style golden strong ale\u00a0is utterly traditional in its look, scent, taste and feel. Its bouquet contains notes of lemongrass and gardenias, while the beer itself offers a vast array of flavor components\u2014honey, lemon rind, white peppercorn, bubble gum\u00a0and thyme. At 8% alcohol-by-volume, one would expect something overly impactful, but this beer is balanced and drinkable; enough that the beer-menu warns about its tendency to sneak up on imbibers. Smooth, sweet-smelling and delicious…what’s not to like? For that, we’ll have to ask Smith, because she harbors staunch distaste for Belgian beer-styles, making\u00a0the quality of this ale all that more remarkable.<\/p>\n

From the Brewer:\u00a0<\/strong>“Being at a brewpub, I am able to keep my beer-list stocked with lots of stuff that I like to drink. Belgian beers not being one of those things, they rarely make their way onto my board, but I have a few regulars that really enjoy Belgian beers and they have been bugging me to make one. One of the things that I dislike about Belgian beers is the high amount of residual sugars that are usually present in the final product. So for mine, I wanted to make something that had a pretty simple grain-bill, pretty much just Weyermann Pilsner malt. This way the yeast is the star of the show, and if I could get it to totally ferment out, I knew the finish would be clean with just enough Belgian-ester sweetness.\u00a0I am really happy with how it turned out, which was extremely surprising to me and everyone else. I get lots of weird looks when I say, ‘Here, try my Belgian beer,’ when everyone knows I strongly dislike the style. When I carbonated it and put it on tap I was able to drink almost\u00a0a whole eight-ounce serving\u00a0in one sitting, very big for me…ha. I was inspired to enter it into the San Diego International Beer Festival<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>competition, because I felt that it was an almost perfect representation of the Belgian golden strong ale style. I also thought it would be hilarious if the brewer who hates Belgian beers won a medal for one. Oh, the irony!\u00a0“\u2014Carli Smith<\/em>, Head Brewer,\u00a0Rock Bottom La Jolla<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From the Beer Writer:\u00a0As I wrote a short while back, many are the brewers who tell me, “I brew beers that I like drinking.” Judging by the quality of her hoppy offerings, particularly her\u00a0Mosaic-heavy IPA, I’d say\u00a0Rock Bottom\u00a0head brewer\u00a0Carli Smith has an affinity for lupulin-laced ales.\u00a0I like when brewers do right by their taste-buds, but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":16699,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[368,369,1],"tags":[1353,376,1461,1926,3744,442,3742,391,3743,2483,1010,1946,2604,3745,1052,1439,430,2683,1637],"class_list":{"0":"post-16698","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-beer-news","8":"category-beer-styles","9":"category-san-diego-beer-beverage-news","10":"tag-sdbeer","11":"tag-beer","12":"tag-beer-of-the-week","13":"tag-beerfest","14":"tag-belgian-strong-ale","15":"tag-brandon-hernandez","16":"tag-carli-smith","17":"tag-craftbeer","18":"tag-devils-thumb","19":"tag-indiebeer","20":"tag-ipa","21":"tag-la-jolla","22":"tag-mosaic-hops","23":"tag-pink-boots","24":"tag-rock-bottom","25":"tag-san-diego","26":"tag-san-diego-international-beer-festival","27":"tag-utc","28":"tag-west-coaster","29":"entry"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/archives.csusm.edu\/westcoastersd\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/botw_rbdtbgs.jpg?fit=1000%2C993&ssl=1","wps_subtitle":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pdtr4y-4lk","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archives.csusm.edu\/westcoastersd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16698","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archives.csusm.edu\/westcoastersd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archives.csusm.edu\/westcoastersd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archives.csusm.edu\/westcoastersd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archives.csusm.edu\/westcoastersd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16698"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archives.csusm.edu\/westcoastersd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16698\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archives.csusm.edu\/westcoastersd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16699"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archives.csusm.edu\/westcoastersd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16698"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archives.csusm.edu\/westcoastersd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16698"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archives.csusm.edu\/westcoastersd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16698"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}