{"id":21795,"date":"2019-02-15T11:51:20","date_gmt":"2019-02-15T19:51:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/archives.csusm.edu\/westcoastersd\/?p=21795"},"modified":"2019-02-16T09:29:33","modified_gmt":"2019-02-16T17:29:33","slug":"beer-of-the-week-brewers-best-amber","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archives.csusm.edu\/westcoastersd\/2019\/02\/15\/beer-of-the-week-brewers-best-amber\/","title":{"rendered":"Beer of the Week: Brewer&#8217;s Best Amber"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>From the Beer Writer:\u00a0<\/strong>Though available at the recently-opened Sorrento Valley brewpub,\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.gravityheights.com\"><strong>Gravity Heights<\/strong><\/a>, there may not be another beer that makes me feel like I&#8217;m drinking in an authentic English pub than that establishment&#8217;s\u00a0<strong>Brewer&#8217;s Best Amber<\/strong>. Toasty, biscuity and made earthen with tea-like flavors from UK hops, it&#8217;s traditional as the day is long. The only thing that&#8217;s not spot-on about it is its name. &#8220;Best bitter&#8221; is a popular style across the pond and the type of beer that&#8217;s being emulated here; however, bitters are extremely misunderstood by the American drinking public. This is particularly true in Southern California where &#8220;bitter&#8221; IPAs are what really put our region on the craft brewing map. Order anything labeled &#8220;bitter&#8221; in San Diego and it better, indeed, pack a hop-borne wallop in the finish. But that&#8217;s the thing. English bitters don&#8217;t. They are the mild, middle-ground of beer where malt and hops meet in the middle so as not to overpower each other. They are a testament to balance and Brewer&#8217;s Best Amber shows off the beauty of a real-life bitter&#8230;even if they have to label it an &#8220;amber&#8221; so it will have greater appeal to the masses.<\/p>\n<p><strong>From the Brewer:\u00a0<\/strong>&#8220;Our team is certainly proud of the IPAs and several other beers we brew, but wanted to select a beer we believe is a hidden gem in our line-up for Beer of the Week. When my partner,\u00a0<strong>Ted Newcomb<\/strong>,\u00a0and I started <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.alesmith.com\">AleSmith Brewing<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>in 1995, we only brewed AleSmith ESB (later known as Anvil Ale) for our first six months of operations before beginning to add additional brands. I wanted to pay homage to Anvil Ale and Ted without using the original recipe, and also wanted a session ale that could be cask-conditioned and served at Gravity Heights via a beer engine, which is the traditional dispensing method for cask-conditioned ales. We look forward to cask-conditioning a few of our beers using this process, and will likely cask-condition the next bath of our Brewer&#8217;s Best. There are three sub-styles of English bitter, which are termed &#8216;ordinary bitter,&#8217; &#8216;best bitter&#8217; and &#8216;strong bitter&#8217; (often referred to as ESB or &#8216;extra special bitter&#8217;). Brewer&#8217;s Best Amber fits into the mid-tier best bitter category at 4.2% alcohol-by-volume. This beer is also very food-friendly, so it will pair with most of our menu. We suggest a full pour paired with the Gravity Heights sausage plate for starters.&#8221;<em><i>\u2014<\/i>Skip Virgilio, Brewmaster, Gravity Heights<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From the Beer Writer:\u00a0Though available at the recently-opened Sorrento Valley brewpub,\u00a0Gravity Heights, there may not be another beer that makes me feel like I&#8217;m drinking in an authentic English pub than that establishment&#8217;s\u00a0Brewer&#8217;s Best Amber. Toasty, biscuity and made earthen with tea-like flavors from UK hops, it&#8217;s traditional as the day is long. The only [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":21796,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","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":[4904,1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-21795","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-beer-of-the-week","8":"category-san-diego-beer-beverage-news","9":"entry"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/archives.csusm.edu\/westcoastersd\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/botw_ghbba.jpg?fit=1024%2C649&ssl=1","wps_subtitle":"Gravity Heights' amber isn't bitter but it is a bitter...and a good one at that!","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pdtr4y-5Fx","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archives.csusm.edu\/westcoastersd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21795","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=21795"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archives.csusm.edu\/westcoastersd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21795\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21799,"href":"https:\/\/archives.csusm.edu\/westcoastersd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21795\/revisions\/21799"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archives.csusm.edu\/westcoastersd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21796"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archives.csusm.edu\/westcoastersd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21795"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archives.csusm.edu\/westcoastersd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21795"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archives.csusm.edu\/westcoastersd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21795"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}