Inspired by flavorful beers with discerning ingredients, Doug Odell (along with wife Wynne and sister Cookie) launched Odell Brewing Co. back in 1989 with the promise to make honest, real, and creative renditions of the beer styles that moved him. As the brewery has grown (3rd largest in Colorado and 34th largest in the United States), he’s racked up eight World Beer Cup and fifteen GABF medals but even more importantly has gained the admiration of fellow beer lovers who appreciate his skill for finding balance and drinkability in the midst of significant and distinctive flavor.
His six pack is as diverse as his brewing influences, with an even representation from the old-school European powerhouses (German, Belgium, and England) plus some classic and creative American contemporaries.
Anchor Steam Beer
Anchor Brewing (San Francisco, California)
I ought to start out with what really got me here at this point in time, and that’s Anchor Steam beer. When I was going to school at San Francisco State in 1978, I got a part-time job with Anchor Steam. I was a homebrewer, and I followed brewing history, and I saw a note on the board at the placement office at school saying a San Francisco brewery needed some brewhouse cleanup. I knew Anchor Steam was the only local brewery at the time, since everyone else had gone out of business. And when Fritz Maytag bought Anchor Steam in 1965, it was about a week away from going out of business, too. Even when I worked there, they were selling 9,000–10,000 barrels per year, which was very small, but bigger than any other craft brewery in existence.
I got an interview that consisted of the guy who interviewed me as we walked around the brewery talking about brew philosophy. When we were done, all he said was, “Okay, you’re hired.” I had the lousiest job in the whole place, which was to scrub out the mash tun before I had to crawl into the brewing kettle and scrub that, too—they didn’t have CIP in the brewery then. Even though I had this lousy job, the idea of working there was impressive to me. But I really enjoyed the job—we got free beer every week, and after drinking Olympia, which was my beer of choice until I got that job, Anchor Steam hooked me on full-flavor beer.
While I was at school I’d meet people at parties, and they’d ask if I had a job, and I’d say, “Yeah, I work at Anchor Brewing.” No matter what the profession of the person asking—landscapers, doctors, lawyers—they were impressed that there was a brewery brewing full-flavored beer in San Francisco because there wasn’t that type of brewery anymore; it was all lager. Years later, I recalled that as my first realization that people are willing to spend more for a beer that has more flavor and that they are intrigued by a local company brewing something different from what everyone else is brewing. And that interest in craft beer continues today, with that same criteria.
Anchor Steam was nutty, its hops character had a little spiciness and some floral notes to it, and it had flavor. With Olympia or Bud, you knew it was made out of hops and malt, but you wouldn’t necessarily know about the other ingredients.
That experience and learning about full-flavored beer was a catalyst to me because I was an extract brewer, and I wasn’t happy with the results I was getting. But then a few years later, like when liquid yeast first started making an entrance and the homebrew shop owner taught me to all-grain brew, it changed everything. That experience introduced me to full-flavored beer.
Jaipur IPA
Thornbridge (Derbyshire, UK)
The reason Jaipur IPA sticks in my mind is that it was the first of the new breed of IPAs in the United Kingdom. There were IPAs, but that style somehow evolved into a 3.8 percent ABV, light-tasting, hardly hoppy beer, but they still called it IPA. And when Thornbridge put out Jaipur, it was really one of the first IPAs of the new style. I think that they were influenced by American brewers, and they also had a New Zealand brewer who was familiar with the tropical fruit flavors that were available in New Zealand. They made something that wasn’t available in their country. There weren’t many brewers in the United Kingdom that followed that, of course.
It costs $85 a six-pack when you buy it in the United States. I looked on their web site to find out how to buy it, and if you want to buy it to sell across a bar you have to go to the brewery. You give them your license plate number, and when you show up the rule is that you can’t buy more beer for a month or something like that.
It’s a wonderful beer with incredible malt character and flavor. They maintain a really well balanced malt and hops profile, really fresh, floral, citrusy, spicy character.
Tripel
Westmalle Abbey (Westmalle, Belgium)
Westmalle Tripel has got so many things that are great in tripels going forward in one beer: a proper malt sweetness and dryness at the same time, and the yeast spiciness is there but not overdone, and when it’s fresh it’s just great. I think that too many times, tripels, including the one we have on tap right now, can be too sweet. That’s the thing that kills it for me. The glory of the tripel is that nice, dry, fruity, spicy character from the yeast.
Black Tuesday
The Bruery (Placentia. California)
Black Tuesday is a flavor bomb of all kinds of dark-fruit characteristics and chocolate, and it’s just so smooth and balanced for its strength—it’s 20 percent ABV this year. It’d be very easy to make a beer with that high an alcohol content that’s cloyingly sweet, but Black Tuesday is rich and flavorful without being too sweet. It hits the spot.
And they’re blending from different kinds of barrels. If you just age in one kind of barrel, say bourbon for instance, that’s going to deliver a distinct character to your beer. If you use a bunch of different kinds, then no one flavor is going to stand out. That’s how I like to use hops. I like single-hops beer, which can be kind of interesting, but I think blends of hops are more interesting because no one hops stands out, which gives the beer a complex character. You’re blending different characteristics to make something that’s greater than the sum of its parts.
Celebration Ale
Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. (Chico, California)
Celebration ale has a rich malt character and then that very citrusy character, and they’ve been calling it Celebration Ale for a long time. Now there’s a name for it: it’s red IPA. But it’s a classic. They’ve been brewing it for a long time, so it’s innovative and broad thinking to put something out like that that’s clearly different from anything else out there.
You can always tell with Celebration that they’re using really good hops. I know that they get great choices, and they’re using them in that beer. There’s something about a hoppy beer where the hops freshness just jumps out at you, rather than being dulled or overwhelmed by the malt. It’s a great balanced beer.
Union Jack IPA
Firestone Walker Brewing Company (Paso Robles, California)
Matt Brynildson’s lineup is so exemplary, and Union Jack is right up there. What’s special about it is that it’s a California brewery, but considering the way people define West Coast IPAs, this isn’t really a West Coast IPA because it’s not a bitter bomb. I think the balance of that beer is fantastic. It’s got such intense hops, citrus, and floral characteristics, and it’s fruity, yet at the same time, retains its elements. It’s not a one-dimensional IPA by any means. It’s a great effort in balancing hops flavors, and repeatedly enjoyable.
Hopfenweisse
Schneider Weisse (Kelheim, Germany)
There’s nothing like a nice, fresh, well-made weissbier in southern Germany and Bavaria. Fresh is the key. Like Union Jack, Hopfenweisse is a wonderful beer with balance. That’s big, and a big part of our brewery is balancing the flavor and ingredients so that nothing overwhelms you. The clean hefeweizen character that they get from the yeast in their process is really nice, and it’s not too much of anything. It’s balanced, fruity, and spiced with just enough clove and nutmeg. There are a lot of examples of hefes—Americans do it as a one-off that they can never get right because they don’t get the subtleties. Schneider Weisse gets that right, and there’s nothing quite like having it at the brewery.
Three years ago, in honor of our new German brewhouse, we decided to go to Germany. We sat down with [Brewmaster] Hans-Peter Drexler at dinner. He asked, “You know what I’m really excited about?” And then he took us into his barrel-aging cellar. You wouldn’t think of a traditional weissbier brewer experimenting with barrel aging, but he was. They experimented with different kinds of weissbier but also others that weren’t, and blends, and it was really exciting. It’ll be interesting to see if they’ll come out with one!