Loud on flavor: Why stouts are becoming the Sacramento region’s most honored beer
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Sacramento’s stout craft beer scene
While IPAs are the financial base of the Sacramento beer scene, stouts are the highest-rated and most critically acclaimed beers in the local area.
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Loud on flavor: Why stouts are becoming the Sacramento region’s most honored beer
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The beer board at New Glory brewery in Sacramento looked similar last week to what you’d see at most places in the area. About half the offerings were IPAs, the best-selling style of craft beer in the country.
Director of brewing Jared Long was happy to talk about hoppy beers. They’re what New Glory is known for, and he’s experimented with the different flavors you can get out of hops.
But what Long and other Sacramento-area brewers really want to talk about are their stouts, which hardly use any hops in the brewing process. While IPAs are the financial base of the Sacramento beer scene, stouts are the highest-rated and most critically acclaimed beers in the area. They are the secret strength of the Sacramento beer scene.
Just like its flavorful IPAs, New Glory has four stouts full of loud flavors. You can get an imperial maple stout, an imperial vanilla stout or a stout that tastes like a nutty, cannabis-infused brownie. But the headliner is New Glory’s top-rated beer out of 332 options on Untappd: Infinite Void, which clocks in with a 4.42 rating on a site where a 4.0 is considered a good beer.
In spite of its reputation as a hop house, New Glory’s top four beers on Untappd are all imperial stouts that have huge alcohol percentages and strong flavors. That’s no accident, Long says. Whether it’s IPAs, fruity beers or stouts, consumers are demanding very flavorful beers.
“I think it’s part of a nationwide trend, but it seems to be especially true in Sacramento that consumers seem to like very, very loud flavors,” he said, “and I think it explains a lot of the pastry stout stuff and a lot of the IPA stuff.”
Alaro owner Ray Ballestero said he’s tried plenty of big stouts from Sacramento-area brewers, and he’s quick to tout the region’s role as a leading creator of big ABV stouts.
“I think brewers are up for a challenge,” he said. “They want to create something fun, like ‘How do I make this work?’”
Brewers have received the message loud and clear. And while Sacramento’s hoppy brewers such as Track 7 and Knee Deep lead the area in production volume, Sacramento’s stouts have the most accolades.
Moksa leads the way
When you’re talking about stouts in the area, the conversation starts with Moksa. Sure, Moksa offers IPAs (10 were on tap at the Rocklin brewery Monday morning). But stouts are where the brewery has made its mark.
Moksa earned a prestigious bronze medal at the 2020 Great American Beer Festival for its Grasp of Oak, a 16% ABV stout. Moksa was named one of the best new breweries in the world in 2018. And it’s not just hype. Four brewers interviewed all raved about Moksa’s stouts. They are quick to credit head brewer Derek Gallanosa, who moved to the Sacramento area in 2017 to found Moksa and quickly became known as the best stout maker in town.
“Moksa stouts exist on different levels from everyone else,” Long said. “They’re very good at using extremely bold flavors. For example, if they release a pistachio stout, you will taste pistachios, I can promise you that. They’re not messing around.”
Moksa’s bold flavors are often tied to sweet pastry flavors you might find in a bakery. Pastry stouts have been trendy for years, with flavors like German chocolate cake among the offerings at Moksa’s taproom.
Movement Brewing in Rancho Cordova collaborated with Moksa on a pastry stout meant to taste like biscotti. Sure enough, the stout smells and tastes like candied almonds, with coffee notes tasting throughout a sip and a hint of vanilla on the back end. Movement owner and head brewer Tommy Hamilton is quick to defer to Gallanosa on the quality of the beer.
“Derek is an absolutely brilliant stout producer,” Hamilton said. “It is fun because you can adjunct so many cool, crazy things in stouts, and learning from Moksa — oh, my God. Some of the stuff they’ve done is wild.”
Despite the high quality, Moksa is not a brewery most casual drinkers are familiar with. That is in part because the brewery doesn’t have much room for expansion in Rocklin. Moksa told the Business Journal in March about plans to open a West Roseville barrel room, but the brewery will likely not ramp up production to massive levels even with additional space. Moksa’s Grasp of Oak, for example, takes 23 months to ferment and age in vanilla bourbon and apple brandy barrels.
Certified beer judge Melissa McCann, who helps breweries with quality control issues, says Moksa’s beers are treats, to be enjoyed occasionally.
“You can’t make what Moksa does in mass production. That doesn’t work,” she said. “They’re a labor of love, and there’s a lot of pride in making a good stout. Getting all those roasty, toasty flavors in the way you want them and expect them. Moksa — they’re just so good at them.”
But there are plenty of other breweries in the Sacramento area with good stouts.
High taste, high calories
Where a pale ale or an IPA has pretty simple flavors, stouts offer an opportunity for layering flavors. The one you’re probably familiar with is Guinness, the famous Irish stout that has caramel and coffee notes in its taste. And while it’s flavorful, dark and thick, a 12-ounce pour of Guinness has just 125 calories.
That’s not what Sacramento-area brewers are known for making. Long, the lead brewer at New Glory, talks about layering flavors. First a drinker will taste hops, then toffee, then coffee, for instance.
“There’s a lot of complexity going on,” Long said. “But I think more than anything, the reason that we tend to get the alcohol way up is because that’s what the customers want. Not everyone, but a lot of people.”
Brewers can have more fun with stouts because they can be stuffed full of malt — the wheat, barley and other grains that give beer their sugars. Brewers can add adjuncts — fruit, chocolate, pistachios, etc. — that age with the beer and give it flavor. Some brewers add lactose to provide a creamier taste. And they can add sugars to fermentation to pump up the alcohol content. The result is high-percentage ABV beers that are also laden with sugars, to hide the alcohol taste.
As a result of all the malts and sugars, the brew process can be a mess. Hamilton, at Movement, said his boots will stick to the floor after brewing a big stout.
“It’s on really long boil for us, because we want to get a very viscous (stout),” he said. “Stouts, to me, are fun because in stout season, we can think like, ‘Cool, what do we want to do? Will we adjunct this? What do you want to do? What are we creating?’”
All that brewing and alcohol lead to high calorie counts for drinkers. As an example, a pint of Goose Island’s Bourbon County Stout runs about 600 calories. Because of the time and ingredients involved, stouts are also expensive. Part of the reason stouts haven’t taken over the importance of IPAs in beer production is there’s really no way for that to happen.
“They’re definitely a treat beer; it’s not something you do every day,” McCann said. “And honestly, if you think about the price point, it’s a beer you want to share with people. Typically, when there’s a beer like that, there’s multiple people and you have tasters. And honestly, you can’t drink much more than a taster.”
Traditional stouts, too
Midtown’s At Ease Brewing takes a more traditional approach to stouts. Owner and brewer Mike Conrad prefers a chocolate stout. Conrad’s 40 Mike Mike is an 8.7% ABV stout with two doses of chocolate nibs added to the fermentation process. Ten years ago, it would have been at the high end of alcohol percentage. Now it’s a more subtle throwback.
“It’s not sweet, but it definitely has the chocolate, but it’s dark chocolate,” he said. “That’s one we’ve done that two or three times now and that’s one of our regular dark beers because what we’re trying to do here ... we want to ... always have a variety, right, so we always want to have at least one dark beer. And that’s a favorite.”
Over at nearby Alaro, owner Ballestero can be counted on to deliver a traditional stout. He always has his La Luna on a nitrogen-infused tap. It pours a light, bubbly brown that turns pitch black as the nitrogen bubbles out of the beer.
“Our approach is the same approach we have with most of our beers here: beer-flavored beer,” Ballestero said. “So we tend not to lean on gimmicks or flavors, not that I’m opposed to those things, it’s just not our profile. … We like to let either the yeast, the grain or the hops express their own flavors. And so we’re not putting other things in there.”
McCann, the beer judge, is quick to applaud Alaro’s work on traditional beers. And she gives Moksa credit for drawing attention from beer fans who will wait hours in line for a new stout release.
But she says beer fans are missing smaller, less-hyped brewers that are also making high-quality stouts. Venture out, try a stout from a brewery you haven’t visited before. It’s hard to go wrong in the Sacramento area.
“We have so many different brewers in our area that are just knocking it out of the park,” she said.
This story was originally published October 22, 2021 at 5:00 AM.