The beers of Iwakuni: Speakeasy prohabition ale

I purchased this at a grocer in Corona California when I was there for my friend Capon's wedding. I can't remember which one though. It is the Prohabition Ale by Speakeasy Ales out of San Fransisco California. Speakeasy Ales was started by Forest Gray in a warehouse in the butchertown district in the years since the coming of our lord 1997. In their early years they just distributed to northern California, starting with their Prohibition Ale and then the Big Daddy IPA which would eventually become their flagship. In 2011 they opened a taproom and started fostering national recognition. in 2015 they started a 60 barrel brewhouse which improved their production capacity to 90,000 barrels a year.

I purchased this particular beer in a 1 pint 6 fluid oz bottle (AKA the venerable 22 oz bomber), with noted shoulders and a bulged neck featuring some suspicious eyes. The art has a 1920's lithograph feel, especially with the couple entering the speakeasy on the cover. Everything is written in the Neon lights and "fill in all the spaces" advertisement of the time. The bottle says "Amber ale with a perfect balance of Bold Hops and Caramel maltiness" "Prohibition ale is a boldly hopped amber ale that strikes a perfect balance between caramel maltiness and its aggressive hopping" "Legit since 1997 SPEAKEASY ales &lagers San Fransisco California, Independently owned and operated". 6.1% abv. I will be using my crass brookstone beer mug with the bottle opener bottom. Let's pop this cap, put on some 1920's music and see the head.

Nose from the bottle smells of piney, floral, hop oil with some pear qualities as well. The beer forms a quickly dissipating beige head and has a deep hazy oak color, I would say a 22 on the SRM. Nose from the mug is the same as from the bottle. I would actually say the nose also has a quality a bit like pickled cherries, which may not sound appetizing if you've never had them, but trust me, they are delicious. On first sip, It's bitter and hoppy with significant resin flavor. It starts out piney, then goes to pickled cherry, then juniper berry with a resin finish and dry aftertaste. Body is medium full with more mild acidity than you would expect from such a hoppy beer. It is a little chewey as well. There are actually quite a few yeast clumps in this beer. They are not as large as you would find in Belgian beers, but there are a great deal of them.

While I'm a big fan of music from the 1920's, but I don't have allot of records with it. I'm currently listening to a late 1960's Readers Digest nostalgia collection I got in a blind Ebay box lot that has a decent amount of music from the 20's and 30's. It's about 10 disks but only a handful have the music I'm looking for, most of it is 40's and 50's. After this I'm probably going to listen to the Mississippi Sheiks. I became a fan of the Sheiks after discovering their song "Sales Tax" while looking for music by my other favorite 1920's blues musician, Charlie Patton. This blog is officially apolitical, so I'm not going to get into why I love this song. But to get into a subject to rant about, Turbosuperchargers. I've been interested in turbo's for a while now, mostly because I'm a freak for efficiency but also because they are generally fascinating pieces of equipment despite their conceptual simplicity. The idea of a turboshupercharger is to take exhaust gasses from your engine and spin a turbine that is connected by a spindle to a turbine in your intake and that turbine is going to force air into your engine, allowing you to burn more gas more quickly. This will give you a power boost at higher RPM's and will allow a generally small engine to produce power much greater power than it would be able if naturally aspirated (doesn't have something forcing air into it). Now, there are two problems with doing this. The first problem is that these two turbines share heat (as they must, it's just a thermodynamic reality) and in turn heats the air coming into the engine. Now hot air does not burn nearly as well as cold air because the oxygen molecules are spread out due to the heat, so there are fewer of them in your combustion chamber when it comes time to have them react to the fuel and cause an explosion to turn chemical energy into mechanical energy. To solve this we have what we call an intercooler, which is a radiator placed between the turbo and the engine which will cool the air before it gets to the engine intake by dissipating heat through a series of cooling fins. The second problem is specific to engines that very greatly in RPM during their operation. So you just forced a bunch of air into this duct work in front of an engine and then you cut the throttle, what happens? Back in the day you would have a rush of back pressure that would work against your turbo and slow it down significantly. To alleviate this, we have the blow off valve. Blow off valves are simple devices, when they reach a certain PSI they open an relieve the pressure in the system. Crisis averted right? Not quite. You want to leave just a little pressure in the system so that the turbine does not have to spin for a while to build it back up. For this we have the modern adjustable blow off valve, which is something I'm looking to stick on my 180SX. What this is going to do is let off as little pressure as necessary for your turbo so that the system is ready for the next time you open up the throttle, greatly increasing response time.You could also alleviate this by using whats called a bypass valve, but that is terrible for your engine, so I won't be using one of those.

Final thoughts. I loved this beer. It was delicious, it was hoppy but not overpowering. It was nuanced. It was everything I'm looking for it a good beer. I could not recommend this highly enough. I very much give this my blurry seal of approval.