[S2/E17] On Location at Noble Ale Works

Season 2, Episode 17 – This week we’re on location at Noble Ale Works in Anaheim, California, the first of our three stops at three Orange County breweries.

We’re back with another round of on-location episodes and this time, we’re focusing on the Orange County beer scene. The OC is very much up and coming, in terms of the excellent beers that are being produced, with breweries sprouting up all over the place from Brea to San Clemente.

Noble Ale Works is the first stop on our Session #16 road trip, and we’re hanging out with head brewer Evan Price, and lead brewer Brad Kominek. We start off with a porter served on cask that’s very near and dear to Evan’s heart, Porter Exporter. Evan and Brad recently returned from a trip to England where they visited many English pubs and breweries. The trip inspired them to get more into traditional English beer styles as well as cask ale. Noble has been serving cask beer for quite a while now, but this trip to England really inspired Evan and Brad to go even further with the cask ale and traditional English beer styles. 

Porter Exporter is actually a beer whose recipe was derived from a book that Evan is currently obsessing over, Ronald Pattinson’s The Home Brewer’s Guide to Vintage Beer: Rediscovered Recipes for Classic Brews Dating from 1800 to 1965. The use of brown malt is key to giving this beer its coffee overtones and dryness. Keeping with traditional, the beer was served on cask at 55ºF, and was a perfect beer to start our long day of recording.

The next beer is somewhat legendary in the beer geek world, Noble’s “golden milk stout with coffee”, Naughty Sauce. Sounds weird, right? How can a stout be golden?! Inspired by a blonde ale brewed by Jonathan Porter when he was still brewing at Tustin Brewing Company, Evan set out to make a beer of his own that incorporated all of the flavor, body, and aroma of a coffee stout while maintaining a golden color. Naughty Sauce is served on nitrogen, which gives it a super-smooth mouthfeel and fluffy white head that sticks to the inside of the glass. It’s a beautiful beer, and is described by Evan as a very approachable beer to new craft beer drinkers.

We wrap up with a collaboration beer that Noble made with another Southern California brewery, and friend of Four Brewers, Monkish Brewing Company. Evan was really blown away by the awesome brettanomyces beers that Henry Nguyen was making at Monkish, and decided it was time to make one at Noble. Evan admits that this beer was successful mostly because Henry really knows how to work with brettanomyces, and was gracious enough to throw some knowledge Evan’s way. The beer was bottle conditioned with brettanomyces about a month ago, and the brett character is already starting to shine. The name of the beer is We Saved Latin, and is set to be released in a month or so.

Big thanks to Evan and Brad for having us. Noble Ale Works has been killing it lately, and they are definitely worth checking out if you’re in or near Anaheim. They’re also within walking distance of the Honda Center and Angel’s Stadium. How rad is that?!

BREW THE SHIT OUT OF IT.

Links to things from this week’s episode:
S2/E17 Show Outline

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