The Best Beers at the 2021 Extreme Beer Fest
February 7, 2021
It’s been far too long since our last beer festival. In fact, our last true beer fest was a year ago to date, before the pandemic shut down the entire beer festival circuit. We’ve missed beer festivals desperately: our friends we’d see regularly, the variety of beers we’d get to share, and the camaraderie that comes with being surrounded by fellow craft beer lovers for an afternoon. So when we heard BeerAdvocate was doing Extreme Beer Fest virtually in 2021… we jumped at the opportunity to join.
Extreme Beer Fest holds a place near and dear to our heart. It was the first festival we covered for this website. It was one of the first festivals we attended in Los Angeles after moving to the west coast. Most of all, we’re into extreme beer— any brewery we’ve gone to will attest to this. We love little more than trying a beer that pushes our boundaries. Even if we don’t think the beer tastes good? We thoroughly appreciate the experience of a beer making us think about beer in a different way.
Fortunately, all of the beer from Extreme Beer Fest: Cyberspace tasted good. There were definitely fewer *crazy* beers than we’ve had at the in-person festivals, but then again, we have to consume 12 ounces minimum of these beers, so the fact that these beers were more on the palatable side of extreme is definitely a good thing. Todd and Sam did a great job hosting an entertaining and informative livestream, and the forums contained a number of interesting questions for the brewers and videos from the brewers. If we couldn’t enjoy the camaraderie in person… this festival did as good a job recreating it online as we could’ve possibly expected.
So while normally we’d dig through our drunken notes and figure out the best beers from the festival… we figured we’d go through this festival, beer by beer, in the order the festival recommended we consume it, and share with you our first big virtual beer festival experience. Big shout out to Todd, Sam, and everyone involved with making Extreme Beer Fest: Cyberspace such a memorable time. If BeerAdvocate does more virtual beer festivals, we’ll be first in line— and you’ll see why in our beer notes.
We know Dogfish Head is taking this delicious oat IPA, Hazy-O!, into distribution soon, and we can’t blame them. The oatiness makes the texture nice and soft, while some creamy banana flavor shines through thie tropical citrus notes. Is this IPA extreme? Definitely not. But is it a refreshing, surprisingly-crushable-for-the-ABV, alluring option to start a festival with? Absolutely.
Next up, we had Other Half Brewing‘s Small LACEd in Space. Other Half was a late substitution into this festival after Burley Oak dropped out, but Burley Oak’s loss is our gain. Other Half’s lower-ABV rendition of their lACEd in Space citra-and-galaxy-hopped IPA still has the same smoothness and richness of flavor as your typical Other Half IPA. Again, was it extreme? Maybe not. But damn, any time you can get Other Half, it’s a super welcome addition.
After the Other Half was gone, things started to definitely tip toe into the extreme. Short’s Brewing gave us Super Delicious Stout: Extreme Beer Fest Edition, a stout aged in maple bourbon barrels. The bourbon character definitely comes out in a strong way in this beer, cutting through the dark chocolate and the berry and making sure the predominant flavor profile comes from the barrel. Overall, it’s roasty, well-balanced, and a great step up in extremeness for the Friday night session.
Now, we get to what I can absolutely say was the biggest surprise of Friday night, and maybe of the entire virtual festival: Carton Brewing‘s The World’s Turned Upside Down. Carton gave us a barleywine with grilled pineapple and maraschino cherries… but when Emily tried it blind, she insisted it tasted like fresh squeezed apples. Then, when I tried it… it tasted like fresh squeezed apples. Were we both wrong? Are our palates busted? Or do these mad geniuses understand that grilled pineapple + cherry = apple? Whatever the case, this was the most distinctive Friday night beer, and we’re excited to see what we can get from Carton in the future.
The final beer of Friday night was Great Notion Brewing‘s Double Maple Pusher, and there’s no question that this was the most “extreme” of the Friday beers. The maple aroma from this beer wafted around our home the second the pour hit the glass— and truthfully, even the next morning, my hand smelled like maple from where foam from the beer spilled onto my fingers. There’s definitely a serious splash of jam, but the overwhelming flavor is, unsurprisingly, maple. It lingered on the tongue after, the way super extreme beers often do… so it made for a strong closer to the night.
Saturday, we started our next session off with The Lost Abbey‘s Libri Divini. Even though we haven’t been to Lost Abbey in two years or so, we still hold it as one of the great sour makers not just in Southern California, but in the country as a whole. Libri Divini definitely lived up to our expectation: it’s an oak-aged lemon and vanilla sour that is perfectly balanced. I know many people, ourselves included, will throw the word “balanced” around a lot… but in all seriousness, you get 50% fresh lemon, 50% vanilla creaminess in this light, delicious wild ale. It’s absolutely one of the highlights of the festival.
BeerAdvocate continued to send us down the sour path with its next selection, Special HYDRA by Mortalis Brewing. First off, the second you crack this can open, the aroma is almost overwhelmingly fruity and sweet. It sets the tone for this fruited sour before you take your first sip. The can cites raspberry, cherry, and mango, but the major flavors are definitely a darker form of raspberry, like a berry sangria. The fruitiness and creaminess make this one luxurious smoothie sour— and one of the bigger hits of this festival.
Next up is a beer from Minnesota’s Modist Brewing, Special Reserve Mallow. We’ve praised their hazy IPAs on our site before, but this weekend they gave us — brace yourself— an oak-aged double marshmallow imperial lager. Yes, you read that correctly. It’s a difficult beer to describe: you get the lightness of the lager and the sweetness of the marshmallow, but the booze of the oak-aging never disappears. When I gave this to Emily without describing it first, she was baffled as to what it was— she even guessed it was some sort of Belgian variant. This definitely fits the extreme bill and is certainly one of the most memorable in the box.
Our first stout of the Saturday comes from the Brazilian brewery, Japas Cervejaria. Black Miso is, unsurprisingly, the first miso stout that we can recall ever having. I’m not necessarily convinced that the flavor here is terribly extreme— the miso comes through as a slight undercurrent of soy saltiness underneath the prototypical stout roastiness. However, even if it didn’t have any hints of miso, the stout itself is a fantastic Russian Imperial. It served as a terrific transition from the sweeter predecessors to the darkness that would close the night.
The penultimate beer of the festival is F2020x3, a triple dry-hopped west coast triple black IPA from BeerAdvocate, BeerThugLife, and Crowns & Hops. This was one of Russell’s favorites of the whole fest: there are few bigger fans of black IPAs in the world, and the bitter roast with the big hop bite was exactly what the doctor ordered. Edgar and Teo were also the highlight of the livestream, which should be unsurprising for anyone who’s ever spoken with Edgar and/or Teo before. We love what these guys stand for, and we’ll be happy to continue to support their endeavors here in LA.
Finally, we closed as we opened: with Dogfish Head. The end of the night brought up Olde School, a 2013 (!!!) barleywine brewed with figs and dates. Were we just drunk, or had this bad boy held up immaculately for nearly a decade? We assume the latter, because this is an absolute beauty, a boozy toffee and raisin masterpiece that tickles the tastebuds, warms the body, and reaffirms your faith in a higher power. It may be cheating to call the closing beer of the festival, an 8-year-old barleywine from the sponsor of the fest, the highlight of the weekend… but whatever. Barleywine is Life.
Overall, the festival was a big success. We weren’t sure what to expect with a virtual beer festival of this magnitude, but it was great fun. Sure, we lacked some of the camaraderie and diversity of the in-person festival… but getting to drink all of these terrific, creative beers from the comfort and safety of home (while wearing sweatpants!) made for a singular and enjoyable time. We’ll gladly partake in the next BeerAdvocate virtual event this year.
Have you taken part in any virtual beer festivals? If you did Extreme Beer Fest: Cyberspace, what was your favorite beer? Please let us know in the comments! Cheers!
Have to say you hit the nail on the head with this review. Loved every minute and every sip of Extreme Beer Fest: Cyberspace and would sign up for more remote festivals if Beer Advocate offers them in the future. (Paused while writing this for a Charlie bomb!) All of the brewers were awesome in their own way but Teo and Edgar were the highlight. Their beer was as good as their story and they were beyond entertaining. Cheers to all involved for a job well done!