Local brewery crafts choice beers
The Olde Saratoga Brewery offers award-winning beers, complete with tasting room
Miles Mattison
Issue date: 9/25/09 Section: Features
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The beers brewed in Saratoga are of the utmost quality, using all-malt ingredients and no adjuncts, such as the rice or corn macro breweries are known to use as a cost-cutting measure. The Olde Saratoga Brewery puts out anywhere from 35,000 to 50,000 barrels of beer annually, well over a million gallons of beer.
The location began brewing on site in 1997 under a company called North Country; two years later, Mendocino Brewing Company, the owner of the popular Indian beer Kingfisher, bought the brewery. Mendocino Brewing Company is based out of Ukiah, California, and contracts most of its beers sold east of the Mississippi to Saratoga's brewery.
Mendocino is best known for its staple pilsner beer, Kingfisher, as well its Red Tail Ale, Talon Barley wine, and White Hawk India Pale Ale. With so many varieties, the Mendocino line of beers targets any beer drinker's taste buds. They produce beers ranging in flavors from sweet to bitter, weak to strong, and light to dark.
The Olde Saratoga Brewery brews for Mendocino, pushes its own products, and also does contract brews for other breweries. Some micro breweries do not have the on-site capacity to meet their demands for beer so they contract their recipes out to other breweries that have an extra capacity to brew.
The whole line of beers from Shmaltz Brewing Company is brewed in Saratoga. Some of Shmaltz's beers include "He-Brew," "The Rejewvenator," and "Messiah Bold." The labels are indeed playful, but the beer inside is serious. Shmaltz has a reputation in the craft beer industry for using the choicest hops and highest-quality grains, creating a line of award-winning beers.
Although the Olde Saratoga Brewery may be best known for the contract products it produces, brew master Paul McErlean's own creations are beginning to prove worthy to the gurus of the craft beer industry. At the 2008 Great American Beer Festival, North America's most reputable beer tasting competition, Saratoga Lager won a silver medal in the Marzenbier category. A Marzenbier is a Bavarian-style full-bodied lager with a slight bitterness that is often brewed to celebrate the German Oktoberfest tradition. Brew master Paul McErlean sends his ales and lagers to major beer festivals throughout the world and hopes to continue gaining international recognition for his creations.
Coming soon, the Olde Saratoga Brewery will be marketing Imperial India Pale Ale, which is its staple winter beer. Six years ago the brewery began brewing its Imperial India Pale Ale. It has 9% alcohol and "it's obscenely hopped and outrageous," says Ryan, one of the brewers. When asked how he got into brewing beer, Ryan said, "I was unfortunate enough to go to school in Quebec, where beer is outrageously expensive, so I had to start brewing my own beer." After about five years of home brewing, Ryan became adept at the art of crafting beer and was hired by the Olde Saratoga Brewery.
Saratoga Lager, Imperial India Pale Ale, and India Pale Ale can be found at various bars downtown as well as at local beverage centers. Perhaps the best location to enjoy the Saratoga beers is on site at the brewery. The tasting room offers customers to sample the brewery's contract beers, Mendocino products, and the Saratoga line of beers.
Every Thursday night, the tasting room has an open-mic night, featuring Saratoga's musical talent as well as Skidmore's student musicians. Thursday nights, bar patrons can be found sipping on Saratoga's best ales and lagers in tandem to the beat of local musicians. Cheers!
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