Beer Style: Strong Ale Family

Volume-wise, booze-wise, and holy crap-wise, this still remains our “biggest” collaboration to date (only Sierra Nevada brews more beer per year in terms of our collabs). This one all happened on a whim as Allen Tracy, a member with family in the Paso Robles area, stopped in at the brewery and had a palaver with Brewmaster Matt Brynildson about brewing a special beer. Matt said, “whatever you want to make” and this crazy thing came about from two suggestions “a really big brown ale” and “rum barrels.” The recipe design was created by Steve Cook and then brewed by a large crowd of Falcons. (We say brewed, but really the whole place is computer-controlled so they mostly ran around like barely trained monkeys after eating partially fermented bananas.)

This beer went on to be a surprising hit with the beer ticket crowd who would clamber for a chance to get a taste whenever Firestone rolled it out for things like their Firestone Walker Invitational.