“Oh hey, do you like Scotch?” asks Bottle Logic’s president, Steve Napolitano. “The peatier the better,” I say, holding an uber thicc Leche Borracho; a beer that drinks damn near like a Bimbo bread truck crashed into a chocolate factory with Wilford Brimley at the wheel. Together, we traverse the thousand-person strong crowd in the alley behind Bottle Logic in search of a Superior Siege Weapon, a Laphroaig barrel-aged stout.
Such is the Week Of Logic.
The Week of Logic is how Bottle Logic celebrates their anniversary: with a week-long celebration where beer fans line up for special releases every day of the week. Each day, a passport is stamped, garnering the adventurer a higher swag level depending on the number of stamps.
With the Superior Siege Weapon in hand, one quick whiff of the dark brown liquid so full of character – it’s damn near like a collab with an Islay distillery – where peat fired malts meld with an undercurrent of sea-crashed barrel character. Once you get over the initial clove-like 70’s band-aid medicinal character of Islay peat, there are some really fun fruity notes that work well with the beer. Each sip is an instant reminder of the smells of driving around the windy lanes of Scotland, where the smell of chimneys are forever ingrained in your memory banks, and the gentle dram of whiskey is as much of the culture as that of sipping stout on the La Palma beer trail on a casual weekend afternoon in Anaheim. And this is just one of the many beers being tapped during the week.
Over Bottle Logic’s last five years, they’ve managed to expand into the next-door couple of buildings, where a kitchen is slowly being built, and unfortunately, their plans for a distillery have been scrapped. Although the City of Anaheim has been fundamental in key brewery growth since their opening, perhaps the new set of council members and planners are a bit behind the times. Irvine, for example, has recently allowed a brewery to install a distillery on-premise without issue. Anaheim now has two stalled distillery projects, which is a shame considering what spirits can bring to the local culture.
Bottle Logic’s Week of Logic brings in all kinds of beer lovers, enough to win one of Untappd’s most check-ins across the entire United States in 2018. Can they do it again?
The Week of Logic anniversary party goes from now through March 30. Info is at bottlelogic.com/weekoflogic2019
Greg Nagel has been writing about beer since 2011, is an avid homebrewer of wine, cider, and beer, is a certified Cicerone Beer Server, level 1 WSET in Wine, a podcaster with the Four Brewers Show, and runs a yearly beer festival called Firkfest happening on June 29th in Anaheim!
Superior Siege Weapon has an excellent Smoky peaty finish. My favorite so far this logical week. It is similar to Firestone Walkers Scotch Parabola, but is slightly more subtle.