Farewell Cinder Cone Red....

...we hardly knew ye!

Just as I was preparing to post my last set of Quick Riffs, I learned that Deschutes Brewing has discontinued production of their stellar Cinder Cone Red seasonal ale. To me this is big news because my discovery of Cinder Cone coincides roughly with my new found appreciation of beer and I believe I waxed effusively about it in one or two posts and I snapped dozens of pictures, of which, only two or three survive. My scant photographic record does note that I spent one Fourth of July grilling with Cinder Cone.

As I’ve already pointed out, my first instinct was to get pissed off. Then, very quickly came the impulse to fan out and scoop up as much Cinder Cone Red (let’s call it CCR) as I could and hoard it. (Ironically, that was my first impulse when I first discovered CCR and learned it was a seasonal. I kept 12 of them stashed in the back of the closet for more than a month!) Now, in my zeal, I immediately sought out the local distributor, the local Total Wine outlet and Deschutes themselves. I neglected to bother with much detailed research on line at places like Beer Advocate; an oversight that would eventually prove significant.

Cutting to the chase:
Last Monday I visited no less than three Walgreen’s outlets, a Fry’s grocery store, a Trader Joe’s and a BevMo in search of some Deschutes CCR. I was helped in my quest by kind assistance from the customer service folks at Republic National Distributing Company, the go-getters at Total Wine and ultimately the gurus at Deschutes Brewery and the brothers at Beer Advocate.

The Outcome:
I returned from my sortie, bereft of any CCR. I logged on to the Beer Advocate site and found that the 2010 batch was only released in Oregon, parts of Washington State and Hawaii. Sigh. That’s that.

An email from the very kind people at Deschutes allowed as the entire stock of CCR was gone and none is even available in their hometown! Never mind that some lucky squirrels managed to get sample sets of both the CCR and the Red Chair to try out. One nice fellow even videotaped his experience and put it on YouTube for the rest of us poor saps to watch. Cruel bugger.

The scribe at The Brew Site also got one of these mystical, mixed six-packs of Cinder Cone and Red Chair – and on Christmas Eve no less? Christ, I’m not living right.

Then you’ve got some underachiever at The Beer Guzzlers who evidently took the time to track down or stumble upon what will be some of the last CCR ever made and all he can manage is a four-sentence complaint. I realize that I’m long-winded, but talk about understated. God, I worked harder to find Cinder Cone Red than he worked on reviewing it.

One of the reasons Deschutes has given for halting production of Cinder Cone is that it’s one of their least popular seasonals. So I found it a bit ironic that Drink Hacker rated Cinder Cone higher than its replacement Red Chair NWPA.

Finally, I found a post at Seattle Beer News interesting not simply because they evidently send beer samples to this guy too, along with some smoked salmon (Good lord what do I have to do to get beer samples mailed to me?) but because one of the folks leaving a comment indicated that Lagunita’s makes a beer that resembles Cinder Cone.

Which puts me in a great spot to close this out. While at BevMo last Monday looking for bottles of Cinder Cone that do not exist, I settled for a six pack of Rogue's seasonal Santa’s Private Reserve and you know what? It reminded me somewhat of my beloved Cinder Cone Red. Wishful thinking? Hallucination? Perhaps, but I sure didn’t imagine all those nice people who responded to my frantic emails seeking out Cinder Cone in Arizona. My quixotic search came to nothing, but the search was half the fun. I’m going to miss Cinder Cone a lot but I’ve gained a new appreciation for seasonals. Enjoy ‘em while they last and know that you may not see them next year!

Now, I’m off to chat with Mrs. Beer Rant about putting in a beer cellar.

Next time: Perhaps a review of both the old Cinder Cone Red and the Red Chair NWPA and the Santa’s Private Reserve, which I seem to think resembles Cinder Cone. We’ll see.