Arts DEVO

Let’s do it again next week It turns out that beer weeks are really fun. (I know, right?) Arts DEVO was super impressed with the way Chico’s craft-beer purveyors showed up for Chico Beer Week with more than 50 unique events. I tried so many memorable beers—Lost Coast’s Sharkinator White IPA at the Grad, and the four variations of Ballast Point’s Sculpin IPA (regular, jalapeno, grapefruit and nitro) plus Speakeasy’s Syndicate 02 strong ale at Winchester Goose, to name a few.

Of course, all of the takeovers, flights and pairings were just an appetizer for Sierra Nevada Brewing Co.’s nonpareil Single, Fresh, Wet and Wild Harvest Festival. With arguably the greatest brewers in the country setting up camp next to the newly harvested hop fields, it’s pretty much the perfect beer experience.

My goal at events like this is to try new things, so I mustered all my willpower to pass on one of my favorite beers—the rare to our little city Pliny the Elder—and save room for at least one more glass of something else that I’d never tasted. And judging purely on the “something new and different” scale, my favorite of the day was the out-of-this-world unusual 16 Counties wet-hopped ale from Allagash Brewing Co. out of Portland, Maine. The beer was made using locally sourced ingredients from the brewery’s surrounding 16 counties, including three grains, three hops and 100 percent of the funky, wild brettanomyces yeast. The flavor description was: citrusy, floral, nutty, sour and cracker. And you know what, it did taste just like crackers—a wonderful toasted-grain quality that blended with the yeast for a saltine breadiness that was completely new and very nice.

I also really dug the huge (each around 10% ABV), creative brews of Adroit Theory (a label I likely will never see in Chico again)—Love of the Damned, an old ale with syrah grape must and aged in brandy barrels; and the insane Legion, a Belgian stout with horopito pepper leaves, aged in pinot noir barrels. Dan Segall, brewer for the Purcellville, Va., brewery said it best: “We don’t mess around.”

Other highlights included Bear Republic’s perfect Racer X double IPA, even perfecter wet-hopped and served from a newly tapped firkin; Russian River’s refreshing and super-dry STS Pils; and the wild-hopped Neo Mex (named for the wild neomexicanus hop) from Sierra Nevada, a fruity favorite of mine from last year.

Wait, weren’t we just here? The San Francisco Giants are in the World Series for the third time in five years, and here in this outer ring of Nor Cal fandom, folks are excited. But most baseball fans are pretty grumbly about an 88-win wildcard team surviving the National League playoffs by feeding off the mistakes of others before sealing the deal with a home run by a 31-year-old who was playing in Fresno for the Giants minor-league team earlier in the season. But that’s always how baseball works. I like the perspective of the always excellent McCovey Chronicles columnist Grant Brisbee:

The Giants won the pennant. The Giants, this team of confusing, amazing bozos, won the pennant. We’ve seen a lot of ridiculous things over the last few years. This is probably the most ridiculous, which, by the laws of baseball-god physics, makes it one of the best. Travis Ishikawa hit the home run. Literally Travis Ishikawa.

The reality is that teams that make the MLB playoffs are all pretty equal. Only one team, the Los Angeles Angels, won even 60 percent of its games in the regular season this year, and only 6 percentage points separated them and the Giants (who won 54 percent). So really, there is only a hot-streak’s difference between any postseason contenders. With the Giants already up 1-0 after one game (as of press time), here’s hoping the Kansas City Royals are cooling down and the Giants are keeping just warm enough to stumble softly into a third title since 2010.

Word to your mummer I know a lot of people hate mimes, but I have to admit they’ve kind of grown on me. (There are way worse ways by which to annoy your fellow humans in public—I mean, it’s not like they’re starting drum circles or anything.) I think my soft spot for them goes back to memories of strange performers covered in black head-to-toe leotards—with hand-drawn eyeballs, weird exploding masks, and toilet paper rolls for faces—that would make guest appearances on The Muppet Show and Sesame Street when I was kid. The Mummenschanz troupe, the mime-ish Swiss theater ensemble, was blowing my unformed mind four decades ago, and they’re still at it today. Chico Performances will get surreal this Tuesday, Oct. 28, at Laxson Auditorium.