Lagunitas Lucky 13 Ale

     Review Date 8/7/2007

It seems that a lot of breweries are having anniversaries these days. Some of that may just be a slick way to try to market their beer. But it’s also a sign that the craft beer business is maturing, growing, and gaining a solid foothold in American culture. Petaluma, California’s Lagunitas brewery celebrates its thirteenth anniversary in 2007, and to honor that simultaneously lucky and unlucky milestone, they’ve released Lucky 13 Anniversary Ale.

Lagunitas has perhaps one of the biggest beer portfolios of any bottling microbrewer in the business, and I’ve been drinking a lot of their beer lately. They describe the Lucky 13 as a ““Mondo Large Red Ale”, or basically a red ale on steroids.

But wait! Lagunitas already has a Red Ale like that, aka their Imperial Red Ale . Well, that may be true, but Lucky 13 is not a rebottling of that brew, though the two are similar. Lucky 13, for example, has an original gravity of 1.085 and 76.92 IBUs of bitterness with 8.3% alcohol by volume, while the Imperial Red has an original gravity of1.072, 84 IBUs of bitterness, and 7.6% alcohol by volume.

Now you ask, just what the bloody heck is original gravity? Recall your high school chemistry if you will and your lessons on density. Water is the standard for original gravity, having an O.G. of 1.0. So, everything else is measured pretty much in terms of how dense it is compared to water.

As it happens, beer is made with lots and lots of water. What makes it more than just water, however, is the addition of barley malt, hops, and perhaps other ingredients. And the more of those you add, the higher the specific gravity. So, for example, in the case of Lucky 13, a volume of the unfermented wort of this beer equal to a volume of water that weighed 1000 pounds would way 1072 pounds, more or less.

That’s all well and good, you say, but what does that do for me, the beer drinker? Simply put, a higher specific gravity usually means more fermentable sugars. And when the wort is pitched with yeast, those little buggers see all that sugar like the local Golden Corral, and start doing their thing. That means a higher alcohol beer. A higher specific gravity often means more non-fermentable sugars, too, meaning more texture or body in the final product.

OK, you say, enough of the science lesson, give me beer! Well, here it is.


Lagunitas Lucky 13 pours to a deep coppery reddish color with a light creamy head formation and a slightly resiny hop nose. Lots of caramel jumps at you right away when you sip, and the beer has a firm and thick mouthfeel to it. Then the hops start to emerge, piney and resiny and grapefruity too, gradually becoming intensely bitter in the long dry finish. The bitterness lingers for a quite awhile after sipping.

That kind of bitterness is essential to balance out all the chewy caramel here. As I said, Lagunitas calls this a Mondo Red, but it really tastes like a big IPA to me, just like the Imperial Red pretty much did. This one won’t likely be around as long, however, so if you see a bottle, why not snap it up? Lagunitas beers are usually a steal in the bomber bottles, and I paid a paltry $2.99 for mine.