All Things Homebrewing

Dry Hopping Experiment

2010-05-03T00:04:00.003-04:00

Whoah, my dry hop experiment (with this particular beer) gave me totally unexpected results. Cascade came out on top of the Amarillo. I think it had to do with a balance thing since I used a lot of amarillo at the end of the boil. The Cascade dry hopped beer was more complex and enticing where as the Amarillo Dry Hopped beer just seemed to be more 1 dimensional. Kegged the Cascade version and threw in an ounce of Cascade and an ounce more of amarillo in the Amarilly dry hopped version for good measure. I'll keg that one once they settle out.

Brians IPA

A ProMash Recipe Report

BJCP Style and Style Guidelines

-------------------------------

14-B India Pale Ale, American IPA

Min OG: 1.056 Max OG: 1.075

Min IBU: 40 Max IBU: 72

Min Clr: 6 Max Clr: 15 Color in SRM, Lovibond

Recipe Specifics

----------------

Batch Size (Gal): 10.00 Wort Size (Gal): 10.00

Total Grain (Lbs): 27.50

Anticipated OG: 1.074 Plato: 18.01

Anticipated SRM: 8.1

Anticipated IBU: 98.4

Brewhouse Efficiency: 75 %

Wort Boil Time: 60 Minutes

Pre-Boil Amounts

----------------

Evaporation Rate: 15.00 Percent Per Hour

Pre-Boil Wort Size: 11.76 Gal

Pre-Boil Gravity: 1.063 SG 15.45 Plato

Formulas Used

-------------

Brewhouse Efficiency and Predicted Gravity based on Method #1, Potential Used.

Final Gravity Calculation Based on Points.

Hard Value of Sucrose applied. Value for recipe: 46.2100 ppppg

Yield Type used in Gravity Prediction: Fine Grind Dry Basis.

Color Formula Used: Morey

Hop IBU Formula Used: Rager

Additional Utilization Used For Plug Hops: 2 %

Additional Utilization Used For Pellet Hops: 10 %

Grain/Extract/Sugar

% Amount Name Origin Potential SRM

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

90.9 25.00 lbs. Pale Malt(2-row) America 1.036 2

3.6 1.00 lbs. Wheat Malt America 1.038 2

3.6 1.00 lbs. Crystal 60L America 1.034 60

1.8 0.50 lbs. CaraVienne Malt Belgium 1.034 22

Potential represented as SG per pound per gallon.

Hops

Amount Name Form Alpha IBU Boil Time

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

2.00 oz. Chinook Pellet 11.40 50.1 60 min.

2.00 oz. Chinook Pellet 11.40 25.5 30 min.

2.00 oz. Cascade Pellet 5.40 8.0 20 min.

1.00 oz. Amarillo Gold Pellet 9.10 6.7 20 min.

2.00 oz. Amarillo Gold Pellet 9.10 8.0 10 min.

1.25 oz. Amarillo Gold Pellet 9.10 0.0 0 min.

1.25 oz. Cascade Pellet 5.40 0.0 0 min.

I split this into two batches and dry-hopped one with 2oz of Cascade and one with 2oz of Amarillo hops. I was 100% sure I'd like the Amarillo better. Turns out, Cascade worked better. (for this recipe anyway). I used a lot of late addition Amarillo so I think the cascade beer was more compled because of the dry hopping.

Big Ol' Something-or-Other

2010-02-24T14:15:00.004-05:00

I got to spend some time in the garage on Sunday and brew some beer which was a nice treat. I've been so busy this passed year that brewing has been sparse and the supplies are dwindling. I think this is technically my first "kitchen sink" beer I've ever brewed. No I didn't brew it in my sink. Basically I brewed a huge beer with what I had on hand. Good thing is, it is probably something I would have tried anyway.

A ProMash Recipe Report

Recipe Specifics
----------------

Batch Size (Gal): 5.50 Wort Size (Gal): 5.50
Total Grain (Lbs): 25.25
Anticipated OG: 1.127 Plato: 29.52
Anticipated SRM: 20.2
Anticipated IBU: 65.2
Brewhouse Efficiency: 75 %
Wort Boil Time: 90 Minutes

----------------

Evaporation Rate: 15.00 Percent Per Hour
Pre-Boil Wort Size: 6.47 Gal
Pre-Boil Gravity: 1.080 SG
Final Gravity 1.100 OG
-----------------
Grain/Extract/Sugar

% Amount Name Origin Potential SRM
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
25.7 - 6.50 lbs. Pale Malt(2-row) - Great Britain - 1.038 - 3
3.0 - 0.75 lbs. Crystal 125L - Great Britain - 1.033 - 120
65.3 - 16.50 lbs. Munich Malt - Germany - 1.037 - 8
4.8 - 1.20 lbs. Flaked Oats - America - 1.033 - 2
1.2 - 0.30 lbs. Rye Malt - America - 1.030 - 4
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hops

Amount Name Form Alpha IBU Boil Time
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
3.00 oz. Cluster - Pellet- 5.00- 48.5 - 60 min.
1.00 oz. Styrian Goldings - Pellet- 3.75- 8.5 - Mash H
1.00 oz. Styrian Goldings - Pellet- 3.75- 6.2 - 30 min.
1.00 oz. Styrian Goldings - Pellet - 3.75- 2.0 - 5 min.

I pitched SafAle US-05 & SafAle T-58 (supposedly the strain used in De Struise Pannepot)

2009-12-16T15:03:00.001-05:00

2nd to last bottle of my undead red that my friend James had stashed away. 3+ years old now and tasty!

Brewday Where Are You?

2009-09-03T15:32:00.002-04:00

I'm back in school and I am swamped with reading and my beer supply is dwindling away. I need to set up some sort of automated system to brew for me while I am in class. Hopefully I can find the time to sneak in a brewday soon. It seems every second of my day that I am not at work or asleep I am in a book. Oh well, it's only 2 years of school and then back to the old hobby (religion) we know as homebrewing.

I Am a Home Brewer

2009-08-13T03:05:00.001-04:00

Can you spot the Yooper in this video?

FOOP

2009-08-04T02:16:00.003-04:00

DRINK YOUR FOOP
I decided to try drinking the FOOP--(Formerly Once Only Protein) from a Hopped up Red Rye beer I did this morning. It was really interesting. It is going to be a brewday tradition from here on out I believe.

MBG Festival & UPtoberfest

2009-07-27T22:11:00.003-04:00

The Michigan Brewers Guild is going to be hosting a festival Sept. 12 in Marquette! They need people to help out and pour beer for this event so if anyone is interested in pouring beer samples for a few hours let me know by emailing me your name and phone # and I will add you to a list that I am going to pass on to a friend at New Holland Brewery who will let you know when and where you can help out.

This should be a fun event and a great chance for us Yoopers to get our hands on many of the great offerings that are to be had right here in Michigan.

Also, October 10th in Escanaba, there will be another festival that has been growing in interest over the past few years. This will by-far be the best year yet for UPtoberfest. Head to the website and get your tickets now.

Sept. & Oct. are going to be a lot of fun.....as long as you attend these two beer festivals.

Christmas Beer in Bottles...Fa la la la la

2009-07-23T14:44:00.003-04:00

I just bottled my Christmas Beer that I'm going to be handing out to some friends and family this Christmas season. It's basically the grain bill of a schwarzbier fermented with the Duvel strain of yeast and I blended in a tea I made with some mulling spices at bottling to give it a little bit of holiday kick. It tastes pretty good right now, hopefully it gets better with a little bit of age on it before the Holidays.

Other beers I have going right now:
Barley Wine (dry hopped with amarillo)
Schwarzbier
Lambic

Back to Brewing & Blogging!

2009-07-23T13:47:00.002-04:00

Got my computer back!!! Mancave Pics.

2009-07-15T12:20:00.003-04:00

Alright, first off, sorry for not posting for a while. We are still getting situated in the new house and I've been without my computer until today. It took forever for this place to get it fixed for me. Anyway, I'm sitting down in the Man-cave now with 20 gallons of beer fermenting. It's like a symphony of airlocks and blow-off tubes down here. The thing I'm most excited about is the space I have to brew in now (new garage). Now that I am home by myself during the dayss I can get out of the kitchen use some of my bigger pots. 10 gallon batches from here on out. I just did a Schwarzbier (my first lager), a Belgian stout, & a barley wine that turned out more of an imperial IPA. My efficiency was way low so It came out at 1.085--was shooting for 1.100+. I solved the problem with my low efficiency now so I can quit wasting all that extra base malt now. Here are some pics of my littler corner of the basement...AKA Man-Cave. Sorry so messy.

All Moved In

2009-06-29T00:24:00.002-04:00

Wow, my last entry was May 6th. It's been a very busy last couple of months for me. We just bought a house and are finally getting situated in the new place. I'm going to actually have a lot more free time to brew (in my new garage) now that my wife started her own daycare and will be taking the kids with her to work every day. I'm bummed out that I don't get to see my kids as much but the cellar will definitely benefit. I just did a barley wine this last weekend so I'll actually have one ready to drink during the colder months instead of brewing one during the colder months like I usually end up doing. Once my computer comes back from the doctor I'll post some pics of my new brewing area. I have a nice basement to store all of my fermentors and other equipment with an attached garage that I can brew in now. Livin' the dream man, livin' the dream. Buying a house instantly brang out the "king of the hill" in me. LOL.

Birdsfoot Trefoil Braggot

2009-05-06T14:02:00.004-04:00

I just brewed one of the last beers ever to be brewed in this ol' kitchen of mine. I've been wanting to brew a braggot for some time now and I finally got around to it this morning. Damn it felt good to brew something. I've been so bloody busy lately and distracted with house hunting that I haven't even had time to think about brewing. I get crabby when my beer supply starts running low...as anyone would, right?

I just bought a house yesterday in Ishpeming so it looks like I'm going to have to pack up my gear and head 15 min west of Marquette. The move is going to help my brewing situation greatly as I'll have a garage to brew in that happens to be attached to my basement where I plan to put in a little tasting/fermentation room. I'm pretty excited to get it all set up.

Anyway, back to my Braggot that I just brewed. Recipe goes like this:

13 lbs Castle Belg Pilsner
4 oz Crystal 12oL
4 oz Special Roast

1.5 oz Styrian Golding @ 60
.5 oz Styrian Golding @ 30
1 oz Lublin (polish) @ 30
.5 oz Lublin (polish) @ 15s

1 oz sweet orange peel @ 15
1 cinnamon stick @ 10 (to help prevent oxidation on the shelf)
1/8 tsp Grains of Paradise @ 10
1/2 tbsp Coriander @ 8
5lb of White Birch Apiary (Just the name of the Apiary--you can't make honey from Birch) Birdsfoot Trefoil Honey. From right here in da U.P. 'eh.

Pitched a slurry of WLP530 Abbey Ale Yeast

I Am A Craft Brewer

2009-05-06T10:45:00.000-04:00

I Am A Craft Brewer from I Am A Craft Brewer on Vimeo.

Hey, I brewed something!

2009-04-09T14:18:00.004-04:00

I thought I'd quit bitching about not having enough time to brew lately and just do it. So I did. I brewed.....coffee. Here's how I do a cafe latte. Simple and tasty.

Whip up a little cream and put a splash of it in the bottom of your glass. Roll it until the entire glass is coated with a thin layer. Pour your coffee in slowly and add a tiny bit more of cream right on the top of that to give it a nice little peak. Oi la.

I NEED TO BREW!

2009-04-09T11:35:00.002-04:00

I apologize for the lack of updates lately. I have had absolutely no time to brew for a while now. I plan to get back in the swing of things soon. I have a lot of beers I want to do, the trick is finding the time to squeeze it in. Hopefully I can crank out a few batches in upcoming weeks.

Cheers,

I hope everyone is doing well and your cups are from empty.

Cool Looking Pellicle

2009-03-12T00:51:00.003-04:00

A few weeks ago I made a yeast starter from some oak cubes that I received from a fellow homebrewer. They were innoculated with a buffet of bugs from different lambics and such. I poured all of the liquid from the starter into my lambic and then poured the chips into a fresh erlinmyer with some fresh wort to make another starter and I am getting this really cool pellicle growth going on. It is like powdery little snowbanks scattered about on the surface of the wort. Pretty cool, at least if you are geeky like I am.

2009-03-06T22:49:00.002-05:00

How's THIS for a beerlist?
I will hang my head for this weekend for I am not at the Zythos Beer Festival. I can dream can't I.

Belgian Beer Primer (Part 1)

2009-02-19T20:18:00.003-05:00

Belgian Beer PrimerDecoding the world’s most acclaimed
(and confusing) brews
By Roxanne Webber
http://www.chow.com/stories/11362/
Belgian beer has mystique: Some of it’s made by monks. Some of it tastes really, really weird. Some of its labels show elves and devils. People who know beer are sometimes unable to resist blowing huge chunks of cash on it. How to Serve Belgian Beer
and Where to Try It
It is, said famed beer writer Michael Jackson, the “Disneyland of beer.”

But like Disneyland on a warm holiday weekend, Belgian beer can be intimidating. Walk into a specialty shop or bar that stocks it, and you’ll probably be confronted with an overwhelming list of things you’ve never heard of—with names in French, Dutch, or a combination of the two. The beers will often be more expensive than other imports, and in some cases will deliver flavors the average American palate is unprepared for. It’s enough to make most of us just order a Sierra.
Still, Belgian beer is wonderful, and it can take you places you never expected. The range of flavors and aromas, like with wine, can be surprisingly complex and mysterious. To dive in, all you need is a little background and the curiosity to begin tasting. Whether you’re a fan of rich, dark ales or light, effervescent quaffers, there are delightful examples to be found. We’ve put together this primer on the various styles and where to locate them stateside to get you started.

MAIN STYLES
Not all Belgian beer is craft beer: Belgians drink crappy beer sometimes just like Americans do. And among the craft options there’s a fallacy, says Dan Shelton, owner of Shelton Brothers, one of the primary importers of small-batch Belgian beers for the U.S. market, which is that they’re all ultrasweet, strong, spicy, or fruity, rather than hoppy or light. Not true.

Saison
Historically, saisons were made on farms with whatever grains were on hand to supplement the malted barley, so there was a lot of variation. (“Malted” means the grain has been moistened, allowed to germinate—which makes its starches more readily available for the brewing process—and then heated to stop it from sprouting.) They are refreshing, light in body, dry, golden to orange in color, effervescent, relatively low in alcohol (around 5 percent), and moderately hoppy. They may or may not have spices added (some take on a spicy flavor naturally from phenols produced during fermentation), and can be citrusy and floral.

TRY: Saison Dupont; Fantôme

Witbier or Bier Blanche
These are Belgian-style wheat beers made with a relatively high percentage of unmalted (raw) wheat and some lightly malted barley. Witbiers are pale to golden in color but can be cloudy because they’re unfiltered. Most, like Hoegaarden, are flavored with coriander and orange peel, but they don’t have to be. Like German hefeweizens, witbiers are refreshing, citrusy, relatively low in alcohol (4 to 5 percent), and easy to drink.

TRY: Vuuve 5 (spiced); Saisis Blanche (unspiced)

Trappist/Abbey
Trappist beers are brewed by a Benedictine order of monks. The tradition of creating products like beer, cheese, and bread dates back to 1098, to fund social work and make the monasteries self-sufficient. There are Trappist monasteries all over the world, but only seven brew beer, six of them in Belgium: Achel, Orval, Scourmont Lez Chimay, Rochefort, Westmalle, and Westvleteren. The seventh, Koningshoeven, is located in the Netherlands. You’ll often see Trappist beers labeled “double” or “triple,” and sometimes “single” or “quadruple.” The terms indicate alcohol content (double is stronger than single, etc.). Some Trappist breweries, like Rochefort and Westvleteren, skip this naming convention and use numbers; higher numbers indicate higher alcohol content (though they don’t directly correlate to the actual percentage).

“Abbey” is a term applied to beers made in the Trappist styles but not necessarily in an abbey. There are no regulations for what these styles should taste like, so they vary greatly. Here’s a rough generalization of what to expect:

SINGLE A.K.A. SINGEL: There aren’t very many singles, but the ones you can find are lighter, easier-drinking beers, almost like pale ales, with 4 to 5 percent alcohol.

TRY: Witkap-Pater Singel (not from a Trappist monastery)

DOUBLE A.K.A. DUBBEL: Between 5 and 8 percent alcohol, often amber to brown, with a malty aroma and flavors like raisin, fig, date, caramel, plum, and even toffee and chocolate. They can be on the sweet side.

TRY: Westmalle Dubbel

TRIPLE A.K.A. TRIPEL: Usually a strong golden ale, around 8 to 9 percent alcohol. Triples are fruitier and crisper than doubles, and often more refreshing.

TRY: Achel 8° Blonde; Orval (a unique Trappist brew similar to a triple but considered a Belgian pale ale by some)

QUADRUPLE: Very high in alcohol content (10 to 12 percent), sweet and raisiny, sometimes chocolaty. Kind of like a double on steroids.

TRY: Urthel Samaranth (not from a Trappist monastery)

Just Bruit Gruit from Fighting Pike Homebrewery

2009-02-06T13:55:00.004-05:00

I'm drinking the first beer out of a 6 pack from Edward Mathis' Fighting Pike Homebrewery. It is a Gruit that weighs in at 1.068 OG and an ABV of 6.4%.

The beer pours a tootsie roll brown with garnet highlights when held up to light. There is a light tan/mocha color head that settles down after a few minutes to a thin layer.

The aroma of this beer reminds me of a Chai tea that has a nice cardamom presence. Basically, Chai tea the way I make it. That aroma leads you into a mild spruciness or that smell you get when you are trying to twist a branch until it snaps offin a swamp somewhere in the U.P.

The flavor fallows the nose. There is a dark fruit flavor that perfectly offset by the spiciness of this beer. I can't help but think there might be some special B malt in this beer given the garnet highlights and that familiar flavor of dried plum. The spiciness is perfect in this beer. It is there from start to finish but it isn't too overwhelming.

I could drink a few of these in a row and that is not something I would have ever imagined myself saying about a gruit. I like the style but most of the Gruits I have tasted exhausted my palate soon after.

Nice job on this one Edward.
Czar's Blog

Big Ole Lumberjack Festival Homebrew Competition

2009-01-23T21:20:00.009-05:00

Big Ole Lumberjack Festival Homebrew Competition
June 26-27

Here are the early details of the Big Ole Lumberjack Festival Homebrew Competition. I will be updating this as the rest of the details are worked out. Just thought I'd post this now to get the word out. This is going to be held mid to late June.

Who is eligible to participate

The competition is open to any homebrewer from within the United States. Affiliation of entrants with AHA is NOT a requirement. Contestants will be considered as an individual entrant on the basis of person's name appearing on the registration form. Combinations of brewers should appear in the same order on all entries. Applicable entry fees and entry limitations shall apply.

Homebrewers may not use homebrewing facilities other than their own, unless brewed with the help of the owner of other homebrewing facilities. Furthermore, in this case, the beer must be entered under the name of all brewers who helped. Beers brewed in commercially licensed facilities, brew on premise, whether for commercial research or production, or for any other purpose, are ineligible.

Beer entries will be judged in 5-7 different categories. Categories may be altered at the head judges discretion.

How and what to enter

Entry Fees: Entry fees for this competition are $5.00 per entry. The registration form can be accessed from this web page beginning 05/25/2009. All checks should be made payable to the Bay de Noc Brewers and sent with your entries and your registration form to Big Ole Festival Homebrewing Competition c/o Josh Marenger, 1430 Stephenson Ave #2, Escanaba, MI 49829. Judges and Stewards can volunteer by calling Jeremy Drury at 906-555-5555 or by sending an e-mail to events@baydenocbrewers.org

Entry Requirements: Bottles must be 10 to 16 ounce glass or plastic of ANY style and clean and free of any labels (inked, paper, or otherwise). Entrants are encouraged to use brown, long-neck bottles for maximum protection from light and breakage. Use a rubber band to attach bottle label form to each bottle. The use of tape or glue to attach forms is not acceptable. For the competition, homebrewing competitors must enter two bottles for each entry. Soft drink or other printed crowned caps are acceptable; however, they need to be blacked-out with a black marking pen to assure anonymity in all judging situations. There is no limit on how many beers you can submit per category.

All entry fees, names of competitor, address, phone number, Category entered must accompany entries when submitted. No entries will be returned whether received late or otherwise. All entries become property of the Bay de Noc Brewers Competition Committee.

Use official registration forms (or copies) that can be found here when possible though other registration forms such as ProMash will be accepted.

Beers will be disqualified for entry requirements infractions. These entries may still be judged (unless a shipping infraction has occured) but will be ineligible for awards or prizes. You will still receive your score sheets.

Where and when to enter

Drop your entries early to arrive between 06/??/2009 and 06/??/2009 at Hereford & Hops. Entries will be refrigerated upon receipt, thus helping to preserve the quality that we receive them in. No entries will be accepted after 06/??/2009. Sorry, we cannot make any exceptions.

Out-of-State Entries: Please send deliveries to Big Ole Festival Homebrew Competition, c/o Josh Marenger, 1430 Stephenson Ave #2, Escanaba, MI 49829. It is legal to ship your entries via UPS, FedEx Ground or air freight. The Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms Division of the Internal Revenue Service says it's legal. Usually you will be asked the contents of the package; your reply should be: "Bottles, but they are double-boxed and padded well." DO NOT send entries via US Postal Services. It is illegal to ship via USPS and your entry will not be judged.

PACK YOUR ENTRIES WELL: Line the inside of your carton with a plastic trash bag. Partition and pack each bottle with adequate packaging material. Clearly state "GLASS-FRAGILE. THIS SIDE UP" on the package. Your package of NON-PERISHABLE FOOD should weigh less than 40 pounds. It is not necessary to state specific contents of your package of non-perishable food. Send entries as soon as possible. No late entries will be accepted.

Drop-Off Points:
Hereford & Hops Restaurant and Brewery
Ludington St.
Escanaba, MI 49829

Judging

Judging will be done in open sessions from 06/DD though 06/DD, as needed. In the first round, the judges will judge each category, selecting the best three. The second round consists of all the 1st place beers selected in the first round. The winner will be named best of show. More than one judge will evaluate every first round entry. Entries will be chilled and stored properly and appropriately. All decisions of the judges and competition organizer are final. Winners will be announced at Big Ole Festival 06/26/2009. All winners will be notified and every reasonable effort will be made to return score sheets and judges' comments to all entrants. Results will also be found on this website.

If you would like to judge, you can register by clicking the "Volunteer, Judge or Steward" button on this page or may register by sending an e-mail to events@baydenocbrewers.org

Awards and Prizes

There will be ribbons awarded for first, second, and third place in all catagories. BOS will have their name added to the Big Ole Axe Trophy that will be displayed at Hereford and Hops. The winner will also receive (whatever prizes donated from sponsors). A minimum of 25 points must be obtained to receive a ribbon. Other prizes will be awarded, hopefully something in all categories for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd, Best of Show. In case of a tie, tie breaks will be determined at the discretion of the competition coordinator.

Contest Sponsors:

Finally corked the Flanders Red! Whoo Hoo!

2009-01-18T23:15:00.003-05:00

Well, I finally got around to corking up this beer (or beers I should say since it is actually a blend of two different Flanders Reds). In short, I brewed Jamil's Flanders Red recipe a couple years ago and I also brewed a La Folie clone that I came across in a BYO 150 Clone recipes magazine. While pulling samples of these beers I like to blend some of the samples together just for the hell of it and I found that a 50/50 blend of these two beers benefited the flavor of both beers. They were both o.k. in their own right but I liked the blend a little better so I just decided I'd blend them and have 10 gallons of a nice beer. All of the corked bottles are the Belgian bottles with the big fat heads on them like the Chimay or Unibroue 750mL bottles. Both Morebeer.com and Northernbrewer.com carry the right sized corks and wire cages for these bottles now. He are some pics from the day.

Teriyaki Steak with Onions, Green Pepper and Pineapple

2009-01-17T01:10:00.004-05:00

I had a few NY Strip steaks sitting in a Teriyaki marinade for a few days and I decided to cook them up in my heavy ol' cast iron skillet for a harty lunch and leftovers for a few days. Almost every time I cook a steak there are onions, green peppers, & mushrooms cooked right along side of them to put on top of the steak. Since I had in a teriyaki marinade I decided to do onions, green pepper, and pineapple. But....I did the pineapple separately and I cooked them in some flanders red, my Undead Sour Red to be exact. After I cooked up the steak, onions and green pepper I deglazed the skillet with the beer and then added the pineapple and cooked it until the beer cooked down a bit and thickened up a bit. I then drizzled the sauce over the steak and added the pineapple to the veggies. Oi La.

Use your favorite Teriyaki marinade. Mine is just Orange Juice, Brown Sugar, Soy Sauce, Garlic & Ginger

De Proef, Bell's to collaborate!!!

2009-01-16T01:48:00.001-05:00

De Proef, Bell’s to collaborate

A bit of American-Belgian brewing news from SBS Imports in Seattle:

“(SBS) is pleased to announce that Bell’s Brewery has agreed to be the 2009 partner for the latest brew in the De Proef Brewmaster’s Collaboration Series. The yet to be designed beer will be brewed in March at De Proef in Lochristi, Belgium and released to the USA market in September 2009.

WHOLE STORE HERE

Beer Geek Brunch Weasel...

2008-12-31T14:58:00.001-05:00

Straight out of an email I just reveived from Mikkeller.dk

"Beer Geek Brunch Weasel. This is an imperial Oatmeal stout brewed with one of the world's most expensive coffees Cà Phê Chòn, made from droppings of weasel-like civet cats. The fussy Southeast Asian animals only eat the best and ripest coffee berries. Enzymes in their digestive system help to break down the bean. Workers collect the bean-containing droppings for Civet or Weasel Coffee. The beer will be available from the beginning of 2009."

I Shit You Not

None the less, I will try it.

Busy, busy, busy

2008-12-30T00:52:00.002-05:00

I don't know about you but I found that it is extremely hard to find time to brew during the holiday season. Any free time goes to shopping, get togethers, and spending time with the kids. Not of these things are bad mind you, but it definitely makes it hard to keep up with brewing. So I've dumped two neglected yeast starters in the past few weeks and I hope I can get back on track here. I really want to get my Flanders Reds bottled and corked up here on New Years Eve. I have two different batches of Sour Red that I have been playing around with as far as blending is concerned. I've tried blending them many different ways with each other and it just so turns out that my favorite mix of the two is a 50/50 blend. This works out perfect because all I have to do is rack both of them into a big vessel and bottle from there rather than try to make sure I have my ratio right were it something weird like 55/35 or something. And no it's not some deep down lazy part of my psyche telling me that the 50/50 blend tastes best because it is the easiest way to do it. Although I think that's they way my mind works alot of the time. I'm excited to use my new corker that I bought and I look forward to popping open some of this beer with some friends. Nothing beats popping a cork off of a hefty belgian style bottle of beer. I'll take pics of the corking process, maybe even some video (or the wife will I should say) and post them on here soon. I hope everyone has a safe and happy new year.

Cheers,

Brew more in '09!
Brian

Parlez-Brew Francais?: Bières de France hits the U.S.

2008-12-05T20:05:00.000-05:00

(Original Article)By Ernest Barteldes

France is well known around the world for its champagne, fine wines and cheese (among other delicacies), but somehow the beer produced there has never really gotten much publicity Stateside. That has happened mostly due to the popularity of Belgian, German and Dutch brews, which have pretty much dominated the market of imports on this side of the pond in spite of the fact that France is one of the leading nations in the production of brewing barley in the entire planet.

That is poised to change, as many small producers in that country have come together to promote their own craft beers in the US with the support of The French Embassy’s trade agency. Last October, several of them showcased their product during an event at New York’s House of Brews and also in Boston aimed to attract distributors, tastemakers and members of the press to their product.

“We have noticed increased sales for craft beers, imported beers and microbrews over the years—it’s a niche which is growing considerably in the US,” says Jean-Jacques Giard of Brasserie Duyck. “However, French beer hasn’t got the image it deserves, as roughly ninety percent of French beers are in the hands of big international groups like Heineken and so forth.”

“We have about twelve-to-fifteen small craft breweries who are trying to improve the image of French beer, and it’s quite a hard job because France is considered as a country that produces champagne, wine and so on,” explains Giard. “When it comes to beer, people think about Belgium, Germany, The UK or the US. However, the fact is that we are working very hard to produce great beer.”

At the New York event, several small producers—many of whom have yet to score distribution deals in the US—conducted a tasting of more than eighty varieties of beer, going from simple blonde brews to ambers, stouts and even a handful of sweet, flavored beers like Verte du Mont Blanc, an apple-green-shaded beer made from glacial waters off the slopes the mountain of the same name.

“The feedback has been very good, and people really liked it,” Giard says. “Americans are very nice people, and they said that the beers were fantastic. Here in France we are working towards moving things forward a bit faster in that market.”

“We are definitely keen on working on the main markets even though it’s difficult,” he continues. “That makes the breweries to realize that they have to work together to create a better image of French beer—so far that image is very poor, and nobody knows what we are producing, except maybe for some beer connoisseurs—otherwise, no.”

Asked about what characteristic differentiates French beer from its other European counterparts, Giard told us about Biere de Garde, which is produced in the northern part of the country. Often sold in a corked champagne bottle (the region is conveniently located a mere fifty miles from the winemaking region, so those vessels are plentiful there), the name translates as ‘”beer to be kept.”

“Fifty years ago, we had 2,000 breweries in northern France that were produced during winter because they didn’t have the equipment for cold fermentation, so during winter they could control the process, and we used to sell it in summer, when it was hot,” he recalls.

“So we used to brew the beer and keep it for weeks in kegs, and we have kept that tradition—it’s beer that is kept after fermentation for at least four weeks,” he explains. “Beer, as you know, is not like wine—nothing happens after fermentation, but still we realized that if we keep it for a while it gets better. There is no scientific explanation for that, but somehow it just tastes better, and that is what makes French beer different from German, Belgian or English beer.”

One of the favorites at the tasting was Jenlain Amber, a delicious 7.5% brew that can be found at Brasserie Jo, 59 West Hubbard, (312)595-0800 and also at West Lakeview Liquors, 2156 West Addison, (773)525-1916.

Midwest Homebrewer of the Year...DO IT!

2008-12-04T00:55:00.006-05:00

Hey there Brewers, Well as this year is coming to an end and 2009 is right around the corner we all do a little re-evaluation of ourselves whether we like it or not. Everyone starts talking about new years resolutions and pin-pointing things about themselves that they would like to change. I have already started on my new years resolution and that is to get back in shape and I would like like to get down to 200lbs. I started at 245 and now I am already down to 226 as of today. My other resolution is to brew a wider variety of beers, not just the beers I would ideally have if I were stranded on an island. I think this is going to be harder than getting down to 200 lb because I love my Belgian Golden Strong ales. The reason I want to do a wide variety of beers is so I can improve my ranking in the Midwest Homebrewer of the Year competition. This past year I entered almost every competition and I definitely learned a lot about how one needs to go about doing this. The first two competitions I entered every beer I had on hand in the basement thinking that the more beer I enter the better chance there is I will get more ribbons. This would be true if all of the beers you send are ribbon/medal worthy. I sent a lot of beers that I sort of knew wouldn't do well and it really hurt my overall score. This year I am going to send only beers I think are really good and I'm going to try and cover a more categories than last year. I think it would be great to get a feel for beer styles that I have little experience with right now. With resources like the Jamil Show there is no reason not to broaden your brewing horizons. For those of you who haven't entered competitions yet, don't bother with doing something like this where you have to pick and choose which of your beers are worthy. You should make a goal to enter as many competitions as you can. Send in all of your beers, by all means. You will get some great feedback on your brew and it will help you figure out what adjustments you can make to become a better brewer. Or just make an effort to get honest info about your beers from friends or enemies...they give better feedback.

I highly recommend trying something new this year. Set a goal that will benefit YOU as a person and your longevity and then set a goal that will benefit your mind and possibly taste buds. I know these kind of contradict each other. I have really cut back on drinking during the week and now I am mostly just having a few on the weekend with a random beer sprinkled in during the week when the timing is right. Just doing that along with a small diet adjustment I have already lost close to 20lbs.

Here are the rules for the MWHBOTY competiton:

MIDWEST HOME BREWER OF THE YEAR RULES
Eligibility
Brewers must enter beer, mead, or cider in at least:

* 4 participating contests
* 10 unique BJCP categories

Brewers must reside in one of these states:

* Iowa
* Indaina
* Illinois
* Kansas
* Michegan
* Minnesota
* Missouri
* Nebraska
* North Dakota
* Ohio
* South Dakota
* Wisconsin

Scoring
1. A brewer's Net Score is determined by the formula:

Net Score = (Raw Score) x (Winning Percentage)

2. Only the highest placing beer per 2004 BJCP Style category will be used for Raw Score points. Raw Score points are awarded as follows:

* 1st Place = 8 points
* 2nd Place = 4 points
* 3rd Place = 2 points

NOTE: Points are not cumulative for each BJCP category.

For example, if a brewer earns two silver medals in a category that does not equal 8 points for that category. Instead, it earns the brewer 4 points.

Similarly, if a brewer wins multiple gold medals in a category, the max points allowed is 8.

In other words, only a single highest placing beer per BJCP category will be used to determine total points, however, multiple wins in a category will increase a brewer's winning percentage.

3. All entries from a brewer or team will be used to calculate winning percentage except special categories unique to a contest.

Scoring Example for Brewer Mookie McAhat
Total Wins by Mookie

* 5 1st place wins = 40 points
* 4 2nd place wins = 16 points
* 8 3rd place wins = 16 points

Mookie's Raw Score

* 40 + 16 + 16 = 72 points

Total Entries by Mookie

* Total entries for all competitions = 39

Mookie's Net Score

* Net Score = 72 X (17/39) = 31.38

Brewing a Healthy Beer

2008-11-29T23:25:00.002-05:00

I think all beer is healthy but check this out.
Click Here For Video

A Better Brew

2008-11-26T23:24:00.003-05:00

The rise of extreme beer.

by Burkhard Bilger November 24, 2008

Sam Calagione at Dogfish breweries. “I’m frustrated that one beer has been hammered down people’s throats,” he says. Photograph by Martin Schoeller.

Elephants, like many of us, enjoy a good malted beverage when they can get it. At least twice in the past ten years, herds in India have stumbled upon barrels of rice beer, drained them with their trunks, and gone on drunken rampages. (The first time, they trampled four villagers; the second time they uprooted a pylon and electrocuted themselves.) Howler monkeys, too, have a taste for things fermented. In Panama, they’ve been seen consuming overripe palm fruit at the rate of ten stiff drinks in twenty minutes. Even flies have a nose for alcohol. They home in on its scent to lay their eggs in ripening fruit, insuring their larvae a pleasant buzz. Fruit-fly brains, much like ours, are wired for inebriation.

The seductions of drink are wound deep within us. Which may explain why, two years ago, when John Gasparine was walking through a forest in southern Paraguay, his thoughts turned gradually to beer. Gasparine is a businessman from Baltimore. He owns a flooring company that uses sustainably harvested wood and he sometimes goes to South America to talk to suppliers. On the trip in question, he had noticed that the local wood-carvers often used a variety called palo santo, or holy wood. It was so heavy that it sank in water, so hard and oily that it was sometimes made into ball bearings or self-lubricating bushings. It smelled as sweet as sandalwood and was said to impart its fragrance to food and drink. The South Americans used it for salad bowls, serving utensils, maté goblets, and, in at least one case, wine barrels.

Gasparine wasn’t much of a wine drinker, but he had become something of a beer geek. (His thick eyebrows, rectangular glasses, and rapid-fire patter seem ideally suited to the parsing of obscure beverages.) A few years earlier, he’d discovered a bar in downtown Baltimore called Good Love that had several unusual beers on tap. The best, he thought, were from a place called Dogfish Head, in southern Delaware. The brewery’s motto was “Off-Centered Ales for Off-Centered People.” It made everything from elegant Belgian-style ales to experimental beers brewed with fresh oysters or arctic cloudberries. Gasparine decided to send a note to the owner, Sam Calagione. Dogfish was already aging some of its beer in oak barrels. Why not try something more aromatic, like palo santo?

Calagione was used to odd suggestions from customers. On Monday mornings, his brewery’s answering machine is sometimes full of rambling meditations from fans, in the grips of beery enlightenment at their local bar. But Gasparine’s idea was different. It spoke to Calagione’s own contradictory ambitions for Dogfish: to make beers so potent and unique that they couldn’t be judged by ordinary standards, and to win for them the prestige and premium prices usually reserved for fine wine. And so, a year later, Calagione sent Gasparine back to Paraguay with an order for forty-four hundred board feet of palo santo. “I told him to get a shitload,” he remembers. “We were going to build the biggest wooden barrel since the days of Prohibition.”

Gasparine, by then, had begun to have second thoughts. No lumbermill he knew had ever cut so much palo santo, and he wasn’t sure that any could. Bulnesia sarmientoi is a weedy, willowy tree, sometimes called ironwood. It’s difficult to get large boards out of it, and even small ones can dull a saw blade. Wood experts rate a species’ hardness on the Janka scale—a measure of how many pounds of force it takes to drive a half-inch steel ball halfway into a board. Yellow pine rates around seven hundred, oak twice as high. Palo santo hovers near forty-five hundred—three times as high as rock maple. It’s one of the two or three hardest woods in the world.

Gasparine eventually found some Paraguayans willing to fill the order. On one trip, they took him to the forest where the palo santo grew, a twelve-hour bus ride from Asunción followed by a half day’s drive into the wilderness. Three rough-looking millworkers had agreed to accompany him, led by a bullet-headed giant named Carlos. At one point, a herd of wild boars crossed the road, but Carlos didn’t slow down. He plowed straight over a boar and kept on going.

When they finally arrived, one of the millworkers pulled out a large cooking knife. “He said he was going to prove to me that these were palo-santo trees,” Gasparine remembers. “ ‘We’ll cut away the bark and you can smell it!’ Then he starts hacking away for five or ten minutes. Nothing. Can’t get through the sapwood. So the monster Carlos goes at it. The blade looks like a butter knife in his hand. Nothing.” After a while, Carlos turned to one of his sidekicks and sent him back to the truck. When he returned, he was holding a .38-calibre pistol. “Now I’m a little more than freaked out,” Gasparine says. Carlos took the pistol, swivelled it toward the tree, and fired a single shot from five feet away. The bullet struck with a dull thud, then fell harmlessly to the ground.

The barrel that Dogfish built is now housed at its main brewery, in Milton, Delaware. It’s fifteen feet high and ten feet in diameter, and holds nine thousand gallons. When Calagione took me to see it in August, a pallet of leftover palo santo was stacked nearby. The staves, streaked with a greenish-brown grain, felt disproportionately heavy, as if subject to a stronger gravity—one part wood, one part white dwarf star. The barrel was built by a father-and-son firm in Buffalo, Calagione said, and cost about a hundred and forty thousand dollars—three times the price of the oak barrel beside it. “If Dogfish were a publicly traded company, I’d have been fired for building this,” he said.

Calagione is thirty-nine. That day, as on most days, he was wearing flip-flops, cargo pants, and a threadbare T-shirt, and looked about as concerned with liquidity as the customers bellied up at the brewery’s bar, drinking free samples. When tour groups visit Dogfish, they’re greeted by a quote on the wall from Emerson’s essay on self-reliance: “Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist,” it begins. “Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.” Calagione doesn’t seem, at first, to fit this cantankerous creed. His nonconformity is of an agreeable sort: brewing beer, keeping his own hours, living by the shore with his high-school sweetheart and their two children. For a while after college, he did some modelling, and he still looks as if he belonged in, well, a Budweiser commercial. He has a surfer’s loose, long-muscled frame and perpetual tan. His chiselled features are set in a squarish head and topped by a thick black ruff. When he talks, his lips twist slightly to the side and his voice comes out low and woolly, like a crooner’s at a speakeasy. “Just get a whiff of that wood,” he said.

I leaned forward and put my nose to the grain. The barrel was more than a year old, but the wood smelled freshly milled. A sharp, spicy, resinous scent came off it, like incense and mulled wine. To stand up to its aroma, Calagione said, he had filled the barrel with a strong brown beer. It was made with three kinds of hops, five kinds of wheat and barley, a dose of unrefined cane sugar, and a sturdy Scottish ale yeast. It had a creamy head when poured, like a Guinness stout, and contained about twelve per cent alcohol—two and a half times as much as a Budweiser. Calagione called it Palo Santo Marron. It was an extreme beer, he said, but to most people it wouldn’t have tasted like beer at all. There were hints of tobacco and molasses in it, black cherries and dark chocolate, all interlaced with the wood’s spicy resin. It tasted like some ancient elixir that the Inca might have made.

America used to be full of odd beers. In 1873, the country had some four thousand breweries, working in dozens of regional and ethnic styles. Brooklyn alone had nearly fifty. Beer was not only refreshing but nutritious, it was said—a “valuable substitute for vegetables,” as a member of the United States Sanitary Commission put it during the Civil War. The lagers brewed by Adolphus Busch and Frederick Pabst were among the best. In 1878, Maureen Ogle notes in her recent book “Ambitious Brew: The Story of American Beer,” Busch’s St. Louis Lager took on more than a hundred European beers at a competition in Paris. The lager came home with the gold, causing an “immense sensation,” in the words of a reporter from the Times.

Then came Prohibition, followed hard by industrialization. Beer went from barrel to bottle and from saloon to home refrigerator, and only the largest companies could afford to manufacture and distribute it. A generation raised on Coca-Cola had a hard time readjusting to beer’s bitterness, and brewers diluted their recipes accordingly. In 1953, Miller High Life was dismissed by one competitor as a beer for “women and beginners.” Within a decade, most other beers were just as flavorless.

Beer has lagged well behind wine and organic produce in the ongoing reinvention of American cuisine. Yet the change over the past twenty years has been startling. In 1965, the United States had a single craft brewery: Anchor Brewing, in San Francisco. Today, there are nearly fifteen hundred. In liquor stores and upscale supermarkets, pumpkin ales and chocolate stouts compete for cooler space with wit beers, weiss beers, and imperial Pilsners. The King of Beers, once served in splendid isolation at many bars, is now surrounded by motley bottles with ridiculous names, like jesters at a Renaissance fair: SkullSplitter, Old Leghumper, Slam Dunkel, Troll Porter, Moose Drool, Power Tool, He’brew, and Ale Mary Full of Taste.

Dogfish is something of a mascot for this unruly movement. In the thirteen years since Calagione founded the brewery, it has gone from being the smallest in the country to the thirty-eighth largest. Calagione makes more beer with at least ten per cent alcohol than any other brewer, and his odd ingredients are often drawn from ancient or obscure beer traditions. The typical Dogfish ale is made with about four times as much grain as an industrial beer (hence its high alcohol content) and about twenty times as much hops (hence its bitterness). It is to Budweiser what a bouillabaisse is to fish stock.

“We are trying to explore the outer edges of what beer can be,” Calagione says. But the idea makes even some craft brewers nervous. “I find the term ‘extreme beer’ irredeemably pejorative,” Garrett Oliver, the brewmaster at Brooklyn Brewery, told me recently. “When a brewer says, ‘This has more hops in it than anything you’ve had in your life—are you man enough to drink it?,’ it’s sort of like a chef saying, ‘This stew has more salt in it than anything you’ve ever had—are you man enough to eat it?’ ”

Dogfish makes some very fine beers, Oliver says. But its reputation has been built on ales like its 120 Minute I.P.A., one of the strongest beers of its kind in the world. I.P.A. stands for India pale ale, an especially hoppy British style first made in the eighteenth century for the long sea voyage to the subcontinent. (Hops are a natural preservative as well as a flavoring.) A typical I.P.A. has six per cent alcohol and forty I.B.U.s—brewers’ parlance for international bittering units. Calagione’s version has eighteen per cent alcohol and a hundred and twenty I.B.U.s. It’s brewed for two hours, with continuous infusions of hops, then fermented with still more hops. “I don’t find it pleasant to drink,” Oliver says. “I find it unbalanced and shrieking.”

Others find it thrilling. “When you’re trying to create new brewing techniques and beer styles, you have to have a certain recklessness,” Jim Koch, whose Boston Beer Company brews Samuel Adams, and who coined the term “extreme beer,” told me. “Sam has that. He’s fearless, but he’s also got a good palate. He doesn’t put stuff into beer that doesn’t deserve to be there.”

The debate goes back, in one form or another, nearly five hundred years. According to the Bavarian Reinheitsgebot, or Purity Law, of 1516, beer can be made with only three ingredients: water, hops, and barley. (Yeast was left off the list because brewers didn’t know it existed; beer was naturally fermented, like sourdough bread.) German brewers still observe a version of the Reinheitsgebot, but Belgian brewers, just across the border, have cheerfully renounced it. Their krieks, wits, lambics, and gueuzes are among the world’s most remarkable beers, yet they’re often made with fruits or spices, or fortified with sugar, to become as potent as wine.

In America, brewers have long followed the German model: our major industrial breweries were all founded by German-Americans. But Calagione and others have lately wandered over to the Belgian side—and kept on going. “I’d probably be arrested, tarred and feathered, if I stepped off a plane in Berlin,” Calagione told me. Extreme brewers have helped turn American brewing into the most influential in the world. But they’ve also raised a basic question: When does beer cease to be beer?

On my first night in Delaware, I found a manila folder waiting for me at my hotel. It was filled with printouts of an e-mail exchange from earlier that year, between Calagione and a brewer in Finland named Juha Ikonen. Calagione was trying to find ingredients for a rustic juniper-flavored beer known as sahti, which Finnish farmers began making as early as the ninth century. He had tried to get Ikonen to send him whole juniper branches with needles intact, so that he could lay them in the bottom of his brewing vessel. But Ikonen thought the branches might get moldy on the flight over. In the end, they’d settled on juniper berries, hand-picked in Finland two weeks earlier. “Welcome Burk,” Calagione had scrawled on the folder. “Tomorrow we are so brewing Sahtea (our version of Sahti). . . . See ya in the Inn Foyer @ 8:30. *Beers in the fridge.”

The next morning, Calagione pulled up at the hotel in an old Dodge pickup truck. It looked like something out of “Paper Moon”: bulbous fenders, pop-eyed headlamps, red paint weathered nearly to pink. On the tailgate, Calagione had stencilled a line adapted from William Carlos Williams: “So much depends on a red wheelbarrow.” He had bought the truck from some firefighters in Rochester, he told me, and used it mostly as a family car. (Later that week, it would make an appearance at a “Touch the Truck!” event for toddlers.) But it was also handy for hauling supplies. In the back were a pitchfork, a large bag of Indian spices, and about twenty gray river rocks, collected by the brewery’s maintenance man. What the rocks were for, I’d soon find out.

“Sam is a wonderful showman,” Garrett Oliver told me. “He almost conceives the beer around the story. He’ll think, Wouldn’t it be cool if we carried the beer down the street and everyone put something new into it!” This is partly a matter of clever marketing and partly of a genuine creative temperament. Calagione has written or co-written three books on beer. He designs many of Dogfish’s labels and cites Andy Warhol and Coco Chanel as inspirations—“that fusion of commercialism and art.” The Emerson quote at the brewery’s entrance is both an eloquent mission statement and a reminder, as Calagione told some Dogfish fans when I was there, to “keep on drinking the good shit!”

Like most craft brewers, Calagione came to beer from something else. He grew up in Greenfield, Massachusetts, the middle child of an oral surgeon and the heir to a long line of winemakers. His father and his uncle used to drive to Worcester to meet the trains that brought grapes from California. When they got home, and the juice had been stomped out in the basement, Sam would help bottle it. The process seems to have stripped him of any reverence toward the product. His forefathers worked hard making wine, he recently wrote, “so that I might have the opportunity to produce a superior beverage.”

Calagione was a bright student and a scrappy athlete (to keep his weight up for the football team, his father made him eat a cheesesteak every night at ten-thirty). But by the spring of his senior year, at Northfield Mount Hermon prep, he had so many demerits that he was expelled. His offenses were of the usual Animal House variety: flipping a truck on campus; breaking into the skating rink and playing naked hockey; “surfing” on the roof of a Winnebago, going sixty miles per hour down I-91. As a junior, Calagione sometimes waited outside a local liquor store and got customers to buy him a case of beer. Back at school, he hid the bottles in his hockey bag and sold them to other students at a profit. “I remember when I got busted,” he told me. “The dean said, ‘You think you can make a living doing this?’ I didn’t have the foresight to say, ‘Yeah, maybe someday.’ ”

He never did graduate from high school, though he went on to earn a bachelor’s degree in English, at Muhlenberg College, in Pennsylvania. In 1992, he moved to Manhattan, to take writing classes at Columbia and work toward a Master of Fine Arts. It was there, while waiting tables at Nacho Mama’s Burritos in Morningside Heights, that he had his first taste of craft beer. Emboldened by the home-brewing movement, and the success of beers like New Albion, Sierra Nevada, and Samuel Adams, more than two hundred craft breweries had opened in the previous decade, as well as swarms of microbreweries and brewpubs. (A craft brewery, according to the Brewers Association, is one that produces less than two million barrels a year; a microbrewery produces less than fifteen thousand; and a brewpub serves at least a quarter of its beer in house.) Before long, Calagione was brewing beer in his apartment—his first was a sour-cherry ale—and spending his afternoons at the New York Public Library, researching the beer industry.

“I looked around and saw three breweries basically ruling the United States,” he told me. All but one per cent of the beer sold in the U.S. was still made by Miller, Coors, and Anheuser-Busch, along with mid-sized and foreign breweries such as Pabst and Heineken. And while craft breweries made wonderful beer, they were mostly focussed on classic German and British styles, such as pale ale and Pilsner. Calagione had something else in mind. “I’d read a copy of Michael Jackson’s ‘World Guide to Beer,’ and I thought, Holy shit! There are people out there making beer with fruit! There are Scottish ales made with heather flowers! Maybe I can make a living making beer that isn’t like anything else.” It was an opportunity to play David to the beer industry’s Goliaths, he says. “It was the same kind of thing that got me kicked out of prep school.”

Dogfish Head Brewings and Eats, the pub that Calagione opened in 1995, sits on the main drag of Rehoboth Beach, on Delaware’s southern shore. The pub’s name comes from a peninsula in Maine where Calagione spent summers as a boy; its location was inspired by his wife, Mariah, who grew up nearby. (She’s now co-owner of the brewery and its marketing director.) The property is only four blocks from the ocean, but was long considered snakebit. “Everyone said it was too far from the boardwalk,” Calagione says. “This isn’t Manhattan. People don’t like to walk.” Still, he liked the large parking lot and the shambling, open-raftered dining room. And he knew something the locals didn’t: Delaware was one of the last eight states in the country without a brewery. Publicity alone, he thought, ought to keep the place afloat for a while. Or at least until he learned to make beer.

As it turned out, there was a reason that Delaware had no breweries like Calagione’s. Prohibition had been over for sixty years, but it was still illegal for a pub to bottle and distribute its own beer. Calagione found this out not long after he’d signed the lease. Luckily, Delaware was also very small and very friendly to business. “I literally drove to Dover, asked which one is the House and which is the Senate, and started knocking on doors,” he remembers. “They said, ‘You want to do what, son? Well, write up a bill!’ ” Six months later, the governor signed the bill into law. The only hitch had come when Calagione was applying for his liquor license, and one of the commissioners brought up his recent arrest for driving under the influence of alcohol. Calagione admitted to the incident—a few weeks earlier, on his way home from a restaurant, he’d run into a parked car and dislocated his shoulder—but added a small correction. The actual infraction was a P.U.I., he said: pedalling under the influence. “Commissioner, I was on a bicycle.”

The tavern was a success from the day it opened. The beer took a little longer. Calagione had brewed fewer than ten batches before coming to Delaware, and he rarely used the same recipe twice. “I’d just grab herbs and spices and fruits from the kitchen and throw them in,” he says. “I used to think, Oh, it’s cool that every batch tastes different. It’s like snowflakes!” The pub’s brewing equipment consisted of three fifteen-gallon kegs on propane burners, and a rack of modified kegs for fermenting the beer. To keep up with demand, Calagione had to brew two or three times a day, every day; between shifts he slept on a mattress in the cellar. When the beer was ready, he and two employees would don ski goggles and green garbage bags and bottle the beer by hand, with a siphon and mechanical capper. In ten hours they could fill a hundred cases.

“It was a hot ghetto mess,” Bryan Selders, Dogfish’s lead brewer, remembers. By the time Selders arrived, in 2002, Calagione had jury-rigged some larger kettles out of stainless-steel tanks from a yogurt factory. To reach the cooked barley, or mash, Selders had to climb onto a metal grate twelve feet high and straddle the edge of the boiling kettle—one foot on the grate, the other on the kettle’s lid. Once, during a morning production meeting, Selders fell in. “The lid just gave way,” he says. The mash in the kettle was hot—around a hundred and fifty degrees—but came only to the tops of his boots. “I went home, took a shower, watched a little Sally Jessy, and came back.”

Dogfish was on the verge of bankruptcy for many of those years. More than seven hundred craft breweries opened in the United States between 1995 and 2000, yet their combined market share increased by less than a quarter. Some brewers were too inexperienced to make good beer—a 1996 issue of Consumer Reports found a number of the most expensive brands “flawed and stale-tasting”—others too cynical. Companies like Bad Frog simply contracted other breweries to make beer for them, then slapped on a silly label—in this case, a frog flipping off customers. The industrial breweries, meanwhile, were busy acquiring and buying shares in smaller companies (Celis, Shipyard, Red Hook, Widmer) or creating fake craft beers of their own: Blue Moon, Red Wolf, Eisbock, Elk Mountain. When most of those beers failed, their owners settled for squeezing craft brewers from the other side: paying bar owners and distributors to carry only their products. “It was economic Darwinism,” Calagione says. “Supply finally overtook demand.”

Dogfish’s ragged beginnings were its saving grace, he says. “If we’d bought a turnkey brewhouse for three hundred thousand dollars, I have no doubt in my mind that we would have gone bust.” The restaurant paid for the brewery at first, then the brewery grew as the beer improved. By working in small batches, Calagione became an experimental brewer a decade before it was fashionable. He made a medieval gruit with yarrow root and grains of paradise. He made an African tej with bitter gesho bark and raw honey. He made a stout with roasted chicory and St.-John’s-wort (“The world’s only antidepressant depressant,” he called it). While other brewers were dyeing their beer green for St. Patrick’s Day, Calagione brewed his with blue-green algae. “It tasted like appetizing pond scum,” he says. “The first sip, you were like, ‘Wow, that tasted like pond scum. But you know what? I kind of want a second sip.’ ”

His customers were forgiving, if not always enthusiastic. When Calagione bottled his first twelve-ounce beers for sale in New Jersey, he decided to celebrate with a publicity stunt. He would build a wooden boat and row the beer across Delaware Bay—a distance of eighteen nautical miles. “The idea was handmade beer from a handmade boat,” he says. “But I forgot to get press releases out.” When he arrived, there were four fans to greet him.

The turning point came in 1999, when Calagione was watching a cooking show on television. The chef, who was making a soup, was saying that several grindings of pepper, added to the pot at different points, would give the dish more flavor than a single dose added at the beginning. Not long afterward, at a Salvation Army store, Calagione came across an old electric football set—the kind with a playing field that vibrates to send miniature players skittering across it. Back at home, he found a five-gallon bucket and drilled some holes in the bottom. He laid a pair of wooden blocks on the football set, put the bucket on the blocks, and strapped the whole thing together with duct tape. (“Pretty high-tech M.I.T. stuff,” he says.) Later, when his kettle was boiling, he put hops in the bucket, perched his contraption at a slant above the kettle, and set the game vibrating. Soon, a steady stream of hops was falling through the bucket onto the playing field and sliding into the kettle.

The beer born of that experiment, known as 60 Minute I.P.A., is still Calagione’s biggest seller. He calls it a beer geek’s idea of a “session beer”—mild enough to be consumed in quantity, but with an unexpected kick. It has the bright, citrusy bouquet of a much hoppier brew, without the bitterness. Wine Enthusiast tasted hints of rose petal, tangerine, orange zest, and nutmeg in it, and rated it a “classic.”

The extreme-beer era was under way.

The pub in Rehoboth is now a proper experimental brewery. Although most of Dogfish’s beer is made at its large modern facility in Milton, twenty minutes away, Calagione and his staff use the old equipment once a month to try out new recipes. “I need my brewers to be able to blow off steam,” he told me, as we were driving to the pub that morning to make the Finnish sahti. If he had to brew the same beer every day, he said, he knew how he’d feel. He cocked his forefinger and put it to his temple.

The experimental beers are served on tap in the pub, at festivals, and at beer dinners that Calagione hosts around the country. Dogfish still doesn’t advertise, aside from a few small notices in industry magazines, relying instead on word of mouth from “beer evangelists,” as Calagione calls them. Whenever a beer is released, he monitors the chatter on Internet forums like BeerAdvocate and RateBeer. If he has a hit, and it’s not too expensive to produce (the arctic-cloudberry ale averaged out to about nineteen dollars a snifter), he has Bryan Selders reformulate it for the larger brewery.

Selders arrived about an hour after we did, driving a van filled with sacks of grain. He was wearing what looked like a gas-station attendant’s uniform, with his name stitched over one front pocket and the Dogfish logo over the other. His hair was gelled into a miniature Mohawk—more Tintin than Billy Idol—and his eyes, framed by thick black glasses, wore their usual look of ironic bewilderment. Selders, who is thirty-three, was a painter and ska guitarist before he became a brewer. When he and Calagione aren’t making beer, they sometimes perform together at the pub as a beer-themed hip-hop duo called the Pain Relievaz (sample lyrics: “You’re the barley virgin that my malt mill will deflour”). At work, they maintain an amiably fractious relationship, built on a role reversal of sorts. Selders plays the boss, the beleaguered perfectionist, searching for efficiencies and citing studies from brewing journals; Calagione plays the wayward talent, sloppy but charismatic and, occasionally, inspired. “I’m a little scared of this project, to be honest with you,” Selders told me, as he was lugging the grain into the brewhouse. “Sam’s ideas . . . the execution doesn’t always match the theory.”

Every beer is a brewer’s invention to some degree—a combination of ingredients that could never be found in nature. A barrel of crushed grapes, left to its own devices, can turn into a crude sort of Beaujolais nouveau. The winemaker’s job is mostly to prod the process along. That isn’t true of beer. For grain to turn into an ale or lager, it has to be malted, cooked, strained, cooked, strained, fermented in a barrel, and sometimes again in a bottle. “Mother Nature makes wine,” Calagione likes to say. “Brewers make beer.”

Which isn’t to say that beer is any less natural, or less subject to nature’s vagaries. One year, a drought in the Dakotas may leave the barley with half its usual starch. The next, a hot summer in the Yakima Valley could turn the hops less bitter. The water in the mash may be hard or soft (Bavarian water is great for dark lagers, not so good for pale ales), the fermentation tanks sealed tight or exposed to the open air. And at the end of the process lies a notoriously finicky organism. All brewing yeasts eventually run out of sugar or self-destruct, poisoning themselves on their own alcohol. Only the hardiest strains—“freaks of nature,” Calagione calls them—can produce the most potent beers. Dogfish has its own yeast-propagation lab, but some strains give up too soon, causing what’s known as a stuck fermentation. “Our brewery is a hundred people relying on a few billion yeast cells,” Calagione says. “Sometimes they outvote us.”

There’s no reason, given all these variables, that a given beer should always taste the same. We expect a Merlot to change from year to year, crop to crop. Why not a Michelob? Beer has been an industrial commodity for so long that it no longer seems an organic substance. And brewing, in its complexity, allows just enough control to maintain the illusion. If winemakers are Dionysian, brewers have had to become Apollonian. Age will only improve a Bordeaux, winemakers say. Brewers tend to prefer their beer fresh, exactly as they made it. Their skill lies in compensating for nature as much as collaborating with it.

Then again most brewers don’t make beer with rocks. When sahti was first brewed, in the Middle Ages, Calagione told me, Finnish farmers used wooden kettles. The wood couldn’t be set directly on a fire, so the brewers heated up rocks and threw them into the mash, caramelizing the barley and giving it a smoky flavor. Calagione wanted to use the same method, but he wasn’t sure that he had the right material. “I told my maintenance guy to get rocks without a lot of quartz in them,” he said. “Otherwise, when they get hot, they’ll explode in your face.”

The brewhouse was a cinder-block mudroom to the side of the building, with a trio of blackened kettles inside. When Selders had dumped the grain into the mash kettle—three hundred and fifty pounds of malted Pilsner barley and fifty-five pounds of rye—Calagione loaded the rocks from the truck into a wheelbarrow and rolled them into the kitchen. The pub’s menu was designed around a wood-fired grill, used to cook burgers, steaks, seafood, and beer-battered pizza. (The beef came from cows fed on the brewery’s spent grain.) Calagione strapped on a pair of safety glasses and peered into the oak and hickory embers. “If there are no second-degree burns, I’ll call this a success,” he said. Then he heaved in a rock, sending up a shower of sparks. “Let me know if they start to explode,” he told one of the cooks.

The grain had been cooked to mash by now, and a thick, lacy foam had bubbled to the surface. It was here that A. E. Housman’s famous lines—“Malt does more than Milton can / To justify God’s ways to man”—were borne out. When grain is partially sprouted, it builds up enzymes that can break down starch and turn it into sugar. In a living seed, this sugar fuels the plant’s growth. In beer, it’s digested by yeast, producing alcohol. The foam on the mash was a sign that the enzymes were at work. After an hour or so, the malty liquid, known as wort, would be strained off and cooked again with hops and flavorings. (Malt and hops are the yin and yang of beer: the one sweet, the other bitter.) Once it cooled, the yeast would go in, and the beer would be left to ferment, producing an array of flavor compounds in addition to alcohol: peppery phenols, fruity esters, and so on. “Beer is all about what your yeast is doing,” Selders said.

The year before, Selders had taken some wort intended for 60 Minute I.P.A., divided it into four batches, and added a different yeast to each. “They turned into four completely different beers,” he said. His favorite was made with a German Kölsch strain, used in the delicate straw-colored ales of Cologne. For the sahti, Calagione had decided on a Hefeweizen strain instead. He had read that Finnish brewers used baker’s yeast to make a spicy but slightly chalky beer. The Hefeweizen yeast would provide similar hints of clove and banana, he hoped, “but without the weirdness.”

When the mash had been cooking for a while, Selders climbed onto a stool and took a temperature reading: a hundred and fifty-five degrees. “We’re ready for the rocks,” he said. Calagione grabbed his pitchfork and hurried back to the kitchen. Inside the stove, the rocks were white-hot. A few had burst apart, though not loudly enough to alarm the cooks: the kitchen radio was turned up high, to Bob Dylan braying over a squall of Gypsy violin. Calagione stabbed his pitchfork into the flames and lifted out a rock balanced on the tines. “This is going to be an adventure,” he said, dumping it into the wheelbarrow with a clang.

Soon, he and the pub’s manager, Jason, were running back and forth between the brewhouse and the stove, carrying rocks in oven mitts or between metal plates. As the rocks plopped into the mash, they sent up jets of steam and glutinous bubbles, until the whole kettle was boiling. Calagione stripped off his mitts, now charred beyond use, and threw them to the ground. His face was bright red and sheened with sweat. “When we do this next year, at the big brewery, we’ll use the rocks outside in a small tank,” he said. “Then we’ll mix that mash in with the rest inside.”

Selders rolled his eyes. “Yes . . . it is already done,” he said, wiggling his fingers as if casting a spell. Later, when I asked what he thought about Calagione’s plan, he shook his head. “Yeah. Not going to happen.” But Calagione overheard him. “They didn’t want to do continual hopping, either!” he said.

The last stage of the brewing process was the most unorthodox. Traditionally, sahti is flavored with juniper alone, but Calagione wanted something more unusual. After the hops and the juniper berries had been added to the wort, he took the bag of spices from his truck and steeped it in a bucket of hot water. The mixture contained cardamom, coriander, ginger, allspice, rampe leaves, lemongrass, curry powder, and black tea, custom blended for Calagione in India. It would be added at the last moment, he said, so that its volatile flavors wouldn’t boil off. The idea was to amplify the already spicy flavors of the juniper berries and the Hefeweizen yeast—to turn the sahti into Sahtea.

Selders walked over to the bucket and crouched down beside it. He took a wooden spoon and trailed it through the inky gunk. “You want to use all of this?” he said. “Because this is a lot of tea, dude.”

Calagione nodded, a little sheepishly. “We’ll see. We might want to use all of it.”

Selders stared at the tea. He lifted a spoonful to his nose and took a cautious sniff. “So you went with curry, huh?”

“Nowhere near as much as I did with coriander and lemongrass.”

“My God.”

Restraint can have its advantages. A well-made German beer is both tasty and relatively wholesome: in Bavaria, it’s considered a foodstuff and included in soldiers’ rations. It’s unlikely to give you a headache, upset your stomach, or cause an allergic reaction, as the acids and biological amines in Belgian lambics may, and it can have a surprising range of flavors—from sweet Helles to dark Doppelbock to smoky Rauchbier. The strictures of the Reinheitsgebot have helped turn German brewers into the most resourceful and technically capable in the world. By mixing and matching strains of yeast, varieties of hops, and pale or roasted grains, they can produce almost any flavor found in fruit or spice. With three ingredients, they can give the illusion of a dozen.

The same discipline, if not creativity, has helped make Budweiser the most popular beer in the world. Its sheer consistency, across tens of billions of bottles and cans, is a technical marvel, and even the crankiest craft brewers harbor a secret admiration for it. When I was in Belgium recently, I visited the Trappist monastery at Orval, near the French Ardennes. Orval is home to one of the world’s great beers: a dry, earthy, multilayered concoction made with brewer’s yeast and a wild strain called Brettanomyces. The monastery is circled by sandstone walls like a medieval fortress (it was founded in the twelfth century and rebuilt in the nineteen-twenties), but its brewery is as high tech as any I’ve seen. From the grain bins in the attic to the onion-domed copper kettles on the middle floors to the fermentation tanks in the basement, the operation is largely gravity-driven and computer-controlled—an android in a monk’s robe.

I asked the brewmaster, Jean-Marie Rock, which American beer he likes best. He thought for a moment, squinting down his bladelike nose, and narrowed his lips to a point. Then he raised a finger in the air. “Budweiser!” he said. “Tell them that the brewer at Orval likes Budweiser!” He smiled. “I know they detest it, but it is quite good.” Later, though, when he described the newest beers coming out of Belgium, they sounded a good deal closer to Calagione’s. “People would rather pay a little more and have a special product than to pay a lot for a Pilsner and have something banal,” he said. “I like Budweiser, but I wouldn’t pay two euros for a Budweiser.”

Even at Dogfish, the line between high end and low, industrial and craft, can get blurry. As Selders was piping the cooked wort into the fermentation tank that day, he turned to Calagione and me with a grin. “Is everyone excited about Budweiser American Ale?” he said. “It’s going to taste great!” Calagione gave him a flat, brooding look. He knew he was being baited. Anheuser-Busch had been advertising its newest product all summer, clearly targeting the craft-beer market. Like other ales, the new beer is brewed at a relatively high temperature with a top-fermenting yeast. It’s a little fruitier and more full-flavored than regular Budweiser, which, like all lagers, is brewed at a lower temperature with a bottom-fermenting yeast. In regular Budweiser, the bitterness of the hops is kept “at the threshold of perception,” in Garrett Oliver’s words. American Ale has more of a bite, thanks to a dose of whole Cascade hops—a craft-brewer favorite—that’s added to the beer during a second fermentation.

“Those people know what they’re doing,” Selders said, goading Calagione. “What, you don’t think it’s true?”

“I think they can make a technically correct beer. But I don’t even want to try it.”

“As a brewer, you’re obligated to try it.”

“To give you some context for why it’s so distasteful to me,” Calagione said. “At the same time that they’re making this relatively hoppy wanna-be craft beer that exists only to confuse the consumer—so that they can be culture vultures—they are running ads that say that the darker a beer is the more impurities it has. It’s beer racism."

“Beer racism!”

“You don’t see the hypocrisy in that?”

“I see it. But if you are going to take that stance you shouldn’t shop at Food Lion, shouldn’t go to Borders, shouldn’t do any of that stuff.”

Calagione shrugged and grabbed a shovel, then climbed into the kettle and began scooping out the spent mash. He liked to frame his business as an epic battle between small, stouthearted brewers and their evil industrial overlords. But his loyalty to craft beer was more in the manner of a guy who has rooted for the underdog all his life. (His own football teams, in junior high and high school, had a combined record of 0–72–2). “Look,” he told me later. “I’m not afraid to pay compliments where compliments are due. Anheuser-Busch’s quality—if quality is consistency—is second to none. But I’m frustrated that that one beer has been hammered down people’s throats. I mean, banana cream pie may be your favorite fucking food. But if you ate banana cream pie every day you would hate it, too.”

Every year at the end of the summer, Calagione throws a bocce tournament in Milton, on the brewery’s two oyster-shell courts. “Bocce’s an Italian thing,” he says. “But it’s also a sport that you can play without putting down your beer.” The tournament culminates in the evening, when a large catapult is rolled out onto the lawn. The catapult was built by Frank Payton, the same maintenance man who found the river rocks for the sahti, and was designed to hurl pumpkins—a fall tradition in Delaware. In this case, it’s armed with thirty cans of industrial beer and fired, with a precision born of years of practice, into a gargantuan sculpture of a toilet a hundred yards away. “We tried to throw a keg once,” Calagione told me. “But it misfired and knocked down a street lamp.”

The event evokes earlier, wackier days, but its anti-establishment vibe can seem a little at odds with the rather large factory beside it. Dogfish now sells about twenty-five million bottles’ worth of beer a year. It has almost quadrupled in size since 2004, but still can’t meet demand: about a fifth of its orders go unfilled. Calagione’s salvaged kettles have been replaced by a state-of-the-art brewery, his ski goggles and garbage bags by an automated bottle-filling line and a three-person microbiology department. (Every beer is tested forty times per batch, including blind tastings in a sensory lab.) When the facility expanded last year, the roof had to be cut open so that a crane could drop in nine new three-story tanks. Well before that, the brewery’s wastewater had overwhelmed the town’s sewage system: the yeasts in it were outcompeting the bacteria used for waste treatment. The water is now trucked out several times a day and sprayed on local farms.

“Sam is the Adolphus Busch of his generation,” the beer historian Maureen Ogle told me. But he has plenty of rivals. Koch’s Boston Beer Company, for one, still makes twenty-five times more beer. The Darwinian beer wars of the past decade have tended to leave the best brewers standing. While sales of wine and spirits grew by between two and four per cent last year, craft-beer sales grew by twelve per cent. “Part of what we’re seeing is a return to normality,” Garrett Oliver told me. “It’s weird for a country of three hundred million to have one kind of beer. But we’re getting back to what we had before—and unless we go into a deep depression it’s never going back.”

Oliver, who is forty-six and black, with a trim beard and a resonant voice, has done his best to become the respectable face of craft brewing—its Orson Welles. While Calagione wears jeans and a rumpled shirt even on the “Today” show, Oliver attends almost every event in a jacket and tie. One blazer bears the Brooklyn Brewery logo, woven in steel by the same tailors who stitch crests for the British Royal Family, and his beers have some of the same suavity. “From what I’ve seen, a lot of people still think of us as kids playing with toys,” he told me. “So anything I can do to ennoble beer is worthwhile, whether dressing up the packaging or dressing up for a beer dinner.”

For all its success, craft beer has yet to reach the mainstream. Ninety-six per cent of the market—about sixty-seven billion bottles a year—still belongs to non-craft beers and imports. Oliver remembers talking to a brewer at Anheuser-Busch a few years ago, when sales of Michelob had fallen to about a third of a billion bottles a year. “He told me, ‘I wish that brand would just die.’ And that one beer was the size of the entire American craft-brewing industry.” The disparity is partly a function of poor marketing, Ogle argues—craft brewers are still preaching to the converted—and partly of cultural conditioning. Until more Americans wean themselves from ketchup, soda, and other sweet foods, they may never enjoy the taste of hops. “When I talk to people like Sam, I’m constantly amazed at how persuaded they are that everyone drinks craft beer,” she says. “If that’s true, why are they still sitting at four per cent?”

In a decade’s time, Oliver believes, breweries like his could claim a quarter of the market. (Paul Gatza, director of the Brewers Association, predicts something closer to ten per cent in twenty years.) But only if they don’t scare people off first. “The whole idea of extreme beer is bad for craft brewing,” Oliver says. “It doesn’t expand the tent—it shrinks it. If I want someone to taste a beer, and I make it sound outlandish and crazy, there is a certain kind of person who will say, ‘Oh, let me try it.’ But that is a small audience. It’s one that you can build a beer on, but not a movement.”

Late one morning, Calagione and I drove to Philadelphia to see an archeological chemist he knows named Patrick McGovern. Calagione looked washed out and a little crotchety—a rare thing—after one too many glasses of grappa the night before. When I mentioned Oliver’s misgivings to him, he smirked, as if hearing them for the hundredth time. “Garrett and I are good friends, but we definitely disagree on this,” he said. “It’s a purist versus populist position. If all of our palates are subjective, who am I and who is Garrett to decide whether there’s too much hops in a beer, or whether you should be putting lemongrass or rampe leaves in it? As long as it finds an audience, it’s valid.”

Extreme beer is a return to normality, too, Calagione believes. It’s just the normality of a thousand years ago, or several thousand, rather than a hundred. If the Reinheitsgebot is still the touchstone for most American brewers, Calagione’s is a bronze bowl from King Midas’ tomb.

The historical Midas was a Phrygian ruler in what is now central Turkey. When he or one of his close relatives was buried, around 730 B.C., the tomb was filled with more than a hundred and fifty drinking vessels—parting toasts to the dead king. By the time they were excavated, in 1957, the liquid inside them had evaporated. But Patrick McGovern, forty years later, was able to analyze some residue from a bowl and identify its chemical content. By matching the compounds to those found in the foods and spices of ancient Turkey, McGovern gradually pieced together the liquid’s main ingredients: honey, barley, and grapes, and a yellow substance that was probably saffron. It was a beer, but like none we’ve ever tasted.

“Beer is a much older concept than the Reinheitsgebot,” McGovern told us later, at the University of Pennsylvania. He was sitting at a chipped metal desk in his basement office at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, surrounded by sagging bookshelves and dusty lab equipment: a furnace, a microscale, a spectrometer, a liquid chromatograph. Here and there, chunks of pottery and other artifacts were wrapped in plastic or aluminum foil and stuffed in file drawers or ratty cardboard cases. “You’re taking nine thousand years of brewing history and just looking at the last five hundred years of it,” he said.

McGovern is a wizardly figure with a long white beard and large glasses that seem to draw his eyes together at the inner corners. He has a quiet but penetrating voice, a sharp wit, and a near total lack of pretension. (When brewing at Dogfish, he has been known to pour himself a chicory stout for breakfast.) He and Calagione first met eight years ago, at a dinner in honor of Michael Jackson, the great British beer writer. McGovern had recently published his findings on King Midas and was hoping to convince someone to make a modern-day replica of the beverage. (Anchor Brewing had done something similar a few years earlier, when it made a beer based on an ancient Sumerian hymn to the beer goddess, Ninkasi.) As it turned out, several brewers took up the challenge and sent beers to his house over the next few months. “Some were pretty good,” he says. “But Dogfish Head’s was the best.”

Midas Touch, as it was later called, has a brilliant rose-gold color—every batch contains about a thousand dollars’ worth of saffron—and a thick, honeyed, spicy flavor: a cross between beer, mead, and wine. It has become Dogfish’s most decorated drink, winning a gold medal at the Great American Beer festival, another gold at the International Mead Festival, and a silver at the World Beer Cup. “I look at beers like these as an opportunity to drink history,” Calagione said. “They’re liquid time capsules.”

Earlier that summer, he and McGovern had brewed their most recent project: Theobroma, or “food of the gods.” It was based on Mayan and Aztec ceremonial drinks, and on residues of the earliest known fermented cacao beverage, found in Honduran pots from between 1400 and 1100 B.C. It contained cocoa nibs, ancho chilies, honey, barley, and annatto seeds. “I kept complaining that it needs more chocolate,” McGovern said. “I wanted to make it more reddish, because it was equated with blood and human sacrifice.” Calagione laughed, saying, “And I told him, ‘O.K., I’ll get back to you on that.’ ”

Beer is less ancient than wine, McGovern went on to say, because it requires more technology: agriculture to grow the grain, fire and kettles to cook it. But, once invented, it quickly spread. “It wasn’t just in one part of the world,” he said. “It was all over.” If wine was rare and therefore aristocratic—it could be made only once a year, when fruit was ripe—beer trickled down to the working class. All you needed was a little malted grain and something bitter to balance its sweetness. Before barley became the grain of choice, brewers used millet and rice. Even after hops were domesticated, around 700 A.D., they threw in wormwood, henbane, cowslip, ivy, mugwort, bog myrtle, elderberry, oak leaf, laurel leaf, autumn crocus, or wild rosemary. Some plants were poisonous, most were not, and they gave the beer an endless variety of flavors.

The Reinheitsgebot, when Duke Wilhelm IV of Bavaria imposed it in 1516, had less to do with keeping peasants from poisoning themselves—never a great concern of the gentry—than with controlling the hops and barley crops. It made a virtue of trade restrictions. And beer, that great bouillabaisse of an invention, became nearly as predictable as wine.

Extreme brewers are doing their best to help it devolve. This past October, I joined Calagione at the Great American Beer Festival, in Denver, for the première of his Sahtea and Theobroma. The festival was founded in 1982 by a home brewer named Charlie Papazian, when its title still sounded like an oxymoron. “That’s a great idea, Charlie,” Michael Jackson told Papazian, in so many words. “Only what will you serve for beer?” Twenty-six years later, more than eighteen hundred beers were on tap at the Denver convention center. A vast hangar had been divided into booths for four hundred and thirty breweries, grouped by geographic region. Anheuser-Busch, Coors, and Miller had their usual elaborate stage sets, and most beers followed the classic German and English styles. Still, the night belonged to extreme beer.

Wandering through the hall in the hour before it opened, I saw signs for beers called Goat Toppler, Chicken Killer, and Old Headwrecker, Incinerator, Detonator, Skull Annihilator, and the Obamanator. Many were double I.P.A.s that seemed to be competing for the highest I.B.U. rating. But others were faithful re-creations of ancient recipes, or else beers invented from whole cloth. “When you’re making an extreme beer, it’s like pushing beyond the sound barrier,” Jim Koch told me. “All of a sudden, everything is silent. I remember when I first tasted my Triple Bock. It dawned on me that beer has been around for thousands of years, and I am tasting something that no brewer has ever tasted. It was inspiring, beautiful, almost reverential.” Even Garrett Oliver seemed to be bowing to the trend. His booth featured two wonderful bottle-fermented ales and a pale ale called BLAST!, with eight kinds of English and American hops. “No, this is NOT a double I.P.A.,” a sign beneath the tap read. “Even if you believe in those.”

The festival was sold out for the first time. Over the next few days, some twenty-eight thousand attendees would pay fifty dollars for a wristband and a small plastic glass for tasting samples. The outcome was predictable. When the doors were flung open at five-thirty, six thousand people barrelled in and began drinking immediately, in great quantity. They wandered around in Viking horns, jester bells, and hats shaped like foaming steins, their bellies jutting from beer-themed T-shirts. One shirt showed Jesus hoisting a frothy mug with the caption “King of the Brews.” To make sure that the noise stayed near the shattering point, a bagpipe ensemble roamed the hall, blasting fanfares at unexpected moments. Whenever there was a lull, some oaf would drop his glass on the concrete floor and the entire assembly—as per tradition—would erupt into an epic whoop.

“It’s amazing how well people behave, given how many are here and how much alcohol there is,” Bob Pease, the vice-president of the Brewers Association, told me. In his sixteen years at the event, he noted with some pride, no one had been killed or seriously injured. But, then, security was pervasive. Uniformed police, private security guards, and hundreds of volunteers prowled the booths, slicing the wristband off anyone who had overindulged. At one point, late in the evening, after I’d stumbled over a power line (or something), I went up to get a free sample. A guard hustled over to the server and muttered, “Go easy on the pour.”

Calagione, for his part, had no time to drink. Going to the Great American Beer Festival with him, a friend of his had told me, is like attending a Star Trek convention with Captain Kirk. Wherever he went, beer geeks and fellow-brewers clustered around, taking pictures, handing him books to sign, or taping his greetings on a handheld recorder. The Dogfish booth was mobbed. While most others had five or ten people in front of them, Calagione’s crowd spilled across the concrete till it engulfed the Blue Moon booth across the way. I helped him work the taps for the first half hour, then slipped off with samples of Theobroma and Sahtea.

Like many craft-beer drinkers, I’d started out liking Pilsners and pale ales, and found myself craving more and more hops. The Theobroma managed to satisfy that taste indirectly. It was a lovely amber-colored beer with a hint of bitter chocolate at the beginning and an afterburn of chilies. But despite its ten per cent alcohol, it seemed almost too fainthearted. It was the Sahtea that I loved. For all Selders’s concern, the tea and spices in it hovered politely in the background, leaving the yeast to run the show. Cloudy and golden, with a lush flowering of bananas and cloves, it tasted like something a trader might have sipped a century ago, standing in a colonial market in Ceylon, with open baskets of tea and spices all around. It wasn’t an extreme beer by any stretch, and it certainly didn’t taste Finnish. But it was a time capsule nonetheless.

When the session was over and the booth was packed up, when six thousand drunken revellers had descended on the streets of Denver, and the other Dogfish brewers had followed in search of more beer, Calagione and I walked back to our hotel. “Remember what Patrick was saying that day in his office, about how alcohol affects the brain?” he said. I nodded. McGovern had shown us a paper illustrated with scans of animals’ brains. Alcohol’s emotional effect is unusually complex, he had said. It starts out as a stimulant and only later, when you’ve had a lot, becomes a depressant. Calagione laughed. “Does it work that way for you?” he said. “Because it doesn’t for me. I never get around to the depressant part.”

Teach a Friend to Homebrew Day

2008-11-14T01:50:00.004-05:00

A few of us from the Bay de Noc Brewers got together on "Teach a friend to homebrew Day" and brewed up a Maibock with Hereford & Hops brewer Mike Sattem. We deemed it "Teach a Brewer to Brew Day" because Mike had never really brewed on a small scale. It was a great time and we tried a lot of great beers-homebrewed & commercial.

California Rolls with Dos Equis/Red Snapper

2008-11-14T00:35:00.002-05:00

I am basically just posting this one because I was proud of myself after mass-producing a bunch of California rolls. It was my first time giving it a try and I must say, rolling them is way easier that people make it sound. Maybe all that practice in college helped...know what I mean. I have to say that either one of these beers (Arbor Brewing Co's Red Snapper or Dos Equis) make a nice little pairing with California rolls. I particularly liked the Red Snapper with it a little bit better because it had a little bit more hop presence, not too much, but just enough to clean the palate where as Dos Equis is more malt driven. Both were great with though.

Goose Island brew pub to stay open

2008-11-12T13:53:00.001-05:00

By Michael Lev |Tribune staff reporter

9:20 PM CST, November 11, 2008

They raised a glass in celebration at Goose Island Beer Co.'s pioneering North Side brew pub Tuesday night: the well-known spot isn't going to close.

John Hall, Goose Island's founder and chief executive, said he reached a last-minute deal with the pub's landlord to stay at 1800 N. Clybourn Ave. for three to five years, averting the closing of the homebase for Honker's Ale and other brews at the end of 2008.

"I'm thrilled," said Hall, who bought everyone in the place a beer. "They called me last week and said we want to try to do a deal. We compromised in a week on something we couldn't do for a long time."

Hall said he couldn't talk for the other side but he indicated the weak real estate market may have helped get the agreement done. In April, Hall said that the landlord, CRM Properties Group, had asked for a significant rent increase, reflecting the popularity of the trendy neighborhood.

Goose Island was part of a pioneering redevelopment in the North and Clybourn Avenues area. In the mid- to late 1980s, an old Turtle Wax factory into an upscale retail mall. Today, Clybourn Square is surrounded by one of Chicago's hottest retail regions, but the entire economy is now in duress.

Chris Siavelis, an executive at Deerfield-based CRM, couldn't be reached Tuesday night.

Goose Island, which also makes 312 and other brews, was founded as a brew pub in 1988 at the site. The venture was a success and Goose Island built a stand-alone brewery at 1800 W. Fulton St. in 1995. Since then, the company has focused on retail beer sales, though it has continued to operate two brew pubs.

"We've been in the business for 20 years and a lot of things have changed," Hall said. "We couldn't be more pleased about reaching an agreement."

Mikkeller (Black) "Chinese Character for Black"

2008-11-08T21:23:00.004-05:00

Brewed at De Proef Brouwerij, Lochristi-Hijfte, Belgium
Mikkeller 黑 is Mikkellers strongest and wildest beer to date. Mikkeller Black Stout has the Chinese character for black on the label. Black is an imperial stout at no less than 17.5% alcohol, making it Denmark's strongest beer ever.
Ingredients :Water, malt, roasted barley, dark cassanade, hops and champagne yeast.
Alc : 17,5% Volume : 375 ml.

I need to get my hands on some of this. If you see it, buy it, send it to me with an invoice, I'll move next door to you and be your bitch for life. Well, how about I just send you a check.

Beer-Low in Heavy Metals / Wine-High in Heavy Metals

2008-11-03T20:37:00.003-05:00

This article was just released explaining how Wine is high in heavy metals.

Heavy Metals Found in Wine
Red, White Wines Carry Dangerous Doses of Toxic Metals
By Daniel J. DeNoonWebMD Health News
Reviewed by Louise Chang, MD

Oct. 29, 2008 -- Red and white wines from most European nations carry potentially dangerous doses of at least seven heavy metals, U.K. researchers find.
A single glass of even the most contaminated wine isn't poisonous. But drinking just one glass of wine a day -- a common habit in Europe and the Americas -- might be very hazardous indeed, calculate biomolecular scientist Declan P. Naughton, PhD, and Andrea Petroczi of Kingston University, London.
Naughton calculated "target hazard quotients" (THQs) for wines from 15 countries in Europe, South America, and the Middle East. The measure was designed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to determine safe levels of frequent, long- term exposure to various chemicals.
A THQ over 1 indicates a health risk. Typical wines, Naughton found, have a THQ ranging from 50 to 200 per glass. Some wines had THQs up to 300. By comparison, THQs that have raised concerns about heavy-metal contamination of seafood typically range between 1 and 5.
"I was surprised at this finding, and would be very interested if regulatory authorities and food-safety people will look at this," Naughton tells WebMD. "The wine industry should look at ways to remove these metals from wine, or to find out where the metals come from and prevent this from happening."
The metal ions that accounted for most of the contamination were vanadium, copper, and manganese. But four other metals with THQs above 1 also were found: zinc, nickel, chromium, and lead.
Some 30 other metal ions were measured in the wines, but THQs could not be calculated because safe daily levels for these metals are not known.
All of these oxidating metal ions pose potential problems. But the manganese contamination particularly worries behavioral neurotoxicologist Bernard Weiss, PhD, professor of environmental medicine at the University of Rochester, N.Y. Weiss was not involved in the Naughton study.
"From the point of view of just one of these metals in wine, manganese, I would be concerned," Weiss tells WebMD. "Any time you see numbers like they have in this study, you begin to scratch your head and wonder about the effects over a long period of ingestion: Not one glass of wine last Tuesday, but a glass a day over a lifetime."
Manganese accumulation in the brain, Weiss notes, has been linked to Parkinson's disease.
Safe Metal Levels in Wines From Italy, Brazil, Argentina
Wines from three of the 15 nations studied had safe levels of heavy metals: Italy, Brazil, and Argentina.
Based on the maximum THQs for wines from each nation, here's the list of the worst offenders:
Hungary
Slovakia
France
Austria
Spain
Germany
Portugal
Greece
Czech Republic
Jordan
Macedonia
Serbia
Hungary and Slovakia had maximum potential THQ values over 350. France, Austria, Spain, Germany, and Portugal -- nations that import large quantities of wine to the U.S. -- had maximum potential THQ values over 100.

The good news is that Beer is Low in Heavy Metals
Check This Out
also
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A Night of Good Beer

2008-11-01T00:45:00.000-04:00

I got together with my brewing buddies Kevin and James the other night and we had a nice little spread of beers to try. We sipped on a Scotty Karate which is a Scotch Ale from Dark Horse. It is a pretty amazing beer with rich malt character and a nice smoke presence. We also drank a very limited edition beer from Flossmoor Station called "Evil" which was a Belgian Dark Strong Ale. That was a tastey beer. It had hints of Belgian candi sugar, honey, and a there was an underlying spiciness that was just right. After we drank one of my 12th anniversary beers from Flossmoor we had a Cantillon "Rose de Gambrinus" which is a Lambic made with raspberries. What an incredible beer that is. It is like nothing else.

Pizza Port/Lost Abbaye Coming to Chicago

2008-10-31T15:03:00.001-04:00

Windy City Distribution is very pleased to announce a new addition to our family of craft beers: The Lost Abbey/Port Brewing Company.

Pizza Port was founded by Vince and Gina Marsaglia in Solano Beach, CA as simply a great pizza joint. However, these home brewers decided to install a 7 barrel brewing system in 1992. They unleashed some handcrafted beers on their customers in 1993, and with little surprise their one location became three.

Tomme Arthur joined the Port brewing family in 1996, as Head Brewer of the original Pizza Port location in Solano Beach. The Solano Beach Pizza Port location was GABF Small Brewpub of the year in 2003 and 2004, and those same years Tomme Arthur was selected GABF Small Brewpub Brewer of the year.

Tomme Arthur’s unique approach and creativity, along with his enthusiasm, helped produce a thriving beer scene in San Diego. Tomme brought a love for Belgian beer to the Port family of brew pubs and created their first Belgian style ale, Overhead Abbey Dubbel in 1997. That one Belgian style brew has since become an entire family of beers called The Lost Abbey. Tomme Arthur is certainly one of the most cutting edge brewers in the United States, and he continues to play a major role in the growth, education, and creativity of the American Craft Brewing scene. Outside of his multiple medals at World Beer Cup, Chicago Real Ale Festival, and the Great American Beer Festival, Tomme has brought a new passion to the rustic, old world traditions of Belgian brewing by creating new beers with a fresh new vision of what beer can be. The canvas for his artwork is stretched with oak, fruit, spices, wild yeast strains, and time.

Tomme Arthur will be joining us in Chicago to help launch his beer, and I’m pleased to announce the following events:

When: Tuesday, November 11th, from 5:30 PM - 11:00 PM
Where: The Publican, 845 W. Fulton Market, Chicago
Renowned Chef Paul Kahan will design a Prix Fix/Tasting Menu, with cuisine created specifically to pair with the Port Brewing/Lost Abbey beers. In order to accommodate as many diners as possible, the tasting menu will be offered throughout dinner service, and Tomme Arthur will be in attendance to present his beers to the public.

When: Wednesday, November 12th at 7:00 PM
Where: The Hopleaf, 5148 N. Clark Street, Chicago
“Meet the Brewer” launch event in the upstairs bar. An assortment of Hopleaf’s fine food will be offered buffet style, and the full line of Port and Lost Abbey beers will be served throughout the evening, providing an opportunity for beer enthusiasts to meet Tomme in person.

When: Thursday, November 13th, 5:30 PM - 7:30 PM
Where: Dobby’s Worldwide Liquors, 15 S. Brockway, Palatine
Tomme Arthur will be in attendance to taste a variety of Port and Lost Abbey selections.

When: Thursday, November 13th, 8:00 PM
Where: Bavarian Lodge, 1800 Ogden Ave., Lisle
Launch of the Lost Abbey/Port Brewing beers, with Tomme Arthur in attendance to meet, greet, and discuss his beers.

Bacon Beer? What the Hell...Why Not!

2008-10-30T17:47:00.002-04:00

I believe it is time for this guy to brew a bacon flavored beer. I keep stumbling across this website that has instructions on how to make a bacon infused vodka and everytime I read through it I think, "Well I could blend that vodka into a batch of Marzen or some sort of smoked lager". The time has come, I think within the next few months or so I am going to get myself a nice clean tasting vodka and then I'm going to violate with some swine. Depending on how long it takes to get a good bacon flavor in there, I'd like to have this beer ready for January or February. We'll see. I'll definitely report back on this one.

My Attempt at Wostynje

2008-10-30T17:07:00.004-04:00

So I got up at 5:30 AM and put this together.

11.5 lbs Belg. Pilsner
.5 lb Caravienne
.5 lb melanoidin
1 lb cane sugar

60 min (1.5 oz EKG)
10 min (1 oz Willamette)
10 min (2 Tbsp Mustard Seed)
I just put them in the mortar & pestal and beat them up a bit.

I mashed at 149 for 90 min
mashed out at 168 10 min
batch sparged at 170F

I racked over a Belgian Golden Strong ale today and repitched the yeast (wlp570) into this beer. I'm a big fan of that strain.

I took a sample of my wort to get a gravity reading and the mustard seed wasn't detectable but I'm sure it won't be until things come into balance after fermentation. I'm anxious to get this one into bottles. I'll let you know how it turns out. I might even rebrew this beer again if I feel it needs tweaking.

A few hours later

Get More Smarterness and You Can Brew the Beer More Good

2008-10-29T19:54:00.003-04:00

Brew Strong Episode about Enzymes (Click Here)
In this episode of Brew Strong Jamil and John Palmer explain enzymes and their purpose and effects in brewing. Along with the Brew Strong crew is special guest host Colin Kaminski from Downtown Joe's in Napa, CA.

Brew Strong with Jamil Zainasheff and John Palmer combines the two most prominent authors and figures in homebrewing today in a live beer radio format that allows listeners to pose beginning and advanced brewing questions to expert hosts and guests from the Craft Beer industry. Designed as an amateur brewing geek's must-listen show, Brew Strong is your source for cutting edge beer and brewing information, answers to technical questions, as well as a guide to greater appreciation of all things beer.

Organzied groups abusing Michigan's bottle deposits

2008-10-27T18:25:00.000-04:00

"It's like a rebate, $2.40 a case for pop and beer," said Jim Wanty, president of O & W Inc., a beer distributorship in four Michigan counties near the Ohio state line. O & W lost about $65,000 last year from picking up more returned containers from stores than it had delivered.

In some cases, smuggling rings have collected and crushed millions of cans in Ohio, selling them to several stores in southeast Michigan. When buyers don't return the bottles to get their deposits back, states or distributors get to keep the money, and store owners pocketed more than $1.5 million by redeeming cans for which no deposit had ever been paid. Law enforcement broke up the rings last year, and a trial for 12 defendants is scheduled to start Monday.

Wanty said fraud has increased since stores installed machines to handle bottle returns. Grocery workers used to accept cans in person, which he said made customers more reluctant to claim a deposit return on an out-of-state container.

"It was eyeball to eyeball, now it's eyeball to a machine," Wanty said.

Great Interview With The Homebrew Chef, Sean Paxton

2008-10-22T22:34:00.004-04:00

I came across this great video with Zane Lamprey from "Three Sheets" which airs on the Mojo channel and it has an interview that DRAFT Magazine did with Sean Paxton and it is sure to get you fired up about pairing beer with food or cooking up something amazing.

Does Batch Size Make a Difference in Hop Utilization?

2008-10-22T18:17:00.005-04:00

I got to wondering about this a few days ago when I was thinking about scaling down Edward Mathis' Old Ale recipe. I posted this question on Tech Talk today and then afterwards I found this information below. Thought I'd pass it along.

Brian
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ask the Troubleshooter
Dave Miller on...Hop Utilization
by Dave Miller
Republished from BrewingTechniques' January/February 1994.
Does hop utilization depend on batch size?

Hop Utilization

Q: Hops and IBUs: In figuring your IBUs, does batch size make a difference (say 10-gal versus 10-bbl)? The formula I use is from the Zymurgy hops special issue (1):

%Ux%AXWg
IBU= --------- x 1000
VLx(1+GA)

where U = utilization, A = a-acid content, Wgr = weight in grams, VL = volume in liters, and GA = gravity adjustment. The V above: is it the starting volume or the final volume?DM: The short answer to your first question is, yes, batch size makes a difference. Small-scale brewers often find that moving to a different batch size alters their hop utilization. And to answer your second question: Utilization usually is calculated based on the volume of wort in the kettle at the end of the boil. This practice makes it easier to compare figures from different breweries because losses at later stages in the process can vary tremendously.
I sense another question lurking behind your first, though: "If batch size makes a difference, how does one compensate for it? Is there another term that can be inserted into the formula?" The answer to that, alas, is no.
Strictly speaking, an IBU is one part per million of isohumulone. It is a quantity that must be measured directly in the finished beer. All of the formulas published in the home brewing literature - and you have no doubt noticed that there are several, and that they give varied results - at best will allow you to make a rough estimate of a beer's IBUs.
Remember that all of these formulas include a term for utilization percentage. In some formulas, a fixed percentage is built in; in others, you must supply it. Either way, it's there. The only way to plug an accurate number into that slot is to measure the actual IBUs in a laboratory. If you can do that with several test brews, you can then predict the IBUs of future batches - assuming of course that you do not change your brewing techniques or equipment.
The problem is that batch size is far from the only variable that can affect utilization. Some other variables include the following:

Form of hops. Pellets give better utilization than whole cones. Sometimes a factor is included to account for this in the formulas.
Time of hop boil. All formulas include a factor to compensate for this.
Gravity of the wort. Some formulas include a factor for this.
Agitation in the boil. Kettle configuration and material, placement of the heat source, and numerous other factors influence how much rolling action you get during the boil. There is no way to figure in a factor for this because it is unknown to the formula writer and is difficult to measure in any case.
Time of hot stand after boil and before cooling. This again is unknown to the formula writer.
Agitation after the boil. If the wort is whirlpooled with the hops, even the finish hops will yield a respectable percentage of their bitterness. Again, there is no way to figure in this factor.
Losses during fermentation. Yeast cells adsorb hop bitterness, as a simple taste test proves. The degree of adsorption depends on a multitude of factors, not the least of which is the amount of cell growth.
To give some idea of how important these unknown and unaccountable factors can be, let me cite two beers we brew at The Saint Louis Brewery: our wheat ale and oatmeal stout. Both were analyzed by friends with access to a large and well-equipped brewing laboratory. Both beers are brewed using pelletized hops, and both are fermented using the same yeast strain, pitching rate, and method. For the oatmeal stout, we add all the hops 45 min before the end of the boil. Wort gravity is 1.056. Our hop utilization is 31.5%. For the wheat ale, we add 50% of the hops (by a-acid) 30 min before the end of the boil and the remainder at the finish. Wort gravity is 1.037. Our hop utilization is 26.8%.
You may ask, what in the world is going on here? Other things being equal, you would expect a little better utilization in the wheat ale because of the lower gravity, but in no way could that make up for the difference in boil times. Remember, by the article you are following, we should be getting only about 5% utilization from our finish hops.
The answer (in part) is that our kettle also is a whirlpool, and we whirlpool the wort for 20 min and then let it settle for another 10-15 min before knocking out. Obviously, 30 min of agitation at near-boiling is almost as effective as boiling for a similar period.
OK, this is a gross example, and you might argue that you could still use the formula if you simply include the 30-min whirlpool period in the total boil time. But that still will not get you anywhere near an accurate estimate. Figuring the finish hops as a 30-min boil and the first addition as 1 h, we should (again by the article you are following) get an average utilization of 30 + 15.3/2 = 22.7% - significantly below the actual figure.
Every published formula I have seen for estimating IBUs has more than an outside chance of giving you a grossly inaccurate estimate of the bitterness in your finished beer. The brewing process simply contains too many variables, and some of them are nearly impossible to quantify. Whenever a brewer tells me, "This beer has so many IBUs," I have to ask in turn, "What lab did the measurement?" There is a real need for a good, reasonably priced lab service that would measure bitterness for small-scale brewers.
In any case, I see no advantage in publishing recipes that require working backwards from an IBU figure through a complex formula to derive a hop rate. The simple old AAU (a-acid unit) or HBU (homebrew bitterness unit) system is just as likely to get you in the ballpark. Furthermore, brewing encompasses art as well as science, and setting bitterness falls on the art side of the process. You have to go by taste. All the calculations are only a means to let you use your knowledge and experience to get a beer that tastes right - the right amount of bitterness, in this case - in as few trials as possible, and then to repeat or fine-tune the flavor of that beer.
I hope it doesn't sound like old technical Dave is getting arty and muddle-headed. Flavor is the reason we brew and drink beer. Even the biggest and most technically proficient brewers in the world rely on taste panels as the ultimate analytical instrument. Numbers do not tell the whole story; they are only a means to an end. So if we cannot fix a recipe entirely by formulas, it's not the end of the world. We can still brew great beer.

New Labels for my IPA & Belgian Golden Ale

2008-10-21T22:52:00.002-04:00

Here are the labels I made up for my IPA and my Belgian Golden Ale.

Bay de Noc Brewers at UPtoberfest

2008-10-21T22:30:00.000-04:00

See All Pics Here

The UPtoberfest in Escanaba, MI was this weekend and our homebrew club, the Bay de Noc Brewers set up a table outside of the main beer tent so people could stop by and talk to us and watch, first hand, how to brew a batch of beer thanks to Mike Miller. He was brewing a Biere de Garde recipe. This weekend has been a blast. Saturday I started out at Hereford & Hops and had a few beers with Ben & Mike from BDNBrewers, then we headed over to the Beer Festival for a few hours, then I headed up to Marquette to go to Los Tres Amigos for dinner with a few friends. Also made a few new friends there. Then over to Latitude for some Short's Huma Lupa Licious and then over to the Bob & Tom comedey tour (Ralph Harris is one funny dude-I was crying from laughing). Sunday Morning we took the kids to the Hayes Corn Maze in Cornell. There was a ton of people there. I probably saw about 10 people I had gone to school with there. I recommend going there, it's a lot of fun. I highly recommend the pumpkin launcher.

There’s more than flavor in a flavor wheel

2008-10-20T12:42:00.001-04:00

Lauren SalazarBefore we get to the Slate three-part series on sensory perception and wine a few words of wit and wisdom on that topic from Lauren Salazar of New Belgium Brewing, who spoke Friday in Denver at the National Homebrewers Conference. (That’s her on the right, during a mock judging last year in Seattle, staged for the shooting of American Brew.)

Things I learned I would have added to the earlier discussion here about the mysteries of how (and how we might measure what) we smell and taste:

- To those scientific types who argue that senses of sight, touch and hearing are concrete and smelling and tasting are not her answer is simple. “Yes they are,” she said. “Seeing is not believing. Smelling and tasting is where it’s at.”

- There a second “flavor” wheel (I put the quotation marks around flavor because we’re really talking flavor and aroma), this one just for byproducts of oxidation. If you’re sitting on a tasting panel at New Belgium and call out a beer for being oxidized you can’t stop there - you have to be more specific. This goes to quality control, and more about that in a few paragraphs.

- She presented four samples of Fat Tire dosed with chemicals that reproduce flavors such as acetaldehyde (green apples) and diacetyl (butterscotch; buttered popcorn at higher levels). Although we often cite these as off flavors when judging beer (there are even boxes to check on a BJCP scoresheet) they aren’t inappropriate in every beer.

A bit of green apple in Budweiser is part of its flavor profile. Hints, heck more than hints, of butterscotch make British ales taste like British ales.

“Diacetyl is one of the first words you learn (in judging beer),” Salazar said. “We are American brewers. We are paid to hate diacetyl. You know how much British brewers hate us for that?”

When I posted the flavor wheel last week, Jonathan wrote that the majority of the descriptors on the wheel don’t describe particularly pleasant flavors. Yep. And I think figuring out how to keep the good ones in and the bad ones out - sometimes in beer that is going to be shipped across the country and maybe mishandled along the way - is a craft.

During the lengthy discussions of “what is craft beer?” (start here) I’ve seen it suggested that Sierra Nevada Brewing and Stone Brewing were craft but no longer are because they grew into production breweries.

That’s poppycock. Both Sierra Nevada and New Belgium have new state-of-the-art bottling lines that will take your breath away, but we’re back to the early question: Is the Big Foot (or Mothership Wit) in the glass any different because it passed through a technically superior bottling line?

Salazar and her husband, Eric, oversee the New Belgium barrel program. La Foile is essentially hand bottled. That beer is something we expect from a great brewery.

Salazar also administers a quite sophisticated quality analysis program at New Belgium, with 24 tasters sitting on her in-house panels. A couple of months ago at the Craft (my italics) Brewers Conference Matt Gilliland of New Belgium talked about â€œTotal Oxidation: Exposure and Increased Flavor Stability.â€� One measure of success is that after beer changes hands several times over the course a few weeks in the distribution system it is still “true to brand” in the glass.

That’s something else we expect from a great brewery.

"12" GABF Pictures

2008-10-19T22:16:00.002-04:00

Not much to say here, just wanted to post a couple of the pics that I just got from the GABF of my beer, the Pro Am beer list, and the Flossmoor brewers with Charlie Papazian after winning a Silver for their Baltic Porter--Killer Kowalski

What's Brewing for the Weekend

2008-10-17T11:53:00.004-04:00

Bay de Noc Brewers Homebrew Club Meeting
Saturday Oct. 18, 7:00 PM
Hereford & Hops in Escanaba
If you're looking to learn how to homebrew or already know how and just want to participate in our club please feel free to come and join us. There is always great homebrew along with the many great beers that Hereford & Hops has to offer.
baydenocbrewers.org

Fresh Hop Tastival at Hopworks - Saturday Oct 18th
Hopworks will be hosting the second of three fresh hop tastivals on Sat. October 18th, from noon - 9pm. It’s your once-a-year chance to taste what Oregon’s finest brewmasters can do with just-picked Willamette Valley hops. Sample more than 20 fresh hop beers from Oregon’s top craft brewers, large and small. Admission is free; glasses are $5, tasting tokens $1. Our tastival will include our own New York-style, thin-crust pizza, burgers, authentic German fare, dj stylings and 3 of our own fresh hop brews chock full of green, lush and earthy fresh hop flavor. The third and final event will be held at Ninkasi Brewing Co. in Eugene on the 25th. Come and indulge in the glory of the harvest like a true hop fanatic!

2008 People's Real Ale Fest
The 2008 People's Real Ale Fest will take place at Clark's Ale House, 122 West Jefferson Street, Syracuse, NY.
Expect 12 casks to be pouring over the weekend, including rare offerings not normally seen in the area. This event is hosted by Clark's in conjunction with Alex Hall (BA: Imbiber) and Great Lakes Brewing News.
There's no entry fee and you pay by the glass.
Opening hours: Noon to midnight daily.

Festival website:
http://www.gotham-imbiber.com/syracuse.html

2nd Annual Fresh Hop Celebration
2nd Annual Fresh Hop Celebration held at Falling Rock, Saturday, Oct. 18 from Noon - 5 pm.
Come celebrate the fresh Hop harvest with Deschutes Brewery, SKA brewing, Full Sail, Sierra Nevada,Oskar Blues and Great Divide Brewing. Grand Junction's Williams Brothers will be playing this hoppy event featuring this seasons finest Fresh Hop Ales.

Fresh Hop Beer Tasting & Dinner at Deschutes Brewery Mountain Room
Deschutes Brewery will celebrate the hop harvest and bounty of fresh hops available in the Northwest by hosting a special fresh hop beer tasting and dinner at the Deschutes Brewery Mountain Room in Bend, OR. The brewery will be serving seven fresh hop beers: three produced at the Bend public house, another three from the Portland Public House as well as Bond Street Series favorite, Hop Trip.

Each of the beers focuses on bringing out the unique flavor of the hop variety used during brewing. One of the evening's highlights will be a fresh hopped version of the brewery's flagship Mirror Pond Pale Ale.

6:30 p.m. Sat. October 18th, Mountain Room, Deschutes Brewery, 901 S.W. Simpson Ave., Bend; $35 includes dinner,
all beers and gratuity. For reservations or more information or call (541) 385-8606.

The dinner menu for the tasting includes:
Scalloped Sweet Potatoes with Ham (vegetarian friendly version available)
Roasted Fall Vegetables with Fresh Herbs
Braised Beef Short Ribs on Pumpkin Puree
Assorted Breads, Spreads & Crudites
Pumpkin Cheesecake with Wheat Malt Crust drizzled with Fresh Wort Caramel

Kuhnhenn Oktoberfest
Oct. 18 2:00PM - 11:00PM
Our own Oktoberfest party.
Releases of seasonal beers.
Food. Smoked pork shank (Eisbein), Bratwurst,Weisswurst, Knockwurst Beef Brisket, Potato Salad, Red Cabbage, Sauerkraut, Apple dumplings.

Belgian Golden Ale...Adulterated

2008-10-17T01:01:00.005-04:00

I'm trying my first sample of the Golden Ale that I brewed on Sunday and I am very excited for this one to be done. I really like the way my recipe and mash process looks like on paper and this sample, even though it is still not 100% attenuated, tastes amazing. I am so glad that I talked myself into the late hop addition. I added 1oz. of Ahtanum hops right at knock out and they came through very nicely. All I wanted was some nice sort of citrus (but not a ton of grapefruit)to go along with my coriander and grains of paradise that I added at 2min left in the boil. I'll post my recipe below.

Sexy Time Blonde Ale
Grain Bill:
11.75 lbs Belgian Pilsner (Castle)
.31 lbs Melanoidin
1.00 lbs Sugar -- (half lb of turbinado and a half lb or cane)
.30 lbs Vanilla Sugar (I keep about a pint sized jar full of cane sugar and a few used vanilla bean pods to make vanilla flavored sugar)

Hops
1 oz Sterling @ 60 min (21.7 IBUs)
.5 oz E. Kent Golding @ 60 min (9.8 IBUs)
1 oz Ahtanum @ 0 min (0 IBUs)

I also added .5 tsp of Grains of Paradise @ 2 min
and 1 tsp. Coriander @ 2 min.

Note:When I added my sugar I added the 1 lb of Turbinado/Cane sugar at 15 left and I added the .30 lbs of vanilla sugar with like 2 min left so I wouldn't boil off any of the subtle vanilla notes.

Francoise de Harenne at the Hop Leaf & Map Room

2008-10-15T12:09:00.002-04:00

Francoise de Harenne from Orval will be at the Hop Leaf on Monday Oct 20th
from 7-9 and The Map Room Tuesday the 21st from 5-7. Francoise is the business administrator at the abbey. This would be a great experience for anyone who is into great Belgian beer such as Orval and the like.

Orval was formulated in 1931 with the help of a German brewer, but it’s a golden colored ale with a lively, rising head of white foam, 6.2 percent alcohol by volume and a unique aroma of ripe pears and spicy hops.

What’s unusual is the way it’s bottled. A bit of priming sugar and two yeasts are added to each bottle. One is a special ale yeast, the other is a strain of wild yeast.

Test Run....Going LIVE with a Belgian Golden Ale

2008-10-12T14:43:00.000-04:00

Check it out at the bottom of the page.

2008 GABF Winners Announced

2008-10-11T23:46:00.003-04:00

Well the GABF has come and gone and the results are in. My Belgian Golden Strong Ale that was entered in the Pro/Am category didn't win but Flossmoor Stations Baltic Porter, "Killer Kowalski" took a Silver. Congrats to the guys at Flossmoor. I thought it was great that you could watch the awards ceremony live via the Brewing Network's live stream on justintv.com. Those guys did a great job bringing the GABF to those like myself who could not attend. Thanks guys.

RESULTS ARE IN!

De Struise Brewing With Allagash

2008-10-10T02:20:00.003-04:00

What started out as a crazy idea of brewing with Allagash during the week of the Belgian Beer Festival at the Ebenezer's became a first: the collaboration for Allagash and De Struise breweries to brew together. Urbain, Carlo, Phil, Peter and I got up way too early to make it down to Portland to brew with Jason Perkins, Allagash's Brewmaster. Upon arriving at 8:00 am, we got a brief tour of the brewing system, were Jason and Urbain started to strategize the brewing of Fedeltá. This brew is a recipe that has been brewed at the Struise’s farm. With help from Jason, they were able to scale the brew for Allagash’s 30 barrel system. Since it was a quiet Friday morning on Labor Day weekend, we had most of the brewhouse to ourselves.

To read more and to see the rest of the amazing pictures from this brew day go to Sean Paxton's website: Homebrewchef.com

Watch the GABF LIVE with the Brewing Network.

2008-10-09T18:39:00.001-04:00

LIVE GABF COVERAGE

Starts tonight, check it out.

Slimey and Yucky....just the way I like my pellicle

2008-10-08T02:28:00.003-04:00

Here's those pellicle pics I promised you. How could something that looks so gross aid in the production of something that tastes so good you ask...well that gross yucky stuff actually protects the beer from O2 during the aging process. I've become kind of fascinated with watching the production of these pellicles. They seem to start to form in a fractal-like manner before they grow into a chaotic, protective mess that looks very unappealing unless you know how it is helping the beer along. I love my pellicles like Cher loved Eric Stoltz in the 1985 movie Mask.

New Features and Look

2008-10-07T23:19:00.002-04:00

Well I'm sure you noticed the site looks a little different. I've added a few features. You're probably listening to one of the many beer related tunes I've put into the playlist on your right. If you know of a song you think should be added, leave me a comment. I'm going to have different playlists that I'll rotate in and out. I've also added a "All Things Homebrewing" window way at the bottom of the page that you can click on and watch LIVE video of whatever I decide to put on there whether it be a brewing demonstration of some sort or just a beer review from time to time. I'm open to ideas there. I just have it there primarily as an option for the time being. I will be trying to come up with something to air live there on hopefully a regular basis. You will also be able to air old clips there too, not just when I'm going to be "live".

2008-10-07T02:16:00.000-04:00

These are just a few pics of the beers I have going right now. I'll post some cool pellicle pics soon if you are into gross slimy things like I am.

(Counter Clockwise starting with the skull t-shirt)
Sour peach beer, Cherry Flanders Red, La Folie Clone, Standard Cider

Maple Cream Stout

Raspberry Ryeson (Rye Saison)

Sour Peach Beer on the fruit

Judge rules against Michigan over wine shipments

2008-10-03T19:45:00.000-04:00

LANSING — Barring a successful state appeal, Michigan wine lovers will be able to avoid the middle men and buy straight from out-of-state retailers now that a federal judge has struck down alcohol regulations as unconstitutional.
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The decision released Tuesday by U.S. District Judge Denise Hood in Detroit is a blow to wholesalers that benefit from Michigan’s historic three-tier distribution system.
A similar ruling was issued in Texas earlier this year, and other states are watching to see how the issue is handled by federal appeals courts.“It’s extremely significant for Michigan consumers because now they have access to the full measure of wines available in the United States,” Tom Wark, executive director of the Specialty Wine Retailers Association, said today. “Michigan is notorious for not having a very good selection of wines.”State law prohibits out-of-state wine retailers from shipping direct to in-state consumers — unless the retailers have a location in Michigan and are part of the three-tier structure that includes beverage manufacturers and wholesale distributors.Hood said requiring a business to open a bricks-and-mortar location in Michigan violates the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits states from discriminating against interstate trade.The Michigan Beer and Wine Wholesalers Association called the court decision “disturbing.”“Michigan’s licensed alcohol distribution system ensures accountability, transparency, efficient tax collection and safety — and unfortunately, this ruling puts all these safeguards at risk,” said Mike Lashbrook, the group’s president.Michigan wineries also questioned the ruling, as did school principals who cited concerns about underage drinking. The decision is a win for those who sued the state — Florida-based online retailer Siesta Village Market and two Michigan residents who claimed they could not buy particular wines from in-state retailers.If the ruling stands, Michigan residents could buy from out-of-state online Web sites, wine auction houses and others.The state attorney general’s office, which defended existing alcohol laws, is reviewing the ruling. It expects a stay to be issued so the decision does not take effect while Attorney General Cox considers an appeal, spokesman John Sellek said.In 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down laws in Michigan and New York that allowed wineries to ship directly to in-state consumers but prohibited out-of-state businesses from doing the same thing. The latest ruling affects retailers, not wineries.It may not have as widespread an impact as the 2005 case because that affected the entire country and out-of-state retailers get far fewer licenses than out-of-state wineries, Wark said.Still, another state has lost the argument that the 21st Amendment, which ended Prohibition, gives it wide powers to regulate the sale and distribution of alcoholic drinks. Wark said New York and Illinois are among states that could be affected by the issue.Michigan had argued that hundreds of out-of-state retailers complied with its licensing requirements and opened a location in the state in order to ship directly. State attorneys also had said requiring wine sales to go through the funnel of wholesalers helps prevent tax evasion.The judge faulted the state for not discussing why alternative methods would be unworkable.

Ancestral Ale: Brewing In Colonial America

2008-10-03T19:18:00.001-04:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mAU4bhjCB08

Here is an interesting video on making beer like they did in colonial times.

AHA Rally at Bell's Brewery

2008-09-30T11:49:00.001-04:00

Budweiser American Ale

2008-09-27T00:56:00.005-04:00

I saw that Budweiser's Ale was in the singles cooler tonight while I was stopping off for some beer on my way home from work. I felt obligated to at least try it and not just assume that it is going to suck just because it is an Anheiser-Busch product. After spending over an hour trying to figure out how to put my Ctrl button back on my laptop I popped open the Budweiser American Ale and gave it a go. It pours a crystal clear deep amber color with little head retention. It claims that it is brewed with Cascade hops but I wonder how much and when in the boil. I don't pick up that Cascade aroma at all. I get more of a perfumey herbal-type hop aroma and very little. It tastes like mostly pilsner malt bill with some mid-range to darker crystal malt. Leaves a little bit of caramel/toffee notes on the finish. The mouthfeel is pretty lacking, similar to a regular budweiser. Drinkability is pretty good of you like the flavor of it. I don't care so much for how it tastes so I probably won't ever buy it again but if I had a bunch of it lying around I could probably drink alot of these. No suprise. I guess it is a good stepping stone beer for a lot of the light lager drinkers who want to venture into the world of ales. I like the packaging and it even has a pry-off cap!

My gripe is that the label reads:
GENUINE
Budweiser American Ale defines a new style of ale--The American Ale--created by Anheiser-Busch brewmasters to deliver robust ale taste that's full bodied, but not too heavy nor too bitter.

Apparently they just defined American Ale. I would not use "Robust" or "Full-bodied" as descriptors for this beer what so ever. I would describe this beer as carefully crafted in the same manner in which you choose what album to play when your grandparents are visiting.

Sometimes My Job Can Suck

2008-09-26T20:13:00.002-04:00

Here's the scoop. We have a new show at the station that I work at and it requires a person to sit at the news desk and run the prompter for the first part of the show because the Anchor who normally runs their own prompter is standing in front of a television screen away from the desk. When you run the teleprompter you have to look right into one of our cameras and read the prompter off of the screen. Well, I was running the prompter and looking into the camera and low and behold the director punched me up in the big TV behind the Anchor while he was talking about a murder suspect. Lucky me. Right before she put me in the monitor whe said "wouldn't it be funny if I accidentally punched up Brian in the monitor" and oi la, there I was.

I would just like to state one last time, I AM NOT A MURDERER

No Cider Mills in the U.P.

2008-09-26T18:44:00.002-04:00

Are there really NO Cider mills in the Upper Peninsula? WTF Man! If there is and I'm just overlooking it, please let me know. Hell, we should buy some land and order some trees from a nursery somewhere. Downstate is saturated with Apple orchards. Looking at the USDA Michigan Hardiness Zone Map it totally seems like this is a good place to have a few Mills. What gives? I notice that the majority of Downstate falls into zone 5 while the majority of the Upper Peninsula falls under zone 4 but one would think that zone 4 varieties would work well in certain microclimates in zone 5 and vice versa. There has to be a logical reason that there aren't any. Any ideas? I guessed I'm just mad that we don't have all of the options that our lower half does when it comes to picking up cider. I just did my first batch by the way. I'm trying to find some more cider up here that is good enough to do another batch with but I haven't found anything special yet. Anyone know where I might be able to find so good stuff?

2008-09-26T09:58:00.003-04:00

Old Yeast, New Recipe | Video: Discovery Tech

Sept. 23, 2008 -- Trapped inside a Lebanese weevil covered in ancient Burmese amber, a tiny colony of bacteria and yeast has lain dormant for up to 45 million years. A decade ago Raul Cano, now a scientist at the California Polytechnic State University, drilled a tiny hole into the amber and extracted more than 2,000 different kinds of microscopic creatures.

Activating the ancient yeast, Cano now brews barrels (not bottles) of pale ale and German wheat beer through the Fossil Fuels Brewing Company.

"You can always buy brewing yeast, and your product will be based on the brewmaster's recipes," said Cano. "Our yeast has a double angle: We have yeast no one else has and our own beer recipes."

The beer has received good reviews at the Russian River Beer Festival and from other reviewers. The Oakland Tribune beer critic, William Brand, says the beer has "a wierd spiciness at the finish," and The Washington Post said the beer was "smooth and spicy."

Part of that taste comes from the yeast's unique metabolism. "The ancient yeast is restricted to a narrow band of carbohydrates, unlike more modern yeasts, which can consume just about any kind of sugar," said Cano.

Eventually the yeast will likely evolve the ability to eat other sugars, which could change the taste of the beer. Cano plans to keep a batch of the original yeast to keep the beer true to form.

If this has a ring of deju-vu, it could be because Cano's amber-drilling technique is the same one popularized in the movie Jurassic Park, where scientists extracted ancient dinosaur DNA from the bellies of blood-sucking insects trapped in fossilized tree sap.

Cano's original goal was to find ancient microscopic creatures that might have some kind of medical value, particularly pharmaceutical drugs.

While that particular avenue of research didn't yield significant results, the larger question of how microscopic creatures survived for millions of years could help scientists understand certain diseases, said Charles Greenblatt, a scientist at Hebrew University in Jerusalem who studies ancient bacteria.

"We've got cases of guys who contracted [tuberculosis] during World War II and lived with it for 60, 70 years," said Greenblatt. "Then suddenly they get another disease, the TB wakes up from its dormancy and kills them."

Inducing dormancy could be a new way to fight disease and infection, said Greenblatt. Instead of outright killing infectious creatures, doctors could instead put them to sleep. The infection would still be present in the patient's body, but it wouldn't hurt the patient.

Neither Cano nor Greenblatt can say what the upper limit for hibernating yeast or bacteria is; it could be hundreds of million years. But while other scientists work on that, Cano plans to spend his time tossing back a few cold ones, and hoping others will too.

"We think that people will drink one beer out of curiosity," said Cano. "But if the beer doesn't taste good no one will drink a second."

Related Links:

Fossil Fuels Brewing Company

How Stuff Works: Beer

Next »21 « Previous

Beer Examiner: Great Beers of Belgium, 6th edition by the late Michael Jackson. - Just released in the U.S.

2008-09-25T16:47:00.001-04:00

Beer Examiner: Great Beers of Belgium, 6th edition by the late Michael Jackson. - Just released in the U.S.

Posted using ShareThis

Porter...This Is Your Life

2008-09-25T00:54:00.006-04:00

Oh Porter, let me count the ways. As a style I give you a 10. The BJCP went as so far to give you a 12. (Categories 12A, 12B, & 12C that is) I'm going to start doing little write ups on things that I find interesting about each beer style. I am going to keep them in order with my homebrew clubs "Style Night" meetings. Our first club "Style Night" is going to be Porter so I am doing what my wise cousin does when she wants to solidify information in the ol' noggin. Write it down, and then write it down even neater and OCD-like, and then high-lite the ever-so-important parts. Well, actually I'm just going to do some research, take some sloppy notes, then blog it out here. First off, let me state that if you are a homebrewer and you are looking for a book that will truly make you a better homebrewer, I highly recommend picking up "Designing Great Beer" by Ray Daniels. I went nuts on Amazon a while back and I bought every book that was respectable by the homebrew community and when I received my box in the mail full of beer know-how I was so excited until I opened this book and I realized, I don't know shit about beer. I thought I was going to sit down and just read through this book front to back and oi la, brewmaster. Not the case. Instead I would just pull this book out from time to time and go to the index and see what it had to say about certain beer styles. Well now this book is probably my favorite book to read that gets me ready to brew. It really breaks down beer styles so you understand where/how they came about, how do other people brew them successfully, what do you need to do to get your beer NHC worthy. I'm going to be using this book for all of my clubs style nights to get more familiar with some of the historical aspects of particular styles as well as how the styles have evolved into today's commercial and homebrewed examples.

Some interesting things about Porter:

"Porter was truly the first "industrial" beer. Rather than being a natural product of the brewing ingredients, it was "engineered" to meet specific consumer needs. (quote from "Designing Great Beers" by Ray Daniels)
Multiple accounts agree that the year 1722 was the first year that Porter was brewed. George Harwood of Shoreditch Brewery is credited with first brewing Porter by some but it is more likely that multiple brewers started brewing it in the same year.
Porter came about by patrons requesting the publicans for a blend of different beers. Usually a Mild (young) beer and stale beer mixed or any but not limited to the following combinations. Ale, mild beer, and stale blended. /Half-and half (half ale and half two pennys), /Three threads (Ale, beer, and two pennys),/ Mixture of two brown beers, one stale, one mild. /Three threads pale ale, new brown ale, and stale brown ale./ Four threads and six threads (constituents not given).
The Labouring people, Porters, etc. experienced its wholesomeness and utility, they assumed to themselves the use thereof, from whence it was called Porter or Entire Butt.
Original Porter was made exclusively with Brown malt which was kilned over an open fire so one could imagine that there was probably an underlying smokey flavor to these beers. Brown malt was sometimes referred to as "Porter malt".
Once Porter was established as a style in the 18th century there was a higher demand for it which lead to breweries building large vats for storage and aging of the beer. These vessels where so big that you could hold a dinner dance accommodating 200 people inside of them. (for real, they used to have dinner dances in these motha's)
October 16, 1822: a vat of Porter ruptured, releasing a jet of porter that first wiped out an adjacent tank and then ravaged the surrounding neighborhood in a five-block radius. At least eight people (including women and children were killed immediately, and a dozen others succumbed to injuries or were crushed by the crowds seeking to consume the fine Porter that was running in the streets.
Once industrialized, Porter was blended with 1/3 volume of stale porter that was always kept on hand to help bring young porter forward in flavor.
Taxation put economic pressure on brewers to reduce the amount of malt in their beers. This had an affect on the color of the beer so brewers would used burnt amounts of sugar or molasses to compensate.
Brewers looked to find other ingredients to use in their beer that would have a stimulating or narcotizing effect that would give the consumer the impression of alcoholic potency. Some of these ingredients that were use are: Cocculus indicus (violent poison that was used to stupefy fish), Opium, Indian Hemp, Strychnine, tobacco, darnel seed, logwood, and salts of zinc, lead, and alum.
Less than 100 years after the birth of Porter, brown malt had already lost its place as the styles predominant grain.

I obtained this information from "Designing Great Beer" by Ray Daniels.

What does the BJCP say about Porter?

12A. Brown Porter

Aroma: Malt aroma with mild roastiness should be evident, and may have a chocolaty quality. May also show some non-roasted malt character in support (caramelly, grainy, bready, nutty, toffee-like and/or sweet). English hop aroma moderate to none. Fruity esters moderate to none. Diacetyl low to none.

Appearance: Light brown to dark brown in color, often with ruby highlights when held up to light. Good clarity, although may approach being opaque. Moderate off-white to light tan head with good to fair retention.

Flavor: Malt flavor includes a mild to moderate roastiness (frequently with a chocolate character) and often a significant caramel, nutty, and/or toffee character. May have other secondary flavors such as coffee, licorice, biscuits or toast in support. Should not have a significant black malt character (acrid, burnt, or harsh roasted flavors), although small amounts may contribute a bitter chocolate complexity. English hop flavor moderate to none. Medium-low to medium hop bitterness will vary the balance from slightly malty to slightly bitter. Usually fairly well attenuated, although somewhat sweet versions exist. Diacetyl should be moderately low to none. Moderate to low fruity esters.

Mouthfeel: Medium-light to medium body. Moderately low to moderately high carbonation.

Overall Impression: A fairly substantial English dark ale with restrained roasty characteristics.

Comments: Differs from a robust porter in that it usually has softer, sweeter and more caramelly flavors, lower gravities, and usually less alcohol. More substance and roast than a brown ale. Higher in gravity than a dark mild. Some versions are fermented with lager yeast. Balance tends toward malt more than hops. Usually has an “English” character. Historical versions with Brettanomyces, sourness, or smokiness should be entered in the Specialty Beer category (23).

History: Originating in England, porter evolved from a blend of beers or gyles known as “Entire.” A precursor to stout. Said to have been favored by porters and other physical laborers.

Ingredients: English ingredients are most common. May contain several malts, including chocolate and/or other dark roasted malts and caramel-type malts. Historical versions would use a significant amount of brown malt. Usually does not contain large amounts of black patent malt or roasted barley. English hops are most common, but are usually subdued. London or Dublin-type water (moderate carbonate hardness) is traditional. English or Irish ale yeast, or occasionally lager yeast, is used. May contain a moderate amount of adjuncts (sugars, maize, molasses, treacle, etc.).

Vital Statistics:	OG: 1.040 – 1.052
IBUs: 18 – 35	FG: 1.008 – 1.014
SRM: 20 – 30	ABV: 4 – 5.4%

Commercial Examples: Fuller's London Porter, Samuel Smith Taddy Porter, Burton Bridge Burton Porter, RCH Old Slug Porter, Nethergate Old Growler Porter, Hambleton Nightmare Porter, Harvey’s Tom Paine Original Old Porter, Salopian Entire Butt English Porter, St. Peters Old-Style Porter, Shepherd Neame Original Porter, Flag Porter, Wasatch Polygamy Porter

12B. Robust Porter

Aroma: Roasty aroma (often with a lightly burnt, black malt character) should be noticeable and may be moderately strong. Optionally may also show some additional malt character in support (grainy, bready, toffee-like, caramelly, chocolate, coffee, rich, and/or sweet). Hop aroma low to high (US or UK varieties). Some American versions may be dry-hopped. Fruity esters are moderate to none. Diacetyl low to none.

Appearance: Medium brown to very dark brown, often with ruby- or garnet-like highlights. Can approach black in color. Clarity may be difficult to discern in such a dark beer, but when not opaque will be clear (particularly when held up to the light). Full, tan-colored head with moderately good head retention.

Flavor: Moderately strong malt flavor usually features a lightly burnt, black malt character (and sometimes chocolate and/or coffee flavors) with a bit of roasty dryness in the finish. Overall flavor may finish from dry to medium-sweet, depending on grist composition, hop bittering level, and attenuation. May have a sharp character from dark roasted grains, although should not be overly acrid, burnt or harsh. Medium to high bitterness, which can be accentuated by the roasted malt. Hop flavor can vary from low to moderately high (US or UK varieties, typically), and balances the roasted malt flavors. Diacetyl low to none. Fruity esters moderate to none.

Mouthfeel: Medium to medium-full body. Moderately low to moderately high carbonation. Stronger versions may have a slight alcohol warmth. May have a slight astringency from roasted grains, although this character should not be strong.

Overall Impression: A substantial, malty dark ale with a complex and flavorful roasty character.

Comments: Although a rather broad style open to brewer interpretation, it may be distinguished from Stout as lacking a strong roasted barley character. It differs from a brown porter in that a black patent or roasted grain character is usually present, and it can be stronger in alcohol. Roast intensity and malt flavors can also vary significantly. May or may not have a strong hop character, and may or may not have significant fermentation by-products; thus may seem to have an “American” or “English” character.

History: Stronger, hoppier and/or roastier version of porter designed as either a historical throwback or an American interpretation of the style. Traditional versions will have a more subtle hop character (often English), while modern versions may be considerably more aggressive. Both types are equally valid.

Ingredients: May contain several malts, prominently dark roasted malts and grains, which often include black patent malt (chocolate malt and/or roasted barley may also be used in some versions). Hops are used for bittering, flavor and/or aroma, and are frequently UK or US varieties. Water with moderate to high carbonate hardness is typical. Ale yeast can either be clean US versions or characterful English varieties.

Vital Statistics:	OG: 1.048 – 1.065
IBUs: 25 – 50	FG: 1.012 – 1.016
SRM: 22 – 35	ABV: 4.8 – 6.5%

Commercial Examples: Great Lakes Edmund Fitzgerald Porter, Meantime London Porter, Anchor Porter, Smuttynose Robust Porter, Sierra Nevada Porter, Deschutes Black Butte Porter, Boulevard Bully! Porter, Rogue Mocha Porter, Avery New World Porter, Bell’s Porter, Great Divide Saint Bridget’s Porter

12C. Baltic Porter

Aroma: Rich malty sweetness often containing caramel, toffee, nutty to deep toast, and/or licorice notes. Complex alcohol and ester profile of moderate strength, and reminiscent of plums, prunes, raisins, cherries or currants, occasionally with a vinous Port-like quality. Some darker malt character that is deep chocolate, coffee or molasses but never burnt. No hops. No sourness. Very smooth.

Appearance: Dark reddish copper to opaque dark brown (not black). Thick, persistent tan-colored head. Clear, although darker versions can be opaque.

Flavor: As with aroma, has a rich malty sweetness with a complex blend of deep malt, dried fruit esters, and alcohol. Has a prominent yet smooth schwarzbier-like roasted flavor that stops short of burnt. Mouth-filling and very smooth. Clean lager character; no diacetyl. Starts sweet but darker malt flavors quickly dominates and persists through finish. Just a touch dry with a hint of roast coffee or licorice in the finish. Malt can have a caramel, toffee, nutty, molasses and/or licorice complexity. Light hints of black currant and dark fruits. Medium-low to medium bitterness from malt and hops, just to provide balance. Hop flavor from slightly spicy hops (Lublin or Saaz types) ranges from none to medium-low.

Mouthfeel: Generally quite full-bodied and smooth, with a well-aged alcohol warmth (although the rarer lower gravity Carnegie-style versions will have a medium body and less warmth). Medium to medium-high carbonation, making it seem even more mouth-filling. Not heavy on the tongue due to carbonation level. Most versions are in the 7-8.5% ABV range.

Overall Impression: A Baltic Porter often has the malt flavors reminiscent of an English brown porter and the restrained roast of a schwarzbier, but with a higher OG and alcohol content than either. Very complex, with multi-layered flavors.

Comments: May also be described as an Imperial Porter, although heavily roasted or hopped versions should be entered as either Imperial Stouts (13F) or Specialty Beers (23).

History: Traditional beer from countries bordering the Baltic Sea. Derived from English porters but influenced by Russian Imperial Stouts.

Ingredients: Generally lager yeast (cold fermented if using ale yeast). Debittered chocolate or black malt. Munich or Vienna base malt. Continental hops. May contain crystal malts and/or adjuncts. Brown or amber malt common in historical recipes.

Vital Statistics:	OG: 1.060 – 1.090
IBUs: 20 – 40	FG: 1.016 – 1.024
SRM: 17 – 30	ABV: 5.5 – 9.5%

Commercial Examples: Sinebrychoff Porter (Finland), Okocim Porter (Poland), Zywiec Porter (Poland), Baltika #6 Porter (Russia), Carnegie Stark Porter (Sweden), Aldaris Porteris (Latvia), Utenos Porter (Lithuania), Stepan Razin Porter (Russia), Nøgne ø porter (Norway), Neuzeller Kloster-Bräu Neuzeller Porter (Germany), Southampton Imperial Baltic Porter

E300 in Czech Beer

2008-09-24T11:34:00.001-04:00

http://www.praguemonitor.com

There have been a couple of comments about the widespread use of E300 in Czech beer, both here (in a comment from Max Bahnson on the post about Czech beer as a protected name) and from David over at Beer Oh Beer (where Max again casts his vote against it). Nothing more than ascorbic acid, also known as vitamin C, E300 is added as a preservative as well as to prevent the development of haze in beer.

I can understand people might want their favorite beverage to include no food additives whatsoever, but I also appreciate the use of vitamin C in my beer instead of, say, E211, also known as sodium benzoate, a preservative believed to potentially damage mitochondrial DNA, cause premature aging and possibly even cause Parkinson’s disease. (E300 it is!)

In fact, quite a few Czech beer labels show E300 on the back, including some of the very best — the one above is from Herold’s absolutely outstanding Bohemian Black Lager. But how much E300 are brewers allowed to put in your favorite bottle? The answer might surprise you.

Drumroll, please… According to EU regulations, there is no maximum amount of E300 that can be added to a beer. Nor is there any stated limit on any of the following:

E270, lactic acid
E301, sodium ascorbate
E330, citric acid
E414, acacia gum

For all of these E’s, the regulatory principle involved is one of quantum satis, meaning that there is no maximum specified. (The phrase can be parsed as “however much is needed.”) In regulatory terms, that might not be terribly reassuring. But in the case of vitamin C, it’s hard to imagine that even a high dosage would be anything other than beneficial.

Here’s a link for a PDF of Directive 95/2/EC, which regulated the amounts of food additives other than colors and sweeteners in the European Union.

Here’s a link for a PDF of Directive 2003/114/EC, which amends Directive 95/2/EC.

If you search through the documents, you’ll find that EU regulations also allow:

100 milligrams per liter of E405, propane-1, 2-diol alginate (propylene glycol alginate) in beer
1 gram per liter of E1520, propan-1, 2-diol (propylene glycol) in all beverages
200 milligrams per liter of E210 (benzoic acid), E211 (sodium benzoate), E212 (potassium benzoate) and E213 (calcium benzoate) in kegged alcohol-free beer

In addition, there are many weird E-numbers that are allowed to appear in all foodstuffs, not just beer. Go on, read it, but don’t open the file if you’re about to eat. It’s sure to put you off your lunch.

So if vitamin C is all we’re up against, I think I’m okay with it. I haven’t heard if ascorbic acid can affect the taste of beer, but I would imagine that it might contribute to the slight citric finish in some Czech brews, especially Czech dark lagers, which are hopped at much lower rates than Pilsner-style beers, and thus might need another natural preservative like ascorbic acid to stay good longer.

Here’s my final thought: vitamin C is an essential nutrient for life on earth. Many organisms synthesize it internally, though humans, of course, do not. It helps our bodies to neutralize free radicals. It helps protect our cells from oxidative stress. It helps our bodies absorb iron from food and is believed to reduce the risk of stroke. But more importantly: if a beer with a bit of added vitamin C can taste as good as Herold’s Bohemian Black Lager, how could it possibly be bad?

My Favorite Time of the Year

2008-09-22T23:03:00.005-04:00

Well, it's my favorite time of the year again. The temperature is starting to drop a little bit, the sun is starting to set a little earlier, and the leaves are starting to change. As soon as I get the spirit of Autumn running through me I start to crave things like homemade apple cinnamon bread, pumpkin pie, maple syrup, apple cider.....and as of lately hard cider.

As a homebrewer and someone who loves the fall, I thought it was kind of rediculous that I have never made an attempt at making hard cider. I've really enjoyed every example I've ever tried but I just never thought to give it a go. Do you see where this is going? Well I just got home from downstate because I had a wedding to go to this weekend so while we were down there we decided to go check out a cider mill. My family and I stayed in Howell, Michigan which is sort of in between Lansing and Ann Arbor. I'ts a beautiful area and we really had a lot of fun down there. We went to visit the Historic Parshallville Grist Mill near Fenton. It is a great place to bring your family. Well I picked up 5 gallons of their cider to use in my hard cider that I plan on doing in the next day or two. I'll post something on that later. I just wanted to let everyone know about this place and post some of my pics (Below)

Biere Bella is off to the GABF

2008-09-13T12:11:00.003-04:00

The GABF is coming up in October and my Biere Bella that Matt Van Wyk and I brewed this summer at Flossmoor Station Brewery is on its way to Colorado to be entered in the Pro Am competition. Keep your fingers crossed for us in hopes that we take home a medal.

2008-09-12T23:06:00.004-04:00

Are you ready for the first ever Podcast-based homebrew competition? Well, you know the Brew Bubbas are a little “different.” So why shouldn’t their Homebrew Contest be “different”? Here’s what we’re looking for:

All beers must have a starting gravity of at least 1.070. If you’re brewing “to style,” you have 24 categories to focus on:

Maibock/Helles bock, Traditional Bock, Eisbock, Dopplebock, Strong Scotch Ale, Baltic Porter, Foreign Extra Stout, American Stout, Russian Imperial Stout, Imperial IPA, American IPA, India Pale Ale, Weizenbock, Biere de Garde, Flanders Brown Ale, Belgian Strong Ale, Belgian Dubbel, Belgian Tripel, Belgian Golden Stong Ale, Belgian Dark Strong Ale, Old Ale, English Barley Wine, American Barley Wine, Anything in category 23: "Specialty Beer". This can include imperial anything! Your Choice!

We strongly recommend that you review the style guidelines for these big beers if you’re not sure what we’re looking for. Please go to the BJCP Guidelines for additional clarification. Pick your favorite and get brewing!

These big beers need time to mature. That’s why we’re announcing the contest now and starting the judging in August! The contest will run for six months straight: August 2008 - January 2009. The first place beers from each month will go head-to-head to determine the Best of Show!

All beers will be judged by BJCP Certified Judges and score sheets will be sent for each beer entered.

PRIZES?
The beers that place 1st, 2nd & 3rd each month will be awarded a medal and a gift.
Each first place winner will receive:
•The latest brewing software from Beer Smith.
•Four ounces of hops, courtesy of Hop Union

BEST OF SHOW??? How’s this sound to you?
•8 Gallon Conical from Hobby Beverage
•$100 Gift Certificate from Northern Brewer (They are also offering a $50.00 Gift Certificate for 2nd place and a $25.00 Gift Certificate for 3rd Place)
•$50.00 Gift Certificate from Cap N Cork
•$50.00 Gift Certificate from Hopman’s
•The Beer Gun, from Blichmann Engineering
•5 gallon Ice Blanket & Insulated Sleeve from KEGlove
•Something from Hop Union (details to follow)
•Autographed copy of Brewing Classic Styles signed by Jamil Zainasheff and John Palmer
•Heavy-Duty Hoodie compliments of White Labs (2 place will receive a White Labs ball cap, 3rd - 5th place to receive White Labs yeast coupons

PLUS:
•The winning beer will be brewed at Kuhnhenn’s Brewery and put on tap at the pub
•The winner will also receive five gallons of this beer for themselves
•The winner will be allowed to brew this beer with the brewers themselves
•The winner will receive a $300 travel voucher if he (or she) doesn’t live within driving distance to Kuhnhen’s

There will be more details (and prizes) to be announced shortly, but since we’ve already mentioned some of the details on Episode 40, we figured we better start sharing what we know at this point.

Entry forms and contest rules are posted above. Just click to download either a Word doc or in PDF format.

What are you waiting for??? GET BREWING!!!

August Results:

1st Place: John McKissack’s Strong Ale with 41-point average (Vidor, TX)
2nd Place: Mike Krawszak’s Weizenbock with 34.5-point average (Royal Oak, MI)
3rd Place: Joe Vrabel’s Imperial ESB with 32.5-point average (Warren, MI)

Brewing better beer: Scientists determine the genomic origins of lager yeasts

2008-09-11T20:23:00.001-04:00

Public release date: 10-Sep-2008[
Print Article E-mail Article
Close Window ]Contact: Peggy Calicchiacalicchi@cshl.edu516-422-4012Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
Brewing better beer: Scientists determine the genomic origins of lager yeasts
Yeast, the essential microorganism for fermentation in the brewing of beer, converts carbohydrates into alcohol and other products that influence appearance, aroma, and taste. In a study published online today in Genome Research (www.genome.org), researchers have identified the genomic origins of the lager yeast Saccharomyces pastorianus, which could help brewers to better control the brewing process.
For thousands of years, ale-type beers have been brewed with Saccharomyces cerevisiae (brewer's or baker's yeast). In contrast, lager beer, which utilizes fermentations carried out at much lower temperature than for ale, is a more recently developed alcoholic beverage, appearing in Bavaria near the end of the Middle Ages. Lager beer gained worldwide popularity starting in the late 1800s, when the advent of refrigeration made year-round low-temperature fermentations possible. Saccharomyces pastorianus, the yeast used in lager brewing, is a "hybrid" organism of two yeast species, Saccharomyces bayanus and S. cerevisiae. It is thought that the contributions of both parent species resulted in an organism able to out-compete other yeasts during the cold lager fermentations.
Though early brewers understood that different brewing conditions would produce a unique beer, scientists are now unlocking the genetic differences between yeast strains that produce variation in flavor, color, and aroma. By comparing the genomic properties of yeast strains sampled from breweries around the world, Drs. Barbara Dunn and Gavin Sherlock of Stanford University have measured the genetic contribution of the parent yeasts to strains of S. pastorianus and revealed new insights into the events that brought about the evolution of lager yeast.
Surprisingly, the researchers found evidence that S. pastorianus strains used by brewers today may not have arisen from a single hybridization event, as was previously believed. "There were two independent origins of today's extant S. pastorianus strains," said Sherlock. "It is likely that each of these groups derived the S. cerevisiae portions of their genomes from distinct but related ale yeasts, and that these natural hybrids were then selected by brewers due to their abilities to ferment at cold temperatures."
While this work identified two distinct groups of S. pastorianus, Sherlock noted that they observed significant genetic variation and flexibility within the groups as well. Dunn and Sherlock speculated this genomic flexibility could have implications for the unique properties of each brewer's beer. "The fact that lager yeasts isolated from different breweries each seem to have a unique genomic make-up may indicate that the yeasts are adapting to the conditions specific to each brewery," explained Dunn.
Furthermore, this work paves the way for the characterization of specific genetic features of each strain that could aid in the brewing process. "Our discovery that unique genomic structures may be characteristic to each brewery and/or beer type could lead to insights on how to directly control flavor and aroma in beer," said Dunn.
###
Scientists from Stanford University (Stanford, CA) contributed to this study.
This work was supported by the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health.
Media contacts:
Gavin Sherlock, Ph.D. (sherlock@genome.stanford.edu; +1-650-498-6012) has agreed to be contacted for more information.
Interested reporters may obtain copies of the manuscript from Peggy Calicchia, Editorial Secretary, Genome Research (calicchi@cshl.edu; +1-516-422-4012).
About the article:
The manuscript will be published online ahead of print on September 11, 2008. Its full citation is as follows: Dunn, B., and Sherlock, G. Reconstruction of the genome origins and evolution of the hybrid lager yeast Saccharomyces pastorianus. Genome Res. doi:10.1101/gr.076075.108.
About Genome Research:
Genome Research (www.genome.org) is an international, continuously published, peer-reviewed journal published by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press. Launched in 1995, it is one of the five most highly cited primary research journals in genetics and genomics.
About Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press:
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press is an internationally renowned publisher of books, journals, and electronic media, located on Long Island, New York. It is a division of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, an innovator in life science research and the education of scientists, students, and the public. For more information, visit www.cshlpress.com.
Genome Research issues press releases to highlight significant research studies that are published in the journal.

Making beer-main types of beer

2008-09-10T22:01:00.001-04:00

A periodic table dividing beer into types ofales and lagers with their differences

Red Haven Peach Berliner Weisse

2008-09-08T00:11:00.002-04:00

Well, I guess I shouldn't call it a Berliner Weisse. I had brewed a Berliner Weisse some time ago and it has completey fermented all the way out and it is still not nearly as sour as I would like it to be. I've been just sitting on it trying to figure out what to do with it. My friend piped in one night with an idea to throw a bunch of fruit on it to give the bugs some more sugar to work on. Sounded like a great idea to me. Well about a week ago me and the family were on the way home from the De Young Family Zoo in Wallace, MI and we drove by a bunch of fruit stands, one of which had a big sign that said "Red Haven Peaches". Me and my wife both looked at each other and said "Go Back". So I turned around and bought a half bushel of peaches for $17.00. A pretty good deal I thought. After I got them home I cleaned them up really good and removed all of the pits. I filled three big freezer bags full of my clean peaches and froze them. I got exactly 5 lbs in each bag and I through away all of the peaches that I thought didn't look that great. I also ate a few of course. Before adding them to my beer I let them though out and then ran them all through a food processor. I then added them to a large stock pot and brought them up to 160F for about a half hour and also added some pectic enzyme. Once they cooled down I racked my beer onto the peaches (10 lbs worth) and I also added a vile of White Labs Brett Bruxellensis that I have been holding onto for a while now. It was just passed expiration so I figured I'd just pitch it in here since there is a host of bugs already at work. It didn't show much activity the first few days but now I am starting to see some action in the air lock and the pellicle has kicked back up quite a bit.

Maple Milk Stout

2008-09-07T23:41:00.004-04:00

Jasper's Pure Maple Syrup

jaspermaple.com My Brewin' Buddy

So in my last post I mentioned I was roasting some brown malt that I was planning on using in a milk stout that I was going to do using maple syrup and roasted pecans. I brewed up my stout this weekend but I did not use the pecans. I'm still going to do a beer with them I think but the main reason I was planning on doing this stout was to grow up enough yeast to make a Russian Imperial Stout and I didn't know if the fats in the pecans would have the same effect on yeast that excessive amounts of hops can have. If you brew a beer with a lot of hops and try to reuse the yeast the results can be less than ideal because the oils can coat the yeast cell walls inhibiting optimal performance. So I brewed my stout without the nuts but I still think it is going to taste great. The though of blending in a touch of Frangelico at bottling has crossed my mind. Not sure if I'll do it. I'll probably try a small sample and see how it tastes. Here is the recipe I used:

Maple Milk Stout (5.5 gal batch)
Grain
4.25 lb Maris Otter
2 lb American Pale
2 lb Brown Malt (see prev post on how)
1 lb Black Patent
1 lb Honey Malt

2 lb Maple Syrup (Jasper's Maple Syrup from da U.P.)
1 lb Lactose

Hops
E.K. Goldings (31 IBUs) 60 min

Mashed at 155-156F for 60 min
Mashed out at 168F

O.G. 1.069
WlP 001 Cal Ale yeast
fermenting at 67-68F

Making Brown Malt

2008-09-03T02:24:00.007-04:00

(click on pic to see it up close and personal)
This picture above is the color when it is done. At least mine was. I read that I should pull it out of the oven when I think it smells right rather then when it looks right. It smelled pretty damn good when I pulled it out.

Untoasted 2-row

Getting Ready To Go In The Oven at 225F

225F for 30 Min to dry it out completely.

Then:
30 Min at 300F
30 Min at 350F
Once you hit 350F make sure you
take the grain out and turn it over every 5-10
min. or so so it doesn't get burned.
This is what I ended up with

I'm sitting at my kitchen table right now drinking a 750ml of Trois Pistoles and enjoying the incredible smell coming from this pumpkin candle my wife bought and the aroma of 2row toasting in my oven at 350 F. I have to say, all of a sudden I am craving autumn and it's rich air and cooler temperatures. I decided to try and make my own brown malt tonight because I am planning on brewing up a stout that is basically going to be a beefed up milk stout with pecans and maple syrup and probably some cinnamon just before bottling. I wanted to use some brown malt in this to add that nice touch of fall. (gotta go turn my grain.....)

Wow, I opened my oven and you'd of thought I was making butterfingers. My whole house smells like a combination of toasted pumpkin seeds, popcorn, butterfinger candy bars, and chocolate. The smell alone is reason enough to toast your own malt. It is starting to turn a nice light brown. I started my toasting it at 225F for 30 minutes just to dry it out completely, the I gave it 30 min at 300F. I've stepped it up to 350F (the temp brown malt was traditionally roasted at albeit over a wood fire and rapidly brought up to temp) and now it is starting to definitely change in color. I've been turning it every 10 min or so now that I am at 350F as not to burn it.

That's what I did to get my brown malt. After reading Randy Mosher's book "Radical Brewing" I saw that he had this chart, which is pretty close to what I did. I just started at lower temps and worked my way up instead of just starting at your desired temp. I must state that I also dry roasted my grains giving it a toastier flavor rather then moistening my grain and then roasting them which would have given it a richer, more caramelized toast.

Min F (C) Color (L) Flavor
20 250 (121) Pale Gold (100) Nutty, not toasty
25 300 (149) Gold (20) Malty, Carmelly, rich, not toasty
30 350 (177) Amber (35) Nutty, Malty, Lightly Toasted
40 375 (191) Deep Amber (65) Nutty, toffee-like, crisp toastiness
30 400 (204) Copper (100) Strong toasted flavor, some nutlike notes
40 400 (204) Deep Copper (125) Roasted, not toasted, like porter or coffee
50 400 (204) Brown (175) Strong Roasted flavor

This Is Great!

2008-09-02T22:55:00.001-04:00

Brew Bubbas Radio

2008-09-01T09:35:00.002-04:00

I had the chance to talk to Craig Belanger from Brew Bubbas Radio about homebrewing and more specifically, Blogging about it a few weeks ago. It is now posted on their website. Check it out.

http://web.mac.com/brewbubbas/iWeb/Site/Brewcast%20Radio/EA956F74-CA66-40A9-8B4B-F3FFBCC39E4D.html

Thanks to Craig & Jerry for having me on. I really enjoyed it.
Brew Bubbas Radio

Michigan State Fair Homebrew Competition Wrap-Up

2008-09-01T09:05:00.004-04:00

Well, the MSF Homebrew Competition has come and gone. There were 721 entries this year which is pretty amazing. Kudos to Phil Kitkowski, Rex Halfpenny, the Judges and everyone else who put helped out to put together such a great competition. Kirk Rowland ran away with BOS and the Rex Halfpenny Award this year. His Dortmonder Export took BOS and I saw his name all over the place in the results. Nice Job Kirk. Jeff Carlson got BOS for his La Peach Ridge Syder for all of the Cider entries. Matthew Goebel got BOS for his Cherry Mead. I was excited to receive two 1st place awards for my Belgian Specialty and Belgian Strong Dark Ale as well as an honorable mention for my Flanders Red Ale. The Brewing Network represented pretty well with four of us placing and Jeremy Drury from the Bay de Noc Brewers also received honorable mention for his Simcoe IPA. Nice job Jeremy, way to represent the U.P.

See all the results here

Deal of the Day

2008-08-27T02:52:00.003-04:00

Morebeer.com has an awesome new feature called "Deal of the Day". For anyone who is trying to acquire pieces of equipment for their setup, I highly recommend checking Morebeer.com on a daily basis and see what they have for their deal of the day. I just realized they have been doing this and it looks like I've already missed out on a bunch of deals that I definitely would have purchased. They had these sweet stainless steel quick disconnects that go for $24.99 for sale for like $4.99. All their deals are super-bargains. You can only buy one of each deal and they post their new ones every night at midnight (in CA) which is 3:00 AM here. So if you are a night owl like me, make sure you stop by their and check it out. I'm about to right now being it is 2:58 in the AM.

Finally, I bought a tap handle for my kegerator

2008-08-27T02:42:00.003-04:00

Well, it's about time that I actually bought a tap handle for my kegerator. I've had it for almost a year and it has yet to see and handle. Not a bad deal on this one. $.99 on eBay. Hell, I'm going to start a collection if I can get sweet tap handles like this Affligem one for less than a buck. No, I didnt just buy it because it looks cool--I actually really like Affligem beers. Who wouldn't?

Another Day, Another Sandwich

2008-08-08T13:52:00.002-04:00

So I know this is a beer blog but I really love food too. And what goes great with a tasty sandwich and pickled egg? Yup, Beer. So beer is tied in. Today I had a PLT Sandwich and a hard boiled egg pickled in a brine that lends a nice tumeric and clove flavor. It isn't a typo, It's a PLT sandwich. Pancheta, Lettuce, and Tomato on homemade bread that is made with roasted garlic, sundried tomatoes, and European Basil. I paired this with my dark saison (or Ryeson since it has a few lbs. of rye in it).

2008-08-07T22:50:00.003-04:00

These are some wild hops that are growing in Marquette. I am going to do a small test batch and use these for my flavor and aroma hops and see what kind of results I get from them. If all goes well there are plenty more where these came from. I also think I am going to cut myself some rhizomes and pland these mothas all over Marquette, Ha, you think I'm kidding.

Good Bye Brett Favre

2008-08-07T00:37:00.002-04:00

I know this is a beer blog but I need to recognize how very sad I am that I am no longer going to be able to watch this guy play football for the green & gold. So I guess you can add "First Quarterback to be featured on a beer blog" to his list of accolades. I wish Favre luck in NY and I hope he kicks our ass when we play them so the Packer organization can see what a dumb thing they did.

You better believe I'm having a homebrew while I write this.

Still a fan,

Brian Richards

Salmon & Green Beans with Sad Girl Saison

2008-08-01T14:36:00.003-04:00

I was looking at a Sandra Lee recipe for beer and salmon and I just so happened to have a salmon fillet that I was needed to cook up today and I also have a Saison on tap so I figured I'd do my own variation of her recipe.

1 Salmon Fillet
2 tsp garlic salt
2 tablespoons organic cane sugar (called for brown sugar)
4 tablespoons butter
a few turns of pepper on the good ol' pepper mill
Just enough onion to lay over the top (red, white, or shallots would be great I'm sure)
Beer of your choice. I used a Belgian Saison that I brewed and I poured about 8 -12 oz of it in the tinfoil tray that I fashioned up. Pour just enough so you submerge the salmon only a little bit. I didn't fully cover the fish.
I baked this at about 350F for about 12 minutes or just until it starts to flake.

I paired this with the Saison that I used in the recipe and a side of green beans and it tasted great. It was actually the best piece of salmon I've had in years.

Undead Sour Red

2008-07-31T02:48:00.002-04:00

I just bottled up my first Flanders Red and I am very excited about the way it is tasting thus far. It has a very nice acetic acid flavor, similar to Rodenbach, but it isn't as sour as the Rodenbach Grand Cru. There is a giant cherry pie flavor to it and this isn't even the batch that I add cherry juice to. I have another carboy of the exact same beer but I added just under 50 oz of Door County cherry juice to it and it enhanced that cherry pie flavor a little bit. Hopefully my La Folie clone will start to sour up sometime soon here. It's been a year and a half but it has a long way to go still.

Want to Make Some Beer!

2008-07-29T20:42:00.006-04:00

The mission of the Bay de Noc Brewers homebrew club is to facilitate the sharing of information about brewing beer at home amongst all club members in order to promote the brewing of high quality beer in our members homes. The distribution of this knowledge will facilitate all club members in becoming more knowledgeable abotu beer and the brewing process assisting them in creating higher quality beer at home. The club itself is therefore founded as a means to facilitate this transfer of knowledge between members and to make this knowledge readily available to anyone interested in learning about our craft.

Our local homebrew club, The Bay de Noc Brewers, is on the web now. So if you are located in the U.P. and are interested in getting involved in the homebrew community go to our website and sign up for our mailing list. You will then be kept in the loop as to the happenings of our club. We get together on a regular basis and we have a lot of fun trying each others beers and usually some very good craft beer as well.
http://baydenocbrewers.org

Americans are Thirsty for Craft Beer

2008-07-29T19:32:00.000-04:00

Dollar Sales Up 11 Percent for First Half of 2008

Boulder, CO • July 28, 2008 – The Brewers Association, the trade association representing the majority of U.S. brewing companies, reports beer sales from American craft brewers¹ (see 2007 Craft Beer Industry Statistics) continue to grow despite a softening economy and challenges with raw materials supply and pricing. Craft beer dollar sales during the first half of 2008 increased 11% compared to this same period in 2007. The Brewers Association attributes this growth to a grassroots movement toward fuller flavored, small batch beers made by independent craft brewers.

According to The Nielsen Company, beer sales are affected the least by the economic downturn, with wine sales showing the most impact. Additionally, craft beer is gaining customers from across all segments of beverage alcohol.

Photo Caption: Thirsty attendees await their fill at the annual
Great American Beer Festival held each year in the Fall.
Download a high resolution version of the image.

"Newer brands by the larger brewers, like Belgian style wheat beers, have huge distribution advantages over beers by independent craft brewers," said Paul Gatza, Director of the Brewers Association. "These brands can grow when the large brewers decide they want them to grow with the ability to impact what brands get shelf space and tap handles. At the same time, beer from craft brewers is being requested by the customer, which encourages distributors and retailers to make the beer available." According to the Brewers Association, 1,420 of the 1,463 U.S. breweries are independent craft brewers.

The Brewers Association reports that in the first half of 2008 volume of beer sold by craft brewers grew by 6.5% totaling an estimated 4 million barrels of beer compared to 3.768 million barrels sold in the first half of 2007. Harry Schuhmacher of Beer Business Daily stated, "Crafts have really taken pricing this year given high input costs, and yet it is still driving volume gains faster than the beer category."

¹ The definition of a craft brewer as stated by the Brewers Association: An American craft brewer is small, independent, and traditional. Small: Annual production of beer less than 2 million barrels. Beer production is attributed to a brewer according to the rules of alternating proprietorships. Flavored malt beverages are not considered beer for purposes of this definition. Independent: Less than 25% of the craft brewery is owned or controlled (or equivalent economic interest) by an alcoholic beverage industry member who is not themselves a craft brewer. Traditional: A brewer who has either an all malt flagship (the beer which represents the greatest volume among that brewers brands) or has at least 50% of its volume in either all malt beers or in beers which use adjuncts to enhance rather than lighten flavor.

###

Based in Boulder, Colorado, USA, the Brewers Association (BA) is the not-for-profit trade and education association for American craft brewers and community of beer enthusiasts. Visit the Web site, www.beertown.org, to learn more. The association’s activities include events and publishing: World Beer Cup®; Great American Beer Festival^sm; Craft Brewers Conference and BrewExpo America®; National Homebrewers Conference; National Homebrew Competition; American Craft Beer Week; Zymurgy magazine; The New Brewer magazine; and books on beer and brewing. The Brewers Association has an additional membership division of 15,000+ homebrewers: American Homebrewers Association.

Michigan Brewers Guild Summer Beer Festival

2008-07-29T02:41:00.004-04:00

Well, if it isn't obvious, the Michigan Brewers Guild Summer Beer Festival in Ypsilanti, MI is a hell of a lot of fun. Riverside Park was full of beer loving, charismatic, fun seeking Michiganders and I even met some folks from surrounding states and even Hawaii. Michigan has one of the best Beer Festivals in the states and if you haven't been there yet, you need to. Those who have been there have more than likely made it an annual trip like myself. 8 hours in a car seems like a short trip when I think back to how much fun I've had there in the past.

My favorite beer that I tried was Jolly Pumpkin's Perseguidor 3. I also like what the Livery had to offer. Their Triple Weizenbock was pretty amazing. Big Rock Chop House had a whole line up of beers that could have kept me happy all day without going to any other tents. They had a Saison and a Fruit Beer called "Cherry Poppin' Danny's Cherry Ale". T'was Awesome!

Summer of Saisons

2008-07-29T02:25:00.002-04:00

I just got done brewing my third Saison for the summer. I'm going to keep it up until the temp starts dropping--or else until my 4 strain saison yeast blend mutates into a monster and eats me. I just brewed a darker than usual saison just to try something different. It came out more of a brown, similar to Jolly Pumpkin's Bam Noire. I'll post the recipe if I feel it is worthy of replicating. I haven't even sampled it yet. I let it start fermenting for a few days and then I through the brew belt on it. A brew belt is just a rubber coated belt that you can plug in and the current warms up the belt thus warming up your fermentation. I can get my wort up to about 85-90F if the ambient temps are around 70F or so. I Just kegged up my second saison and it turned out great. I used the recipe out of Jamil Zanisheff/John Palmer's book -- "Brewing Classic Styles". The only thing I changed was my Saison blend instead of the WLP565 which is probably the most "pain in the ass" strain of yeast to work with ever. I'll post later about how this dark saison turned out.

Miracle Fruit Tricks Taste Buds.

2008-07-17T02:39:00.003-04:00

If I have to explain to you why this article would be of interest to homebrewers then go away.

The miracle fruit, Synsepalum dulcificum, is native to West Africa and has been known to Westerners since the 18th century. The cause of the reaction is a protein called miraculin, which binds with the taste buds and acts as a sweetness inducer when it comes in contact with acids, according to a scientist who has studied the fruit, Linda Bartoshuk at the University of Florida’s Center for Smell and Taste. Dr. Bartoshuk said she did not know of any dangers associated with eating miracle fruit.

Read More Here

2008-07-16T01:39:00.002-04:00

July 18th...has been proposed to be known as International Brewers Day--
a worldwide effort to create a holiday celebrating the contributions to society of the men and women who brew beer. The holiday is set to take place on July 18. On that day, there are several ways that you can participate. But to learn the idea behind this new holiday, why July 18 was chosen, along with the plan to observe it, tips on how to spread the word and even a number of banners, badges and buttons to use in promoting it on the web and/or for your brewer’s post, use the menu either at the left or above here on the buttons directly below the header.

I hope you’ll be convinced to join us in honoring brewers, the men and women who make the beer you love, with a holiday of their own, this and hopefully every July 18th.

Learn More

2008 MSF Homebrew Competition....Do It!

2008-07-16T01:06:00.003-04:00

2008 MICHIGAN STATE FAIR Home Brew Competition
The Michigan State Fair Home Brewing Competition has become one of the
largest and fastest growing competitions anywhere. From 324 entries in fifteen
beer-only categories in 2004, the Michigan State Fair Home Brewing Competition
has grown to 720 entries in all 28 beer, cider and mead categories in 2007,
making it one of the largest competitions anywhere and definitely the largest
single state competition anywhere.
The size and growth of this competition is an indication of the vitality and strength
of the home brewing and craft brewing community here in Michigan. This
competition is an enormous undertaking and would be impossible without the
support of our sponsors, judges, stewards, and volunteers, whose enthusiasm
and hard work are responsible for its success.

Entries accepted: July 21 through August 2
First Round Judging: August 16-17 at Dragonmead Microbrewery in Warren.
BOS and Awards Ceremony: August 30 at 3 pm at the Mi State Fair Community
Arts Building

Want to enter?

2008-07-08T12:32:00.001-04:00

Great New Website from the Brew Bubbas

2008-07-01T21:51:00.003-04:00

Craft Beer Locator is a great new website from the Brew Bubbas. They have spent a lot of time and effort in putting this together and it shows. Check it out.

Sour Beer & Salad

2008-06-19T14:05:00.003-04:00

Today for lunch I made myself a salad of Spinach, Fresh Mozzarella, Peaches, Prosciutto, Mint, and EVOO. I paired this with a light sour beer that I made--"Funky Little Brother" from a previous post. The salad is simple: A handful of spinach, 1 peach peeled and tore up (peeling is optional), 1 piece of prosciutto, tear up enough mint just to give it that refreshing flavor, drizzle EVOO to taste. A light addition of pepper would be nice but I didn't use any. Watercrest would be a great substitute for the spinach and in which case pepper would probably not be needed. This paired really well with my "Funky Little Brother" which is very comparable to a Berliner Weiss. This would be awesome with a Saison. This salad is refreshing in the same manner a Saison is. Perfect lunch for the warm summer weather. Give it a try and report back.

NHC in Cincinatti

2008-06-18T02:31:00.003-04:00

Tomorrow is the first day of the NHC and I am super bummed out that I had to cancel my trip down there. I originally was planning on going down there but being I have so many other obligations this year I am unable to attend. Oh well, there is always 2009. I hope all of you that are going to be attending remember to drink a lot of water along side of your tasty bev's so you don't burn out before the 21st. It sounds like there will be a lot to be learned from the seminars this year as per usual I'm sure. I heard Ron Jeffries from Jolly Pumpkin is going to be speaking on blending with bugs. Have fun all you lucky buggers who are going.

New Label Idea.......Thoughts?

2008-06-16T22:07:00.002-04:00

2008-06-12T00:14:00.003-04:00

I'm sipping on this beer from Flossmoor Station Brewery that Matt Van Wyk gave me to try. He calls it "Sarge". It is a Bourbon barrel aged Imperial Stout brewed with chocolate and espresso. At first sip it was like the "Sarge" hazed me for not being ready.

This beer pours jet black with a head so dark it almost has a purple tint to it. Definitely intriguing. The head doesn't last too long as it settled to a ring around my glass.
The nose is big with bourbon but the espresso and chocolate notes make themselves present as well.

The flavor is amazing. Upfront is the huge bourbon and deep roastiness. I get a great chocolate flavor on the sides of my palate and that leads right into the espresso. Everything about this beer is intense but not overwhelming. There is some alcohol heat that is nice--enhances all of the other flavor like salt would to food.

The mouthfeel is full bodied--coats the mouth nicely leaving a long and enjoyable finish but not cloying at all. Medium carbonation.

I don't think you would want to sit and try to drink more than one of these nor do I think that was the intention for this beer. This is clearly a beer to drink on a frigid snowy day or a cold and rainy day like today is in the U.P. I'd say go and pick this up and try it but I don't think there is any more in existence unless you can shake some out of Matt Van Wyk--head brewer at Flossmoor Station Brewery.

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Now playing: DJ Shadow - Strike 1
via FoxyTunes

Arbor Brewing Company Brews Crews Homebrew Competition

2008-06-11T15:37:00.002-04:00

I just saw the results from the ABC Brews Crews competition and my Belgian Dark Strong Ale got a 2nd place in its category and my De Struise/Paxton Archaic beer got a 1st place in the Belgian Specialty category. The Best of show beer was a Northern English Brown Ale brewed by David Curtis

ABC Brews Crews Competition
First Round Winners 2008
First Place
Styles Name Beer Name
1, 6 Maxwell Roberts All American Honey Wheat
2-5 Make Casedy & Scott Szymusiak Playa-hator
7, 15 Lee Cruppenink German Hefeweizen
8, 11 David Curtis Northern English Brown
9, 19 Christopher & Jason Pruette Big Brain Barleywine
10 David Curtis American Pale Ale
12 Stephen Glover Robust Porter
13 Barry Pyle & Chad Lee Good Samaritan Stout
14 Thomas Wilk Pontious Is My Co-Pilot
16, 17 Brian Richards The Chef & The Master Ale
18 Jeff & Susan Rankert 2008 Tripel
20-23 Jeff & Susan Rankert 2007 Alder Smoked Porter

Second Place
Styles Name Beer Name
1, 6 Bob & Kim Barrett Natural Blonde
2-5 Tom Wilberding Slam Dunkel
7, 15 Nick Larson Common Steamer
8, 11 Derek Reed & Brian Molde Southern English Brown
9, 19 Peter Covill Lowney Scottish 80
10 Tom Wilberding & Gary Kozerski Sweetie Amber Ale
12 Mike Kalette Wet Dog Porter
13 Spencer Weeks & Adam Lauver Vanilla Imperial Stout
14 Stanley Harrison SpringTime IPA
16, 17 Gary Pawlak Saison Especiale
18 Brian Richards Brian's Belgian Dark Strong
20-23 Barry Pyle & Chad Lee Bold Sinner's Brown Ale

Third Place
Styles Name Beer Name
1, 6 David Curtis Amarillo Wheat
2-5 Phil Wilcox JaXon Lager
7, 15 Alex Pettit & Wheatley Frankenstiener
8, 11 Don Ratell Southern Brown Ale
9, 19 Mike Casedy & Scott Szymusiak Drunken Monkey Barley Wine
10 Bob & Kim Barrett Amarillo Pale Ale
12 Joseph Spitaleri Porter
13 Mark Brooks & Terri Ward Flying Fortress Stout
14 Kevin Meves Hop Heads Delight
16, 17 Jeff & Susan Rankert 2005 Flanders Red Ale
18 Barry Pyle & Chad Lee Too Drunk Monks
20-23 Kevin Devoy Chocolate Raspberry Porter

Savor!

2008-06-08T10:50:00.000-04:00

Savor - An American Craft Beer & Food Experience from Flying Dog Brewery on Vimeo.

Belgian Dark Strong Ale

2008-06-05T02:42:00.006-04:00

My Belgian Dark Strong is all bottled up and I don't plan on touching it for quite some time. I admit I have popped a few bottles open and even sent two out to competitions just for the hell of it but this beer definitely needs to sit for a while and mature. The original gravity on this bad boy was 1.123 I believe but it finished a little sweeter than i would have liked-1.023. The last time I tasted it though it did taste like it might have dried out a touch more and it was very nice. Hopefully this one turns out like I dreamt it would.