FOOLCiRCLE

The ‘Bad Ass’ Beer Advocates issue, or the BA BAs! And no Baracus was not one of them.

 

This was a fun issue for me. As I have said in the past, one of my favorite parts of the magazine is the ‘9 Steps to Beerdom’, well this issue featured some of the all-stars of the brewing world, which in some ways is like that article on each of these people (more on all of that in a minute).

The homebrewer’s section “BYOB” was pretty interesting this time around too. This time they interviewed a very well know very accomplished homebrewer by the name of Jamil Zainasheff. This dude is sick, he’s been brewing less than 10 years (part time at home of course) and has won the AHA Ninkasi Award twice, brewed to perfection every beer style in the BJCP style guidelines, “re-invented” the immersion chiller, has a spread sheet which is referenced everywhere in the hombrewing community about proper yeast pitching rates, has a weekly homebrew podcast show, and is just about to publish his first book ‘Brewing Classic Styles‘ – no jokes with this dude! I have been a fan of his for a few years now.

Nice little article about Baltic Porters which will compliment the release of Victory’s (Heavyweights?) Baltic Thunder written by local beer writer Don “Joe Six-Pack” Russell.

“9 Steps to Beerdom” was all about Brian “Spike” Buckowski of the Terrapin Beer Company. They actually have a decent story starting out as a contract brewer beer and eventually opening there own place. Don’t get me wrong, as long as the contract brewery is good, and the brewer being contracted has supplied them with a great recipe, a great beer can be born, but I like the aspect that these guys weren’t just in it to have someone else make their great beer they wanted to make their great beer. After this article was a couple short fluffy articles on things that were ‘mah’.

Next came the cool article about the BA BAs, “Profiles in Beer”. They started with an unusual choice in my opinion but was probably a very logical choice for the bros., I’m sure they visit this place a lot since they live near by, that being Cambridge Brewing Company and head brewer Will Meyers. Interesting article in the sense that he gives his homebrewing experience a major nod and says it is all basically an extension of it. On a side note, while we were in Boston a few months back this is one place I really wanted to go to that we just couldn’t find, bummer. After that dude comes five major heavy hitters: Sam Calagione of Dogfish Head, Michael Jackson the Beer Hunter, Garrett Oliver of Brooklyn Brewery, Charlie Papazian of homebrewing legend, and Jim Koch of Samuel Adams. I mean seriously, these guys are the voice, and backbone, and face of the craft beer movement in a lot of ways, they are all truly committed to the cause and seem like really great people. Sam is referred to as the ‘Rock Star’ in the brewing industry, which isn’t too far fetched with all of the more off-centered things himself and Dogfish Head are involved with. The others all come through in their own way just as colorful as they could have hoped. Also included in their list of BA BAs were The Shelton Brothers who are major importers of small European (Belgian) beers and Chris White of White Labs yeast, the man who has cultured the culture (get it? I know).

After 10 pages of reviews the magazine jumps to some hamburger action with beers. It’s funny, the first they have listed uses beer from all six of the Trappist abbeys that brew beer, including 4 bottles Westvleteren 12 (one of the rarest/most expensive beers in the world). After I read that I just laughed and couldn’t really read too much more, seriously? And to finish off the rag they had their “Last Call” article about brewpubs and coffee houses (in particularly in Seattle) and how they co-exist and are similar but serve completely different purposes, I liked it.

I don’t know if it is possible, but I kept on wanting like scratch-n-sniff pages with all of these hops and beers everywhere. I mean, come on, how bad ass would scratch-n-sniff hop stickers be!? Outrageous. . .

Gluttony, pure and simple. And, boy, did I enjoy every moment of it. If only every Monday’s menu was so much fun to prepare, to cook, to eat.

 

A delicious tender Delmonico steak seasoned with only salt & pepper grilled to a perfect medium-rare, paired with Russian Purple Fingerling potatoes and root vegetable medley, accompanied with fresh local Jersey tomatoes and Cooper’s Sharp cheese topped with extra virgin olive oil brought back from Trevi in the Umbria region of Italy and fifteen year old Modena balsamic vinegar, and finally complimented by a cool red wine blend both sweet and tart.

Looks like the results from the Malt Madness homebrew competition are in and our efforts were well received!

Three out of our six entries placed, and I think that’s pretty damn good! (See original post here.) Garrett’s Abbey Brown ale placed third in the Belgian Dubbel category, our Gnarleywine placed third in the American Barleywine category, and my Hazelnut Brown placed second in the Specialty Beer category. I was actually surprised to not see Garrett’s Travelers & Tourist beer in the Belgian Dubbel category also for that is an awesome beer. Wouldn’t that have been cool to see his name twice for two different beers in the same category? The other two beers I honestly wasn’t too surprised to see them not place. My Saison is a good beer but doesn’t fit the BJCP style guidelines, and our Saturday IPA is a bangin’ fresh IPA but my bottles are having carbonation issues which I am sure more than anything else is holding that beer back. I will post more after I get the results back.

I just finished the latest Zymurgy issue and it was their annual double issue covering a lot of action from the National Homebrewers Conference with all the gold winning recipes.

This was actually a pretty good issue, as their double issues typically are. The biggest draw back is by the time I finish reading them I always want to go to the National Homebrewers Conference and the Great American Beer Festival (I really want to go to this some time, actually annually). My favorite article had to be the AHA Winner’s Circle article where they actually publish the winning recipe from each category at the NHC, now that’s cool. Not that I want to go and copy these recipes directly, but say you looked back at the last three years winners for a particular category, I bet you could really get a head start on a recipe and maybe even techniques that the judges are looking for.

Another great idea but only an OK article was the article titled the Iron Brewer Showdown. Basically the Iron Brewer Showdown was homebrewing sort-of a la Iron Chef style in that each brewer was given a “secret” (not so secret in this event) ingredient and then the different results were judged. This was a great idea for two reasons, one it took place locally at Iron Hill Brewery in West Chester, PA, and two because of the engagement between professional brewers and homebrewers. For this particular event, IH mashes-in a Blonde Barleywine (100% Pilsner malt) twice to get one batch of beer, basically they just want the strong first runnings from the grain. So this Pilsner malt is still soaked with sugar, so the brewer (Chris LaPierre) invited the local homebrew club (BUZZ) to come and take his second runnings and doctor them up and make a beer out of them. Garrett kind of did this on his own with Stewart’s brewer (Ric Hoffman) after they brewed their barleywine and he brewed his Stewart’s Sloppy Seconds Strong Ale (S^4). Anyway, back to the Iron Brewer, after each homebrewer doctored and brewed the their beer they all brought them back to be judged for creativity, drinkability, and other factors. The winner was invited to an exclusive beer dinner for four each course served with one of the beers from the Iron Brewer competition and paired with a unique menu. Pretty cool.

Another cute article was one titled So I Married a Homebrewer. The title alone is enough to make most of us bag up laughing. The article was more cutesy and tongue-in-cheek then anything else, but I could have read more for it kept me smiling. After that the magazine kind of went into magazine mode and hit on a lot of topics which were boring to me, but I read them still. This was a nice issue over all.

After brewing the Amarillo Amber, Karen and I bottled five gallons of the plain American Brown Ale. This beer was crispy clear and was dying to get into the bottles to be consumed.

 

I almost had a major mess-up right at the on set of bottling. Everything was being set-up and soaking in sanitizer when Karen asked about the bottling sugar, whoops!That would have been real bad to forget that, but at least I would have a good excuse why one of my beers didn’t carbonate. Bottling went smoothly, I think about an hour to do the whole batch. I actually ran out of prepared bottles with a significant amount of beer left. So I either had the options of dumping it (no way), drinking it (the usual), or figuring out another way to package it. Though I don’t know how well it will work, I grabbed a clean growler and stuck it in the sanitizer bucket for a few minutes then filled it on up. It’ll be cool if it works, but I have low expectations, it was a screw-on cap. More information on the ABA when it’s ready to drink and when the Peached ABA is ready to bottle, hopefully soon (minor visible bubbles still).

On Monday (Labor Day) I finally got around to brewing a beer that I’ve tried to brew the past three weekends, I was starting to get a little pissy about the whole thing. Anyway, I brewed an Amber Ale with all Amarillo hops, thus the Amarillo Amber.

Two things really spawned the birth of this brew. First was Garrett’s Amarillo Pale Ale and second was the fact that I had 2oz of really old Amarillo hops that needed to badly be used, plus I had enough sorta fresh Amarillos to finish off the hop bill. Originally I was going to actually make this a pale ale, and it may still taste very pale ale like, but the color will probably be closer to amber, plus Amarillo Amber sounds good.

Anyway, after transfering the ABA to secondaries like two weeks ago I decided at the last minute to reserve the yeast slurry from the carboy. So knowing that the residual beer from the ABA was definetely darker than the AA I decided to try and wash the yeast slurry to try and eliminate the possibility of any color transfer. Well, it didn’t go quite as planned. The beer picked up some color, but most likely it didn’t pick up any flavor. The weird thing was this was third generation yeast so I was expecting an explosion of a fermentation with very little lag time. Instead after 12 hours no visible activity, and after 24 hours no visible activity, WTF! So I went to one of the dry packs of US-05 and threw that in and walked away, basically disgusted.

I’m sure the beer will be fine, it appears fine now, but damn-it that pisses me off! I didn’t get to brew for three weeks (planned), and got a late start on brew day but an early finish. I was actually went into the brew day with a bad attitude and finished feeling great, then the freakin’ yeast shit on me. Whatever, RDWHAHB.

You know that I’ve been feeling tight on time since there has either been one of two things going on: A) Not enough posts going up or B) Posts with more than one subject that could be multiple posts (D) Stick it in the pooper) You know what, I changed my mind, I’m tucking some of those others posts back for later, this is what you get for now, you’ll see . . .

So here’s some of the supplies I received in the mail the other day. I actually placed two orders, one with Northern Brewer (NB) and one with More Beer (MB). From NB I got a new Auto-Siphon, some dark Belgian syrup, some grains and hops I couldn’t get from MB, and the last of the supplies I needed for an upcoming kegging/bottling experiment. From MB (see above picture) I got a bunch of different grains and hops, some back-up dry yeast, a new thermometer, some caps, some corn sugar, and some honey. I prefer to order from MB because of their offer for free shipping if you spend over $60. Unfortunately MB has really gone down hill as of late with shipping everything that was ordered, and they are becoming more and more of a hassle to deal with about their mistakes. I’d say the last 3 out of 4 orders have had something left out, and the last 2 out of 3 times it has been a hassle to get them to ship out what was missing at no cost for shipping. Versus with NB I’ve only ordered three times and each time they have been fast and have had things in stock which MB does not. Maybe that free shipping thing isn’t all that it is cracked up to be . . . ?

So, as it is obvious I ordered a bunch of ingredients, that also means I have a bunch of brewing planned! Now that the temperature is about to be more cooperative I’m going to be more inclined to brew more often. So what is on the menu do you ask? Well, here’s a taste of what I had in mind when I ordered the ingredients and what I have preliminary recipes written up for, obviously all of this can change. All of the following are planned for 5 gallon batches: an Amarillo Amber Ale, RyePA (Rye India Pale Ale), a Tripel, a Dubbel, a Belgian Red, a Honey Oatmeal Stout, and an Imperial Stout. Sounds tasty, huh? A few of these really should be brewed sooner than later so that we’ll be able to appreciate their flavor this holiday/winter season. I think I am going to do another hard cider this fall and do it differently than last time, and maybe another mead, a sweet mead this time. I’d actually like to get into the habit of doing a cider in preparation for every Autumn and at least a yearly mead if not more frequently. I don’t think my first attempt at a cider or a mead were stellar, but I think they are both simplistic in comparison to making beer yet show a lot of potential for creativity, enjoyment with non-beer-drinking friends, and speed (in making that is, not aging).

On Friday Robert, Mitchell, and myself went down to Dogfish Head (DFH) to do the whole brewery tour and happy hour thing. Of course I didn’t realize it was the Friday of Labor Day weekend, but in all honesty it wasn’t so bad.

We got to the brewery just before 3PM which is what time the tour starts. Mitchell has never been before and Robert & I have been a lot, maybe 10 times. Every time we go it is amazing how much things have changed. One of the first times we went the head brewer Bryan Selders gave the tour, they were still using the old 50bbl system, they had open fermenters, and about half of everything else they have now. This time I believe it was Fred Mazzeo who gave the tour, the new 100bbl system was up, the warehouse, fermenters, bottling-line, quality control lab – everything, was just, well, just right – Cheers to DFH! Per usual they had samples to try, this time we got to taste the 60 Minute IPA (one of my personal favorites) and the new Golden Era “Imperial” Pilsner, which is a remake of the beer formally known as Golden Showers, which is sort of a remake of the beer formally known as Prescription Pils. As you may be able to guess, DFH ran into a little bit of naming issues with those last two names. I picked up a 4-pack of the Golden Era while there for $10.

After the tour we were off to the brewpub. The tour typically runs 45-60 minutes, and the brewpub does happy hour from 4-6PM. So if you take the tour and drive out to the pub (30 minute drive) you can still hit most of happy hour. Happy hour used to be $2 everything that was made by DFH (beer & spirits) and half price appetizers, great happy hour, but now it is $1 off everything (beer, spirits, and food), not such a good happy hour. On “special” at the pub they had a beer called Fluckey Fest and 90 Minute IPA pulled through Randal – nice! The Fluckey Fest was a beer that was made with 51% malted barley and 49% Chardonnay grapes and fermented with Champagne yeast. Sounds really interesting, and it was interesting, but not my cup-o-beer. Reminded me a little of the original brewing of the Chateau Jiahu, which later tasted very different in the bottled version. After adopting the corner of the bar for several hours, the general manager Jim Boyd offered us a new combination DFH has been working on. It was a glass of their Chicory Stout with a shot of their Dark Chocolate Vodka served a long side. Basically he asked us to take a sip of each separately and notice the flavors they each portrayed, then to mix the rest of the vodka with the beer and appreciate the new flavors that were brought together. It was actually really good and made me think, is DFH going to try and market this as a drink, the first vodka infused beer? Someone asked about the spirits while on the tour and they made it very clear they were not aloud to have the spirits at the brewery because the ATF was concerned they may try to make a super-infused beer and right now there is no laws or taxation concerned with that, so they don’t want DFH to be tempted. Sounds like just the thing DFH will try to make happen.

I think only DFH makes people this happy and ghey!

After DFH we cruised around Rehoboth Blvd. and the boardwalk for a couple of hours, watching a little girl beat her dad at chess, grabbin’ some Grotto’s, and making general fools of ourselves. All through out the day, from before the brewery tour to up until two days later we began to talk about creating a tournament between the greatest front-men of all times. Yes, I know it sounds silly, and a little dorky, and way over thought, but remember who’s talking here. In the beginning it was a big 64 player seeded tournament that I believe we were going to try and do that night when we got home. Instead it turned into a giant 128 player unseeded randomly drawn tournament that was crazy and stupid-fun. I think the final list had about 145 or so on it that got weened down to 128. Basically it went like this, we finalized the 128 frontmen that were to be involved. All of their names were put into a hat together and names were drawn out two at a time to see who the match-ups would be. After the initial 64 match-ups the tournament would play out like any normal tournament. We did include our own rule as to keep it interesting though.

Our rule kind of went like this, in the first round each of us were given three “power nahs” in which we were able to say “nah” to any match-up that was pulled out of the hat. If we used a “power nah” then that match-up would be thrown back into the hat to be re-pulled in a different combination later. This was typically used to keep heavy hitters from going up against each other too early. For example, if Robert Plant and Mick Jagger went up against each other in the first round then someone might use a “power nah” to throw their names back into the hat so a big decision like that wouldn’t have to be made too early in the game. After the first round each of us was also given two regular “nahs” that could be used in the second, third, and fourth rounds. What these “nahs” did was basically give the loser of a match-up a second chance. The winner of the match-up had to get a 2 out of 3 vote to stay in verses the normal 50/50 chance – make sense? Click the tournament picture and you’ll find the results of a few hours of us being idiots with Robert, Mitchell, myself, and later Wooly as a spectator. Now remember, none of us fully agree with this, this is just what happen when the three of us ran this tournament. It would probably be different with any three people and obviously with any random drawing. Oh, please excuse the misspelled names, I know I can’t spell.

Michael Jackson the “Beer Hunter“, writer, and the original beer geek died this morning in his home in England.

I’ve always respected Michael Jackson’s views and insight into beer. He has been doing this “beer thing” much longer than most of us and was the original “rock star” on the beer scene that I can remember. I am sure his studies, travels, books, lectures, articles, and other teachings will long be influential. We have lost a mighty leader today.

Normally I’ll sit here with the magazine in front of me as I review it, but this time I happened to forget it, so don’t be surprised if there is more added to this post later.

Also, BYO is the worst about keeping their website up to date. Since I breezed through this issue in one lunch (per usual) I have been sitting on it for about a week waiting for BYO to throw a picture of the new cover up so I could use it here. Didn’t happen, so now I took the lame picture above to use in the post.

The cover actually grabbed my attention for once. Professional brewer on the cover (Great Divide president/brewer), the promise of 10 gold medal clones, and brewing with coffee – all things I am interested in. Brian Dunn (the Great Divide guy) brews great beer so I was waiting for an interesting article, guess what? No article, just a paragraph or so of him talking about how to properly brew an Old Ruffian Barleywine, which happened to win a gold medal, which happens to be one of the 10 clones. Then there was nine other snippets from nine other non-exciting brewers about nine OK sounding beers – double let down. Then there was the article on coffee and beer. It was mostly interesting, but felt very opinionated. Like I was looking for more of a scientific approach where he would brew the same beer repeatedly and use different kinds of coffee additions and or even different roasts or regional coffees. Like I could think of three ways to incorporate coffee: beans, ground, and brewed. And also multiple times to add these forms of coffee: to the mash tun, to the boil (different times), to the fermenter, to secondary, at bottling – it was a little lame honestly. He basically told you what he liked best through his trial and error but never really explained the trials, oh well. Other than that I don’t remember the articles being very remarkable, so they probably weren’t. Though this is the magazine I bitch about the most, I still enjoy reading it, it’s the fluff of the beer magazine community, to me.