BetterBeerBlog

If you didn’t see me at any of the Saturday morning sessions, there’s a good reason: I wasn’t there. Yep, I slept in. Didn’t mean to, wanted to get my money’s worth but the body said, “Oh hell naw, back to bed for you”. So there I was, snug as a bug in a Hilton.

BRUTal Brewing with Dave Beechum (of the Maltose Falcons)

I readily admit that I wasn’t originally planning on attending this session. I mean, Methode Champenoise? C’mon, isn’t that just bottle conditioning? Good thing I attended this session because this ended up being one of the most interesting sessions of the entire conference.

To answer my own question, methode champenoise is bottle conditioning but different. It’s a technique developed in the Champagne region of France as a way for the region to compete with the other wine producing regions. Apparently the wine from Champagne wasn’t “all that and a baguette of chips” (doesn’t make sense when you read it, but…) so they needed a “gimmick”. What they ended up producing was the sparkling wine which now bears the name of the region: Champagne.

Here’s some lingo you’ll need to know:

• Brut - Dry
• Riddling - Forming a hop plug by turning the bottle upside down and gently dropping the bottle on it’s head while rotating the bottle.
• Disgorging - Shooting out the compacted hop plug.
• Dosage - Topping the bottle off.

Well, how does this relate to beer? There are a couple of Belgian breweries that are offering/marketing some of their beers as Bruts, of which Mahler Brut is but one. Very simply put, a Brut (with regards to beer), is usually a Belgian Golden Strong ale with Champagne complexity. Brut beers are dry and highly carbonated, anywhere between 3.5 - 9 atmosphere (By comparison, your typical bottled beer will average 2.5 atmospheres) and around 10% ABV. Typically made from a lot of pils malt and augmented with a healthy dose of sugar, expect an O.G. of 1.085 and a F.G. of less than 1.010. These beers are low hopped because the high levels of carbonation accentuate the bitter flavors.

Well, all these numbers seem fine and dandy but how will this help your average homebrewer. Well, let me try and simplify it all. Brewing up a Brut beer is basically adding another step to your normal bottling process. First, brew your Belgian Golden Strong ale as you normally would except pitch a lot of yeast. Save some of this beer for later use. If brewing a 10 gallon batch, save about 5 for later. I’ll try and explain ina bit. When it comes to bottling, use anywhere between 2-3 times the priming sugar your normally would. Dave Beechum recommends priming with a simple syrup formula of one part water to one part sugar. Normally you’d let the beer ferment right side up but if you’re a lazy homebrew like many of us, bottle condition the beer upside down. Here’s the important part, pick the bottle up about an inch out of the box, twist it slightly, then drop it back in. You do this to dislodge any yeasts clinging to the side of the bottle and to, hopefully, compact the yeast into a yeast plug in the neck of the bottle. This is not exactly riddling but it’s close enough for our purposes. Now comes the extra, slightly complicated, extra step.

On bottling day, you need to set up your bottling line like a factory assembly line. First, prepare and ice bath in an approximately 4″ deep pan. The ice bath will be a mixture of acetone and dry ice. As it was explained to me, this particular combination gets as cold as -40°F. I’ll explain the significance of this in a little bit. With your bottling stations set, here’s what your basically do. Take on of your bottles and make sure the yeast has settled quite snugly in the neck of the bottle. Gently place the bottle neck side down into the ice bath. At -40°F, you will freeze the beer right above the yeast plug in about a minute. This is important as without the ice formation, it will be messy trying to get the yeast plug out. Once you have that little bit frozen, uncap your bottle in such a manner that the bottle cap is pulled toward you. What’s supposed to happen next is the release in pressure will shoot the yeast plug right out of the bottle. You have just degorged your beer. Depending on a variety of factors, you may loose a lot of beer or you may not. This is where the extra beer you saved will come in. Quickly top off the bottle taking care to leave about a 2-2.5 fingers worth of head space. This is the dosage part. Cork the bottle, cage it. You’re done!

It may sound complicate but when demonstrated, it’s actually not that complicated at all. I’m looking forward to trying this technique for a future beer and I have Dave Beechum and the Maltose Falcons to thank.

Chocolate and Beer with Timothy Childs (TCHO founder), Jeremy Wanamaker (TCHO brewmaster) and Roger Davis (brewmaster of Triple Rock)

This was another unexpected surprise of the conference. What I fully expected to see was an informercial for TCHO chocolates, taste some TCHO chocolate bits paired with beer. Well, I was only half right.

Timothy Childs, in addition to resembling Kiefer Sutherland, is the founder of TCHO (Technology CHOcolate, that’s how they got their name). He is attempting to move TCHO chocolates from a commodity to a premium brand by making better chocolate. They all say this, I know, but TCHO focuses on educating the chocolate farmers he works with. In their opinion, and I happen to agree, if you empower the farmers with knowledge to improve their product, you will have a finer chocolate in the end. Sounds simple enough but I guess no one else was helping out the farmers. I’m sure you can find all the marketese on their process, ideals and other stuff online so I won’t go into much more detail. I must say that Timothy is a very good public speaker. Even when he was messing up, it didn’t seem like it. He worked the room well.

Jeremy was the next speaker and, unlike Timothy, was not a good public speaker. Then again I suppose you’d be hardpressed to find a brewer that is exceptional at public speaking, Sam Calagione notwithstanding. Truth be told, I don’t quite remember what Jeremy spoke about. All I remember is what happend next.

TCHO’s business at NHC was to pimp out not only their chocolate and ideology but a very specific product geared toward homebrewers: cacao nibs. Cacao nibs are basically, as I understand them, crushed cacao beans. What a homebrewer would do is take a bag of nibs, put them through a coffee bean grinder set for a coarse grind. Take the resulting grinds, throw ‘em in a hop bag, and “dry hop” your beer with them, or whatever technique you normally would use to add additional flavors to your beer.

The big “ohmygodthisisblowingmymind” moment is when they poured us a taster of, I believe, a kölsch from Drakes Brewing. It’s a kölsch, not too bad. They then brought out another kölsch that was “dry hopped” with the TCHO cacao nibs. Ohmygodthisisblowingmymind. The beer looked like a kölsch, light in color, except that it was slightly hazy making it look like a bright witbier or a hefeweizen. The aroma was what you would expect from a kölsch but there was this big, chocolate aroma. Really trippy. Then I drank it; wow. I picked up this big, chocolate flavor but it wasn’t chocolate sweet. Despite all this chocolate, you could still taste the base beer. It was awesome. Don’t be surprised if you see chocolate kölschs in future homebrew competitions. It really was an unexpected yet exceptional beer. Normally you’d expect chocolate in a porter or stout but this was very, very nice.

At the end of the session, they handed out small bags of TCHO nibs but there wasn’t enough for everyone. Good thing I sit up in front as I was able to get my hands on some nibs. I am going to attempt to brew a chocolate beer this summer using those nibs, not sure what style yet but I’m not thinking of a porter or a stout. They also handed out the recipes for the kölsch, porter and stout they poured. I was worried that the last day of NHC would be a little lackluster until the beer dinner but these past two sessions were quite the diamonds in the rough.

Ingredients 5-10 with Tomme Arthur (Port Brewing/Lost Abbey)

This was the final session of NHC for me. Truth be told, I was never quite sure what to make of Tomme. To me, he comes off a little standoff-ish and unapproachable. I’ve spoken to him briefly a few times and each time he seemed like he couldn’t wait to be rid of me. In any case, I’ve seen Tomme sit in on Sam’s (Calagione) and Vinnie’s (Cilurzo) sessions as well as be in the Going Pro Panel. In each instance, he has been very business like. I guess he’s one of those “once you get to know him…” sort of guys. In any case, his presentation completely changed my perception of the guy.

Just like Sam (Calagione), Tomme is very much against the Reinheitsgebot. He finds it very restrictive and if you take a look at brewing history, you’ll see that the Reinheitsgebot (enacted in 1516) is only a small part of that. People all over the world have used various ingredients in making their beer, or variations of, and we shouldn’t be limited to just 4 ingredients. Tomme likens the Reinheitsgebot as the “tidy whities” of the beer world. Hilarious.

Tomme views the beers and work he does with Lost Abbey as story telling. As cliché as this may sound, he believes his beers are flavor driven and refers to his beers as Belgian-inspired as opposed to Belgian-style. Tomme just doesn’t brew with interesting or unusal ingredients for the sake of brewing with something weird. He won’t brew with an ingredient unless it can add value to his beers. They have to help tell the story he wants to tell through his beers.

Tomme’s session is titled “Ingredients 5-10″, on the surface it looks like he’s just going to be talking about additional ingredients you can use in you beer like raisins or spices or other stuff like that. I couldn’t have been more wrong. Ingredients 5-10, Tomme explains, are (mostly) not physical ingredients but more concepts you can apply to your homebrewing or brewery. Through the illustrative power of bullet points, I will explain:

• Ingredient 5: Mind - The mind is the first ingredient. When formulating a recipe, a brewer needs to think outside of the box. Special and spectacular beers don’t just happen, someone worked to make it happen. The mind is crucial in conception all the way through execution.
• Ingredient 6: Time - Time is an overlooked component in brewing. All to often we are told that fresh beer is the best beer. As Tomme says, “fresh beer is good but aged beer is better”. With that in mind, Tomme will brew his beers with the knowledge that once their sold, they’re good but if you let them sit a bit, they’ll get much better.
• Ingredient 7: Collaboration - Collaboration is important to a homebrew or professional brewer. By working out of your comfort zone in a collaboration, you will be pushing yourself and your abilites to new levels. If you’re brewing with someone less experience, this is a good time to get fresh perspective on things and to teach. If you’re brewing with someone who has a ton of experience, hopefully you will be learning a few things in the process. While all these reasons are valid, collaborations are fun! At least they can be.
• Ingredient 8: Philosophy - Every brewer should have a philosophy. Lost Abbey views their beers as “liquid art” and brew accordingly. How do you view your own philosophies?
• Ingredient 9:  Technique - Technique can be an ingredient in of itself. Further explained, there’s only so much flavor you can get from you beer with your most basic brewing process. Using different techniques yield different results and can augment the flavors of your beer. Not convinced? Why do you dry hop? Why do you decoct your mash? Why not boil your beer longer instead of using superheated rocks to boil your wort? Different techniques affect a beer’s flavor. Use the right technique to attain the flavor profile you are looking for.
• Ingredient 10: Oak - Tomme has an extensive oak barrel aging program. Wood is a return to a more traditional brewing process, imparting its own set of flavors and with its own set of quirks.

I can honestly say that I gained a greater respect for Tomme Arthur after NHC. Understanding his philosophies and beliefs regarding brewing can give you great insight to the person he is. I never thought he had much of a sense of humor but the guy is a cut up. He’s not a LOL kind of guy but he does have a very sharp wit and dead pan sense of humor (or is it dry?). You would think that a man as artistic as he is would be all about the craft and art of his beers but at the end of the day, Tomme never looses sight of the fact that he is running a business.

I wish my notes were better as Tomme served up different beers to illustrate each of his “ingredients”. I think I ended up as drunk during this session as I was during Pro Brewer’s night. Now that’s saying something. If you didn’t make it to Tomme’s session, you definitely missed out. What a great way to end the NHC, session-wise at least.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 25th, 2009 at 12:46 am and is filed under Craft Beer, Homebrew, Lecture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.