BetterBeerBlog

The American Homebrewers Association (AHA) has designated the first Saturday of August to be Mead Day. Mead Day is meant to raise awareness for mead as well as foster camaraderie amongst meadmakers. Some of you might be wonder what mead is? Simplistically put, mead is honey wine. I hate to describe mead that way but it’s the closest approximation. Fruit juice is to wine, what malted barley is to beer, what honey is to mead; in other words, honey is the fermentable sugar that gets eaten by yeasts and transformed into mead. Arguably the oldest alcoholic beverage in the world, mead is probably the least known.

For the past 3 years, this year included, I’ve been holding mead tastings out of my home to do my part to help promote the beverage. While I can count the number of meads I’ve made on one hand, I genuinely enjoy the beverage and would like to see its popularity increase. What better way to do so than to introduce it to our friends?

We were originally supposed to have our annual mead tasting event on designated day (this year it was on August 7th) but that day happened to coincide with my good friend’s wife’s birthday dinner as well as the Bistro’s 13th Annual IPA Festival. We decided to postpone our tasting a week and attend these two events instead.

Our 3rd Annual Mead Tasting Event started off with a crash, literally. While Mrs. BetterBeerBlog was bringing out a tray of tasting glasses to use for the evening, the bottom of the tray gave out sending a few years worth of beer festival glasses crashing to our kitchen floor. We lost our GABF tasting glasses, a couple of the aforementioned IPA Festival glasses and a mini-snifter I was quite fond of. I thought the event was snakebit; first we postponed it, then this?! Luckily for us, that was the end of our troubles.

Generally speaking, many of the meads we tried were pretty good. I make it a point to collect throughout the year as varied a number and style of meads as possible. This year we sampled over 15 different meads, braggots and pulque. While pulque doesn’t qualify as a mead, it’s an interesting beverage if you really like the flavors of agave. Here are pics of the meads as we tried them as well as my brief notes. I didn’t take formal tasting notes as I usually do as I really wanted to enjoy the evening with my friends so you’ll have to forgive me as much of this is from memory.

Sweet Mead, BetterBeerBlog, unknown ABV

This was the very first mead I made. I totally forgot to take an original gravity reading and as a result, I have no idea how alcoholic this mead is. It’s made from locally produced wildflower honey from a couple I know of in Campbell. The sample in the glass is cloudy as it’s from the bottom of the bottle. Even though this mead is 3 years old, it’s still pretty good, in my humble opinion, but a lot of people at the party liked it as well.

Dry Mead, Rabbit’s Foot Meadery, 13% ABV

Rabbit’s Foot Meadery is the hometown kid. Located in Sunnyvale not too far from where I currently work, Rabbit’s Foot Meadery is an award-winning meadery that also makes braggots and cysers. After the homebrewed mead, I thought I’d calibrate everyone’s palette with their Dry Mead. They have a 2-bottle purchase limit of this product so I’m guessing it’s one of their more popular items. In any event, it’s probably my favorite of their meads as I prefer a drier mead. In addition to being fairly sweet, I can also taste an oaky character to the mead. If I remember correctly, they start their meads off in stainless and then age them in barrels. I like it. It’s only in hindsight that I can tell you that Rabbit’s Foot Dry Mead would end up tasting very sweet when compared with many of the other meads of the evening.

Classic Mead, Medovina Meadery, 13% ABV

Medovina Meadery is located in Niwot, Colorado. Not only do they hand craft their meads but they own their own beeyards as well. This particular classic mead was bottled in 2008 and is labled as “off-dry”. Many of us found this mead to be white wine-like in nature; crisp and dry with a light fruitiness. The honey character that was so prevalent in the Rabbit’s Foot Dry Mead is nearly gone in this example but that’s not a bad thing. I tend to like my meads on the dry side anyway so I enjoyed this mead quite a bit.

Summer Solstice, Medovina Meadery, 12% ABV

Summer Solstice is supposed to be their version of a “lighter” mead but at 12% ABV, I guess you can call it “light” when compared to the 13% Classic Mead. This bottle is labeled as “semi-sweet” and was bottled in 2008. When compared to the Rabbit’s Foot Dry Mead, this is drier still. Even though I can’t really recall anything about this mead other than it’s mouthfeel, that should be more of an indictment of my fading memory than how bad/good the mead was. We picked up both Medovina bottles from Fort Collins, Colorado last year when we were in town for the Great American Beer Festival (GABF). Even though we’re not going to GABF this year, I’m hoping to have some bottles brought back for us.

Sweet Mead, Rabbit’s Foot Meadery, 12% ABV

It’s at this point in the tasting that I kick myself in the ass for not paying more attention to the serving order of the meads. We’ve been bouncing around from sweet to dry to off-dry to semi-sweet that all of our palettes are basically shot. If I thought Rabbit’s Foot’s Dry Mead was sweet, predictably, this is much sweeter. A big hit with the ladies and some of the fellas (I’m not judging, just making an observation).

California Orange Blossom Sparkling Mead, Heidrun Meadery, 12.5% ABV

The meads from Heidrun Meadery were the only 2 sparkling meads of the night. At first I though these meads were force carbonated but it turns out this mead was made in the traditional French Champenoise method, the very same used to make Champagne and sparkling wines. Using triage, riddling and disgorgement, Heidrum Meadery has produced a clear and effervescent mead with no sediment. Bad. Ass.

I found this mead to be very champagne-like, it was effervescent and dry yet retained enough of the orange blossom character to be noticeable. This bottle was a welcome surprise and I’ll be looking forward to trying to find more.

Oregon Meadowfoam Blossom Sparkling Mead, Heidrun Meadery, 12.5% ABV

As with the California Orange Blossom Sparking Mead above, this mead was created in the champenoise method. Since I am not familiar with Oregon Meadowfoam Blossoms, I found this mead to have a similar mouthfeel and body to sparking wine with enough residual sweetness for balance and a floral component I can only assume is meadowfoam blossom. I forgot to mention it above but Heidrum is located in Arcata, California.

Traditional Mountain Honey Wine, Redstone Meadery, 12% ABV

The very first time I ever heard about mead was from the podcast Basic Brewing Radio (BBR) where BBR’s James Spencer was interviewing Redstone Meadery’s David Myers. The interview was interesting enough to have piqued my curiosity that I started searching for mead in my area and ended up finding Rabbit’s Foot Meadery.

My biggest gripe about Redstone Meadery is their overbearing insistence to try and set themselves apart from their competition. While every company wants to stand apart from its competition, Redstone has taken it a step further by trying to reinvent the wheel and create brand-specific categories for their products. Before reading this post, how many of you were familiar with mead? How about braggots? Cysers? How about Nectars? Mountain Honey Wines? Mead has enough trouble being recognized for what it is that you don’t need to create any more confusion by renaming/rebranding things. Just call things as they are; the mead industry needs a unified front as opposed to unnecessary segmentation.

My personal feelings regarding their branding efforts aside, I really like their products. This Traditional Mountain Honey Wine, aka mead, was a nice balance between sweetness and dryness. Redstone Meadery is quite inventive when it comes to their line of products but, more often than not, their execution matches their vision. If I keep buying their products, it’s because they’re good and not because of some fancy name or blue bottle (although their blue, swing top bottles are cool).

Pinot Pyment Mountain Honey Wine, Redstone Meadery, 12% ABV

The Pinot Pyment Mountain Honey Wine is made with 77% honey and 23% grape wine. Pyment is a subset of mead; it is basically a fruit mead (melomel) brewed with either white or red grapes. It’s too bad that I’ve been taking photos with my cell phone as this pyment is a wonderfully, dark red in color. The honey character is still apparent in the mead but there is also an equally notable red wine character with light oak aromas and flavors. I thought this was a very well executed pyment and a good example of Redstone’s creativity.

Chrysanthemum Mead, BetterBeerBlog, unknown % ABV

You’d think I would’ve learned the first time around but I once again forgot to take an original gravity reading, therefore, no clue as to what the % ABV of this mead is. Compared to my sweet mead, this one is much drier and the chrysanthemum character seems to be a little more noticeable this year.

Raspberry Mead, Rabbit’s Foot Meadery, 12% ABV

Everything’s starting to get a little hazy at this point. Yet another offering from the local guys, this time, their melomel (fruit mead) featuring raspberries. Someone had commented on how this melomel was the best expression of raspberry in a beverage they’ve ever had. It was it was sweet, yet tart, and dry not from a lack of residual sugar but from the seed quality of the fruit. If there’s anything that can be considered a “fault” of this mead, it’s that there’s too much raspberry character. At least for me but many other people that night seemed to like it.

Slascha, Bacchus Meadery, 12% ABV

A quick Google search for Bacchus Meadery will show you that they have closed business. This doesn’t surprise me as this metheglin, or spiced mead, tasted like ass. Which is really too bad as the label holds so much promise:

A cocoa sweetened honey wine, named after the Goddess of Confection, Slascha is well known for her love of any sugary pleasure or dessert. This chocolate honey wine is a perfect remedy for any sweet tooth.

I was very excited when I picked this bottle up from Colorado. Mead Day couldn’t come fast enough for me to crack this bottle open and have at it. Unfortunately the label wrote check the mead just couldn’t cash. The mead had a very “barnyardy” aroma, not unlike a brettanomyces fermented beer, only not the good barnyard character. If you’ve ever driven on Highway 5 and passed by Coalinga, you know exactly what I am talking about.

Bellona, Bacchus Meadery, 12% ABV

I picked up a second bottle of Bacchus mead, once again, because of the label description. Here is the description for Bellona:

An agave sweetened mead named for the Goddess of War. Bellona was revered and honored by soldiers as she was often at their side in battle. This honey-agave wine is like the goddess herself with a distinct flavor of its own. Enjoy over ice with a squeeze of lime.

While not as bad as Slascha, Bellona only had hints of agave. If anything, I think I picked up more citrusy, lime-like character from this mead. I shall call forever refer to Bellona as the Bud Lime of mead. Too harsh?

Pulque Fino, Full Circle Brewing Company, 8% ABV

Marketed under the Los Californios label, this Pulque Fino is not a mead at all but pulque, a “wine” brewed from the sap of the maguey, or agave plant. In all honesty, this product has very little resemblance to a true pulque. That being said, this is a tasty beverage. If you like the flavors and aromas of tequila but not the alcohol burn or harshness of the distilled spirit, this is the drink for you. It’s a wonderful, easy drinking “wine” that encapsulates all that is good about tequila with none of the bad.

We usually pick up the different meads from Full Circle Brewing to include in our annual mead tastings and I cannot recall why we didn’t pick any up this time around. Full Circle is one of two breweries in Fresno and a place I make a point to visit each time I’m in Fresno. I recommend going on a Friday night to catch whatever show they have on. Last time I was there, they had a sword-swallowing giant performing.

Prickly Pear Braggot, Widmer Brothers, 10% ABV

I just so happened to be at BevMo a couple of days before our Mead Tasting when I noticed this product was available. It seemed like a serendipitous find so I picked up a bottle for the party.

Braggots meads brewed with malted barley; put another way, they’re beers brewed with honey. Any type of beer can be the base beer for a braggot and Widmer chose to use a strong ale as the base of this beer. Even more interesting is their use of prickly pear juice. Also known as “tuna”, this is a common food source in many cultures, notably Mexico. Having never tasted prickly pear before, I can’t say what character it adds to the braggot. As a beer, I found it interesting but not really something I’d be interested in picking up another bottle of.

Diabhal, Rabbit’s Foot Meadery, 12% ABV

Named after the devil, Diabhal is Rabbit’s Foot Meadery’s example of a braggot. The base beer is a Belgian-style ale, a dubbel, I believe. If you’re a big fan of Belgian dubbels, you may find yourself disappointed with this beer but keep in mind, it’s really a braggot and should be enjoyed/evaluated as such.

Chocolate Raspberry Love, Rabbit’s Foot Meadery, 18% ABV

Chocolate Raspberry Love, at 18% ABV, is a big mead. It is analogous to a port or dessert wine, really, which is why I saved it for last (probably the only thing I got correct in terms of serving order). Served in a thin, 375 mL bottle, the label is fun, colorful and overly indicative of the 60s vibe and mentality.

Chocolate Raspberry Love proved to be divisive amongst the group. Half of the remaining people like it, they appreciate the chocolate and raspberry fruit character of the mead as well as it’s intensity. The other half likened it to cough syrup. I fell on the “like” part of the equation but just barely so. Despite being chilled in an ice bath for a number of hours, the alcohol was readily apparent in nearly all aspects of the mead from aroma, to flavor to mouthfeel. It was almost “hot” and I think that’s this mead’s biggest distraction. If we had some bittersweet or nearly pure chocolate to accompany this mead, it might’ve been a little more enjoyable.

Lessons Learned

With each year, I learn more and more about mead and all the varieties of mead out there. I believe mead has it’s rightful place in the pantheon of alcoholic beverages, which is why I hold these tastings to begin with. That being said, there are a few things I’ve learned and will try to apply for next year.

First, tasting order is important. While it’s cool to be able to taste all the meads from a single meadery, I need to do a better job setting up the tasting order. Thinking out loud, braggots should go first, followed by dry meads, sweet meads, and then all the other subsets of meads grouped accordingly. Doing this can save all of our palettes and provide a base from which to compare apples-to-apples.

Second, I totally forgot to take photos of all the good food we had. While it wasn’t quite the production as last year’s Mead Tasting was, the food was definitely good. In fact, we kinda fell behind in our tastings because we were grubbing. In hindsight, this was more of a necessity than a problem as many of the meads we had were in the 12% ABV range.

Third, I might consider limiting the number of meads we would be tasting. We tried 17 different meads, braggot and pulque this year, an increase of 7 bottles from the year before. That was a lot of mead. A lot. At this point, a year might be just enough time to develop a taste for mead again.

Lastly, I gotta get off my ass to bottle my third mead and brew my fourth. Right now, the third mead is basically a straight mead, nothing added but that could change by this weekend.

I’d like to thank everyone who was able to come by. It was a blast and I’m looking forward to next year already.

This weekend is shaping up to be epic with regards to craft beer and mead. Here’s a brief list of things happening this weekend:

Friday

First Fridays at Drakes Brewing Company

Drakes Brewing Company has reintroduced First Fridays. Here are the details:

Who: Drakes Brewing Company
What: First Friday Tastings
Where: 1933 Davis Street, Building 177, San Leandro, CA 94577 (their tucked away behind Walmart) map
When: Friday, August 6, 2010 @ 4pm - 8pm
Cost:

• $5 per person voluntary donation, to the non-profit organization we are supporting, at the gate. (Children with their parents free)
• $15 for a Drake’s tasting glass and 3 tokens for 3 full pours. Additional tokens can be purchased separately ($3.50 each, with net proceeds going to the non-profit)
• Great food available for purchase

Notes: Drakes will be pouring their Aroma Prieta IPA, Bass Akwards IPA & Hopocalypse IPA.

Growler Fills at Devils Canyon Brewing

Not really a special event, per se, but another option for craft beer starved people

Who: Devil’s Canyon Brewing
What: Growler Fills
Where: 111 Industrial Way, Belmont, CA 94002 map
When: Friday, August 6, 2010 @ 4pm - 6pm
Cost: No cost to go, just pay for the beer you want.

Firkin Fridays at Tied House Brewing Company

Tied House has been tapping firkins on Fridays for several months now.

Who: Tied House Brewing Company
What: Firkin Fridays
Where: 954 Villa Street, Mountain View, CA 94041 map
When: Friday, August 6, 2010 @ 5pm
Cost: No cost to go, just pay for the beer you want.

Notes: These firkins are usually tapped by a special guest. Sometimes they get it right in one shot, sometimes they don’t. Fun either way.

Saturday

The Bistro 13th Annual IPA Festival

I wrote a post about this event a little earlier in the week. You can view full details here.

Speakeasy Ales & Lagers Anniversary Party

Speakeasy Ales & Lagers is having their 13th Anniversary party at their brewery this weekend as well.

Who: Speakeasy Ales & Lagers
What: 13th Anniversary Celebration
Where: 1195 Evans Avenue San Francisco, CA 94124 map
When: Saturday, August 7, 2010 @ 2pm - 7pm
Cost: No admission but I think you’ll have to pay for drink tokens.

Notes: They will be releasing their special Anniversary beer, Midnight Run India Black Ale (IBA).

Mead-making Demonstration with Micah Dubinko

Saturday is also Mead Day. Mead Day was started in 2002 and is a way to foster community, camaraderie between mead-makers while growing awareness for mead. What is mead? Well go to this event and find out!

Who: More Beer! (Flavor) homebrew shop
What: Mead-making Demonstration & Tasting featuring Micah Dubinko
Where: 991 N. San Antonio Road, Los Altos, CA 94022 map
When: Saturday, August 7, 2010 @ 2pm - 4pm
Cost: $10 donation to cover the costs of honey, yeast and light snacks. Seating is limited so please RSVP to this event by sending an email to Micah Dubinko at mdubinko@yahoo.com.

Sunday

As if there wasn’t enough beer and mead going around on Friday and Saturday, I will be hosting a Sunday Beer School, featuring American Craft Beer, at Wine Affairs. Details below:

Who: Wine Affairs
What: Sunday Beer School - A hosted tasting of 6 American Craft Beers
Where: 1435 The Alameda, San Jose, CA 95126 map
When: Sunday, August 8, 2010 @5pm - 6pm
Cost: $20/pp, call 408-977-0111 to make your reservation today! Walk-ins also welcome.

In case I forgot to mention any other events, feel free to add the details in the comments section. I hope to see some of you at a few of these events. Have fun!

Each year, the American Homebrewers Association organizes an annual Big Brew event that is not so much a centralized event but a collection of Big Brew events held throughout the country by homebrewers such as you and me. The 2010 Big Brew this year was a little bittersweet as one of the recipes was offered in honor of Greg Noonan, author and brewmaster, who passed away last fall.

I didn’t submit my own “Big Brew” as part of the festivities as it was… a much smaller affair. My wife’s good friend Kong joined me on this brew day. Kong had expressed interest in helping me brew beer on a few occasions and this was the perfect opportunity to introduce him to homebrewing. Out of the three available recipes, Kong decided to try his hand at the American Craft Beer Wheat (Extract). Although, I did change up the recipe a little bit because I couldn’t find certain ingredients.

Ingredients

Malt

• 6 lbs - Dried wheat extract

Specialty Grains:

• 1 lbs - Bamburg Wheat (1.6L)

Hops

• 1 oz - Chinook (11) - bittering
• 1 oz - Chinook (11) - aromatic

Yeast

• Hefeweizen Ale Yeast (WLP300)

Extras

• 1 tablet - Servomyces

Original Gravity: 1.060

Final Gravity: 1.016

ABV: 5.775%

Process

1. Steep all grains for 30 minues at 155° F.
2. Bring to a boil, add 1 oz Chinook hops for bittering.
3. At 30 minute mark, add 6 lbs Coopers Light DME.
4. At 40 minute mark, add in wort chiller to sanitize in boil.
5. At 50 minute mark, add 1 tablet servomyces.
6. At 57 minute mark, add 1 oz Chinook.
7. Chill to 65° F - 70° F.
8. Pitch yeast and aerate.

Tasting Notes (wort) — 5/1/10

Dark gold color with greenish hues and a thin, white/off-white head. Sweet, wheat malt aroma with fresh, yet muddled hop aroma. Flavor is sweet wheat with an assertive hop bitterness. Body is medium-high with no carbonation.

Tasting Notes (primary) — 5/15/10

Cloudy, gold/dark gold color with no head. Lots of banana phenolics in the aroma with some sweet wheat malt aroma. Medium-high citrus flavors upfront with medium/medium-high hop bitterness and a low level of residual sweetness. Body is medium-low/medium with low carbonation.

Tasting Notes (final) — 7/14/2010

This beer was actually done a few weeks ago but I just got around to drinking it. The beer is a cloudy gold/egg yolk color with a white head. Fruity banana aroma with a slight clove in the background. Kong’s hefeweizen has a lemony citrus flavor upfront, medium-low banana fruit flavors in the middle with a floral, resinous hop flavor and an assertive, medium-high hop bitterness. The beer is medium bodied with a spritzy carbonation and a slightly dry finish.

Overall

I couldn’t get the exact liquid extract the recipe originally called for and I’m very okay with that. I don’t particularly enjoy using liquid extract because a lot of that flavor gets imparted into the beer. Also, the color is never as it should be. Also, I split up my hop additions instead of using a first wort hopping as in the recipe. I did a late hop addition at the 57 minute mark because I was looking for more hop flavor and aroma. Lastly, Kong wanted more banana fruit character in the beer so we used a more traditional hefeweizen yeast.

All that being said, I am really enjoying how this beer turned out. A lot of the banana character from the yeast comes through and the hop character is readily apparent as well. The beer ended up pretty much exactly as I imagined as it would and more with the unexpected citrus flavors and character.

I will say that I was a little worried about the level of hop bitterness. The entire batch went home with Kong and he’s not exactly a hop head. The hop bitterness of this beer is comparable to a strong pale ale. In the end, I just trusted the process and the resulting beer ended up being layered and balanced. While Kong did enjoy the beer, he wants to make a more traditional hefeweizen that more fruit/yeast forward.

With the exception of the two photos taken during my review of the final product, all these shots were taken by Kong and his DSLR. I am envious. Just the macro shots alone are worth it; there is also very little post-production work that needed to be done as well. I used to be in photography, having cut my teeth on an old Nikon FM. I miss it. I get so wrapped up in the process of the brew day, documenting everything and taking mediocre shots with my point-and-shoot that I fail to properly compose a shot. It’s good to see things from another point of view, literally and figuratively.

If you’re like me and have only started brewing in recent years, you might know the name Charlie Papazian, but may not know much more about him nor have read any of his books.

Although the classic The Complete Joy of Homebrewing is still in print, I’m almost embarrassed to say I don’t own a copy and certainly haven’t read it cover to cover. In fact, I’ve only really just browsed it (even though it once sat on my desk for a month after checking it out from the library.)

Like many of today’s homebrewers, I started with John Palmer’s How to Brew, a more recently published treatise on homebrewing which in itself is so good, I’ve not had a reason to supplement my library with yet another basic text on homebrewing.

Recently, however, I’ve discovered another Papazian book, Microbrewed Adventures (and you gotta love this subtitle) A Lupulin Filled Journey to the Heart and Flavor of the World’s Great Craft Beers. It’s turning out to be such an enjoyable read, I may just have to revisit Joy.

So who is Charlie Papazian and why should anyone, especially homebrewers, bother to read this book?

First off, his credentials are impressive. He was the founding president of the American Homebrewers Association in 1978, the same year homebrewing was legalized in the U.S. He also founded the Association of Brewers in 1979 - today the Brewer’s Association - for which he is currently President.

He founded the Great American Beer Festival after being invited to judge the Great British Beer Festival in 1981 and credits Michael Jackson (the Beer Hunter, NOT the singer) with encouraging and supporting this effort. He also founded the World Beer Cup, now the world’s largest commercial beer competition with 3300 entries in 2010.

Although some of this history is mentioned in the book, I use it to make a point: Papazian has had his finger on the pulse of the American craft beer movement since a time when the number of registered breweries in the United States wasn’t much more than the number of beers in a case! (There are over 1000 today.)

It is this connection to the evolution of American beer that make the stories in the book so compelling. In fact, the book is organized as a series of stories. Stories of beer places he’s been, beer people he’s known and beer history he’s been a part of. Stories told in a down-to-earth, personal style, like you’re hearing them over a beer at your favorite watering hole.

And the bonus for homebrewers? He punctuates most every story with a recipe!

You’ll find an eclectic mix of delightful recipes such as the original 1982 version of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, a Belgian (!) Stout, a beer called Klibbety Jibbet, a “delicious” Green Chile Ale, Flying Fish’s Farmhouse Saison, Alaskan’s Winter Spruce Old Ale, and Sam Adams original Triple Bock - the beer that was the first in a series to claim the title, “World’s Strongest Beer.”

And that’s just a handful of the recipes you’ll find in just the first 100 pages. As the cover states, there’s over 50 recipes in the book and each is in some way tied to one of the stories he has to tell.

If you’re a homebrewer and interested in a bit of the history behind the American craft beer movement told by the father of the American homebrew movement, you owe it to yourself to read this book. Find it on Beertown.org, the official site of the Brewer’s Association.

Follow Charlie Papazian on his Beer Examiner Blog or on his Twitter Feed.

Brian, the Rabid Brewer

So, it’s American Craft Beer Week and I decided to do my part to support the cause by paying my local breweries a visit. A year ago, I decided to support American Craft Beer Week by paying Tied House a visit. Unfortunately when I arrived, the doors were shuttered and there was a huge, gaping hole in the building where they took out the brewing equipment. This year? Fully open doors and a bustling dinner crowd.

There are a variety of events happening in junction to American Craft Beer Week. The Tied House in Mountain View brewed up an American Red Lager for the event. Well, sort of.

Tied House, American Red Lager, 5.0% ABV

This beer pours out a clear, deep brown color with amber highlights and a thin, short lasting white head. The American Red Lager is primarily malty; it is slightly sweet with a toasted malt component. The aroma is similar. The beer has a medium-low/medium body with a medium level of carbonation. While I didn’t pick it up initially, new BetterBeerBlog scribe The Rabid Brewer, pointed out the beer had a slight DMS note in the form of corn-like flavors. Overall, this is a malty, drinkable beer.

The American Red Lager is one of those style-defying beers. In fact, there is no style category for an American Red Lager in either the BJCP or the Brewers Association. Or I just didn’t look hard enough. As a homebrew, I can only speculate that this beer may have started off as an American Red Ale that ended up fermented with a lager yeast. Since the brewing staff wasn’t in house at the time I was there, speculation is all I got.

Tied House, “Rock Out with your Bock Out” Maibock, 7.5% ABV

The Tied House Maibock pours out a pale brown/amber color with honey-colored highlights and a thin, short lasting white head (I’m starting to see a pattern here). The aroma of the beer is slightly sweet, estery with spice notes. The flavor is sweet, with a moderate toasted quality. The hop flavor takes a back seat to the malt quality of the beer but it’s there for balance. There is also a noticeable spice character that I can be attributed to either the types of hops used in the beer, the alcohol or both. The Maibock is medium-full in body with a medium carbonation level. Even though the beer rings in at 7.5% ABV, it’s not overwhelming or hot. Despite being slightly out of style, this is a good drinking, flavorful beer.

It’s great to see the Tied House make the effort to support American Craft Beer Week. As a community, craft breweries are much stronger when we have a unified front supporting a common cause. Since the Tied House is one of the older breweries in the Bay Area, I almost expect them to take a leadership role in supporting causes like this. No pressure guys, no pressure.

Every since it’s doors have opened, the Trappist has packed in throngs of Belgian beer fans. It’s intimate space, friendly and knowledgeable staff, and commitment to an authentic Belgian beer bar experience has earned much respect and admiration from not only craft beer connoisseurs but of the community as well. The Trappist’s support craft beer extends far beyond it’s 16 or so taps or the hundreds of beers contained within it’s “Beer Bible” but onto the support it extends towards the craft beer community.

Last Thursday the Trappist played host to Pro-Am Night where 6 of the 10 Pro-Am beers brewed in California were on tap to sample. “Pro-Am” refers to the Professional-Amateur Competition held annually at the Great American Beer Festival (GABF). The competition is supposed to foster collaboration between the amateur and professional brewing communities with the beer being brewed having been an award-winning homebrew recipes. Most professional homebrewers got their start as homebrewers so it makes sense a project like this would’ve been developed.

Here’s a list of what was poured and some specs to go along with it.

Between my wife, her best friend and myself, we were able to try all the beers on tap. Of the six I had, the most memorable for me were the Five & Dime Tripel, Hazy Frog and Elizabeth Street Bitter (ESB). The ESB had a deceptively complex malt character with depth and has classic English sensibilities which included a very manageable 5.2% ABV and low hop character. The Hazy Frog was a good example of a Robust Porter with it’s deep, roasted malt character with chocolate notes and black coffee undertones. The Five & Dime Tripel was a balanced tripel that was sweet-ish with good fruit notes and slightly noticeable alcohol character. A real treat was when Five & Dime brewer Nate Smith brought along the homebrewed version for comparison. The homebrewed version was drier and a little more “alcoholy” but equally good. It all came down to personal preference.

The six Pro-Am homebrewers were in attendance as well and of the six, I managed to interview three of them. The first brewer I spoke to was Mike “Tastey” McDole who brewed Janet’s Brown Ale. Named after his late wife, this beer got it’s start in the late 90s. Initially it was supposed to be a clone of Full Sail’s Amber Ale but Mike used a California Ale yeast while the Full Sail Amber used a English Ale yeast. At the time Tasty, as his friends call him, was brewing only for three years. Without a homebrew club to lean on for advice, his attempt to clone the Full Sail Amber ended up in a completely different, yet tasty, place. His wife Janet served as his sounding board and it was with her help that Tasty dialed in his recipe. The goal of the beer was to find a balance between the minty/woodsy character of the US Northern Brewer hops with the chocolate/roasty character of the chocolate malt which gives this beer a “Thin Mints” quality.

The second brewer I was able to talk to was Richard Brewer-Hay, creator of the Elizabeth Street Bitter. Originally from England, it’s no surprise that Richard decided to brew up an ESB. Richard got his start homebrewing in October of 2003. The very first batch of beer he brewed was a mini-mash version of the ESB where in it’s initial iteration, Richard only used about 4 different specialty malts. Fast forward to the present and the ESB recipe is now an all-grain recipe that calls for double the original number of malts, although some malts are there just to get the color correct. Richard feels this particular beer tends to hit its stride when it warms up a bit. Brewing at 21st Amendment was a mostly pleasant experience for Richard. The idea of scaling things up from his 10 gallon homebrew system to a 12 BBL professional system seemed intimidating initially but after consulting with 21st Amendment brewer Jesse Houck, it was determined that the homebrewed recipe would have to be multiplied by fifty to work on 21st Amendment’s brewery. The only downside of the day was when Richard burned his hand while taking a sample of the wort. The 218°F wort burned off a layer of skin and left Richard nearly single-handed the rest of the day. Richard is a prodigious homebrewer. He brews so much that his house is also known as the Elizabeth Street Brewery. In addition to the Elizabeth Street Bitter, he also brews up Daddy’s Chocolate Milk (sweet stout), Quincy’s Winter Warmer (a dry porter named after his second daughter), Addison’s Firecracker Red (Irish red ale brewed with raspberries) and Mummy’s Double Honey (a brown ale brewed with honey). As you may have already guessed, most of his beers are named after family members. Speaking of family, Richard and his wife eventually want to open up their own family-friendly brewpub modeled after traditional English brewpubs which are family-friendly.

The final brewer I interviewed with is Nathan Smith. Hailing from Oakland, his Five & Dime Tripel is a nod towards his east bay/Alameda county roots (the area code is, you guessed it, 510) as well as to the White Labs’ WLP510 yeast strain, which is the Orval strain. Originally inspired by the relatively new style of Belgian IPAs such as Houbon Chouffe, Nathan wanted to capture the delicate balance between traditional Belgian malts and yeast with the use of American hops. It was while at the Trappist he sampled a tripel from La Rulles brewery that Nathan found a beer that reall peaked his interest. After further investigation, Nathan discovered that the La Rulle Tripel used American hops Amarillo and Warrior but used the Orval yeast. The Five & Dime is his attempt at finding the sweet spot, the balance, between the fruity (pear and apple) esters with the citrus and oily character of the Amarillo hops. An interesting bit of trivia to note is because of time constraints, Nathan brewed up a 25 gallon yeast starter to culture enough yeast to form a commercial-sized quantity of yeast to pitch. Having brewed a Double IPA at Triple Rock last year with Rodger, Nathan was already familiar with Triple Rock’s brewing system and was able to hit the ground running. With the help of his good friend and Triple Rock brewer George Kumparak, Nathan was pretty much left to his own devices while Rodger managed the day-to-day operation of the brewer. At one point a pump had burned out and whirlpooling the beer seemed doubtful but Rodger handled the situation and salvaged what could’ve been a very long brew day.

If you weren’t able to make it to Pro-Am night to try these collaborative beers, you will have to wait until GABF. I know Nathan’s Five & Dime Tripel was a huge success as it was all tapped out last Thursday. I was told they would only have a single keg of each beer available so once they’re out, they’re out. All in all, this was a great event at the Trappist.

By the way, the one thing I forgot to mention was Trappist recently (about 3 months now) opened up their new extention. By the looks of it, Trappist has doubled in size making for a much more roomier experience. The new extension doesn’t have the same intimacy and look of the original space but with room to move around, I’m not complaining. The Trappist extension is not open all the time, just after 5pm on certain days. Hopefully I’ll be able to see some of you there in the future.

Audio Interview: Mike \”Tasty\” McDole* | Richard Brewer-Hay* | Nathan Smith

*Admittedly the audio for Mike and Richard’s interviews are horrible. I wasn’t planning on linking to them but what the hell, why not?

I decided to wrap up all the social events in one post. Mainly because I will be linking to photogalleries of the shots we’ve taken to the specific events. The other reason is that I don’t really need to recap a social event. We all know what we’re there do to: have fun! Drink beer! Talk to friends!

2009 NHC Pro Brewers Night

2009 NHC Club Night

2009 NHC Closing Dinner

Closing Dinner

Okay, I lied. I wanted to leave this as just a photo recap but I couldn’t leave the Closing Dinner without a few of my thoughts. First off, a big thanks to the Mad Zymurgists for being kind and gracious hosts and letting myself and Sammy stay at their table during the dinner. While Sammy and I are loosely (very loosely, more like on their email distribution list) affiliated with the Sudzers homebrew club, we were without a table that night. Instead of going freelance and getting a table to ourselves, we were able to stay at their table. Thanks again!

Second, a big congratulations to Greg Robles for taking a Silver at NHC for his Vienna lager. Once his name was called, our table erupted and we were all quite happy to see our table represented. If you were there, you’d have noticed the unofficial “duel” going on between homebrewers Greg Strong and Jamil Zainasheff. Both homebrewers took home a lot of hardware that night but Greg earned his as well. Here’s a link to the complete list of winners.

Seeing as NHC was over a little over a week ago, the memory is a little fuzzy. I don’t even think I can properly recap the dinner and pairings with any justice. If I tell you the food was good, would you take me at my word? Argh, I can’t resist… must… list thoughts… using… bullet… points….:

• Salad - Asian noodle salad paired with Mother Hefeweizen. Okay, I’m not entire sure if the name of the beer. I do know that all of our beer was supplied by Rogue Ales. I would’ve never thought of using ramen noodles in a salad before. Most of the salad’s ingredients complimented and echoes the flavors in the hefeweizen. A good pairing here. I believe Sean Paxton used a lot of beer to create the salad dressing as well.
• Entree - Pork with Rogue’s American Amber. This was an exquisite piece of pig. Very flavorful, very tender and juicy. The pork was soaked in 20 gallons of brine created with a Rogue beer called “Charlie”. The beer, a hoppy American Amber, was an okay pairing. I don’t know if the beer really improved upon the flavor of the pork, if anything, I remember the beer being a little too bitter for the entree.
• Dessert - Chocolate mousse with TCHO chocolate paired with Rogues Imperial Stout. What an awesome dessert. The mousse was light and served in a bittersweet, dark chocolate shell. The mousse was smooth and creamy yet light on the palette. It was an extra treat to top off the mousse with bits of TCHO cacao nibs and Hugh Baird malt. Very nice touch! As much as I liked this dessert, and its accompanying beer, I was expecting more. Chocolate and stout is, in my opinion, a fairly easy pairing to make, almost boring really. I was really hoping to have seen something new and different with the dessert pairing. I was hoping to get “Wowed” but my expectations fell short. Like I said, it was an excellent pairing, just a little expected.

The rest of the dinner was comprised of giveaways and going through the entire list of NHC medalist. It was a pretty drawn out affair but if you won, it was totally worth the wait. As I mentioned earlier, it was a duel between Gordon Strong and Jamil Zainasheff to see who could bring back the most hardware. In the end, I think Gordon edged out Jamil because Gordon was the receipient of the Ninkasi Award from Samuel Adams. Basically, he had the most points.

So there you go, my recaps of the 209 NHC is finally over with. Feel free to comment on the photos in the gallery or to leave a comment below in case I got my facts incorrect.

I suppose I owe my readers a bit of an explaination regarding my last post. After all, when I lead in with, “With the exception of some bullshit that happened during Pro-Brewers night…”, I’m bound to pique the interests of a few people. So, here it is.

Even now I’m a little reluctant to write about it, not quite embarassed by my actions but a little reluctant. Well, I’ll leave it up to you to decide if my course of action was prudent or not. At one point during Pro Brewers Night Anchor Steam decided to give away 1.5L magnums (big bottles) of their Our Barrel Ale, or OBA. My wife Sammy, short in stature but big in tenacity, is able to receive a bottle which she sets down at the table Firehouse Brewery is pouring from. I am there talking with Deb, Steve’s (Firehouse brewmaster) wife when this woman standing near me swipes the bottle from the table. She then accuses me of stealing her bottle of OBA and that she’s just taking back what’s hers. We argue, I call Sammy over, the guy at BJs comes up with a compromise: I get one of the BJs shirts if we open the OBA bottle so everyone can have some. Sammy, the kind woman that she is, agrees and before I can say anything the bottle is open.

At this point I am pissed, I am livid. Instead of causing a scene, I take a long walk to try and calm down. Truth of the matter is, I don’t even really care about the beer. What I am really pissed off about is that I am accused of stealing, I get stolen from, and the compromise is that we have to share our beer with the people who stole it from us. That is BULLSHIT. By the time I am calm enough to return, we don’t even have an empty bottle I can put on a shelf to remind me daily of this disappointment.

Now that’s off my chest, I can resume my recap of NHC Day 2.

Extreme Fermentables with Sam Calagione of Dogfish Head.

Oy. Sammy and I woke up, as with many other people, with a bad hangover. Despite my headache, I was only a few minutes late to my first session: Extremem Fermentables with Sam Calagione. Here’s the big, take-away from Sam’s session: the Reinheitsgebot is an antiquated form of art sensorship. He even made us repeat this outloud. This feat alone is a true testament to the man’s charisma; he was able to get a room full of hungover NHC conference attendees to be interactive.

Sam sees himself, and the brewers of Dogfish Head by extension, as artists who have decided to use beer as their canvas. A leisurely glance at the portfolio of Dogfish Head beers can confirm, at the very least, they have an artistic spirit when it comes to their recipes. Admittedly their worst brewer, Sam is responsible for conceptualizing their beers before handing off the general idea to his head brewer to source the ingredients and brew up on their Sabco pilot system.

I am sometimes awed at how Sam is able to hold a room. He spoke for a few more minutes sharing with us some of the funnier moments behind the creation of certain Dogfish Head beers. For example, the “Minute” beers are all continuously hopped over the course of the entire boil. Standard brewing practice would be to add the bulk of your bittering hops in the beginning and your flavor hops towards the end. While everything these days is all computer controlled and automated, early attempts at “automation” included the use of a repurposed, vibrating table top football game or a brewer having to stand there and add hops continuously for the duration of the boil. The original idea for this technique was inspired by a cooking show Sam once watched where the chef added black pepper throughout the entire time it took to cook a meal. The reasoning was to add a layer of depth to the food that a one-time addition could not give.

A 20 minute video showing the origins of their Palo Santo Marron beer played for the remainder of the session. While I found this video interesting, I really came to see Sam talk and not watch some video I could’ve probably found on the Interwebs someplace. I must admit that Sam does an excellent job of selling the idea that Dogfish Head is like homebrewing but bigger. He is a consummate salesman always pimping his beers out. I can appreciate what he is doing over at Dogfish Head but the session was a little disappointing because it felt like one of those paid advertisements you see on TV late at night.

Funkification, a 100% Brettanomyces fermented mind dump with Vinnie Cilurzo of Russian River

In this session, Vinnie broke down the barrel aging program at Russian River. What makes their barrel aging program different from another brewery is their inclusion of different types of yeasts such as brettanomyces, lactobacillus and pediococcus. Here are my notes on this session:

Sanctification was poured during the brettanomyces portion of the session.

• Sanctification is 100% brettanomyces, although I think he mentioned they do take out 20% of the beer to spike it with lactobacillus and pediococcus after primary fermentation and then blend it back together. Sanctification is then bottle conditioned with fresh brettanomyces.
• Rules for Funky Beers
  • Be patient
  • Don’t look or taste everyday
  • Can’t be a control freak
  • Be natural
  • Listen to your beer. It will tell you when it’s done.
  • Making something drinkable is a success
  • Make 2 of everything
• 100% brettanomyces is relatively easy. Just brew your beer as usual and pitch brettanomyces.
• Brettanomyces is not a wild yeast

Beatification is a result of 100% spontaneous fermentation, aka “sonambic” (Sonoma lambic).

• Beatification is tart but the flavor remindsme of green raisins
• Fairly simple recipe, 60% barley/40% wheat
• Sour mash - Mash tun is opened up overnight and the natural bugs in the brewery are allowed to take root and sour the mash.
• Aged hops
• Resulting somanbic is then aged and blended together to make a consisten product
• Beatification is then bottle conditioned with a wine yeast

Vinnie is actually from wine making family and some of his techniques and ideas seem to come from that experience. For the homebrewer making funky beers, the plastic ale pail we all used in the beginning would make a perfect vessel for sour beers because of its porous nature.

This talk was a vast improvement over my first session as Vinnie laid down principles of how we could scale this process down for the homebrew environment.

Keynote Speech with Ken Grossman of Sierra Nevada

This was an entertaining keynote speech where Ken Grossman pretty much ran through the humble beginnings of Sierra Nevada and then contrasted it with the Sierra Nevada of today. While it may take some time to find it, you can probably find the complete history of Sierra Nevada online, no need for me to repeat it here.

What I will say though is that the brewing sciences have come a very long way in such a short amount of time. In today’s climate, homebrewers have access to pretty much the same sort of raw ingredients and materials professional brewers have. Back when Ken used to own a homebrew shop, homebrewers used liquid malt extract from a can, sometimes hop flavored, to make their beers with. The liquid yeasts that are so ubiquitous today would’ve costed you hundreds of dollars 30 years ago. Fresh hops? Forget about it. Hops used to come in pink wrapped bricks that were often send to 3rd world contries as an additive to keep bread from spoiling. Even then, those pink bricks were of aged and dry hops, a far, far cry from the relatively fresh whole, plug or pellet hops we can get today.

Needless to say, we are spoiled by today’s technological advancements. Instead of learning to weld as Ken did to fabricate the equipment he needed, we can just search on Google for brewing equipment for sale. It’s ridiculous to see how far Sierra Nevada has come, how far the craft brewing industry has come and how far the homebrewing community has come over the years. Knowing where you’ve come from gives me a better appreciation of where the craft beer industry and homebrewing industry will be going. The beers of the future, as cliché as it sounds, are built from the beers of yesterday. I am excited to see what the future holds.

Mead Panel - Moderated by James Spencer featuring Charlie Papazian, Byron Burch, Curt Stock and Harod Gulbransen

Didn’t take too many notes but here are my bullet points:

• The best mead has been aging for at least one year. It’s possible to make a mead that’s only 7-8 weeks old but you really have to work
• Only one person does a full boil that lasts for only 2 minutes, just long enough to skim off solid particles in the honey.
• Generally speaking, adding fruit to “secondary” results in more fruit character. Adding during primary yields more subtle notes. Spices can be added much later down the line, easier to add more, can never remove
• You are able to resweeten your meads
• People get grumpy when they don’t get their meads. Maybe they should consider moving to the front of the room and shutting up

Going Pro Panel - Moderated by Justin Crossley featuring Sean O’Sullivan, Tomme Arthur, Vinnie Cilurzo, John Pinkerton and Keith Lemcke with Ken Grossman

I tried to take as many notes as I could but then I’d be missing something someone would be saying. I must say that Justin did a great job as moderator keeping the panel going, keeping the questions coming and managing time.

• Ken Grossman was a late addition while Keith represented Seibold Institute
• Vinnie believes that niche brewing has a future
• However much money you think you’re going to need, it won’t be enough. Make sure to get enough capital, roughly $1M minimum.
• Don’t skimp out on the brewery floor.
• Have a good relationship with city officials, it makes things easier in the future
• Actual brewing makes up only 5% of your day, 95% is the business of brewing
• Think carefully of the type of brewery you will want (production, brew pub) as each has it’s own set of pros and cons
• Think and plan for the future. Sean laments the type of liquor license he has as it prohibits him from self distribution
• Think about the area you will be starting your brewery in. Lack of a sustained brewery presence may be an indicator the area isn’t ready for a brewery

I apologize for the delay of the Hopinions post. This was supposed to go last week but I was at the National Homebrewers Conference in Oakland. There was very limited interweb access at the Convention Center and I didn’t feel like paying the Hilton $13/day for internet accesss so I’m having to make it up now.

Gearing up for the NHC got me thinking about homebrewing, specifically, the origins of my own homebrewing. I’m sure I may have talked about it before but I can’t remember which post (if at all). So for this issue of Hopinions, I decided to take a trip down memory lane and remember my initial stabs at homebrewing while bringing Mario (from Brewed for Thought) with me.

Feel free to share your own experiences with homebrewing. I’m always interested in other people’s stories.

From: Peter at BetterBeerBlog

The National Homebrewers Conference (NHC) is in full swing this week and it just so happens NHC is being held right in our “backyard” with the city of Oakland playing host. I will be attending the NHC as a participant this year looking to learn a couple of things to make me a better homebrewer as well as catch up with some friends and perhaps make new ones. That being said, I thought it would be a perfect time here on Hopinions to talk about homebrewing. Specifically, our own homebrewing experiences.

I first got the idea to homebrew looking through the Spartan Daily (the SJSU newspaper) and there was article about homebrewing. I kept the paper and visited the homebrew shop they quoted for the article, Beer and Winemakers of America. Like many other homebrew shops they sold kits with all the necessary equipment to get your started homebrewing. While I use glass for all my beers today, I still have the plastic bucket I started off with. In fact, most of my equipment is still the original. I only just recently replaced my hydrometer about two months ago when it finally broke. The ironic part was that I wasn’t even brewing at the time, just moving stuff around.

Do you remember your first beer? My first beer was an amber ale. I honestly don’t even remember the recipe, I never bothered to write stuff down in the early years. I remember being very nervous about brewing. I was scared to death about infecting my beer so I sanitized the hell out of all my equipment multiple times that day. At the time, I brewed on the stove top and I must say that it took forever for the water to heat up and it took just as long for me to cool it down. In hindsight, I’m surprised my early beers never got infected, especially when you take into account how long it took for me to cool the wort down. Unfortunately, cooling the wort down ended up being my undoing. I misread the thermometer and pitched the yeast when the wort was still too hot. Of course the yeast were killed and the beer never took off so I ended up dumping the thing.

What got you into homebrewing? Do you remember what your first beer was? What was the worst thing that ever happened while homebrewing?

From: Mario at Brewed For Thought

Ah, my first time.  It was special, and I’ll always remember it.  Actually it wasn’t, and I vaguely remember it.

At the time I had just moved to ORegon and was living with my buddy in Corvallis.  He had homebrewed back when we were in college and since we were both such big fans of malt based adult beverages I thought it would be a good idea if I learned the art of brewing.

Since he knew what to do and gave me a hand with the process, I never had that experience of going into it blind, but I did ease my way into it.  I started with the Righteous Ale from Papazian’s Joy of Homebrewing book.  It’s a simple amber, 10 day primary fermentation then straight to the bottle.  For such a simple recipe and short fermentation, it’s a rather tasty brew, so it actually became my fridge filler when the stocks were running low.

Funny thing, this recipe also lead to one of my worst experiences.  Not sure what happened, but a few months later, using the same recipe, fermenting in the same bucket, keeping the beer in the same closet, same fermentation times, we got our first taste of autolysis.  Upon opening the bucket, we knew something was wrong.  I tasted it, and it tasted bad, but not horrible.  Being a new brewer I thought this  was one of the off flavors that might go away with time. So I bottled and waited ten days.

After those ten days later we had the worst smelling and tasting beverage known to man.  One mouthful of this scourge on mankind and you would be stuck with the flavor of burning tires.  No amount of water or beer could remove the flavor.  We should have known because even opening the beer stunk up the entire kitchen, yet everyone had a taste.

The funny thing is, I still have a bottle of the Asshole Beer (that’s it’s name) in my closet.  Would you like to try it?  It has now been kept in fluctuating temperatures for about 5 years and should be reaching it’s prime.

From: Peter at BetterBeerBlog

The Asshole beer sounds pretty hilarious. I should bring in a bottle or two of my almost 2-year old Russian Imperial Stout and Alt bier. Both have been kept in cardboard boxes in my office that also has variable temperature swings. Last I had the RIS, it still never carbonated it should’ve been and it’s already starting to show oxidative qualities. Next time I’m up, we should have a palette-challenging beer night.

It’s funny that you mention brewing from a homebrew book. I have about half a dozen or so homebrew books myself but I have never made any of the recipies contained within them. I actually learned the techniques and process of homebrewing from the Xerox copy of the process that came with my brewing kit. I’ve stayed true ever since. Whenever I needed a recipe, I’ve always thought about the commercial version of a style I really enjoyed and asked my homebrew shop owner to develop a recipe based upon that. I’ve never done side-by-side taste tests as I’m pretty happy with the way my homebrews turn out.

For the last beer I made, I dry-hopped for the first time. I don’t know, I’ve played it very conservatively with my homebrewing all these years and I’ve had some good beers to show for it. I feel left behind though as I read about all these other homebrewers who are brewing with very advanced techniques, such as barrel-aging, methode champagne, first wort hopping, hop backs and even triple decoction.

Do you think your own homebrewing experiences are heavily influenced by the books you read or by the beers you drink? Both? Neither? Also, what was the most challenging technique you’ve tried while homebrewing?

From: Mario at Brewed For Thought

You’re free to drink the Asshole beer, but not around me.  I won’t touch it and I’m actually scared to open it.

As far as recipe sources, I’ve tried it all, books, homebrew shop supplied, internet or even creating my own from scratch.  In the end, that’s all it is though, a recipe.

My brewing experience has been rather conservative as well.  I’ve focused more on perfecting a couple recipes in the past than trying new experimental things.  It’s funny you refer to those other techniques as more challenging.  Other than decoctions, I don’t know how challenging they are, beyond fiscally.  The most challenging “technique” I’ve tried has been to reproduce my previous results.

To answer your question, I think I’m most influenced by the people I brew with.  This would be my old roommate that taught me how to brew, the homebrew shops where I shop and the discussions that took place there.  Beers and books can offer inspiration, but wherever the idea may start, it gets mutated through various stages of conversation.

With the exception of some bullshit that happened during Pro-Brewers night, this conference and this weekend went spectacularly well. I learned a lot about homebrewing and just as much about the industry itself. I got to meet a lot of great people, taste a lot of good beer and had an excellent time. All-in-all, this event was well worth it and I am glad I decided to go.

Getting straight to the point, there’s was a lot of information I was able to take in, some better than others but a lot of information nonetheless. These series of National Homebrewers Conference Recaps will mainly focus on the sessions I attended, my notes and what I learned from each. I could spend a lot of time detailing every single thing that went on but that would bore the hell out of me recapping all of that mundane, as well as sublime and I’m sure it would bore you as well. Plus it gives me an area to focus on and for you to comment about.

The social aspect was a huge portion of this event with Pro-Brewers Night, Club Night and the Closing Gala Dinner. There was much to write about with that but I think I will let the photos speak for themselves. No need to write about how so-and-so was sooo cooool or how I so-and-so was totally drunk or whatever. My words could not do justice to all of that. It was definitely one of those, “you had to be there” sort of deals. So, as I said before, I will compile my photos and develope a slideshow you can browse at your lesiure.

2009 National Homebrewer Conference

While the official conference started off on Thursday, there were quite a few brewery tours run by various groups around the Bay Area. Unfortunately for me, I had to be at work on Wednesday and missed out. No matter. There was plenty of time to drink beers and get to know folks.

Thursday morning Sammy and I checked into NHC at around 9am-ish. I had totally thought that the first session of Thursday started at 9am and when we arrived, I mistook the lack of people for the sessions having already started. Turned out the opening toast didn’t even start until about 1:30 and the first session an hour after that. Sammy and just bummed around the Oakland Marriot City Center.

The Oakland Marriot City Center was ground zero for 2009 NHC. Attached to the Marriot hotel, it also served as the host hotel for the conference. Having booked our accommodations really late in the process, Sammy and couldn’t get a room at the Marriot. Instead we booked on Priceline.com (price, line, negotiaaator!) and booked at a Hilton that was less than 5 miles from where the action was. The distance as a non-issue as we drove ourselves around anyway.

As a convention attendee, you were asked to always carry your conference badge with you (a godsend as it allowed me to remember people’s names) which also doubled as your conference tasting glass holder. In addition to the usual paperwork you receive (program, maps, things to do, places of interest, sponsors, etc.) we were given two beers. The first is Brother Levonian Saison Ale brewed by Port Brewing out of San Marcos, CA (aka Lost Abbey). This beer was named after Dave Levonian, a homebrewer who died of cancer in 2008. The saison was his original recipe as interpreted by the brewers of Port Brewing. I’m not going to review these beers now but at a later date. Although if you want more backstory on this beer (and the next Conference beer), click here. Sippin on the Dock of the Bay IPA was brewed by Alpine Brewing Company. There’s not much of a bittersweet backstory to this beer, it’s just the Conference IPA.

Opening Toast

If I remember correctly, the opening toast was led by three people. First up was American Homebrewers Association Direction, Gary Glass. Second was by AHA founder Charlie Papazian. The final speaker of the opening toast was homebrewer extraordinaire Jamil Zainasheff. What I remember most came from Jamil’s speech. Basically, we are all attending the NHC not for the beers (gasp!) but for the community. We are all here for each other. I happen to agree with him. I’ve written many times in the past that the homebrew and craft beer community have been very embracing of new members. Some of the friends we’ve met because of the beer blog are now very dear friends of ours today. Granted, we mainly meet around beer but beer is not the reason we meet. We genuinely enjoy each other’s company, no matter if it revolves around a pint or two. If we were only about the beer at NHC, there’s no way we’d go through all the trouble and expense of being in Oakland for the conference; there’s no way we’d go through all the hassel and inconvenience of making our own beer. If it was only about the beer, we’d just go to the store and buy it. But it’s not about the beer, it’s about the people behind the beer and that’s why we’re at NHC. I’m sure Jamil was a bit more eloquent about our reasons for being there but that’s was it in a nutshell.

Wood Fermentation and Aging by Matt Brynildson

Barrel aging a beer seems to be the “in” thing to do right now. Many breweries are starting to experiment with aging their beers in used spirit (rum, bourbon, whiskey) or wine (merlot, chardonnay, pinot noir) barrels with various levels of success. While this may all seem new and exciting, in reality, barrel aging beers is the traditional way of making a beer. With all the latest advancements in brewing technology, stainless steel has made us forget about beer’s humble roots in wood and many of the cutting edge brewers are just now reminding us of why brewing beer in wood is a good thing.

Burton-on-Trent was the epicenter of pale ale brewing and wood aging. Many of the breweries in the area used a Burton Union as a way to make their beers. Simplistically put, a Burton Union was a configuration of wooden casks use to ferment beer. In many cases today, most brewers age their beers in wood, more of a final step before kegging or bottling. The Burton Union introduced wood early to the brewing process. When brewing with the Burton Union, a neutral oak was used to make the barrels as to not impart a huge amount of flavor to the beer. But why the Burton Union?

The Burton Union had a few advantages. Monks (isn’t is strange how monks seemed to be at the epicenter of all good beer?) discovered that the Burton Union created an exceptionally clear beer that could be served right from the cask. In addition, 100 BBL of beer would yield 500 BBL in yeast, this was an excellent way of producing yeast, which was collected from a trough above the fermentors. Today, Marston is the last Burton Union brewery.

Firestone Walker uses a variation of the Burton Union to brew their Double Barrel Ale. There are a few key differences between the Union system at Firestone Walker and the traditional Burton Union. The first is that Firestone Walker doesn’t harvest the yeast the process produces. Second, fermentation is initially started in stainless steel barrels before being racked into wooden barrels, which are then purged with CO2 to prevent oxidation. Firestone barrels are made from New American Oak which are medium-heavy, plus toast. Please note that the Double Barrel Ale is fermented with good old sacchromyces cervisae, or brewer’s yeast. They are not interested in the little bugs and critters that produce sour ales.

That being said, to replicate brewing with wood on the homebrew scale, you have the following options:

• staves - long, large stripes similar to barrel staves
• cubes - small solid pieces, can toast well
• chips - thin fragments
• powders - dusty with a fast reaction time

Which method works the best is entirely a matter of trial and error for the individual homebrewer’s setup, experience and goal for the beer. Keep in mind that oak comes in a variety of toast levels which impart different levels of flavor to your beer. Here’s a quick list:

• light toast - sweet, spicy oak aromas
• medium toast - vanilla, toasted bread
• heavy toast - chocolate notes, coffee, almond smoke (phenolic)

Lastly, if you will be brewing using a full-sized barrel, Matt recommends you do the following things when aging your beer:

• purge barrel with CO2 well before racking your beer into the barrel
• purge head space while sampling and moving
• “top up” barrels if evaporation is an issue. Wine makers report a 5%-10% loss each year, also known as the “angel’s share”.
• Keep things clean, sanitize the thief between samples every time
• If you’re using a used spirits barrel, the flavor of the spirit transfers best on a fresh barrel, or a barrel that was just emptied of its spirit.

Speaking of keeping things clean, here are Matt’s barrel maintenance tips:

• use it or lose it. Don’t acquire a barrel unless you intend on filling it within the week.
• hot water works the best to clean, no sterilization needed
• visual inspection and sniff test. If it smells bad, it is bad.
• SO2 (sulfur matches) will keep a barrel if you can’t fill it within a week
• CO2 purging will have the barrel last longer

All in all, I learned a lot of things about wood aging a beer and I’m looking forward to trying this on my own as well.

Brewing Great German Lagers with Michael Ferguson

This was a session I wasn’t sure I’d be interested in or not simply because I have brewed nothing but ales almost exclusively. Michael Ferguson is the Director of Contract Brewing for BJs. He got his start in brewing by working for Dan Gordon, of Gordon Biersch, at their GB1 location, better known as Palo Alto. He has always seen himself as a “lager lad” and is biased towards lagers. Since his youth, he’s since softened on this stance on ales. While is still lager-biased, he can now accept ales for being different, not necessarily better, just different. Michael is a great speaker, he’s funny and witty with a big, booming voice that reminds me of Santa. His sense of humor is shown when he said his other claim to fame was being “the other black brewer” (the inside joke being that Garret Oliver from Brooklyn Brewing Company) was the black brewer most people know about.

Homebrewing lagers has it’s own challenges. It is more time-consuming. You require more equipment. You need to have tighter temperature control, thus the necessity of refrigeration for a slow fermentation. Lastly, sulfur and DMS production is common.

Michael’s big take-away was that if you’re going to brew a lager, you might as well as brew it the right way by choosing the approprite ingredients and use the traditional methods. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it as the saying goes. The second take-away is that you “make your beer in the mash”. Translated, all the work for creating the flavors of the beer is primarily done in the mash, at least for lagers it is.

Use water that is good enough to drink. When choosing hops, keep it simple, keep it traditional, keep it noble. Of course, use a lager yeast. Lastly, use plain old Munich malt. Michael goes on to say that the development of crystal and caramels malts is because we are lazy brewers who don’t want to brew a beer using traditional methods.

In essense decoction mashing is a temperature controlled mashing method in which part of the mash is drawn off and boiled in a separate kettle before being added back to the rest of the mash. Decoction has many advantages:

• Enhances production of flavor and aroma compounds
• Reduces mash pH for better conversion and easier runoff
• Less trube in the main boil and at chilling
• Less chance of raw starch carryone to kettle
• Extracts, coagulates and precipitates tannins, proteins, and silicates (tannins are complex and some of it may drop in the decoction, thus you don’t have to be so careful with sparge temperature and pH)
• Allows thicker mash for earlier rests
• Better gelatinization of starch
• Breaks down protein matrix, thus releasing more starch and improving extraction
• It’s the traditional way to make some beers
• Darkens beer

Of course, decoction has its disadvantages as well:

• Complicated
• Requires more equipment
• Takes a lot more time
• Darkens beers (darkening through decotion was replaced through the use of crystal and caramel malts)
• Extracts tannins as grains are boiled (released tannins require long lagering to drop them out)
• Danger of scorching
• Uses more energy
• Must be careful about starch released in final decotion

In the end, I walked away with a greater appreciation of lagers and the decoction method. I realize that the rich, malt quality of some beers can only be achieved through the use of traditional brewing methods such as decoction. If anything, I’d like to give decoction a try just to see if I could pull it off or not.

This was the final session I attended on Thursday. Pro-Brewer’s night was set to start later on in the evening, around 8pm. I won’t write about this but I will post a slideshow as soon as I’ve developed it, sometime this week, promise.