BetterBeerBlog

Author: The Rabid Brewer

This past weekend I helped judge the MoreBeer! Forum Competition in Concord. The competition is in its 6th year and is a BJCP sanctioned event. Although the competition rules state that, “You must be a member of  the MoreBeer! Forum to enter,” that process is free and easy, so technicality it was open to anyone willing to register online.

This year saw around 200 entries in BJCP categories 1-23 (beer only, no mead or cider) competing for the Best of Show grand prize of a new MoreBeer! 14 Gallon Conical. This has to be one of the best homebrewing competition prizes out there and had plenty of folks excited to enter.

Around 30 judges were seated in tables setup in the MoreBeer! warehouse for both a morning and afternoon session, followed by the final Best of Show round.

Judging Underway at the 6th Annual MoreBeer! Forum Competition

In addition, some of the more popular categories (IPA, Pale Ale) had enough entries to warrant queued judging with a separate mini-BOS round. Despite the additional work, the competition ran smoothly and folks had a good time.

Judges, stewards and other volunteers don’t get paid, but we were all provided bagels and juice for breakfast and a wonderful lunch spread of homemade Mexican food prepared by competition organizer Randy Griggs and MoreBeer! staff. Randy even had fresh mozzarella cheese still warm from just being made! On tap was a keg of Triple Rock Single Hop Apollo Pale Ale.

Lunch Spread for the Competition Judges, Stewards and other Volunteers

Here’s a personal thank you from Randy that was posted on the MoreBeer! Forum:

I also want to say thank you to all the volunteers who showed up and help sort, prelim, judge, cellar, and organize this event. I can’t say enough how great it is that Chris Graham is helping me right now in his free time to scan all 198 entries scoresheets. David Teckam, judge coordinator, for handling the entries and judging, Tasty McDole for his constant advice and guidance, and Ale Industries for providing us refrigeration that makes this all possible. There are many more I am leaving out, and I appreciate them all.

Big shout out to Best of Show winner Dwight Mulcahy for his Weizenbock. Dwight is a member of the Worts of Wisdom and has racked up more than 35 ribbons this past year including 5 Best of Show wins. He also has an entry in the GABF Pro-Am that he brewed at Hanger 24 after winning BOS at their competition earlier this year. Looking forward to trying it at GABF!

Congrats Dwight for your Best of Show Win and new MoreBeer! Conical!

For a complete list of competition winners, stay tuned to this thread on the MoreBeer! Forum.

Brian

Author: The Rabid Brewer

One of the year’s largest gatherings of homebrewers is happening this September in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada when the Northern California Homebrewers Festival (NCHF) celebrates its 13th year.

The Festival takes place at Lake Francis Resort in Dobbins (near Marysville) where the entire campground is reserved for festival goers. (The resort also has a limited number of cabins available.) This year promises a packed event with less than 100 sites still available out of 350 total. It’s expected the event will sell out by the end of the month.

A full schedule of activities is planned including live music, raffles, nationally recognized speakers, a club only homebrew competition, and a Friday Night Brewers Dinner.  And, what kind of beer festival would it be without beer? Rest assured that the festival will be literally overflowing with homebrew from clubs and individuals alike.

Every year the Festival follows a theme and this year it is Eastern Europe. Expect many clubs to have booths following the theme, but as with past festivals, anything goes!

Clubs often spend months planning to make a good showing at the festival and will pull out all the stops to have a creative display and plenty of homebrew on tap. Clubs also compete in the club-only competition and this year the featured styles are Baltic Porter and Bohemian Pilsner.

The only downside of this year’s festival is that it occurs on the same dates as this year’s Great American Beer Festival (GABF). Unfortunately that means no NCHF for me. These two events don’t always overlap and organizers try hard so that they wont. But, due to having to make firm commits on reservations for the festival before the GABF dates are announced, there is always the possibility of a conflict such as happened this year.

The other minor effect of this overlap is that Sean Paxton the Homebrew Chef (who in the past has prepared the Friday Night Beer Dinner) will instead be off at GABF. I doubt that will prevent NCHF from having tons of excellent food though. Check out the menu on their site.

If you’re a homebrewer looking for an amazing event to be a part of, you can’t go wrong with NCHF. Check out their website for complete information and to see more photos of past events (from which all photos in this post were gleaned.)

The title says it all, beer vs. wine; Stone Brewing Company vs. Joel Gott Wines. If there’s one beer dinner that you simple must go to, it’s this one. A bit of hyperbole? Possibly, but you can’t deny the premise of the dinner is extraordinary. I have argued for some time now of beer’s rightful place at the dinner table. When compared to wine, beer is automatically the more complex of the two beverages because it take more ingredients to make beer. Beer also has a wider variety of flavors and intensities when compared to wine. In my humble opinion, beer is the superior beverage.

That being said, this dinner is the perfect opportunity to see if everything I’ve been preaching is true, or at least close. To wet your whistles even further, this dinner will be a contest, literally pitting beer versus wine. Here’s an excerpt from the eBlast I received:

Stone Brewing Company and its co-founder Greg Koch will represent the beer side of the debate against Joel Gott of Joel Gott Winery, to determine which beverage pairs best with a specially prepared “Marco Polo Spice Route” menu.

During the four-course meal, each dish will be paired with a Joel Gott wine selection and a Greg Koch-chosen beer. Once the diners try both the beer and wine, they’ll fill out a scorecard, and results will be tabulated and announced at the end of the dinner.

Fun, fun, fun! Here are the details:

Who: The Duck Club Restaurant
What: Wine (Joel Gott Winery) vs. Beer (Stone Brewing Company) Dinner at the Duck Club Restaurant
Where: 3287 Mount Diablo Boulevard, Lafayette, CA 94549 map
When: Friday, August 27, 2010 @ 6:30pm (hors d’oeuvres), 7:00pm (dinner)
Cost: $99/person (exclusive of tax & gratuity). Call 925-283-7108 to make your reservations.

Menu - Marco Polo Spiced Route

Appetizers

Chef’s Selection of “Spice Route” Appetizers

First Course

Crispy Striped Bass and Fresh Scallops, Scallion and Ginger Sauce, Shaanxi Province, China

Second Course

Paneer Samosa, Spiced Cheese and Potato Turnover, Mint-Cilantro Chutney, Northern India

Third Course

Izgara Kofte, Grilled Lamb Kebabs, Tomato Curry, Istanbul, Turkey

Fourth Course

Green Tea Gelato, Pistachio Biscotti, Venice Italy

Cafe & Exotic Teas to round out the evening.

I am excited by the fact that this seems to be a “concept” menu. Chef Chuck Courtney seemed to have been inspired by the spice routes of antiquity and it’s always interesting to see how the execution compares to the idea. You’ll also notice that there are no listed beer or wine pairings, so everyone in attendance will have no preconceptions coming into the dinner about what will work and what won’t. Whooo… exciting!

Mrs. BetterBeerBlog and I will be making our reservations for this event soon and we hope that more people will be joining us as I think this will be a memorable event.

I recently had the opportunity to be somewhat involved in helping run the Bay Area Brew Off (BABO). This is a BJCP sanctioned competition run by the Draught Board Homebrew Club (out of San Leandro, CA) of which I’m a member. It is held annually at the Alameda County Fair and this year saw a record 251 entries.

Now, when I say “somewhat” involved, I mean just that. One thing I learned is that putting on a judging competition is a heck of a lot of work! The extent of my involvement was minor compared to the competition organizer Roger St. Denis, and there were plenty of others more fully involved than I.

To get an idea of what it takes, here are a few things I was able to help out with:

Drop-off location pickup

This is one thing about most competitions that I initially took for granted. You just drop your entries at your local homebrew shop and that’s it, right?

Well, there can be a dozen or more drop-off locations around the Bay Area and all of those entries need to be collected, transported, refrigerated and eventually make it to the competition in one piece. Most shops are generous enough to provide the location, but it is club members and other volunteers that do the leg work.

I personally collected from only one location and ended up with 5 cases! (Good thing my lager freezer was not in use, or I wouldn’t have had space for all that beer.) The entries had to be collected before the shop closed on Friday eve and transported the next day to the fairgrounds where check-in and registration was being held.

Check-in and Registration

This was an all day affair. Folks were at it well before I even arrived at 10:00. Each entry had to be checked-in, registration and payment information recorded, every bottle labeled with a generic entry number, the entrants temporary labels removed, special ingredients listed on a separate label affixed to the bottle, bottles sorted and cellarred…. you get the idea.

The process was conducted by an assembly line of people. With 251 entries, we’re talking 753 bottles of beer that need to be managed. Beer would come through the door, be unpacked and correlated to registration info, then make it’s way around a series of 3 long tables where the rest of the work was completed.

Entries awaiting check-in.

Yours truly (helping with check-in) and Roger St. Denis (chained to his laptop.)

At the end of the table, the bottles would make their way to the “cellar”, which in this case was a cool room staging area, then eventually were moved to large commercial size refrigerators.

Preliminary Judging

Another logistical problem with a competition of this size is how to get all the judging completed. A panel preferably consists of 3 judges and a single flight no more than 10 beers. Judging any more than 10 at a single sitting can be a bit daunting especially when your dealing with high alcohol Strong Ales or palate-frying IPAs.

With 250+ entries, this equates to roughly 75 judges. Even the bigger comps with over 600 entries (such as World Cup and NHC) can’t get that many judges on a single day, so judging is usually carried out in stages. This allows folks to judge more than a single round over the course of a week or two.

I personally judged in four separate preliminary rounds, two of which were hosted at people’s homes, the other two at the Firehouse in Sunnyvale (thanks Steve!) I would have judged more, but I had 10 entries in the comp which disqualified me from judging a number of sessions.

Preliminary Judging from a previous BABO.

Final Judging

Final judging is usually held over the course of a single day (or for larger comps an entire weekend.) At this point, most of the better beers have bubbled up to the top, and judges that sit on these panels can expect some good brews.

Cellar-Master Paul Goularte at the Cellar Staging Area.

One of two rooms where final judging was conducted.

Bob, Kevin and a flight in progress.

Label Judging

Many homebrew comps also provide a category for labels. BABO is no exception and I helped steward the judging table. This was a marathon session with 16 total entries in the category we judged. Every label was evaluated on design criteria using a judging form similar to that used for judging beer entries.

Kudos to the 4 judges who slogged through this huge flight. I don’t exaggerate when I say a bit of writer’s cramp punctuated the effort.

My personal favorite - one of several Erich Schmidt label entries.

Best of Show

After the winners of each category are determined, a Best of Show (BOS) round is judged. This flight consists of the first place winners in each category. In large comps where categories are not collapsed, this can be a whopping 23 beers!

Although I didn’t judge BOS, astute readers may be able to pick out Mr. BetterBeerBlog in the photo below. (Hint, he just got a haircut!)

BOS judging panel: John, Kevin, Lee, David and Peter

Best of Show Flight

Fair Homebrew Display

My final contribution to this huge undertaking will be to help set up the Fair display this coming weekend. Each winning entry will be on display, so stop by and have a look! Unfortunately, no samples will be available.

San Mateo County Fair Homebrew Display (BABO’s will be similar.)

Again, this is just a small part of the overall effort required to make a comp like this happen. To say that the paperwork involved is a bit overwhelming would be an understatement. Not only do all the results need to be checked and cross-checked, but they need to be correlated with the original entrants, scores and winners validated and final score sheets packed up with ribbons to be sent to the winning entrant.

Thanks to the Draught Board and it’s members for organizing and running this competition on behalf of the entire Bay Area homebrew community. Personal thanks to Roger St. Denis who put in hours upon hours as competition organizer and who included me in this year’s effort. Special thanks to Charles Webster for taking most of these photos and giving me permission to use them.

For more information on how BABO is run, see the How We Do It page on the Draught Board website.

Brian the Rabid Brewer

While searching for the results of the California State Fair Homebrew Competition, I happened upon the results of the Craft Brew Competition and found a surprise: Faultline Brewing Company of Sunnyvale took a number of awards and in various categories.

I’ll admit that I was at first a bit cynical in thinking there probably wasn’t much in the way of competition.  But then I saw that their Pale Ale beat out Firestone Walker’s Double Barrel Ale to take gold in the Special Bitter category! That was indeed a surprise.

As a homebrewer, I’ve come to respect craft breweries that can truly create something I consider an artistic expression of our craft. Firestone Walker is one that does so with passion and has won a number of awards including the World Beer Cup Champion Mid-Sized Brewery 3 years running.

So, to see a local brew-pub create a beer of this caliber means that I’m long overdue in checking out what the Faultline has to offer.

Here’s a list of Faultline awards from the fair.

• Pale Ale - 1st in Bitter Ordinary/Special/Best
• Belgian Abbey - 2nd in Belgian Blonde & Dubbel
• Belgian Tripel - 3rd in Belgian Trippel
• Kolsch - 3rd in Cream Ale & Kolsh
• Dopplebock - 3rd in Dopple & Eisbock
• Best Bitter - 3rd in English Pale Ale
• Stout - Honorable Mention in Sweet & Oatmeal Stout

Judging from their website, all of them are currently pouring except for the 2 belgians and the dobblebock.

For the complete list of awards from this years California State Fair, checkout the California Brewer’s Guild website.

Cheers!
Brian (The Rabid Brewer)

The National Homebrew Competition (NHC) is purported to be the “world’s largest international beer competition recognizing the most outstanding homebrewed beer, mead, and cider produced by amateur brewers worldwide.”

The competition consists of two rounds, the first of which is held in 9 regions of the U.S. plus Canada. Regional winners who place in each of the BJCP Style Categories will then move on to the Final Round to be held on June 17th at the National Homebrew Conference in Minneapolis, MN.

This year there were 6281 entries from almost 1600 homebrewers. First round results have been released, so at the risk of branding myself a geek, I thought it might be interesting to punch them into a spreadsheet and crunch the numbers. Here’s what I discovered.

Total Number of First Round Winners: 810

Number of First Round Winners by Region

• 84 - Northeast
• 84 - Old West
• 84 - South West
• 83 - Northwest
• 83 - South
• 82 - Great Lakes
• 81 - East
• 81 - Midwest
• 80 - West
• 68 - Canada

With a 1st, 2nd and 3rd place awarded in each of 28 BJCP categories in each of 10 regions, there are a maximum of 840 possible first round winners. The number of actual winners is less for two reasons.

First, Canada ended up collapsing a number of categories due to the limited number of entries received.

Second, there is a minimum score of 30 (out of 50) to place in any category. E.g., if a category only had two entries judged higher than 30, then there would be no 3rd place awarded in that category. Out of 10 regions, only 3 awarded places in all 84 possible slots.

My own region, West, passed only 80 winners as we apparently couldn’t award all 3 places in some of the mead categories. (Let me be the first to say it: let’s get out there and make some mead!)

Top States by Number of First Round Winners

• 147 - California
• 47 - Ohio
• 44 - Minnesota
• 38 - Colorado
• 37 - Texas
• 32 - Saskatchewan, Canada
• 30 - Illinois
• 28 - Florida
• 26 - Indiana
• 26 - Michigan
• 26 - Oregon
• 25 - Washington

The most obvious take-away is that CA had more winners than the next 3 states combined! (It might be a bit more fair to look at these numbers per capita, but I’m not THAT much of a stats geek!) There certainly are a lot of great brewers here in the Golden State.

Top Homebrew Clubs by Number of First Round Winners

• 51 - The Brewing Network (various locations)
• 45 - Saint Paul Homebrewers Club of MN
• 43 - Diablo Order of Zymiracle Enthusiasts (DOZE) of CA (Northern)
• 30 - Ale and Lager Enthusiasts of Saskatchewan (ALES) of SK
• 25 - Quality Ale and Fermentation Fraternity (QUAFF) (Southern)

This is an interesting result. I never really thought of the Brewing Network as a homebrew club, but apparently there are quite a few people out there who do.

The top brick-and-mortar club was in Minnesota with 45 first round winners. But, wait! Minnesota only had 44 of the top winners by state. Well, it seems Gordon Strong of Beavercreek OH is actually affiliated with the Saint Paul Homebrewers and helped tip the scales in their favor. Read on to find out why this is worthy of note.

Since I’m in Northern CA, I have to mention that DOZE, a Bay Area club based in Walnut Creek, took home almost 1/3 of the total CA winnings. These guys are obviously rockin’, so my hat is off to them!

Top Number of Awards by First Round Winners

• 14 - Gordon Strong of Beavercreek OH
• 10 - Kristen & Orsolya England of St Paul MN
• 8 - Louis de Bourbon of Mississauga ON
• 8 - Mark Heise of Regina SK (Saskatchewan)
• 7 - John Jurgensen of San Antonio TX
• 7 - Nathan Smith of San Leandro CA
• 7 - Steve Kirby of Tucson AZ

For those of you who don’t know the name Gordon Strong, he is currently President of the BJCP and has been the Ninkasi Award winner for the past two years running. The Ninkasi Award (arguably THE Holy Grail of homebrew competition awards) is given to the brewer who takes the most Final Round points in the NHC.

Since Gordon has the most First Round entries advancing to the Final Round, he has the best shot of getting the Ninkasi again this year.  If he does, he’ll be the first person to do so 3 times, and he’ll do it 3 years in a row. Good luck Gordon!

Top First Round Points

• 52 - Gordon Strong
• 40 - Kristen & Orsolya England
• 30 - John Jurgensen
• 30 - Nathan Smith
• 30 - Steve Kirby

Here is another way to look at the top winners using the NHC point assignments of 6 points for 1st place, 4 points for 2nd, and 2 points for 3rd.

Although these First Round point totals only become relevant in the case of a Final Round tie, seeing Gordon yet again on top indicates he’ll likely do well in the Final Round as well.

So there you have it. A Competition Geek’s look at this year’s NHC First Round results.

I had the opportunity to judge a preliminary round for the California State Homebrew Competition, better known in homebrew circles as Stern Grove, at Firehouse Brewery & Grill last night. Stern Grove holds a special place in many a homebrewer’s and BJCP judge’s heart for a variety of reasons. It is one of the oldest homebrew competitions in California. Stern Grove also signals the end of homebrew competition season. It is one of the last, if not the last, homebrew competition in California.

Judging Stern Grove is a bit of a departure from your typical BJCP/AHA sanctioned event. The biggest difference is the way the beers are scored. In a typical homebrew competition, beers are judged against a 50 point scale. Beers are evaluated according to aroma, appearance, flavor, mouthfeel and overall impression. Because the competition has been around for so long, Stern Grove has it’s own competition forms. They’re not really trying to be different from your typical BJCP event more than they’ve been grandfathered in.

The Stern Grove worksheets are evaluated on a 20 point scale. This poses a slight conversion issue for judges in the sense that a point given or taken away from a Stern Grove worksheet will have a greater impact than your typical BJCP score sheet. That being said, it takes a little bit getting used to.

Most homebrew competitions will have preliminary rounds. This allows the judges to cull the field of entries, weeding out the stronger ones from the entries that need a little more work. By the time the final rounds of judging at Stern Grove actually takes place, the majority of the beers there will be pretty good.

In last night’s preliminary round, we had the opportunity to judge the wheat beer category. There were 3 judging groups. Two of the groups had 3 judges while the final group had only 2. Unlike other preliminary rounds I’ve judged at, we actually had 2 stewards to help us out. Big thanks goes stewards Bobby and Anthony for keeping things fluid.

There were a few issues that kept cropping up as the night wore on. Weizen beers are supposed to be lighter, effervescent, refreshing and flavorful. Yeast character needs to be the dominant, yet balanced, character in a weizen beer. Just about all the entries we tried were lacking banana esters and clove phenolics. In their place were generic fruit esters slightly reminiscent of Belgian yeasts while the phenolic character was equally generic and varied from spicy to plastic/band-aid. Body was an issue as well as many beers were watery while other samples were undercarbonated. Surprisingly a few beers were clear and lacked the “mit hefe” cloudiness one would expect from the style.

To bring out more of the weizen yeast character, start with a viable weizen strain of yeast and then ferment one’s beers at a slightly higher temperature (70º F +). Having a thin body in a hefeweizen is unusual since the addition of wheat malt is usually the prescription for thickening up a beer’s body. For the hefeweizen though, the brewer can implement a decoction mash to both thicken up the body and darken the beer slightly to get a gold color. Wheat malt will also help with head retention. When bottling beers, make sure to measure out one’s priming sugar correctly. Weizen beers are noted for their effervescent character and a flat beer is not a good sign. Lastly, always be mindful of one’s sanitation.

It was good to get back on the beer judging horse. It had been at least 6 months or so since my last competition. I may have been a little rusty with filling out score sheets and with my descriptions but my palette’s been okay. For whatever reason, I haven’t been all that interested in judging competitions this year. You could probably count on one hand how many competitions I’ve judged. What’s ironic is that I received my BJCP exam results (I retook the tasting portion of the exam) and I moved up a rank. There’s always next year.

This Sunday at the San Jose Gordon Biersch brew pub is the Organicfest Tapping Party. This special tapping party will be right on the heels of the 2009 National Organic Brewing Challenge (NOBC) homebrew competition that will be held earlier in the day at Gordon Biersch. San Jose Gordon Biersch brewmaster Dan Satterthwaite is part owner of 7 Bridges Cooperative Organic homebrew shop in Santa Cruz, California. 7 Bridges is the sponsor of NOBC and I think it’s great of Dan to let them hold the competition and afterpart at Gordon Biersch.

Here are the details:

Join us on Sunday, October 18th, from 6pm to 8pm, for an Organicfest Tapping Party to celebrate the winners of the 2009 National Organic Brewing Challenge!

The annual competition takes the craft of homebrewing to a whole new level, as participants are challenged to create a unique, flavorful brew with completely organic ingredients. The top winners of the 2009 Challenge will be announced during the tapping party!

Admission to the tapping party is just $15 and includes…

• Complimentary Gordon Biersch Organic Blonde Bock and Weizenbock*
• Complimentary Gordon Biersch signature appetizers*
• Live funk/soul music by “Timeless”
• For an additional $5, also receive a commemorative pint glass

33 East San Fernando St.
San Jose, CA  95113
408-294-6785

I had initially planned on judging the competition but it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen. I think I’ll just stop by for the after party instead. Maybe I’ll be seeing some of you there.

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 thought that if I were to list all the beer events a couple of months at a time, I’d be able to keep up. Talk about wishful thinking. Anyway, here are the events that I am aware of for the next couple of months.

13th Annual Legendary Boonville Beer Festival

May 2, 2009 (Saturday) @ 1:00pm - 5:00pm
Mendocino County Fair Grounds, 14400 Hwy 128, Boonville, CA map
$40 advance/$50 gate/$5 designated driver

Official Website

Notes: Sammy and I went to this event last year as guests of New Belgium Brewing Company and we were fortunate enough to get invited again this year.

May 7, 2009 (Thursday) @ 6:00pm - 12:00pm
The Trappist, 460 8th Street, Oakland, CA map
$22 (4 tasting tokens)/pay as you go

Official Website

Notes: The first 50 people get a stupid Chouffe hat and free BBQ.

May 12, 2009 (Tuesday) @ 6:00pm - 9:00pm
Toronado, 547 Haight, San Francisco, CA map
FREE!

Official Website

May 13, 2009 (Wednesday) @ 6:00pm - 9:00pm
Toronado, 547 Haight, San Francisco, CA map
FREE!

Official Website

May 14, 2009 (Thursday) @ 4:30pm - 6:30pm
K&L Wine Merchants, 638 4th Street, San Francisco, CA map
$1

May 23, 2009 (Saturday) @ 4:00pm - 9:00pm
Chukchansi Park, 1800 Tulare Street, Fresno, CA map
$25 advance/$30 door/$10 designated driver

Official Website

AHA National Homebrew Conference

June 18-20, 2009 (Thursday - Saturday) @ varies
Oakland Marriot City Center, 1001 Broadway, Oakland, CA map
Price varies depending on which package you get.

Official Website

If I’ve missed anything or if you’d like to add your event to this post, leave the information in the comments section below and I’ll add it as soon as possible. Thanks for reading and I hope to see some of you at these events.