BetterBeerBlog

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

BRUTal Brewing with Dave Beechum (of the Maltose Falcons)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

It’s the final day of SF Beer Week and it’s pouring cats and dogs. The big event of the day is the Celebrator party happening in Oakland later on in the evening. I briefly considered going but opted against it instead. To survive SF Beer Week, Sammy and I have been moderating our drinking and events by going to an event one day and not going the following day. I didn’t plan on this but I was sick for one day, had nothing planned on another and had a non-beer event to go to on another. In the end, my liver thanked me for the respite.

I had initially planned for Sunday to be an “off day” to allow me to rest and catch up on my blogging but after some consideration, Sammy and I headed over to the Englander in San Leandro to help out www.beerbybart.com friends Gail and Steve run their Beer Judging 101 event. As with many SF Beer Week events, their BJCP 101 and 102 classes sold out close to the last day. Having never been to the Englander, I was amazed by the large selection of beers they had on tap and vowed (fist shaking to the sky) that I would be back. I had a job to do that day and enjoying the Englander wasn’t part of the job description.

Grand Master-level BJCP judge Dave Teckam would be leading the class. He has a very casual demeanor and is a wealth of beer information. If anything, his demeanor helped to set a relaxed atmosphere in the class that fostered discussion. It really was like a beer school in that Dave stood in front of the group with a pointer stick in hand and his white boards behind him chalk full of beer information while workshop attendees were seated in tables according to rows.

Having been given very little instruction as to what our roles would be, Gail and Brian set about marking cups and pouring beers while Sammy and I doled them out to the workshop attendees. Eventually, we pre-counted the necessary number of cups, marked them when applicable and handed them out. It was a smooth going operation, if I must say so myself. Sammy was a huge help in organizing how things worked out. Having done our fair share of events ourselves, we’re familiar with figuring the flow of things.

I did my best to listen to what Dave had to say during the 101 class but having to work, I missed out a lot on what he said. In the pieces and parts I did catch, I admired his ability to explain things as well as foster discussion from the class. Public speaking is definitely a learned skill and being knowledgeable about your topic helps determine your comfort level. While I learned some new things regarding beer and beer tasting, I think I may have learned a bit more about public speaking.

The big surprise of the 101 event was the final pairing. I admit that I didn’t see the beers being poured but I noticed a difference between them. They were both big beers, malty but one was decidedly more hoppy than the other. The big reveal was that the final pairing was the same beer, 5 years apart. One beer was a 2004 Sierra Nevada Bigfoot while the other was the 2009 Bigfoot. This revelation elicited a collective, “Whoa!” from the class. I did a mini-Bigfoot vertical a few weeks ago at the homebrew shop but I knew what I was getting into then. When you do a blind tasting like this, the big reveal has a bigger effect.

Dave believes that 5 years is the optimal age for a Bigfoot. Any longer and you start to see a degradation in flavors. The 2004 had a noticeable alcohol note with a complex malty flavor while being mellower and exhibiting slight sherry and oxidation notes. The 2009, by comparison, was bright, hoppy and robust in its flavors. Of course this was because it was the fresher beer. Dave said the best way to age your beer would be to keep them out of light and in a place that is consistent at 50º-55° F, much like a wine. Now inspired to age beers, I will have to back to BevMo and pick up a case of 2009 Bigfoot. Which reminds me, I found it miraculous that Dave, Gail and Brian were able to find enough 2004 Bigfoot for the class. It’s not like you can hit up your local Safeway or BevMo and ask for it. They must’ve called in some favors to pull that off. In the end, I think the reaction of the class was worth it.

The 201 class was a little more in-depth with the knowledge. You didn’t need to have signed up for the 101 class to attend but I think having a slight background helped out. Even then, Dave approached it all as if you didn’t know. Sammy and I stayed long enough to taste some sour beers but we had to cut out. The NBA All-Star game was going to be on that night and I wanted to catch it with some friends.

On the way home through the rain, Sammy and I discussed on how much we got out of the experience. We both agreed that it was totally worth while to have helped out Gail, Brian and Dave. It further inspired me to improve my own BJCP judging abilities to move up a rank. If anything, being a more informed, more skilled judge should help me educate and hopefully turn people on the wonderful world of craft beer. Even in our short time within the craft beer community, we have been shown a warmth and acceptance I had not anticipated. I’m hoping to be able to share that with more of my friends in the future as well as give back to the community that has already given me so much.

Got this in my email sometime last week. I’ve just copied and pasted it verbatim and add in my two cents afterwards.

Charles Bamforth is a brewing scientist. One of the best.

He’s been bothered for a while with a nagging question: why do many people consider wine to be more sophisticated than beer? Is it really better? Healthier? Why do most fancy restaurants have massive wine lists and a few token beer selections?

Bamforth picks apart the complex social, cultural, and scientific histories of both beverages. He has quite a few suprising insights about the (often highly scientific) production of both beer and wine. He’s not seeking to take wine down a notch, but to elevate beer to its proper place, right next to wine, demonstrating just how healthy and complex a beverage it really is.

Want to pick his brain a little? Please join him on Thursday, May 8 at Anchor Brewery Bamforth will discuss his new book: GRAPE VS. GRAIN

The event is free and open to the public.

Charles Bamforth, Chair of Brewing Sciences, UC Davis
Anchor Brewery, San Francisco
May 8, 5:30pm

Before I really got into blogging about beer, I was fortunate enough to have seen Charles Bamforth speak at Xerox PARC over in Palo Alto. I found Charles to be an engaging, charismatic man with a dry, English wit (which makes sense since he is from England). His presentation on Grape vs. Grain was extremely informative and makes a strong case, in my opinion, on how beer is responsible for civilization as we know it.

Now that I am able to reflect on things, I can safely say that Charles Bamforth is one of the inspirations for this blog. I can say his lecture lent a strong hand in forming my own philosophies on beer and it’s place in the culinary world.

Whether your a beer aficionado or wine connoisseur, I fully encourage you to attend this lecture. Bamforth is a wealth of information regarding the brewing sciences and I suspect you’ll have a good time as well. Hopefully I’ll be able to make it as I’ve never been to Anchor Steam brewery either.