Before the end of the day I should mention that it’s my birthday. Woohoo.
Last Friday I sent out an invite to join me at the Brickskeller on this Friday (my birthday, observed). If somehow, I know you and you read this blog, and I failed on have you on the invite list, please join me. Toss me an email to let me know you are coming, or just show up.
Happy Birthday to me,
Happy birthday to me….
It’s been a while since I made beer, perhaps as long as a year. Since I haven’t thrown any parties this year I didn’t have any deadlines in which I needed beer by some date or another and it takes me personally a long while to go through five gallons of beer.
But I ordered supplies a while back, to long ago really they may not be in prime condition anymore but I cleaned and sterilized the equipment and boiled up some wort. This should make decent hefewiezen once it ferments.
Despite making a conscious effort to not fill the pot with too much water I failed and the wort overflowed as it seems to do every time I make beer. So the problem is I forget I rinse the grains. My making beer is a called extact with grain (vs just extract or all grain), the first few steps are to boil a couple of gallons of water and then steep grains in the water for about half an hour.
I remember not to put to much water in the pot but completely forget that once the steeping happens I will be rinsing the grains to get all of the grainy goodness. Which leaves me with too much water. When I add the dry malt extract I don’t have enough pot.
As the DME is dissolving it leaves a thick froth on top of the wort and as it starts boiling, over the edge it goes. Once the boil starts going and the DME is dissolved in the water and some of the liquid is boiled off there is enough room but I have to baby it for like half an hour before I can get all the DME into the wort.
But no matter I followed Charlie Papazian’s admonishments and relaxed and had a beer.
Wort is now made and safely stored in the plastic fermenter. Next weekend I’ll move it to the glass.
I think it’s time to replace some equipment through. I think I’ll order the makings for the infamous bourbon stout tomorrow. At the same time get new air locks and rubber stoppers and probably some hoses.
This was the First New Eve where I didn’t seem to have any friends to invite me over to some sort of party or similar event. Not sure how it happened exactly. It saddens me. I went out to the Dogfish Head brewpub. Had a bottle of Pangea which I recommend highly. Toasted in the New Year with a glass of 90 minute. I’m not a fan of champaign so the last few years I always look for a quality brew to toast the new year. I did 90 Minute last year, since I was at Dogfish Head anyway, I went with the 90 minute again.
So I think the toast for this year is,
“To friends forgotten, friends of the past, friends of the present and friends of the future. May we each have each other and find a year of belonging, a year of prosperity and a year of glory.”
To everyone…
Throwing in Neil Gaiman’s traditional New Years wish:
May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you’re wonderful, and don’t forget to make some art — write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself.
Event Details:
MAX’S 4th ANNUAL BELGIAN BEER FEST 2008
This Years Belgian Fest dates are Feb 15, 16, 17
We will start each day at 11am and go until 2am
NO ENTRANCE FEE.
SAMPLE SIZE PORTIONS AVAILABLE.This Year we are planning on having over 100 Authentic Belgian Beers on draft and Over 130 Authentic Belgian Beers in Bottles. Also a full Belgian Style Menu.
As I put together lists for drafts and Bottles I will be sending them out.
I will also be sending out some new special news in about a month. Hope to see you all here at Max’s. Any questions please contact me at chard@maxs.comThis will be the biggest fest yet. CHEERS
Casey Hard
GM & Cellarman
Max’s taphouse
737 South Broadway
Baltimore, MD 21231
410-675-6297
Oddly enough I’ve never even heard of Max’s though they sound like they have a sweet set up. They’re in Baltimore which is a city away but I should find an excuse to at least wander by at some point.
Not all chemicals are bad. Without chemicals such as hydrogen and oxygen, for example, there would be no way to make water, a vital ingredient in beer.
- Dave Barry
You can’t be a Real Country unless you have a beer and an airline. It helps if you have a football team or some nuclear weapons, but at the very least, you need a beer.
- Frank Zappa, 1940 - 1993
24 hours in a day, 24 beers in a case. Coincidence?
- Stephen Wright
Went down to the Brickskeller last night with a small crowd of people. About 10 people, half from work half from Springfield gaming. A good time was had by all as far as I can tell. And since Bo drove down I got a chauffeur home, always nice.
The service may have been the worst I have had at the Bricks to the point where I was employing various ordering strategies to keep beer flowing. I was doing burst ordering and began the process of ordering a beer when I was to only on bottle in reserve. I was having issues with finding something that was in stock as well. First order took me like five tries before I finally selected something they had in stock. Not sure what was going on but I think the waiter was new or filling in in not his normal capacity.
No matter beer was had, conversation enjoyed, all was good.
Woke up this morning and did a run to the metro to pick up my car. I think it was a little shorter than my normal run and once I got near the metro there was a lot of stop and go based on crossing busy streets and that sort of thing. But not bad considering I was out drinking last night.
It occurs that I failed to mention that I wend down to the Bricks of Friday… Just tossed out an invite to the usual suspects. You know the ones that usually get between 4-8 positive responses, and bang suddenly I had a group of 18.
V. somehow managed to acquire reservations at the Bricks which as far as I know doesn’t take reservations. We all converged… Mostly work and gaming people plus a bunch of people form C’s fencing circle. I had a good time. Played some host, drank some beer, confessed my confusion to trusted folks. Just what the doctor ordered.
Yesterdays beer class featured Great Divide Brewing Co from Denver Colorado. They are an actually a brewery (vs brewpub). The founder/owner Brian Dunn was there to speak with us. He was oddly tight lipped about the contents of his beer. Apparently he considers the malt/hops/yeast he uses to be trade secrets or something. Seems kind of sucky to me. Departing from previous brewers he didn’t seem to admit to any sort of illegal activity.
The brewery itself produces 6,000 barrels a year and was opened in 1994. Apparently he opened the brewery with only $235,000 in capital which is the smallest number I’ve seen to date.
The line up of beers was pretty good. There were two Imperial Stouts and two IPAs with only one beer I really wouldn’t have drunk (Cool Aid beer). He uses the same (won’t tell us which) strain of yeast in all the beers and generally retires the yeast after 10 generations. He believes the higher alcohol and fruit beers mess up the yeasts (acidity is off) and doesn’t re-use the yeast out of the barley wine or wild rasberry ale.
First beer was the Samurai, an unfiltered rice beer. They make it as a draft only summer seasonal. Since it was made with rice it had very little body and was generally a fairly inoffesive light colored beer. Not bad but generally not how I like my beer.
Second beer was the Denver Pale Ale. This was an English style Pale Ale (Good hops flavor and aroma but not very bitter). This beer came in at 5.4% abv with 41 IBU and was dry hoppped. A nice Pale Ale all around.
Third was Titan IPA. This beer came in at 6.8% abv with 65 IBUs and was dry hopped. Since he wouldn’t tell us what went into the beer I don’t have a lot of information about the contents or the process in regards to this beer.
Fourth was the Hercules Double IPA. Yep a double IPA all right. 85 IBUs. This was the least balanced of the beers, which the style almost demands so no reason to hold it against him. The beers have gradually been picking up more color and it has attain a nice deep coppery color by now.
Fifth beer was the Old Ruffian Barley Wine. You could tell this was a barley wine but the alcohol didn’t knock you over. This beer came in with 10.2% abv and 90-95 IBUs. It is aged about 2.5 months before it is ready.
The sixth and seventh beers were two versions of the same beer. Both were the Yeti Imperial Stout. First was the “normal” one the second spend 6 weeks aged with oak chips. Both were very good the oak aged was a bit smoother but I almost liked the sharper edges on the normal one better. Some information was wheedled out of him about the malt in this beer. Appearntly it is 70% 2-row malt with the rest being made up of chocolate, carmel and roasted malts. Lets see these beers come in at 9.5% abv with 75 IBUs.
The eighth and final beer was the cool-aid beer. Wild Raspberry Ale is appearently based on a brown ale with tons of red and black raspberries thrown it. This version of cool-aid isn’t as bad as many I’ve had but I still prefer beer. This is apparently their number selling beer after the IPA I believe. This beer weighs in at 5% abv.
Beerwise this was worst of the classes so far. The speaker wasn’t bad and did his requisite admission of crime (providing beer to a minor and producing beer greater than 5% abw or approx 6.5% abv (illegal in TN)), but the beer didn’t excite me at all. I probably won’t spend much time on this but to go down the list of 7 beers we sampled: Boscos Famous Flaming Stone Beer, Ray’s Honey Rye, Germantown Alt, Boscos Stock Ale, River Rail Red, Boscos Bombay IPA and Boscos XXX Pale Ale.
None of these beers was very good, the River Rail Red and Bombay IPA were pretty drinkable and the XXX Pale Ale was decent, but other than that I’d say skip it. I don’t think it was much of a style prejudice. Since I didn’t care much about these beers I’ll probably just bullet point my notes for them.
Boscos Famous Flaming Stone Beer:
* Brewed with hot rocks ~700 - 800 degrees.
* Stones heated in Pizza ovens and added to wort.
* Creates carmel and mineral flavors.
* 5.5% abv
Ray’s Honey Rye
* Named for Ray Daniels (of “Designing Great Beers” fame.)
* 5.25% abw making it illegal to brew in TN (ooops!)
* 40% Rye.
* I wasn’t happy witht he after taste.
Germantown Alt
* Munich and Chocolate Malts.
* Mid range hops.
* Mostly a brown ale.
* German Style.
* 5.5% abv
Boscos Stock Ale
* Added Raw Cane Sugar (Adds alchol, doesn’t add any body)
* 7% abv (Illegal to brew in TN)
River Rail Red
* 6.25 abv
* Cascade hops (approx 35 IBU)
* It’s a pale ale not a red.
Boscos Bombay IPA
* 50IBUs
* Cascade and Centennial hops
* 6.25% abv
Boscos XXX Pale Ale
* No notes.
Afterwards had a Young’s Oatmeal Stout and a Flying Dog Road Dog Scottish Porter. Yummy.
Later.
Back from the third Beer Gazetteer class. The guest in the hotseat today was Brian O’Reilly of Sly Fox Brewhouse & Eatery of Phoenixville, PA. There wasn’t a particular method to the madness in the sense of lines of beers or anything so after a brief intro I’ll start talking about the beers/lecture. We sampled 8 beers, 4 of them I liked a lot the others were types of beers I’m not usually happy with so no surprise I wasn’t terribly fond of these examples. The IPA, a style which I’m usually a fan, was a bit over the top, but it wasn’t there standard IPA so I’m not sure what that means.
Started with the Pikeland-Pils. More or less your standard pilsner. It was unfiltered which is odd but not much turbidity to begin with so not a lot of change. I generally feel like this style of beer reminds me of soap suds and is generally why some people refer to beer as suds. Obviously not a fan and this example didn’t change that.
Second beer was the Royal Weisse. This is what I look for when I order a hefe-weissen, it had the spicy clove, banana thing going for it. Very yummy. For the homebrewers: brewed with 52% wheat and hefe-weissen yeast. It was of course unfiltered with a turbidness that I expect from a weisse beer. This was very good and it was one of the beers I finished. I think it was my favorite beer of the tasting. First admission of possibly illegal activity happened here. It seems that that the yeast was first imported from Germany but now they have a friend who works in big pharma as a microbiologist or similar and he uses his labs/facilities to store and propagate this strain of yeast. When bosses start asking questions apparently beer bribes have taken care of that to date.
Third beer was Savannah Maibock. The name of this beer changes each year, it is named after the goat that won last years goat race. So it seams the brewpub has an annual festival in the beginning of May and part of is a goat race. It’s been suggested that we need to mark this in our calendars to make sure we can see the goat race live and perhaps we need to enter a goat, or sell goats at the door so other people could enter them. Anyway this was probably my second favorite beer of the tasting. I don’t really have much in the way of notes. I think I was too busy drinking this beer. You’ll have to trust me that it was good without me being able to invoke critic like words about it. I finished this beer as well. This was also the second admission of possible illegal activity. Apparently during the festival they sell a single batch of ice bock. Essentially freeze a good chunk of the water out of the beer concentrating the flavor/alcohol. No one is sure about the legality of this on a commercial scale.
Fourth beer was Progress IPA. No one at my table was terribly impressed by this beer. It was too bitter without even a nod to balance, but it does have an interesting story. So it seems this beers is made with exclusively progress hops. It is one of 8 IPA they make/made with only one kind of hop. In December they blended them into what they call the Odesy IPA. Conceptually pretty interesting implementation wise I’d go for a Dogfish head instead.
Fifth beer was Black Raspberry Wheat. This is a basic cool-aide beer. The fruit overtakes everything. I, like most people I know, don’t really like this sort of cool-aide style. I like fruit in my beer but it should be just tinged. You should notice the flavor complexity but you should have to work at it to figure out what it is if you didn’t already know. Anyway I hardly touched this beer for the above reasons, but if you care this beer weighed in at 8% alcohol, they add about a pound of pureed fruit for every gallon of beer. It is based off an American wheat beer. A style I haven’t found very prevalent in recent years.
Sixth beer was Renard D’or. The name means golden fox and beer is essentially a begian-style golden ale. It had Coriander seeds and about 7% sugar. The sugar pushes up the alcohol without adding body density. This was probably a fine example, but not really a style I’m too fond.
Seventh beer was a Rauch Bier. I’m not sure I’ve encountered the style before but it was pretty good. It was made with 80% beachwood kilned malt giving it a strong smoked flavor. In a beer tasting sense it had a certain bacony flavor to it. I suspect this beer isn’t for everyone but it was pretty good. In all likely hood originally all beer had this smoked flavor to it to some degree or another since all malt was originally kilned over smoking wood. Any pretty good but maybe too flavorful for a session beer.
Last was O’Reilly’s Stout. You can debate the hubris of naming a beer after yourself. A decent if not too imaginative example of the style. It’s nitrogen gassed a comes across a bit too bitter at first drink you quickly adjust and it is pretty good. It has just 3.8% alcohol and is a bit thin making it a pretty good session beer. I finished this one off no problem.
Just a last word about Brian. He was a decent speaker but his style seemed a bit hesitent/nervous but I don’t know if there was anything real about that or just how he spoke.
Any way I’m out. Have some good beer.