Traveling across Iowa and Wisconsin, I tried a fair amount of local craft beer… and a lot of meat and potatoes and ice cream (along with one fancier excellent meal at Forequarter in Madison). A few memories: The West O ( West Okoboji) lager was nicely crisp and well done. I finally had the all-the-rage New Glarus Spotted Cow and a few others from New Glarus and they were solid, good beers but didn’t blow me away. ...
I found myself in Bavaria recently. Unfortunately, I’m not really a fan of German food and the continuous stream of meat-and-white-starch (and to my disappointment, so many of the sausages and pork chops just weren’t very good), but a handful of meals or beers were memorable. Bamberg was a cute city and great place for beer. Schlenkerla is one of the few old breweries still making a rauchbier (smoked beer). Their Marzen tapped straight from a wooden keg was intoxicatingly campfire-smoky in smell, but not bitter or harsh in taste, with a modestly roasted malt and creamy body (and all this for about $3). Delicious and definitely worth a visit. ...
My most successful homebrewing by far deserved some extra effort on the label (laser-cut paper laminated to silver foil): It’s “homebrew #6” because I brewed it back in December and let it age for five months (it could probably go another half year, even). And it really turned out well. Rich, dark, smooth but not sweet, almost like bittersweet baking chocolate and with none of the overt “roasted coffee” flavor I don’t like in some imperial stouts. And it’s powerful. Did I mention it’s 10% ABV? ...
I’ve wanted to brew a saison for a while, and when the San Francisco May Heat Wave struck (88 degrees during the day– the horror!) I knew I had to jump on it (saisons are traditionally fermented at higher temperatures, and I hadn’t built a hot water bath or heating jacket). Inspired by the Modern Times Lomaland saison (which they publish the recipe for on that site), I brewed with barley malt, wheat and flaked corn, Saaz hops, and some acidulated malt, plus the White Labs saison yeast another friend had used to great success in the past (the yeast is the defining characteristic of the saison flavor, after all). ...
A long weekend in San Diego for the First Annual SD Bike & Beer tour expanded naturally into a broad beer tour of that fair city with 51 new-to-me beers (thank goodness for tasting flights and friends to share). This isn’t quite the " tasting 100 beers in belgium" adventure that was the original impetus behind this blog a few years ago… but it’s good to see I haven’t changed much. ...
Farewell, San Francisco Beer Week, it’s been good. I made it out all but two nights, and had to work weekdays (sometimes late), but still managed to do well. In numbers: Events attended: 18 Venues: 14 (Gala, Dynamo Donuts, SOMA StrEat Food Park, Social Kitchen, Noc Noc, The Sycamore, Rosamunde, The Willows, CatHead’s BBQ, Triple Voodoo, Pyramid, Sierra Torpedo Room, Faction, Drake’s) Most-visited: The Willows (Colorado, Maine, and San Diego nights) Friends met for a drink: 11 Beers tasted: About 70? Strangest beer: A really spicy (habanero?) beer at Rosamunde whose name I can’t find. Even bringing it near my face made my eyes water. Favorite non-beer discovery: The Dynamo Donut Campari / grapefruit donut– distinctive citrus and bitter flavors, clean, nice sugar balance. I think tart donuts could be the next thing… Biggest Surprise: Biking into an unexpectedly deep puddle (see photos) Field Notes Drink Local notebooks filled: 0.5 Pliny the Youngers: 0 Hangovers: 0 (pacing, food, and water) The week in photos: ...
I had four one gallon glass jugs and airlocks from the Rye ESB experiments (dosing with different hops and juniper), so I was on the lookout for another side by side brewing experiment. Then late last year I saw some fresh unpasteurized (rare!) cider at a farmers’ market and I had a project. There are so many things you can vary in cider– pasteurized or unpasteurized starting cider, type of apple, yeast (natural, cider, ale, champagne), adding extra sugar pre-fermentation (which primarily just boosts the alcohol, not the sweetness, since the yeast consumes it all), sweet vs. dry, sparkling vs. still, and so on. ...
A remake of homebrew #5 (my anti-Cascade/Columbus/Chinook/Crystal IPA) which had turned out quite well. I tweaked a few things in the recipe and brewing process but mostly tried to replicate it. I brewed on Christmas day, bottled mid-January, just cracked open the first bottle– and I’m happy with the results. A powerful, fresh citrus and herbal smell with no dank/pine in it, a moderately strong (7% ABV), slightly malty, slightly orange flavor, and a long hoppy aftertaste (but not in a bitter way). Just the style of IPA I like to drink (in some ways, like a higher-alcohol extra pale ale). ...
I spent a week biking 400+ miles in Maine recently, a convenient excuse to try a broad selection of local beer. From scribbled notes / quick memories: 3 Tides / Marshall Wharf Brewing (Belfast): Cant Dog Imperial IPA: By far my favorite beer of the trip. IPAs aren’t even one of my favorite styles– I don’t like them too bitter, piney, or one-note (and I’m not a fan of the Cascade and Columbus hops used so frequently). But this 10% ABV beast was nearly perfect– the alcohol helped subdue the bitterness, there was a nice balance of citrusy hops (but not overly grapefruity– more orange/pineapple?), and a bit of malt sweetness. To compare to gold standards: I’d choose this over Pliny the Elder any day, and it’s getting near my favorites Maharajah and Pliny the Younger. Bravo! (A+) ...
Early August brewing -> Labor Day bottling party with friends -> obligatory caps: A few weeks later: I’ve had a cyclic love-hate relationship with IPAs over the years. While I love so many bitter foods (nettles, beetroot, sorrel, tonic water, chicory, escarole, campari), many IPAs including broadly well-regarded ones like Pliny the Elder are a complete turnoff to me. After a few years and a disappointing visit to the Oregon Brewers Festival, I’ve figured out that I don’t like the heavy bittering hops, astringent hops, or the piney Northwestern hops (especially Cascade and Columbus), but can enjoy the smell and a range of the more fruity, dank, or spicy hops. And while I like many session beers, I generally like my IPAs balanced with plenty of alcohol and malt, pushing me into the Double IPA / Imperial IPA territory. ...
Another food-inspired trip to Portland (Oregon) with friends. We ate well. In a few quick cell phone photos: Highlights: Evoe: This place still blows me away. I wish I could cook this effortlessly, casually well. Two chefs at a counter with a simple stove, fresh ingredients, and simple delicious plates prepared to order. Charred greens with egg and anchovy. Piperade (a Basque dish of peppers and onions topped with a soft egg yolks). A salad made from translucently-sliced thin raw squash, soft cheese, and good olive oil. Peach-speck-purslane. Two types of peppers, sauteed with salt. ...
For my forth batch, I wanted to try something more adventurous. I’ve always liked sour beers, but many of them take 6 to 12 months to ferment… but I heard from a friend about another way to make a sour beer using a starter, and I’d recently had a Leipziger Gose I enjoyed, so I decided to try something in the general Gose vein: Per Wikipedia: “Gose is a beer style of Leipzig, Germany, brewed with at least 50% of the grain bill being malted wheat. Dominant flavours in Gose include a lemon tartness, a herbal characteristic, and a strong saltiness (the result of either local water sources or added salt). Because of the use of coriander and salt, Gose does not comply with the Reinheitsgebot. It is allowed an exemption on the grounds of being a regional specialty.” ...
I’ve always been a fan of rye as a grain, and wanted to brew a beer where it was taken to extremes. Thus: became: The details: Browsing around, I read about Roggenbier, an older rarely-made German beer style made with as much as 50% rye, dating from a time and region where barley was not as plentiful (and according to Wyeast Labs, similar to a dunkelweizen but with rye instead of wheat). Other reading suggested that much of the flavor of rye doesn’t come through in steeping– you really need to mash it (and get enzymes to convert the starches to sugars), though other homebrewers I’ve talked to disagree. In any case, this seemed like a good excuse to make a grain-heavy beer, though still with some malt extract as backup (I’ve promised myself I’ll keep my brewing low-tech, at least until I’ve brewed five times successfully and am sure I’ll keep doing it). ...
Jotting down notes and photos for my second homebrew batch (a mutt which started as a British-style Extra Special Bitter, with the addition of some rye for flavor, then split into multiple 1-gallon batches to try additional experiments). A note on an ESB (Extra Special Bitter)– it’s a British ale style that’s not actually especially bitter, more similar to a Pale Ale than an IPA. From the BJCP: “An average-strength to moderately-strong [4.6-6.2% ABV] English ale. The balance may be fairly even between malt and hops to somewhat bitter. Drinkability is a critical component of the style; emphasis is still on the bittering hop addition as opposed to the aggressive middle and late hopping seen in American ales. A rather broad style that allows for considerable interpretation by the brewer.” ...
Jotting down recipe and brew day notes for my first homebrew batch (an IPA), mostly as notes to my future self . This is a dense info dump without many photos after a more general brewing photos post. Beer Stats: 6.2% ABV, 40 IBUs, fermented on the cool end with an american ale yeast, dry-hopped with Simcoe, 1.062 OG, 1.014 FG Grains: (mostly extract, partial mash) 7.5 lbs liquid malt extract (the bulk of the fermentables) 2 lbs 2-row (basic malted barley, adds a bit more flavor than just the extract) 0.5 lbs 40L (crystal malt, adds a little caramel sweetness and color) 0.5 lbs wheat (adds a little body and flavor) Mashed grains in 3 gallons of 155F water for 45 minutes (pot covered and wrapped in a towel for rough temperature control), sack of grains removed, water heated, malt extract added, boiled. ...