Archive for February, 2009

Yard House: first visit

Look, you guys probably know by now that I don’t like chain restaurants. I just don’t. They take up space and money and share of mind/belly/wallet that could be used by unique local places that are the vision of individuals. I could go on, and I really believe it. But…

Penn Stays Open!

Good news first: Penn Brewery has signed a five year lease to stay in their current building. As reported in the Post-Gazette today, that much is sure. More details are promised tomorrow. The details I’m sure everyone is interested in? What about the actual brewery, which is currently listed for sale? (The bottling line’s already been sold.)

Until I know about that, I’m reserving judgment.

Chicagoland afternoon: Flatlander’s and The Firkin

I had made plans to meet up with Steve Herberger – a long-time commenter here, a long-time supporter of non-mainstream beer — this afternoon at Flatlander’s. It was an easy run up Milwaukee Avenue, maybe four minutes from our hotel. As you can maybe tell from Cathy’s face, it was quite cold, and breezy. We hustled inside.

Steve was easy to find: the only guy at the bar. We got right to work on the beers as we got caught up for the first time — this was one of those ‘met on the Internet, now meet face-to-face’ moments — and I got the Bitter, Cathy got the Winter Warmer.

Well, they were disappointing. The Winter Warmer had a very disagreeable odor/flavor that reminded me of the smell in a tire warehouse: musty rubber. My bitter was okay, but maybe a bit over-attenuated, maybe a bit tannic, maybe a little astringent…and maybe I’m going easy on it because I really wanted to like it. Then I got a Belgian Golden, and it was thin, and a bit edgy/tart. And to be honest, the service wasn’t great, particularly for being the only folks at the bar.

So we left. I talked Steve into heading up the road into Libertyville to visit The Firkin. It didn’t take much, and once we got there, I could see why. We weren’t there five minutes before Cathy and I started our perennial complaint: “Why isn’t this bar near us?” Don’t get me wrong: we have good bars nearby. Well, actually, we have two: Isaac Newton’s and the Hulmeville Inn. But The Firkin isn’t just the 25 taps and 2 hand-pumps of good beers (click on the last photo to get a look). It’s a great-looking place, with character, it’s some damned good food that doesn’t taste like everybody else’s, and snappy servers who know the beer (although the first guy we got didn’t know squat; still, he was friendly, and quick to hand out a sample).

Cathy played it safe with a Beamish, I went local and funky with a Goose Island Matilda (delicious), and Steve went even localer (?) with the Emmett’s McCarthy’s Red, a cask red from a small local brewpub chain. It was damned near the pick of the letter: just tasting fresh as bejayzus, hoppy but not crazy. The sip Steve gave me convinced me to get a full one. Steve, on the other hand, got a Dynamo Copper Ale. Never heard of it? Neither had we. It’s from Metropolitan Brewing, a new all-lager production brewery in Chicago.

That’s right, I said “all-lager production brewery.” Steve and I were geeking out: a new brewery! A new craft brewery that makes all lagers! And the beer wasn’t bad. Needs to be cleaned up a little, but it had a good full body, some hop to it, and tasted pretty good. So that was pretty cool. That was about it for us, though: we had to get back in time to get dressed for the rehearsal dinner.

Except we didn’t go. We got all dressed up, but Cathy didn’t look good. By the time we got to the parking lot of Pete Miller’s, she was sweating and shaking. I took her home and put her to bed, and I’ve been reading a new Spenser book ever since. And blogging. She’s feeling better already, so I think we’ll be okay tomorrow.

Down on the Ground in Chicagoland

Just checked into our hotel, about to head out for beers at Flatlander’s. After that, headed for the rehearsal dinner. Nice room, beers for sale in the lobby — we’re not in PA anymore!

A Sense of Place

Tracking old vines in California.

Why I Say No to “Proposition 3-17″

This is the second year in a row I’ve received a press release about the Guinness/Diageo marketing campaign called Proposition 3-17 (I’m not supplying a backlink, just Google it if you want to find out more) in which the brand is trying to “make St. Patrick’s Day an officially-recognized holiday in the United States”. While I love a good marketing gimmick as much as — if not more than — the next guy, there are several reasons this particular gimmick (and yes, it is a gimmick) really annoys me.

First off, the modern day St. Patrick’s Day celebration is almost a completely secular cultural holiday celebrated by Irish Americans (in this country anyway). And while I am the biggest proponent of celebrating cultural significance, if you’re going to reward one cultural holiday with national recognition, you must recognize all major cultural holidays that way. You cannot just pick and choose (its bad enough that only major Christian holidays are celebrated in America, but that’s a much larger argument for a much larger platform) which ones to recognize.

Secondly, it should absolutely never be up to a private company to try and dictate national holidays. Especially an English company (Diageo; which is headquartered in neither the U.S. nor Ireland). Valentine’s Day is bad enough, as its now an almost entirely commercial holiday (even Christmas is borderline but again, another argument for another platform), but at least it started out as something more. Yes, St. Patrick’s day is “something more” but if it were to become a nationalized holiday at the urging of a commercial brand, it would take any remaining true cultural legitimacy out of the holiday completely, and turn it entirely into the marketing gimmick Guinness is trying to make it (understandably, as I’m sure it’s the brand’s most profitable season). the recognition of a holiday should be up to the people and the government of the country recognizing it and at their own discretion; not at the gentle prodding of a major multinational corporation.

Lastly, while drinking beer is obviously a large facit of the celebration of St Patrick’s Day — and of the Irish culture itself — drinking alone is no reason for a national holiday. And believe me, I’m the biggest advocate of safe, responsible alcohol consumption (duh!), but when Guinness is trying to make an Irish holiday an American national holiday solely because of drinking, something has gone terribly wrong.

Saint Patrick’s Day is already a national holiday in Ireland, where it should be. And, while it is widely celebrated across the U.S. by Irish and non-Irish Americans alike, there is absolutely no legitimate reason to make it (and not every other major cultural holiday) a national holiday.

Those are my two cents, what are yours?

Book Review: Radical Brewing

Randy Mosher’s Radical Brewing is the sort of homebrewing book that I wish I could write. While it does include some basic instructions for the new brewer the main focus is on things that fall outside the realm of”traditional” brewing. Topics covered include using raw grains, sugars, fruit, herbs, spices, liquors, as well as interesting technique, recipes, and history.

It is the perfect book to flip through for inspiration when you feel like you haven’t brewed anything really interesting in awhile, but it is not the sort of book that I would recommend to someone who has just started brewing beer at home.

Content: The first few chapters of the book contain a basic look at the malt and hops, and how to brew and taste beer. If this was your first book you would probably be able to make a decent beer, but a book aimed at beginning brewers will contain more basic information that would prove helpful.

The rest of the chapters each take an element of beers/brewing and run with it, with the recipes in each chapter giving an example of how to use the ingredient/technique discussed. The first of these is an attempt to cover some of the most basic styles (blondes, stouts, brown ales etc…). That said even these most basic recipes are probably complex than any recipe in How to Brew, how can you not love a book that includes a 1.085 Brett spiked IPA as a “Basic Drinker”?

Some chapters look at a technique. Lagers get a chapter covering how they differ from ales (including how to do a traditional decoction mash), but most of the book is primarily about ales. The chapter on brewing big beers is a good read for anyone who wants to do strong beers of any sort. Mosher covers the basics like correcting hopping rates to deal with the high gravity, pitching lots of yeast, and waiting plenty of time, but also looks at old mashing techniques like the parti-gyle and doble-doble for achieving a high OG without a 4 hour boil.

Other chapters look at groups of beer styles. For example there are a couple that look at different Belgian beer styles (variations on wits are given almost an entire chapter). There are also chapters on beers that bend style guidelines (gratzer, pilsener wine, and Black Ship Pirate Stout), and historical beers (including gruit, kvass, colonial ale, and kotbusser). Manyof the weirder foreign/historical styles are given both in an authentic form and a “cheaters” version which is easier to pull off (and probably more to the average homebrewer’s palette).

Other chapters look at a class of ingredients. Grains besides barley (including oddballs like wild rice, kamut, and millet), herbs/spices (including basil, cubeb pepper, and sassafras) and honey (with recipes for honey beers, and meads). It is hard to say more about these chapters as there isn’t an underlying theme or topic, just a shotgun blast of possibilities. The suggestions I have used have worked out well for the most part, but often there are no firm recommendations for how/when to use many of the ingredients.

The book finishes up with some odds and ends like things to do with a group of brewers, pairing beer and food, brewery building, and growing/processing your own ingredients. This is a great place to look when you feel like you are in a rut with the hobby.

Accuracy: The actual content of the book is terrific and accurate as far as I can tell, but the editing is the biggest weak point Radical Brewing. The numbers in particular are just off all over the place. Mainly this takes the form of bad metric/standard/percentage conversions in the recipes (how hard could that have been to double check?). The estimated ABV also seems to be lower than it should be for most recipes given the OG.

This caused me a serious problem on a wit a few years back. I made the Wit Guy White Ale exactly to spec, hitting just .002 above the suggested OG of 1.052. After 14 days of fermentation the beer was down to 1.019, that seemed a bit high, but it had held stable for 5 days and was at 4.6% ABV (well above the recipe spec of 3.6-4.2% ABV) so I decided to bottle it. Needless to say WLP400 is well known for stuck fermentations and I ended up with 2 cases of massively overcarbonated beer (it ended up down to 1.013). This is the sort of minor editing mistake that can cause major issues for the new brewer.

The author does maintain a list of errata that you can reference any time you want to make a recipe (not that the ABV issue is even mentioned), but this is a pain to check if you are just flipping through the book.

Recipes: Nearly 130 recipes in total. Most of them have all of the details spelled out, but some of them are just variants of other recipes in the book, for example the Schwarzbock recipe is just a paragraph suggesting adding more carafa, base malt, and hopss to the Schwarzbier recipe on the previous page.

The recipes and variants cover just about every conceivable type of beer from bitters, to lambics, historical beers, and style crushing creations like a chanterelle beer. Any time I feel like I want to brew something fun I’ll flip through Radical Brewing until a recipe catches my eye.

Basically all of the recipes are all-grain, but most have a mini-mash or extract plus steeped grain option as well. One thing that might bother some people is that the author never gives a specific yeast strain suggestion. Most beers call for a country of origin, such as Belgian or English.

Readability: It is the perfect book for skimming. loads of charts, recipes, drawings, graphs, and text boxes. It is also not a very technical book so the reading is a it more enjoyable than How to Brew or Designing Great Beers. The text is well written and brimming with excitement, far better editing than the recipes received.

That said because of the huge variety of topics the organization can be pretty confusing. For example sugars are covered in the Bent Beers chapter, but a Belgian , Big Beers, or Historical chapter would have all been equally valid places to put it. I think trying to get all of these topics neatly organized into logical chapters was an impossible task from the start.

Overall: This was a harder book to review than any of the others I have done so far because it covers such a huge range of topics and doesn’t have any major take away points.

After one or two “normal” batches of beer many new brewers seem to get the urge to brew something really out there. This often results in terrible beer. This would be a perfect book to pick up if you have a crazy idea that you want to refine into something that might actually be drinkable when you are done.

It is One of the most inspiring books I have, and a good replacement for the Complete Joy of Home Brewing fan who feels that the other books on their shelf don’t have too many formulas and not enough fun.

Local Breweries Make Good Showing at USBTC

The Winter session of the United States Beer Tasting Championship was completed recently. In the USBTC competition the beers are judged in regional field trials. The regional winners in each category then move on to a national judging to determine the Grand Champions.

In the Mid-Atlantic regional trials several Virginia breweries made good showings.

Barleywine: Grand Illumination, Williamsburg AleWerks, Williamsburg, VA
Porter: Legend Porter, Legend Brewing Company, Richmond, VA
Porter Honorable Mention: Washington’s Porter, Williamsburg AleWerks, Williamsburg, VA
Brown Ale Honorable Mention: Tavern Ale, Williamsburg AleWerks, Williamsburg, VA
Spice/Smoke Beer: Smoke-Out Rauch Beer, Starr Hill Brewing Company, Crozet, VA

Our friends in Maryland did well also.

Strong/Old Ale: Winter Storm, Clipper City Brewing, Baltimore, MD
Imperial Porter: Gonzo Imperial Porter, Flying Dog, Frederick, MD

Two of these regional winners went on to be named Grand Champions in their categories. Williamsburg AleWerks Grand Illumination won the Barleywine category. In the Imperial Porter category, Flying Gonzo Imperial Porter came out on top.

Congratulations to all the winners! I was happy to several old favorites in the winner’s circle. Be sure to check out the complete results here to see how your favorite breweries did in the competition.

Blogging Around

My first attempt at guest blogging has been posted over at My Year Without Sugar. The blog is dedicated to having a diet free of refined sugars. Something I don’t consciously try to do, but my taste in food and drink tends to lead me in that direction. Nicole (the blogger) asked me to put something together to clarify if/when/how sugars are used in commercial brewing. Most of the article will be pretty basic if you are an experienced homebrewer, but the rest of the blog is certainly worth checking out if you are considering cutting down on your refined sugar consumption.

In addition to that some of you may have noticed a new blog (BrewLocal) has appeared on my profile. I can’t go into the full details about it at this point, mostly because I’m not sure exactly what (if anything) it will end up being. What I can say is that it will be a joint project with my friend Nathan (who you might remember from posts about sausages, bacon and barrels). The blog isn’t even available to view yet, but once things get rolling over there you’ll hear about it here.

Ash Wednesday Thoughts

Maybe it’s just the fast talking but…

• Do any of you other Catholics start thinking, “Man, my forehead’s itchy…” and reach up and scratch most of their ashes off before they realize what they’re doing?
• Does how much you’re “allowed” to eat vary between dioceses?
• If the diocese across the river lets me have half a sammich for lunch, can I go there?
• Beer doesn’t count, right?
• Where can I get more doublebock real quick?
• I actually feel smarter without eating. If I put one of those Breathe-Right strips on my nose and start getting more oxygen, too, maybe I can solve this mortgage problem.
• Do dog biscuits count?
• I really love fish. I do. I love it like a brother. A brother that I’m going to grill up and eat with fingerling potatoes and mixed greens tonight.