2009 October - Your Guide To Beer

Archive for October, 2009

The Mystery of Marketing

Diageo’s Wily Jack makes a mystery out of wine marketing.

Last Sunday, I piled the family into the car and we headed up to Bull Run Park in Centreville to attend the 3rd Annual Northern Virginia BrewFest. It was a beautiful day for a drive, and a beer festival. Once we arrived, we saw the evidence that the previous day’s weather had not been as appealing. The grounds were covered by ankle-deep mud from the rains the day before. Fortunately, we had been forewarned via the NOVA Brew Fest Twitter feed to wear boots. Still, walking was treacherous at times. However, that didn’t stop the beer from flowing.

We stayed just a couple of hours, but we had time to try out a number of beers. I’ll mention a few of our favorites. From the Vintage 50 tent, the Oatmeal Stout was quite nice with dark roasted flavors and some sweetness. Capitol City Brewing Fuel was a noteworthy selection. It had a nice espresso flavor to it, along with some bitter chocolate. Also at the Capital City booth, we tried the Organic Trippel which was very nice as well. Colleen was torn between Fuel and Organic Trippel as her favorites of the fest, so maybe there’s a trip up to Capitol City in my future!

Moving on to Clipper City, I was pleased to see they had the latest in the Mutiny Fleet series, The Great Pumpkin, an Imperial Pumpkin Ale. I hadn’t had the opportunity to try this one previously. Now, typically pumpkin beers I can enjoy only in limited quantities, and grow tired of the flavor rather quickly. However, I did enjoy the Clipper City Great Pumpkin quite a bit. Maybe there’s still time to find a bottle or two of this limited release.

I also had a glass of Founders Centennial IPA. Colleen and I are both fans of citrusy IPAs and this one didn’t disappoint. Colleen pegged the flavor as being more of an “orange citrus,” rather than the typical grapefruit flavor. Another new beer tried this afternoon was Duck Rabbit Wee Heavy. The sweet, caramel, toffee flavors finished off with a bit of hop bitterness made this a good closing beer for our visit.

Despite the muddy grounds, many folks were enjoying the festival on Sunday. Everyone seemed to take the mud in stride. After all, what’s a bit of mud when there are good beers to be had? I especially enjoyed the day as it had been awhile since Colleen was able to accompany me to a beer fest. This was my son’s first beer festival, and although he’s got a few more years before he can enjoy them properly, he got to see what the excitement was all about. Soon we were headed off to find dinner, as I had bribed my son with the promise of dinner at Round Robin. The large burger topped with cheese, bacon, and a fried egg was a fitting feast to cap off the day.

Tom Cizauskas has posted his write up and pictures from the festival at his blog “Yours For Good Fermentables“.
Local beer maven Chuck Triplett also has posted pictures here.

The next Northern Virginia Brewfest is scheduled for June 26-27, 2010 in Leesburg, VA

[ Original content posted at http://www.musingsoverapint.com ]

The Bottle: Wine Barrel Flanders Red

Saturday the DC Barrel Guys got together to bottle our first sour beer, the Wine Barrel Flanders Red we racked into the barrel last November. The year had been good to the beer, after a brief period of sickness (the pediococcus getting moving) the beer has developed a bright acidity, and huge fruit (cherry) and oak complexities (look for a full review in a couple weeks once it carbonates.) Of course I forgot to bring my camera, so I don’t have any pictures from the actual event, but I am sure Dan (City Brewer) and Nathan (Des Jardin) will post some pictures and their own takes on the day soon.

We debated the amount of priming sugar for a long time. Originally we were working on the assumption that the beer would be wine flat, based on this quote from Vinnie Cilurzo (BYO Jan/Feb 2008) “Remember that if you are bottle conditioning, you’ll need to add more sugar than normal, probably 1 cup of sugar per 5 gallons (19 L). This is because the beer has lost all of its CO2 during barrel aging. It is as still as wine when it comes out of the barrel.” The beer tasted a bit carbonated though, so we decided to hold back on the sugar a bit, 149 g of corn sugar per 4 gallon batch was decided to be a good compromise (adding 2.45 volumes of CO2 to the beer). We also added some rehydrated champagne yeast to each bucket (20 grams total) to ensure timely bottle conditioning.

We needed to find a way to get the beer out of the bottom of the barrel without lifting it or disturbing the sediment. Noah rigged up his march pump with a 90 degree turned pickup in the barrel. It worked perfectly as we pumped 33.2 lbs of beer into bottling buckets set on Tim’s postal scale (easier to divide the beer for priming purposes than volume.) This was the step I was most concerned about, but it gave us no problems.

Noah took a time-lapse video of the barrel emptying/filling, one shot every 15 seconds. Not that you’ll be able to pick up too much of our technique, but it is a fun 1:43 (not sure who we should blame for the bucket halfway through).

Overall the day was surprisingly quick and smooth. With that many people we were able to run three bottling stations at a time. From the time we started emptying the barrels to the time all the beer was in (~350) bottles and 20 gallons in carboys and kegs it only took 2.5 hours (and that was with some delicious beer samples from our BrewLocal tour of Bullfrog Brewing and Selin’s Grove, and some excellent fried eggplant pizza from Pete’s Apizza in Columbia Heights where Dan works).

I took half of my 8 gallon share in bottles (everyone who took bottles got 1.5 cases of 12 oz bottles, and six 22 bombers). Not a bad return on a 5 gallon investment.

I also took a six-pack of my share and added some bottle hops. I was inspired by a bottle of El Rojo Diablo from Bullfrog (a sour red dry-hopped with Amarillo). I decided to go with a combination of Amarillo, Simcoe, and homegrown Cascade (about one hop cone of each), I thought the citrusy character would match well with the acidity. New Belgium does something similar as well with their La Folie to make La Terroir.

My other 4 gallons was racked onto 2 lbs of sour cherries I bought at the local farmers market and froze back in July. In addition to boosting the cherry character of the base beer it should renew fermentation, boosting the funk and acidity. I’ll probably let it age another 3-4 months before putting it into bottles.

After three hours of bottling we still had the task of racking the next beer (Sour Single) into the same barrel. We did not clean out the barrel, but we did suck out all but ~1 qrt of the slurry (for use in other batches). 20 gallons of the Single had stopped fermenting around 1.020, 10 had just been brewed in the last 36 hours, and 25 gallons had fermented out completely 1.006-1.012. The resulting blend was around 1.030, lots of residual sweetness, but that will be gone pretty quickly (the airlock was starting to bubble just a couple hours after we finished). This beer will probably stay in the barrel until this time next year.

The Barrel Aged Wee Heavy is also coming along nicely. It has a nice bold acidity, but without much funk. It has a solid barrel/oak character, but not too much bourbon character. Hopefully it will be ready to bottle in the next few months, an Imperial Porter is the leading candidate for the next beer into that barrel.

A Plea for Peaceful Coexistence

Beer lovers, wine lovers, can’t we all just get along?

Weizenbock Recipe

With a yeast cake of White Labs 300, Hefeweizen Ale Yeast, left over from my Extract Hefeweizen sitting in my fridge I wanted to brew something with it. I considered doing a Dunkleweizen (Dark German Wheat) or a Roggenbier (German Rye), but with cold winter weather approaching I decided to step it up and do to my first Weizenbock. This is a rich, generally dark, wheat ale typified by Schneider Aventinus. Rather than having the big banana character of a Hefeweizen, Weizenbock has a more complex fruit character with banana mingled with dark fruit and a firm Bock-ish Munich maltiness.

I decided to go with a pretty moderate gravity for this batch (1.075), I wanted it to be big and flavorful, but not so big that I couldn’t enjoy a pint on a weeknight. In general I like beers in this middle range (6.5%-8.5% ABV) sitting between session ales and the big monster alcohol bombs.

For most of the malt I went with a pretty standard mix of dark Munich, Vienna, and wheat malt. Instead of adding pilsener malt for the rest of the base I added some Marris Otter, which will add a bit more depth of maltiness that I don’t get from pils in such a rich beer. I also added some Simpsons Extra Dark Crystal which added a wonderful character to the lagered Wheat Tripleboc k I brewed last fall. It adds a nice combination of dark fruit with just a hint of coffee, as well as some nice color. I went a bit lighter on it than I did in the Triplebock because this is a lighter beer that I want to be easier drinking.

I kept the fermentation pretty cool (58-60 ambient) to ensure that this beer turns out pretty moderate in terms of alcohol and ester character. After fermentation finished I gave the beer some time at 45 to allow the yeast to drop out and the flavors to meld.

Weizenator

Recipe Specifics
—————-
Batch Size (Gal): 4.00
Total Grain (Lbs): 11.63
Anticipated OG: 1.075
Anticipated SRM: 17.2
Anticipated IBU: 20.6
Brewhouse Efficiency: 70 %
Wort Boil Time: 90 Minutes

Grain
——
6.00 lbs. German Wheat Malt
3.00 lbs. German Dark Munich Malt
1.50 lbs. Maris Otter
0.63 lbs. German Vienna Malt
0.50 lbs. Simpsons Extra Dark Crystal (~155L)

Hops
—–
1.75 oz. Czech Saaz (Pellet @ 3.10% AA) 45 min.

Extras
——-
0.25 Tsp Yeast Nutrient @ 13 Min.
0.50 Whirlfloc @ 13 Min.

Yeast
—–
White Labs WLP300 Hefeweizen Ale

Water Profile
————-
Profile: Washington DC

Mash Schedule
————-
Sacch Rest 60 min @ 152

Notes
—–
Yeast cake saved from extract weizen when it was racked to the keg 9/25/09

Brewed 10/03/09 By myself.

Fly sparge. Collected 6 gallons of 1.055 wort. Added 1/4 tsp of CaCl to the runoff to drop the pH and ensure a good hot break.

1 Year old hop pellets reduced from 3.5% AA.

Cooled down to ~70, put into 58 degree fridge.

Pitched after ~4 hours with 60 seconds of pure O2. Good fermentation by 8 hours.

Good hard fermentation, a bit of blowoff after 2-3 days.

10/05/09 Upped temp to 60 to help it finish.

10/14/09 Dropped temp to 45 to help clear.

10/25/09 Still pretty hazy, balanced fruit character, some caramel. Down to 1.016 (79% AA, 7.8% ABV)

Battlefield Brewing Opening Set

Fredericksburg’s first brewpub will celebrate its grand opening on Friday, October 30, at 5:00PM. Battlefield Brewing Company is part of The Pub, located at 4187 Plank Rd in Fredericksburg. A 3BBL brewhouse was installed in July and we’ve been anxiously awaiting news of beer being poured. The Pub already has a reputation for good pub food, and the addition of fresh-brewed beer is very exciting.

Head brewer Lyle Brown writes that the brewery will be tapping three beers on Friday. Chancellor Pale Ale, is an American-style Pale Ale with Centennial and Amarillo hops. Wilderness Wheat is an American-style Wheat beer brewed with Hallertau hops and a touch of Munich for sweetness . Iwo Jima Irish Red, is an Irish-style Red Ale brewed with East Kent Goldings hops. Specialty and seasonal beers are also planned for the future.

I’ll see you at The Pub on Friday!

[ Original content posted at http://www.musingsoverapint.com ]

Battlefield Brewing Opening Set

Fredericksburg’s first brewpub will celebrate its grand opening on Friday, October 30, at 5:00PM. Battlefield Brewing Company is part of The Pub, located at 4187 Plank Rd in Fredericksburg. A 3BBL brewhouse was installed in July and we’ve been anxiously awaiting news of beer being poured. The Pub already has a reputation for good pub food, and the addition of fresh-brewed beer is very exciting.

Head brewer Lyle Brown writes that the brewery will be tapping three beers on Friday. Chancellor Pale Ale, is an American-style Pale Ale with Centennial and Amarillo hops. Wilderness Wheat is an American-style Wheat beer brewed with Hallertau hops and a touch of Munich for sweetness . Iwo Jima Irish Red, is an Irish-style Red Ale brewed with East Kent Goldings hops. Specialty and seasonal beers are also planned for the future.

I’ll see you at The Pub on Friday!

[ Original content posted at http://www.musingsoverapint.com ]

World Beer Fest – Durham

A few weeks ago I joined three friends for a trip to Durham, NC for the World Beer Festival. As we have in the past, this was an opportunity for us to get away for a weekend of fun, and plenty of good beer. Frank, Jerry, Mike and I arrived in Durham Friday afternoon, and after checking in at the hotel, headed over to Tyler’s Tap Room for dinner and an evening of pool and beer.

I enjoyed several good, and new to me beers Friday evening. Starting the evening off with a bang, I ordered a Foothills Seeing Double IPA. This is a highly hopped, resiny, bold but balanced beer. I’ve often remarked that I’m a fan of the DIPA and Seeing Double didn’t disappoint. In fact, I would revisit this one several times over the weekend. I was excited to see that Tyler’s also had Terrapin Depth Charge on draft. This beer is a result of a collaboration between Terrapin Brewing in Georgia and Left Hand Brewing from Colorado. Depth Charge is full of robust dark roasted coffee goodness in a smooth, creamy milk stout. Although we ordered the beer during dinner, we all remarked that it would make an excellent dessert. After dinner, we moved into Tyler’s Speakeasy and spent the evening (and early morning) shooting pool and trying out a variety of beers from their extensive menu.

Saturday was the main event, the World Beer Festival, held at Durham Athletic Park. We had four hours to try out as many beers as we (responsibly) could. I decided I would mostly focus on “dark” beers. I usually seek out the hop bombs but felt this would be a good way to try a lot of beers I’d not had before. Naturally I varied from the plan here and there. I’ll mention just a few of my favorite finds.

After enjoying the Seeing Double IPA the previous evening I made a couple of visits to Foothills’ booth. During one of those stops, they were pouring a barrel-aged Sexual Chocolate. Molassas and dark chocolate flavors were blended with a hint of bourbon sweetness. The timing was just right to get a taste of this limited beer before it ran out. I was happy to see Great Lakes Brewing in attendance. I enjoyed a sample of their Edmond Fitzgerald Porter. When I mentioned the beers’ (non)availability in Virginia, the reply was “We’re working on it.” Just recently Great Lake beers made it to West Virginia, so maybe we’ll see them here soon.

New Holland Charkoota Rye-Smoked Rye Dopplebock was an interesting beer. The mouthful of a name describes a mouthful of a beer. The mild smokiness mixed with the sweet malt and dark fruit very well. I’d definitely pick this as one of the best beers I tried at the festival. I’d like to enjoy it again, in more than a sample sized serving. Left Hand Smoke Jumper Imperial Porter was another smoked beer being poured. Smoke Jumper has a very woody smokiness to it that’s a bit different than the “bacon-in-a-bottle” flavors of some smoked beers. I think it might appeal even to folks who say they don’t like smoke flavor in a beer.

As I said, I didn’t drink only dark beers at the festival. Aviator Brewing was pouring their HotRod Red through a container of fresh hops to infuse extra hop flavors into the beer. The Dry Hopped Kellerbier from Liberty Steakhouse & Brewery in High Point, NC was another notable selection.

All in all, I tried about 20 new beers, and a tasty lamb pita sandwich, during the afternoon. The World Beer Festivals are some of my favorite events. The beer selection is extensive and the events are extremely well run. I’m looking forward to the World Beer Fest planned for Spring 2010 in Richmond, VA.

I was too busy enjoying the beer to take many photos, but a few are posted here.

[ Original content posted at http://www.musingsoverapint.com ]