2015: A Year of Brewing

As I mentioned before, while I was quiet here on the blog I was not absent in my brewery, I mean kitchen. I plowed forward, re-brewing previous batches and attempting new recipes while making my own. I also joined the Bay Area Mashers homebrewing club in the summer, and they run a quarterly in-house brewing competition, so some of my batches were to compete in that, and will be in the foreseeable future. Additionally, I've been doing my own sampling of the pros, and continue to seek out neighborhood breweries and brewpubs wherever I travel.

The Brewourist: … And Back Again

In the first part I detailed my journey from the Black Hills to Oak Ridge, TN, and all the brewpubs I visited along the way. After a week working in eastern Tennessee, the reason for my visit was complete and I left a day earlier than planned because, well, Oak Ridge doesn't have much going on. My first stop was St Louis, MO, again, then Sioux Falls, SD. And because I couldn't arrive back in Lead, SD until 3PM Monday Oct 26, having left Oak Ridge on Friday Oct 23, I got to spend two nights in St Louis! I was looking forward to spending a more time with my friend there and visiting two new brewpubs.

Heavy Riff Brewing, St Louis, MO

I chose my hotel in St Louis on this return stop to be close to two other breweries. My first night back my physics professor friend was busy preparing for a public physics lecture the next morning, so I walked myself to Heavy Riff, another music themed brewery on my journey, and sat at the bar. Their flagship beer is an oatmeal milk brown ale (what?!). It's practically a light brown porter (by definition), and wasn't my most favorite drink there, but they have a seasonal version of it with vanilla and coffee, which was one of the best beers I've ever had. Heavy Riff serves food and I had a salad with turkey and berries and a bowl of chili pork verde, both were delicious. I chatted with one of the bartenders a little bit, and made single-serving friends of my fellow barflies. We cheered on the KC Royals as they clinched the ALCS and I left at nearly midnight. I didn't have much to do the next day but be at Washington University St Louis by 10 the next morning, so a late night out wasn't a bad thing. Because I walked that night I was able to enjoy four half-pints and a couple 12-oz pours. Like I said, my least favorite was their flagship, the Velvet Underbrown (get it? think Lou Reed's proto-punk work), but it wasn't bad, I just need to be wowed to brown ales. The west coast IPA wasn't that overpowering (which is good), and having never heard of a beire de mars, I quite enjoyed the amber-y take on the traditional French/Flemmish style. I like rye in my beer when it's done well, and the lager, a general difficult style, was enjoyable!

Guitar neck tap handles and a steady
stream of quality tunes in the air.

• New Kids on the Bock (collaboration of 5 local breweries)
• Velvet Underbrown (oatmeal milk brown)
• Single Successful Rye (rye lager)
• Two Frenchmen (beire de mars, in collaboration with Excel Brewing Company)
• Left Coast Envy (WC IPA)
• Vanilla Coffee Velvet Underbrown

The Civil Life, St Louis, MO

Beers aplenty!

The next day I spent the morning and lunch with my friend and his girlfriend. He gave a great public lecture on the nature of the universe and how Einstein's work helped discover these results. We lunched at a local Mexican place and then parted for the afternoon. That evening I met him at his place, he showed me around, and we headed over to The Civil Life, a delightful little brewpub that focuses on Continental style session beers and has a tasty menu all produced out of the tiniest little kitchen at the far end of the bar.  Because I drove that night I had four half pints, with a final taste of their Milk Stout on tap, a lovely dessert beer.

• The Angel & The Sword (cask conditioned and served English ale)
• Rye Pale
• Vienna Lager
• Civil Common (CA Commons)

Dinner was an arugula salad with apples and red onion, and liverwurst on pretzel buns. So yummy! I like the focus on session able beers that aren't overly hoppy in the new American craft beer style. Will definitely visit again when I have the chance and find myself with free time in St Louis.

Dinner with the Vienna Lager.

The Big Rip Brewing Company, North Kansas City, MO

A flight of five at this small but mighty KS brewery.

Heading west from St Louis, Kansas City is perfectly situated for a lunch time stop. On my way down I stopped at a bar-restaurant, so on this return trip I wanted to find a brewpub that made its own beer, or just a taproom, for my stop. I had a leftover burrito from my lunch the previous day, and found that The Big Rip Brewing Company does not serve food in their taproom but allows visitors to bring their own food! This was perfect. I made my way there, just north of downtown in an industrial neighborhood, ordered a half-flight, and dug into my tepid leftovers. The place has framed horror and sic-fi movie posters for decoration, and the beer names echo that fandom. I enjoyed the Groovy Pale Ale, and was told they also make "Boomstick" and "Mr. Fancy-pants" beers. Remembering the Evil Dead poster, I said to the barman, "I see what you did there." When talking about this with the two employees there that day, in between plays of the KC Chiefs game playing out on multiple TVs in the room, they told me that they are indeed horror, sci-fi, and science fans, and their name reflects that. The Big Rip is a theoretical end-of-the-universe scenario, where the constant acceleration of the expansion of the universe leads not only to galaxies becoming island universes, ignorant of their former neighbors, but solar systems, and eventually atoms themselves, ripping apart, giving the brewery its name.

• Umbrella Kölsch
• Great Conjunction Cherry Hefe
• Outlander Roggenbier-Rye Ale
• Groovy Pale Ale
• Franklin Road Coffee Porter

My half-flight, only because I was driving and had to make it to Sioux Falls, SD that night, was the five of their beers on tap that looked most interesting to me. Overall they were good and enjoyable! I really liked the Groovy Pale Ale, which was really fruity in the hops, and the coffee porter was lovely in roasted flavor and aroma. The cherry hefeweizen was good, and I don't care for wheat beers! I'm glad to have stopped there and even purchased a t-shirt, as it mentions "dark matter," the subject of my thesis work.

Gandy Dancer Brew Works at Monk's House of Ale Repute, Sioux Falls, SD

Continuing northward up I-29 that day, I eventually made it to Sioux Falls, SD, and realized I had crossed about half of Lewis and Clark's original journey in just a day of driving. I was looking forward to my hotel room and dinner at Monk's House of Ale Repute. Being Sunday night, most of the breweries in the city were closed after 5 or 6 PM (it was after 7), but Monk's House, as a food-serving, was still open, and I was lucky that they were open long enough for me to get there and spend a few hours enjoying the locally-brewed beers and have dinner. Monk's House is home to the Gandy Dancer Brew Works (I never discovered the name's origin), and as such I focused on those beers. They were pretty good! I was expecting the Dark Ale to be a Black IPA or the like, but it was more like a Belgian dark ale than a Cascadian dark ale: sweeter and maltier, not so hoppy. The porter was strong, and I don't care much for strongly alcoholic dark beers as I feel that taste takes away from the more complex malt and kiln flavors present in porters and stouts, so it wasn't my favorite, but I could recognize quality brewing.

The signage of my dinner destination in Sioux Falls, SD.

• Brainless Wonder IPA
• Fresh Hop Bindlestiff (Dark Ale)
• Point of Origin Porter
• Bitterest Bian (English bitter)

Dinner was a brat on a bun with fried green beans. Simple and good. I made single-serving friends of my bar neighbors, and chatted with the bartender, who also brews at Gandy Dancer, and is an anatomy teacher at at local high school! We talked brewing and Midwest and Plain State breweries. My last official night on the road brought me to another great brewpub and I was glad for the opportunities I had to visit all these wonderful places while on the road.

Hay Camp Brewing, Rapid City, SD

However, I was still away from home, and my last night in South Dakota, after driving across the state and dropping off the repaired crystals, then working three days underground on the experiment, I had to run an errand in Rapid City. I brought dinner (Qdoba!) to Hay Camp Brewing, a newer nano brewery in the city I visited for the first time during my September work trip, and got tasters of a few of their beers on tap. I unfortunately missed some great beers I saw they had the previous week, but what I was able to try was worth the stop.

3/4 Hay Camp beers tasted that evening.

• Best Bitter (English bitter)
• Better Brown Ale
• Mothers Temptation (Imperial IPA)
• Victory Stout

I had their Victory Stout on my first visit, and it's goooood. Lightly smoky to match the expected stout roastiness, this stout is about 5% ABV, so they're not trying to knock you on your butt with it. I respect that, as I no longer care for strong, boozy dark beers. The IPA was what it should be, and the bitter and brown lived up to my expectations for those styles: good but not astounding. This place was started by two guys who studied science in college and grad school and still have day jobs, so it's an inspiration for my possible future career change.

I'm lucky that a work trip afforded me this fun tour of brewpubs between Lead, SD and Oak Ridge, TN. One thing I noticed was the general prevalence of cask conditioned and hand pump served beer. I tried a few of them at the different breweries and enjoyed the different taste and texture afforded by this style of serving beer. There's a world of brewing out there, and I can't wait to do this again. When I travel I'll look out for local breweries to sample, and report back here what I find.


What's your favorite randomly-visited brewery or brewpub? If and when you visit places on your own, do you talk to other people or keep to yourself?

Until next time friends, happy brewing!

The Brewourist: Or, There...

Dateline: October 2015

A medium-large neutrino collaborative experiment housed in the Black Hills of western South Dakota needed to deliver two of their germanium crystal detectors to an company in eastern Tennessee for repair. They are elevation sensitive, so flying them is out of the question, and shipping them freight would take too long. A junior researcher was chosen to drive them as fast as reasonable across the middle of the country, wait for the repair, and drive them back. This is his journey.