New Month, New Year, New Post!

Hey everybody!

Welcome to 2016! I hope you all had a blessed Christmas and joyous New Year. I know I did, and I even got to do some Brewouristing while in St Louis for a conference between the holidays. This month has been so busy, and it's barely half over! But let me give an update of my recent beer-based activities.

Like I said, I did some Brewouristing while in StL. My wife and I had some drinks while around the city and I aimed to sample local favorite. While at lunch at The Bridge Tap House & Wine Bar I had a flight and finally got to taste Prairie BOMB! SO GOOD! Now I understand the hype. This is a great imperial stout aged on coffee, cacao nibs, vanilla, and chilies, and well worth the wait. At the hotel bar I greatly enjoyed Urban Chestntut's STLIPA, a wonderfully hoppy, floral and fruity, lightly bitter double IPA. And at another lunch we ate at Morgan Street Brewpub, a neighborhood joint serving their own fare. A disappointment on that trip came from Schlafly, another StL stalwart. Their pale ale is an amber, and not that great, and the kolsch was merely acceptable. Bummer, but not every brewery can produce high quality beer, something I hope won't be said if I go into brewing professionally.

Upon returning to Berkeley I bottled the milk stout with coffee I brewed earlier in December. That was my 2015 closeout brew, which I'm calling "Little Lebowski." I mentioned brewing it in my triple-beer weekend Dec 5-6, and a fuller post about it is coming after I take the first taste. If it's good I'll submit it to a competition due the last weekend of January, and no matter what I'll be sharing it with friends during a viewing of The Big Lebowski as it's my favorite film and inspiration for the original The Dude Abides. But since this one came out at 6% ABV, and my goal was a less heavy beer than the original, I hope it's good and I feel confident competing with it.

My first brew of 2016 was a stripped down saison using the recipe for the Spicy Jalapeño Saison with none of the extra sugar or added peppers. My 2016 brewing plans are to perfect my brewing of basic recipes, and I've been wanting to do this with this saison recipe for a couple of years now. The brewing went well and primary fermentation felt like it went fast, but I purposely kept it nearly 69°F to aim for traditional warmer saison fermentation temps. I've got the controller set to that during the remaining fermentation and conditioning, and don't even have the cooling output plugged into the temperature controller so that it stays as warm as possible. OG came out to 1.040, one of the lower gravities I've ever had. Depending on overall attenuation, it could come out to 3.5-5% ABV. Fingers crossed that it'll be tasty and good enough for competition, as well!

That same weekend I had my second professional brewing experience. During the BAM brew day we teased with Dan the CQ brewer that he should get beer nerds to help him regularly. I emailed him that following week with that proposal and he jumped on it. So January 9 I headed down to San Leandro's industrial neighborhood and helped the CQ guys package a saison for SF Beer Week. I assisted in the sanitization, CO2 purge, and filling of two firkins, and then manned the sanitization and CO2 stations for 20 cases of 750-ml champagne bottles (that's 240). I only squirted myself once with pressuring sanitizer, and got to know Dan and Peter. I had plans with my wife that night so I couldn't stay too long, otherwise I would have kegged the finished beer in their other bright tank. Dan was happy with my help and when I'm back in the Easy Bay I'll hit him up to see where I can be assistance in February.

Since it was announced last summer, I've also been in regular communication with two gentlemen starting a new brewpub in Berkeley. I have yet to meet them, but we've maintained email correspondence, and with any luck our schedules will line up in February. I want to brew as much of my own beer this year, but I also want to get professional experience to bolster my resume. I now have two brewery job applications out there. 2016 is the year of beer. Here's to whatever my future holds!

How were your holidays? Any fun beer adventures? What do you hope that 2016 holds for you?

Until next time friends, happy brewing!

BAM Brew Day at Cleophus Quealy

Oh no! It's Tuesday!

The CQ taproom.

Beer! Barrels! Brewery!

Sorry for the late update. I had another craft beer-y weekend, and I can't wait to share all about it. This is kind of a sequel from the events of last weekend at the BAM Christmas party. One of the prizes for the winning IPA brewer was to brew a version of it at Cleophus Quealy nanobrewery in San Leandro, CA, just south of Oakland in the East Bay. But not only did the winner get to brew with them, all of BAM was invited to CQ for the day! We were guests of the brewery and were treated to beer and pizza. What a better Sunday Funday?

BAM Christmas Party 2015

Hey friends!

Another Monday, another post written at the last minute because I don't plan ahead and work on it throughout the week.

I had a Saturday full of homebrew! How was yours?

Brief Update

Hey all!

I have a brief update for you. I've been traveling and sick the past two Mondays, respectively, so haven't been able to get a new post written and up. But I haven't been lax in my brewing and craft beering!

Everything I've been working on in the past few months has been bottled, and I've even tasted a few of the batches. The first I tasted was my oat pale ale. Not impressed. It tastes like green apples, which means acetaldehyde, a precursor to ethyl alcohol in the fermentation process. The yeast is supposed to clean up all the acetaldehyde by the end of fermentation, but if you remove the beer from the yeast too early, or allow the yeast to go dormant and fall out of suspension, that step can be arrested. Apparently that's what I did! Even though the beer sat on the yeast for a month before bottling, maybe the yeast just didn't finish its work. I talked to Tom at Oak Barrel and from what he could gather from books they have on hand, there's not much I can do once it's on bottles. So I've placed my case of OPA near the heater in my apartment and shake them up every few days to rouse the yeast so that it can do some more work. Hopefully that works. If it doesn't, I've got a cidery beer on my hands, and a bit of a disappointment in my work. After the off flavoring of the S'More Of What?, another not great beer is kind of a slap in the face, and has me questioning my desire to go into brewing professionally. Oh well, ever onward…

The #w00tstout is amazing! Can not wait to try this. I'm having some friends over in a two Fridays to sample the latest of Dr. Bradley's Brewing Co., and this will be the star of the show. The hydrometer sample was quite good, so I know the conditioned product will be great, and I will slowly mete out this batch over the next year-plus.

I dry-hopped and bottled the Almost Gold Medal IPA, cold crashing for 1.5 days in between, and it smells great. I barely got to taste it having to use some of the hydrometer sample to fill the 20th bottle, but what I did taste was quite good. For an IPA it could be a bit bitter, but it's hoppiness is sweet, floral, fruity, and a light touch, very well balanced. I hope only 11 days in bottle will be enough to meld and condition the flavors for competition at the BAM Christmas party this Saturday. Even if it doesn't place, I expect this batch to be a good one, and the happiness should mellow into something nice while this batch lasts. Definitely a leg up on my IPA making, and I will be researching the temperature variance of the fermentation schedule to understand the why and how of what I was directed to do following that recipe.

I finally tasted the Grapes & Grain, and it's good! The yeasty esters are a bit much, for my tastes at least, but it's good overall. I drank the mixture of the two versions, and it was plentifully carbonated without  being a gusher or having too strong of a carbonic taste. Having this batch turn out this good, after two disappointments this year, was like a weight lifted off my shoulders, and I won't be ashamed to serve it to my friends next Friday. I'll also be shipping some to the grapes' provider in Atlanta, and I can't wait to hear what she thinks of them.

This last weekend I had a triple-beer experience. A new friend of mine from BAM was brewing a Mexican milk stout using Abuelita tablets, and we collaborated on adapting a recipe he found to his 5-gal system. After that I headed over another friend's house where he and his husband were hosting a house warming holiday get-together after their recent nuptials, and shared a batch of nut brown ale they recently brewed. Then Sunday morning I got up and brewed a lower ABV version of my Imperial White Russian milk stout w/ coffee, The Dude Abides. I like what I've produced before, pushing it up to 9.1% ABV, but I'd rather have a more drinkable beer, especially with the #w00tstout I'll have around for the next year-plus. My aim was to get something about 5.5%, but I believe this batch will be about 7%, which is fine. I already have an idea how to modify it more to reduce the ABV and keep the body and mouthfeel full and smooth. After pitching around 1:30PM, fermentation began by midnight, and by this morning it was bubbling away. I'll "dry hop" the whole beans, although I'm considering coarse grinding them and putting them in a muslin sock for greater area exposure

And that should take us up to today. I am working on my overall brewing plan for 2016. Having some friends over next week to sample my beers will be the inaugural event in what I hope to be an every 6ish weeks series wherein I serve my friends my beer and they give me honest, open feedback. I hope to use this next year to push my brewing to the next level with consistent, positive results. I will also be seeking any and all local homebrewing competitions to start getting official recognition under my belt.

What have you been up to before and since Thanksgiving? Any fun autumnal or wintery brews coming up? What are your plans for 2016?

Until next time friends, happy brewing!

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.