Two Brothers - SPECIAL EDITION Part I

No, this isn’t going to be a post about Two Brothers Brewing Company – although we do review one of their beers here. This is a post about a different two brothers. Me and my brother Andrew. Andrew lives in New York City and recently came back for 11 days in good ole Minnesota. Of course he picked the coldest week of the winter, but if that ain’t good beer drinking weather, then I don’t know what is. In this special edition of BEER THIS! I will be posting more than the usual one week of beer. I will be posting all 11 days of hijinks that ensued while Andrew was in town. And if that isn’t enough, I’ve got some exciting homebrewing news and some beer judge news as well. We did a lot so let’s get started.

Like I said in my last post, I have been working on a project for a while and I have finally completed it. My father, who is a Lutheran pastor, had in his possession an old wooden altar that had been removed from an old country church. It was being used as a workbench in their garage. They've recently moved but the altar never made it to their new house. Instead, it went to mine. It was my intention to refinish the old thing and retrofit it with a few draft beer faucets and turn it into the Altar Bar! Well, my ambition quickly faded once I got the thing disassembled and it nearly became firewood. After sitting in the garage untouched for over a year I got back on the horse and resumed the project. When I found out Andrew would be in town I told myself I would finish it by the time he arrived. Five months later I realized that goal just in time. Eventually, I am going to refrigerate the thing and it will be one heckuva kegerator. Until then I will just use it for special occasions. Pictures of the project can be seen here.

January 9th, 2009 Andrew arrives. Where’s the first place we go after he steps off the plane? Beer bar! That’s right, the whole family heads to St. Paul and the Muddy Pig. The place is just packed, in fact all of Cathedral Hill is packed tonight! We were fortunate enough to find parking and also three places at the bar while we waited for our table. I got a Left Hand Warrior IPA. As I suspected by the name this beer uses exclusively Warrior hops for its bitterness and flavor. It poured a nice orange color with a very frothy head. It smelled magnificent, full of floral earthy hops. One taste and I was convinced this was fresh/wet hopped. It reminded me a lot of Sierra Nevada’s Harvest Ale. Very earthy or grassy hop flavors. I had ordered this beer off the chalkboard but once we were seated I was able to take a look at the beer menu. Confirming my suspicions I read that this is indeed wet hopped. I am really starting to enjoy all these wet hopped beers. This was a good beer, but I am curious how old it is hops are harvested in the fall in the northern hemisphere and in the spring in the southern. I am not used to seeing a wet hopped beer this late in the year. Regardless it seems to have aged well as I found no distracting flaws. After this beer I had to settle a dispute with myself. As you may recall from an earlier blog I had an experience with a Victory Stout (literally two blocks away) that was just a little off. I checked the world wide net for information on Victory Stout and found no mention it even existed. The closest thing I could find was Victory Storm King Imperial Stout. Well they had this on tap at the Pig so I ordered it. I had to know if this is what I was drinking last month. I’m pretty sure it is although I liked it much better today. I could taste more of the roasted malt and sweetness. Nose was the same though, beautifully hoppy! After our meal which was delicious we had an Eel River Organic Triple Exultation Old Ale. Although our brains kept telling our mouths to say ELK River this beer was very good. We could definitely smell molasses or brown sugar. There was also a nice burnt raisin aroma. I would certainly order this one again. This is the first I have heard of Elk, er… Eel River, I will certainly look for more of their stuff.



















January 10th, 2009 Not much to report today except that I did have a new, rather good beer today. But, before I get into that I have to give props to one of my favorite diners, the Town Talk Diner in the Hi-Lake neighborhood of Minneapolis. My family and I have been coming here for a while and are always blown away by the quality and inventiveness of the food. I had the peanut butter and jelly pancakes. Sounds interesting right? Almost sounds gross? That’s what I thought, but I’ve never had any bad experiences here and my curiosity got the best of me. The pancakes were awesome! Just enough peanut butter so you knew it was there and topped with strawberry jelly. Mmmm, my mouth is watering again. Of course you can never go wrong with the pulled pork pepper hash. That is fantastic. And so, like any good Scandinavian, while enjoying this fantastic brunch, I had to have coffee… Coffee beer! Today I tried for the first time the Lagunitas (LAH goo KNEE tuss) Cappuccino Stout. It poured a dark amber color not quite opaque. A little tan head that dissipated quickly and left little lace. At first pour the coffee smell was prevalent but towards the end it was barely discernable. You can tell there is some brown sugar or molasses in there, too, probably to boost the ABV. At 8% this is no breakfast beer, but I won’t tell anyone. I could taste the coffee in the first few sips but not much after that. The molasses and raisin qualities really dominate. It was a very good beer but not really a stout and not really a coffee beer. Maybe I am a product of the American bigger-better-faster-more mentality, I like a lot more coffee in my coffee beers. Still a great beer, loved the flavor, just wasn’t what I was expecting.

Real quickly… went to supper at Masa in downtown Minneapolis tonight. I would definitely recommend this place, fantastic contemporary Mexican food. But what would you expect from the people who brought you D’Amico & Sons and Campiello? Just a quick note about the beers. I started with a Dos Equis Amber, a nice brownish easy drinking beer which has very little malt and even less hops. But what really piqued my interest was a nice little pilsner (?) that my wife ordered. Bohemia from Mexico was a nice light straw color like just about every other pilsner but the taste was significantly different. I got a nice little creaminess out of it. Hard to explain, but it was more in the taste than the mouthfeel. I’d like to try another one of these some day, but with so much better beer out there it may be a while. If you get a chance, check out Masa, but go for the food, not the beer.

January 13th, 2009 Tonight we had another fantastic family dinner, this time at home. We dined at my parent’s house in St Paul and as I’ve mentioned before my mom is a wonderful cook. I can still almost taste the Swedish meatballs and creamed green beans. Yum. It was nice family time; even Grandpa and Grandma were there. Well, we finished dessert, we loosened up our belts, we got the dishes all cleaned up. And like most eighty-somethings the sandman came early. Grandpa’s tail lights were barely out of view by the time we got our coats on and were heading to The Happy Gnome. The cold wasn’t going to stop us. It was Tuesday night and the temperature was -17 so we thought the bar would be quiet. Wrong! The bar was completely full and we got the only open table in the dining room. I decided tonight would be a tour of IPAs. I started the trip off with Tyranena Scurvy. This beer is part of their Brewers Gone Wild series and is made with Orange Peel – hence the name. This came out in a bottle which I immediately poured into the glass that accompanied it. It all happened so fast that I didn’t realize the glass was warm and wet. Fresh out of the dishwasher. The first whiff of Scurvy was all detergent – yuk. I got through it and enjoyed it anyway. I remember this one from last summer so thankfully it wasn’t my first taste of this beer. The next two were firsts for me. The second beer I had tonight was Dark Horse Crooked Tree IPA. Had this one on tap and it came out with no head and had very little lacing as I drank it. This one could have also been victim of freshly cleaned glass syndrome. It tasted and smelled just fine though. I got a great citrus aroma, mostly grapefruit out of it. And the taste… wow was this one bitter! There are a lot of hops in here, kinda reminds me of the same hop profile as Dogfish Head 60 minute IPA. I really liked this one. Finally I finished off the night with a Lagunitas IPA. This one was also exceptional. It poured a nice dark orange caramel color, got a thick one finger head that dissipated slowly and left serious lacing. I’m getting some good malty and hoppy characteristics out of the taste. More malt than I am used to in an IPA but I like it. Bitter like an IPA outta be but not over the top. In fact the malt almost dominates. In addition this has a nice creamy mouthfeel to it. Very nice.

January 14th, 2009 This was an especially interesting day. Today was my first BJCP class. BJCP stands for Beer Judge Certification Program. Their website puts it best… “The purpose of the Beer Judge Certification Program is to promote beer literacy and the appreciation of real beer, and to recognize beer tasting and evaluation skills. We certify and rank beer judges through an examination and monitoring process.” What I am doing now is taking a class offered by my local homebrew club the Minnesota Home Brewers Association to prepare for the exam in April. It’s a 14 week course and if I pass that test I will achieve the rank of Recognized Beer Judge. After that I can accumulate experience points by judging in BJCP sanctioned competitions. The more experience points you accumulate and the higher your score on the exam (you can retake it if you want to) the higher your rank as a beer judge. Training for the exam is rigorous… today we drank a lot of beer! It is actually about as cool as it sounds, but the exam is very tough. Passing means a score of at least 70%. Wish me luck!

After class I picked up Andrew up from the folks' house and we headed to Buster’s on 28th. Things were hopping (no pun intended) when we got there at 10pm but we were able to find a spot at the bar. I got the wings which were tasty; I would recommend them and certainly order them again. These were no “wild” wings, these were actually big enough to see without a magnifying glass. A heaping pile, not sure how many, but they were good and plentiful. I started with a Coffee Bender and was pleased to finally see these mugs everyone has been talking about. Surly began distributing coffee mugs for use with their Coffee Bender a while back but I’d never seen them yet. They are shaped like a coffee mug, short and wide and complete with a handle, but they were clear like a pint glass. Now we’re percolating! The Coffee Bender was great as usual and the coffee mug just made it all the more enjoyable…
Good News! Coffee Bender is now available in cans. That’s right; the company that made canning beer cool has just released its famous Coffee Bender in cans for the first time.
…now back to your regularly scheduled program. After finishing up the mug o’ mud I switched to another favorite I’ve drooled about here, Bell’s Best Brown. This one went down pretty well as usual. I just love those malts. We enjoyed good beers, good food and good conversation. One of my favorite places in the world is bellied up with my brother.