This Blog's Growing Mold

The good news is, I'm having a great time and learning a great deal as an intern for Summit Brewing Company. The bad news, as a result, is that I am no longer sitting behind a desk all day. So I really haven't been keeping up with my blog as I should be. I did, however, recently contribute to another blog. Summit's blog. There I talked about some of my experiences as an intern. I posted to Facebook and Twitter about the story but thought I should put something out here too. If you want to read it, go to summitbeerblog(dot)com or just click here.

Terrapin - Left Hand Depth Charge

I don't do a whole lot of reviews here on my blog but in anticipation of Surly's 4th anniversary beer, I thought I would break this one out. Depth Charge is an Espresso Milk Stout and Surly 4 is going to be an Iced Double Espresso Milk Stout. Stylistically these sound like similar beers. But there is only one way to find out just how much they have in common.

Let's drink them!

Depth Charge is a collaboration beer from Terrapin in Athens, Georgia and Left Hand in Longmont, Colorado. Here is what Terrapin's website says about the beer:

"The second in the midnight project series. Left hand brewer, Ro, joined Spike at the Terrapin Brewery in Athens to cook up this espresso milk stout in July 2009.

Be wary of the calm before the storm. This creamy, deeply delicious milk stout will seduce you into submission while the explosion of hand roasted gourmet espresso will blow you into next week. We Shall Drink in the breweries. We Shall Drink in the pubs. We Shall Drink in the comfort of our homes. We Shall Never Surrender.

Brewed with a blend of espresso roasted coffee beans made just for this project by Jittery Joe's Coffee, Athens, GA"

That's quite the build up. Let's see if it stands up. Beer Advocate reports this beer has a 7% ABV. Oops, perhaps I shouldn't have let this one age for six months. I got this beer in a trade from fellow beer blogger Rusty Diamond last fall and I wonder what it would have been like then.

Well, let's get to it.

Aroma: Lots of bitter coffee. Some milk chocolate and cocoa aromas, like the smell of powdered hot chocolate. There are no esters or hops and surprisingly I don't get the sweet lactose I was hoping for. All good smells, no flaws evident.

Appearance: Very dark, opaque. Dark garnet when held up to a light. Pretty clear actually. Clear and opaque... huh? Frothy brown head. Very tight bubbles, rocky head commences. Fades slowly.

Flavor: Again, mostly espresso/coffee, harsh not smooth. Bitterness from both hops and dark malts. Dark chocolate and finally some lactose sweetness. Some nice hop flavors, more lactose as it warms.

Mouthfeel: Medium-full body, some roasty astringency but not offensive. As expected, no heat. Somewhat creamy and loads of pleasant carbonation.

Overall I enjoyed this beer, I would certainly drink another one, and another. But since I like milk stouts and coffee beers so much I was expecting a lot. More lactose sweetness would have been welcome in both the aroma and flavor. Also, I would have enjoyed a smoother coffee flavor instead of the bitterness here. Coffee beers are usually one or the other and I used to think that the cold press coffee beers were the smoother of the two. But I've had some cold pressed coffee beers that were bitter as well. Go figure. Another please!

Questions I'd like to throw out to the beer drinking community are these: 1) Does coffee bitterness increase over time? 2) Does lactose sweetness diminish over time? I would love to know your experiences and determine whether or not time had anything to do with the imbalance of this coffee milk stout.

Slainte!

DA

PS Surly 4 review will be forthcoming. Release party is February 23rd at The Blue Nile. Stay tuned.

Happy New Year!

Okay, so this post is 43 days late. With all that's been going on, I haven't been able to keep my blog as up to date as I'd like. In my last post I explained why I'd been so absent. Despite neglecting the blog, I have not been neglecting the beer.

So what have I been up to?

In my last post of 2009, before my Houdini act, I wrote about a Beer Blogger's Brewoff in which I was participating. Since the original brewday disaster, things have been going along fairly well. On January 2nd I racked the molasses stout into secondary where it remained until the 10th at which time I bottled the beer. After two weeks I popped one open and it was as flat as the Earth before Columbus turned left to go right. I figured it was just too cool where I was storing it so I moved it upstairs in our townhouse. One week later, still flat. What to do? I moved it into one of the internal bathrooms. No, we don't have an outhouse. Internal as in one with a heat vent but no windows. I shut the door and ignored for a week. This did the trick. I popped one open last weekend with The Captain and it was nice and frothy. Tasted good too, I can't wait to try everyone elses next weekend.

Molasses Stout "breathing" on bottling day

Not long after the new year began I discovered a new beer bar. Opened in September (I think they said) in the old The Times restaurant space is a new Asian inspired restaurant called Ginger Hop. Always eager to try something new I sauntered in and sat down at the end of the bar. I think I was the only person in the place so I had to ask if they were even open. They were indeed and I was told I had just caught them between the lunch and happy hour rush. As luck would have it I arrived about the same time as happy hour. Their HH runs from 3-6 and 10-close everyday but Saturday. During happy hour, pints will set you back a mere $3 (excluding some high gravity or special release beers - even those are reduced to $5). Besides the Mich Golden Light and Sapporo, their twelve taps were all craft beer offerings (four of them from Minnesota). I inquired about the obviously absent Surly and discovered they are on a waiting list. The beers that interested me that evening were the Founders Imperial Stout and the 21st Amendment Back in Black. Being a virgin of both, I wasted no time. The BIB was a black IPA and was pretty much just as you'd expect. It was dark, like a schwarzbier but very hoppy. I like the idea, but the flavor just didn't work for me. I always say my three favorite styles are Porter, Stout and IPA but apparently I don't like them all in the same glass. The Founders Imperial Stout was very pleasing. Thick and viscous and a nice balance of sweet and roasty bitterness. We tried the smoked duck potstickers and a couple different kinds of satay and were very pleased with the food (which is also priced nicely during happy hour). The beer was great, the service friendly and the atmosphere comfortable and welcoming. Check it out if you haven't already. I know I'll be back.

Ginger Hop

As you may have read in other local beer blogger posts there was recently a meeting of the minds for local beer writers. Both hobby and professional writers met at Stub and Herbs in mid January. We put down our pens and keyboards and raised a glass with one another. There was no agenda, just a group of like-minded individuals getting together to do what they do best; examine and, most importantly, enjoy beer. A couple of shout outs: Thanks to Jon from Stub and Herbs for the apps and beer specials and to Stu from Friday Night Beer for organizing the event. I can't wait for the next one.

In attendance that evening were Front Row: Nils (Nils Pils: A Poor Man's Guide to Spendy Beer), Kat (aka Hopwhore), Kris (MSP Beer - Beer Musings from Minneapolis - St. Paul), Stu (Friday Night Beer), Micheal (A Perfect Pint), Jon (Legal Beer), Eric (Bearded Brewing). Back Row: Scott (Scott McGerick's Weblog), Mag (MSP Beer - Beer Musings from Minneapolis - St. Paul), Ryan, (MNBeer.com), Shawn (The Beer Genome Project), Eric (Lucid Brewing), Aaron (The Captain's Chair), Derek - that's me (Beer This!), El Jefe (Friend of the Bearded Brewer), Spencer (A Brewer's Journey). Not Pictured: Andrew (Hopchart.com), Doug (Author - Land of Amber Waters). I am sure I have missed someone.

Slainte

DA

Happy FeBRUary!

Wow, February 3rd already and I still haven't posted a single time in Twenty Ten. There is a very good reason for that. In anticipation of my suspected unemployment we have been prepping our town home for rental. Where are we going to live if we rent out our home? In the in-laws basement! Now I know that living with the in-laws has a certain negative connotation to it, but I don't think it's going to be so bad. I was lucky enough to marry a gal with great parents. I get along with them well and I believe they will respect our privacy. They have a roomy lower level and we should be able to spread out pretty well.

Since ringing in the New Year I have spent countless hours packing up our nonessentials and getting them over to a storage locker. It's amazing how we are still able to function normally when three quarters or our stuff is inaccessible. When we finally purchase a new home, I think we may simplify things a bit. However, despite all the packing, all of my homebrew equipment remains on site.

So about this unemployment I mentioned earlier. I work in the retirement trust industry and my one and only (very large) client decided to take their business to another bank leaving me and another fellow high and dry. The deconversion was an eight month process and upon completion I was expecting a pink slip. Of course also during this time I was enrolled in the Craft Brewers program with the American Brewers Guild. Hoping to make a career change soon a pink slip would be almost welcoming. As it turns out I finally got the news on January 21st. We got a one month notice and my last day in the corporate world will be February 19th.

What's next? Well as a student at the Guild I was to do an internship upon completion of the course work. I lined up the internship with Summit Brewing Company right here in the Twin Cities. Summit has been very flexible with me and very patient as I waited for my current job situation to play out. I will begin my four month internship with them on February 22nd. It is an unpaid internship but as luck would have it, I am receiving four months of severance from my current employer. Talk about luck!

After the internship with Summit I will be looking for a job in the brewing industry. Perhaps there will be a position at Summit? That would be ideal, but I have to remain realistic. Summit is a great company to work for and has very little turnover. Open positions are hard to come by. My wife and I are faced with the very real possibility of having to move out of state to find work. This is why we are getting the town home rented now (or soon) so we don't have to worry about that if we suddenly have to move across the country. While we'd both love to stay close to our families, I think we'd both welcome an adventure as well.

I apologize for being blog-absent for so long. It has been a ton of work not only packing up our entire home but also bringing it up to good renting condition. Now that I have much of the pre-rental paperwork out of the way I will try to post more frequently. And being that we are in the only month of the year with the word Bru in it, I think that makes it all the more important.

BEER THIS!

DA

Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire

I was going to hold this post off until tomorrow, but I couldn't keep misleading everyone like this. Red Hots were NOT my secret ingredient. It wasn't a complete fabrication; it was a very clever idea from my mother-in-law. However, I thought it was a little too risky for a project like this. And, I don't know how appetizing it would be. It could be alright. I might just try dropping a few red hots into a beer sometime and see how it goes.

Sorry guys, just a little early April Fool's joke.

Okay, so what did I really do? My short list consisted of Vanilla, Lactose, Coffee, Molasses and Bourbon. I didn't know how much vanilla to use, how to use it or when to add it so I crossed that off. Lactose was already being used by another blogger and I didn't want to be the guy who made the second best milk stout. Coffee can be tricky, but it made it to the final two. And I didn't know if adding bourbon soaked oak chips would be considered adding two ingredients or not. So, I went with molasses. I have wanted to use molasses in a beer for a long time. I love the smell and flavor of molasses and I think it would compliment a stout nicely.

I found a recipe using molasses (a Marzen beer, actually) in Sam Calagione's book Extreme Brewing. I could not find any high-grade light molasses so I went with Grandma's Original Molasses. I used one pound as called for in the book and added it at the ten minute mark. The cooled wort smelled of fantastic molasses, now we'll just have to wait and see what is left after fermentation.

I carelessly forgot to take a gravity reading just before the addition so I don't know how much this added. The OG officially weighed in at 1.064. Apparently molasses is 90% fermentables and the aroma and flavor are supposed to remain. I sure hope so.

Cheers, and again, sorry! DA

Beer Blogger Brewoff - Brew Day

I have recently started using Twitter more often and shall we say more completely. I had registered a while back just to play around but never really used it on a day to day basis. I've only recently started doing this as well as adding a bunch of users to my "following" list. As a beer guy it's a great tool for staying connected with all the local beer happenings as well as the individuals involved. Some of the people that I follow are other beer bloggers from the twin cities area. It was in doing just this that I discovered a brew-off just in the nick of time. Fellow blogger Aaron from The Captain's Chair had retweeted a tweet from SimplyBeer in Jersey about a brew off. This tweet piqued my interest so I checked out the SimplyBeer website. Sure enough, there was a brew-off between bloggers where each of them would brew the same stout. The kicker is that each would be brewed with a minor change or one secret ingredient. When finished all of them would be shared with the rest of the brewers. I thought it was a great idea. There was a brewing, bottling and shipping schedule and it looked like I could meet all the dates. So, I sent an email to Peter over at SimplyBeer and asked if I could get in on the action. I was welcomed enthusiastically. The cap was set at nine brewers to try and keep the shipping costs from getting out of control.

The important dates for this brew-off are December 13th - brew day, January 10th - bottling, February 1st - shipping and finally February 12th - TASTING! Details of the day can be found here.

My brewday began somewhat surrealistically. I slept much more than usual on Friday night (I wasn't feeling so hot) so when I woke up at 5am on Sunday I just tossed and turned. I gave in at 5:45 and jumped out of bed. I was already heating my strike water by 6:10 without even a hint of fatigue. Here's where disaster strikes (pun most definitely intended). There are many websites out there with strike water calculators. These help you determine what temperature a given volume of water needs to be when mixed with grain at another tempurature. If done correctly you will hit your target mash temp. Well, the strike water temp seemed abnormally warm but my grain was left in the garage overnight so that temp (50 F) was lower than normal. There were a lot of other internal alarms going off at this time - enzyme denaturing, tannin extraction, etc. But I just dismissed those and decided to not argue with the computer. What happened is I completely overshot my target - 170 F!!! In my panic I added a lot of ice which dropped my mash to 135 F. More hot water followed by more ice and I finally gave up. My mash was too cold and too thin. Chalk it up to a learning experience and move on. I discovered later in the day that I had selected the pounds/quarts option when I was entering my water volume in gallons (I did the gallon to quart conversion in my head). Perhaps I was sleepwalking after all.

Now, I will be the first to recognize that we are spoiled here in the Cities because we have not one, not two, but three LHBS* in the metro area. For many other brewers out there this would have ended their day. The bad news for me is that on Sunday the earliest store opens at 11am. And all this happened before 8am! Fortunately I had two beers that needed to be racked into secondary. I also decided to make lemonade out of lemons and use the wort collected from the disaster brew. I collected all those yummy flavors and colors and added six pounds of wheat LME and pitched it on top of the Scotch Ale yeast cake I had just racked off of. I also used all six ounces of Glacier hops I had sitting around. Yikes, thats a lot of hops! It was nice to have all this random stuff at my disposal to try and salvage what I could. I came up with an OG of 1.078, higher than I expected. But how much of it is fermentable? We'll find out. To my surprise, I had vigorous fermentation after only three and a half hours! Keep your fingers crossed.

At 11:30 I finally made it to the LHBS, got my new grain and I was off. The rest of the day was pretty much uneventful. To my delight I mashed in at precisely 152 F. Vorlauf lasted about 20minutes and sparging around 45 minutes. The boil was more of the same, just following the recipe. I could only get leaf hops in the one ounce Willamette variety but used pellet hops for Tettnang. I wasn't sure if we were to use German or US Tettnang so I defaulted to the traditional German variety. With ten minutes left in the brew I added my secret ingredient... Irish Moss! Just kidding. I did a lot of thinking about what I would add. I wanted it to be very unique and I finally decided that since the tasting would be conducted around Valentines Day that I would add cinnamon red hots. I added 1/4 pound with ten minutes remaining in the boil. The wort was very sweet and roasty with just a little bit of cinnamon heat. I think it will be good.

I finally pitched my yeast at 6:20pm and my 12 hour brewday was complete. I am really excited about this project. It is great getting to know the guys and fun to experiment. I have to admit, I unintentionally deviated from the recipe because I did indeed add Irish moss. It was more out of habit than anything. One could argue that with an opaque stout like this it isn't even necessary and you'd be right. Hope I don't lose any points : )

Cheers!

DA

*Local Home Brew Store/Shop/Supply

A Brewer's Journey... Priceless

Round trip from Eden Prairie to Hudson, Wisconsin... 78 miles
Local craft beers from Minnesota and Wisconsin... $72.98
Packaging, shipping and lots of bubble wrap to send beers to Vermont... $60.04
Sharing local craft beer with fellow brewers from around the country... Priceless


Some of you know, some of you may not, that I have been studying with the American Brewer's Guild as part of their distance learning program. This program is just another step in my personal journey towards professional brewing. I have been following a fellow blogger's page A Brewer's Journey since its inception and it has really been a source of inspiration and motivation for me. It is in honor of his story and the many other dreamers out there that I am naming this post, a post about my own story, after his blog. Cheers, Spencer, and good luck in your new endeavor.


I suppose my story begins way back in the summer of 2000. My father has family in England, aunts and uncles and many cousins, so we have made a number of trips. The previous trips I was neither legal nor even interested in beer so on this visit the English beer culture was completely new for me. I graduated from college in 1998 and really didn't even know that beer could have different colors or flavors but my wise English uncles changed all that. My brother and I spent a lot of time throwing darts (did you know there are metal tip darts?) and drinking great English beer.


The next five years was a real growing period for me as I sought out beers most similar to the great brown ales, porters and bitters from across the pond. My palate was still very unrefined but I gravitated toward beers like Sam Adams Boston Lager (what the hell is a lager?), Summit EPA, Newcastle, Beamish, and one of my favorites from our trip, Caffrey's Irish Ale. As my palate began to refine I was able to identify different nuances in each beer. I found myself searching out even more styles and brands. I started to discover Hefeweizen, IPAs, Belgians, Imperial Stouts and more. It was then that I decided to take my love of beer to the next level.


In 2005 after many subtle and even some unintentional hints, my wife surprised me with a homebrew kit for my 30th birthday. After developing quite the passion and thirst for fine beers, I would now be making them myself. Or at least trying. They say if you can boil water you can make beer, and they are absolutely right. I was amazed at how easy it was to make beer. Was it good beer? That can be debated, and I often find, as most brewers do, that I am my own worst critic. But it was still beer. Well, that hobby exploded into an obsession. At times my wife would wonder..."What kind of monster have I created?". To her dismay, there were many trips to the local homebrew shop for kits, ingredients and worse... more equipment! Brewing at home can be as simple or as complicated as you want to make it and I seemed to think I needed all the best gadgets and gizmos. I don't, but I love them just the same.


I'm a person who gets bored quickly. I have had many hobbies but I always seem to lose interest and move on to something else. The brewing fire, however, seemed to burn with a perpetual flame. It even intensified with each beer brewed and I knew I was on to something. They say if you love what you do you'll never work a day in your life. That resonated well with me so I decided I needed to learn more. I checked online for brewing education courses and let me tell you, it's pretty thin. From what I could find my choices were University of California at Davis, Siebel Institute in Chicago, Heriot-Watt University in Scotland and the American Brewers Guild (ABG) in Vermont.


Not being one to take a lot of risks, I decided the distance learning program at the ABG was just for me. I wouldn't have to quite my day job and I wouldn't have to move. I reluctantly applied for the program early in 2008. I say reluctantly because I did not have the math and science prerequisites they asked for. To my surprise and delight I was accepted. The program must be a popular one because there is a waiting list. They do two programs per year, one begins in January and the other in June. This was April of 2008 and I was accepted into the June 2009 program! I was excited, but it was hard to get too excited because it was so far away. This turned out to be a blessing in disguise because it gave me time to do other things before hand.


Not only did I have time to refine my skills as a homebrewer, but it gave me an opportunity to take the introductory chemistry class the Guild recommended. I was going back to school! That summer I enrolled in a chemistry class at Normandale Community College and completed it during the fall semester. This would later prove immensely helpful during the water chemistry portion and the engineering lectures of the Guild's program. And it was kinda fun to be a student again.


In January of 2009 I was fortunate enough to get into the BJCP class offered by the Minnesota Homebrewers Association. This class (which also has a waiting list) is a 14 week program that educates you on all aspects of beer tasting, appreciation and evaluation. The class included many lectures, presentations, quizzes, mock exams and, yes, tasting a lot of beer! It wasn't all fun and games. The Beer Judge Certification Program is the foremost authority on beer tasting and evaluation and the exam for which this class was to prepare us was brutal. Three hours of essay and tasting was not nearly enough time for the amount of material on this test. I took the exam in April and, while it took quite some time to get the results, I did pass. I am now officially recognized as a beer judge. Woo hoo!


That finally brings us to June 2009 and the ABG program. After over a year of waiting, it was time to begin. The chemistry class and the BJCP class both prepared me quite well for the ABG program. The program is a 23 week course in which I "attend" lectures on DVD, read text books, study online and communicate with classmates through Internet message boards and chat rooms. Although the program is basically an online school, the format for which we learned worked out well. I really felt like I was learning right along with everyone and if I needed help or had a question it was just a click away. And here were are, just finishing up week 22.


What's next? Well, the last week of the course takes place in Vermont. Ah ha, the ripoff MasterCard commercial I began with is starting to make sense. I will be heading out this weekend (Nov 13) to meet up with the rest of my class for our 'hands on' residential week. This is something I have really been looking forward to. We get to put many of the things we have learned to use. The week will take place in Middlebury, Vermont at Otter Creek Brewery.

From what I hear Middlebury is a pretty little New England town with lots of beauty and old world charm. We will be spending time at the brewery in the brewhouse, cellar and lab during the days and the evenings will be spent doing sensory evaluation training back at the hotel. At the end of the week there will be a review session followed by the final exam. The exam is the only part of the week that is making me uneasy, but even that is mild. I've faired pretty well on the exams so far so I really shouldn't be worring at all. I am sure there will be ample time for extra-curricular activities so I've sent a bunch of great local beers to my hotel and I've asked other classmates to do the same. It sounds like there will be a nice variety from around the country.

Well, I hope I haven't put you to sleep but if I've driven you to drink then I guess I'll consider that a wash. Hopefull this journey will continue positively in 2010 and I'll be able to share more with you in the coming months. I'll be spending the next ten days enjoying the best beer NYC and Vermont have to offer. And I'll raise a glass to you, my readers, cheers!

BEER THIS... DA