Yummy gruit

With rising hop prices, brewers have been looking to find other non-traditional bittering and aroma agents, such as heather, lavender, rosemary and pine sprigs, or gruit. These and other similar herbs have been used in lieu of hops in Scandinavian countries and Scotland for centuries, and their beers have seen a resurgent in recent years, irregardless (that's a word, right?) of hop prices.

So I picked up a bottle of Alba Scots Pine Ale, from Heather Ale Ltd. out of Scotland. From their website:

Introduced by the Vikings, spruce and pine ales were very popular in the Scottish Highlands until the end of the 19th century. Many early explorers, including Captain Cook, used spruce ale during long sea voyages since it prevented scurvy and ill health. Shetland spruce ale was said to "stimulate animal instincts" and give you twins. Alba is a triple style ale brewed to a traditional Highland recipe from Scots pine and spruce shoots pickled during early spring. Pure malted barley is boiled with the young sprigs of pine for several hours then the fresh shoots of the spruce are added for a short infusion before fermentation.

It was pretty darn good--not piney at all, but sweet and malty, almost Scottish ale. I'm excited to try other beers with herb mixtures. Gruit, here I come!

Lagers are....

While December is the perfect time to pour a dark, big beer--porters, stouts, barley wines, heavy browns--it's hardly the time to be brewing them, at least when the basement hovers around 50 degrees. I typically stray away from most lagers, which uses yeast that needs to ferment at lower temperatures. Dopplebocks can cause me to turn my head and tip my glass, but I would rather have an ale than most maibocks, Octoberfests and of course American lagers.

I had to swallow hard to face the fact that Tony's basement is under a constant chill and perfect for lagers. So we brewed our first ones last week: a Pilsner Urquell clone, which uses nothing but Saaz hops; and a lager using dry yeast, and Pride of Ringwood and centennial hops. It should be duly noted that centennial are typically used in West Coast IPAs, so we'll see what happens. Similarly, we just bottled an ale using mainly Saaz. Ya gotta experiment to learn, even if it results in a beer that's better as a marinade.

About 6 months ago, on a hot and sweaty July day, we brewed a double IPA and a barleywine. The double IPA is sadly about gone, but we're just now cracking into the barleywine. It's full of caramel and pipe tobacco, balanced with a slight bite of green apple.

Hahahaha, at about 10%, please ignore that last sentence. It's just fuckin' good.

Final note: I've been spending a lot of time blogging over at MnBeer.com, so please check 'em out if you haven't already.

Barley John's visited

I and some of the mnbeer.com crew met for drinks last week at Barley John's in New Brighton to discuss upcoming changes to the site, get to know one another better and, well, drink beer. I've been to John's a couple times in the past, so I knew they had good beer, but I never remembered how good. Their double IPA is something to be cherished, especially with the rising prices and shortage of hops and barley looming over the industry. Get it while you can.

Colin Mullen, John's brewer, joined us for some of the evening, and further explained the situation. I was impressed with his positive attitude about it, as he explained that it would challenge brewers to try to new things and out of it would come some creative beer styles. He also felt that the shortage is bringing the Minnesota craft brew scene closer together as they begin to explore joint efforts to help each other. His outlook is emblematic of Barley John's--and certainly his--overall attitude about brewing.

I finished the night with a Dark Knight. If you aren't familiar with it, then head over to John's now. They call it a "bourbon barrel aged double fermented porter," but, whatever. At more than 13%, it's magical and completely heavenly.

As we were paying the tab, Colin offered to take us downstairs to the, um, brewhouse. It was a pretty cramped couple of rooms, with fermenters, heating and cooling systems, bags of hops, empty kegs and bourbon barrels filled with aging Dark Knight taking up every last inch of space. But I hope they don't change a thing, because it works; Colin makes some great creations down there.

For the secondary time

Ben and I transferred our beers to their secondary fermenters tonight. My ESB (right) was fantastic. I withheld dry hopping it with East Kent Goldings, as it already 5 ounces of hops in it, and it didn't really need more. Ben's Amber (a la Fat Tire) was a bit watery (a la Fat Tire), but he dry hopped it with about a half ounce of Hallertau (left). His will be a great session beer, no doubt. That's a bottle of Summit ESB on the counter, newly re-released and now available year round in 12- and 6-packs. Yey!

Homebrew week

Well it's been a homebrew week, brewing, bottling and of course imbibing, because I recently heard that next to cleanliness, the most important part of making the stuff is drinking the stuff. It's good that someone finally put this into writing, as here I've been neglecting to sample various wares whilst brewing.

Ben and I got together Sunday to discuss love (well he did anyway) and figured, why not brew a couple batches? He went with a Belgian-style amber similar to Fat Tire, and I decided to embark on my first off-kit batch, choosing an ESB similar to Fuller's. I increased the amount of hops slightly, sure to cover up any imperfections. Fuggle hops are a nice mellow hop, which I grew for a brief time. They lacked any color besides green, which would be fine, except it was a lot of green as they took over the side of my garage. So I'll pay the dollar or so per ounce, and have some lovely purple vine to look at instead. It goes better with orange honeysuckle anyway.

So 3 ounces of fuggles and about the same amount of east kent golding hops should make for a solid ESB. I'm really interested in being able to distinguish between the multitude of hop varieties, and making your own recipes seems like a good way to accomplish this goal.

Back to brew day. As the wort was boiling, we drank some of the brown that Ben and some of his friends had bottled that afternoon. Very smooth, with a nice hop overtone. It will be even better when its cold and carbonated. All went well, and we'll be transferring the batches to their respective secondary fermenters this weekend. Which means I'll also be emptying the Saison into bottles this week to free-up a carboy.

Wrapping up brew week, I shared a bottle of stout with a friend, courtesy of a lobbying colleague. It was pretty amazing, and a great session beer. I'm looking forward to trying his pilsner this summer.

Final thought: This week has made me think that there are enough homebrewers working in government to start a Homebrew Caucus. So I'm starting it. Shoot me an email if your interested in joining.

Speechless

Oh boy was I in heaven tonight. Mad props to Valerie for picking up a six pack of--are you ready?--New Belgium Tripple and Stone Levitation on her trip to Colorado. New Belgium Tripple and Stone Levitation.You probably know New Belgium as the brewers of Fat Tire, one of the most overrated beers ever. If you want to see what this Colorado brewery is all about, check out anything else by them. Perfect Belgium ales, and the Tripple is no exception. Come east!

You probably don't know Stone. From California and yet to hit Minneosta or Wisconsin, they're all about extreme. Even Levitation at a mere 4.4% still wallops a mighty hop punch, like a Surly Furious, except you could actually have 3 or 4 in a sitting. Great session beer.

I'll savor these brews for awhile. Or try anyway.

November is....

What can I say? I've been busy figuring out how the organization I work for fits into the new make of the Minnesota legislature. It should come as no surprise that I'm pleased as beer-spiked-punch (ok, that's gross). The leadership posts of both the House and Senate are filled with advocates of early care and education (ECE): Senate Majority Leader Larry Pogemiller, former chair of the K-12 Committee, has always touted the benefits of ECE; Assistant Majority Leader Tarryl Clark lobbied for Head Start for years; Speaker of the House Margaret Anderson Kelliher has long promised promoting ECE when she's speaker; and House Majority Leader Tony Sertich was in past years a huge advocate of affordable child care.

In other words, my job became a lot easier with the results of last Tuesday, and even more so after the bodies picked their leaders.

Election season also means that it's winter beer season. Mmmmm, winter beers. Winter beers, in case you don't know, are usually darker ales, somewhere along the lines of a porter. But some breweries take the opportunity to try something new. Take Bells for example. They introduced their Winter White a couple years back, and I have to say I'm not a fan. I like White Ales, and no one does 'em finer than Bells, but not when it's 20 degrees out. Schells is another that likes to experiment with their Snow Storm. They did a cherry porter a couple years ago, a brown ale recently, and this year a Sweet Stout--which by the way is perfect, as most of their beer are.

Summit Winter is a real standard bearer for winters, as far as I'm concerned, but I have to say I was pretty disappointed this year. Instead of their usual dark spicy goodness, they brewed a brown ale. Granted, it was good for a brown, but I was really let down. Two other great solid winter ales this year are the Snow Cap by Pyramid and Wassail by Full Sail--although the latter was much better, in my opinion.

But by far The Best Winter Beer Every Year is the Anchor Christmas Ale. While the recipe is different every year, you can always taste nutmeg, juniper and, hm, coffee or chocolate or hazelnut or something. Incredible.

Back to Bells for a minute. If you don't want to try their White, please do not miss their Hop Slam, one of their limited release brews. As the name suggests, its full of hops. Like 10 percent alcohol slam worth of hops. Yeah, it's about $13 a six pack, but if you like bitterly hop-o-riffic brews, then don't pass this up.

So, in closing, it's an all around good November. And I'll try to get in at least one other post by Christmas...

The Bitter End is coming

You might think that making a good beer depends on the correct amount of hops (boiled for the desired amount of time) or the particular strain of yeast used, but as any experienced brewer will tell you, it really comes down to the soap.

I brewed my first batch of beer in about a year a couple weeks ago (three weeks and three days ago to be exact--it was during a heat wave, when I love to do nothing more than stand over a boiling pot of wort), and I'd forgotten, as I always do, what a pain in the arse it is to clean and sanitize all the equipment. Luckily I've never experienced that legendary armpit taste or achieved the brewed-with-skunk effect I have heard stories about. I've had my close calls. Once, I had to fetch a spoon which had dropped into a fermenter full of hefeweizen (I called the brew "Eric's Arm"). It was said someone found a hair in their beer, but I believe it had more to do with the fact that the fermenter exploded and sat in the open air for several days. Either way, hair or no hair (or maybe because of the hair), the beer turned out pretty incredible.

But you want to take no chances with cleanliness--in general, a good rule to live by. And now I am faced with a problem of my own creation: a keg which has sat uncleaned for two years. I thought about just skipping the keg and filling bottles, but it's just so much cooler to serve homebrew out of a keg. Besides I am taking the beer to a party in Duluth, and accounting for one large steel keg is a lot easier than saving (and reminding the consumers of the beer to save) their bottles.

Nope, this weekend I will have the pleasure of disassembling and scrubbing my keg system. I never knew a keg had so many parts! Valves, hoses, o-rings, couplers, regulators and of course faucets. Of course this is easier than washing and sanitizing up to 48 bottles. If you're ever in the same predicament as me, Yellowdog has a great website with step-by-step instructions.

The beer, which I am affectionately calling The Bitter End, is a dry-hopped IPA, using four different kinds of hops--two ounces of the ever-popular Cascade no-less. I sampled a bit during its transfer to the secondary fermenter, and it was delicious. Sure, it was warm and flat, but it was mine. I can't wait to share it.

Another Score for Summit

While this July 4th marks 230 years of our country's independence from overlords subjecting their views and will on the citizenry--not much has changed--this July also gives cause to celebrate 20 years since the first keg of Summit beer was sold.

Like many great occasions, this one snuck up on me. I remember looking forward to it some months ago, but was pleasantly surprised when someone offered me one of their commemorative brews at a party a few days ago.

ESB, or Extra Special (or Strong) Bitter for the uninitiated, is an English style beer, typically clocking in at about 6% ABV. The trick to an ESB is ensuring a nice balance between hops and malts--think a cross between an American ale and a bock. If I was, er, "trapped" on a tropical island somewhere and had to pick one style of beer to have it would be ESB. Needless to say, I was really excited to learn the 20th anniversary beer from Summit was going to be an ESB.

My plan was to open a bottle and write a review of the beer, from the initial opening, describing the smell and color of the pour, the taste and "mouthfeel," the way it slid down my throat and the aftertaste. But alas the beer I opened (and the one after that) are already gone. I'd open a third, but I do have to work tomorrow, and me thinks the Summit ESB is a tad over 6% ABV.

But damn, are they drinkable. I knew it would be so after the first pour, smelling the malts mix with plenty of hops (fuggle?). I was relieved that the mineral aftertaste quickly dissipated and I found myself taking another sip. That pursued balance found in great ESBs makes it a clever girl--smooth and confident, inviting and longing, especially knowing, at least at this point, that she won't be around for very long. And so she hits you hard, knocks you on your ass after few rounds, and knows you won't forget her when she's gone.

Mark your calendars for September 30, 2006, when Summit celebrates their 20th with the Big Brew at Harriet Island in St. Paul.