Ruinator

I suppose every Minnesota blog is complaining about the 6 inches of snow we got today, after it was in the 40s and sunny yesterday.

Yup, it sucks.

Yesterday, I built a plastic cover for a hot box in my garden so that I can get those seeds in early. Helped Tony build his hop trellis (well watched really), and busted out the kids' bikes.

6 inches.

Thank god for Beer.

Our Maibock is phenominal. Better than the Point Einbock I have in my fridge, maybe even more enjoyable than Summit's version. I've also been working through the Dopplebocks. Schell's has a great one commemorating 150 years in existence , the first of eight Anniversary Series brews. And of course generally anything ending in -ator. Salvator, Consicrator, Primator, etcator......We of course brewed one. Got a name? Leave a comment. It will be ready in 5 - 7 months.

CRAZY

Yah. The 2008 legislative session is crazy. CRAZY. Hence the lack of posts. I'm here to tell you that it's crazy. The governor and the legislature are facing off, continually one-upping the other. The legislature got a couple good jabs in with the veto override and the boot to transpo commish Molnau. "Oh yeah?" responded the governor. "Here's a serving of some program cuts AND a tax cut!"

And while that is forefront on the media's radar, lots of other stuff is going on.

Like making beer.

Homebrew update

The first mai bock is quite tasty, but still could use a few more weeks. The chinook mai bock is in the keg, and the third bock is still bubblin' away. All from the same yeast.

We added some molasses to the schwarz bier, and I cracked my first one tonight. Whoa. Want a cookie? This one gets a few more months in the bottle. The porter--from the same yeast--was thick as hell when we transferred it, and in need of some serious age, 6 months at least. Maybe we'll find a bourbon barrel or something. We took the yeast from this one and made a dopplebock, which will sit until next fall as well.

The liberty lager was waaaaay fruity, like an apple, when we bottled it (with our new capper!). Good summer beer I hope.

Speaking of summer, time to start some ales and get the hop rhizomes in the ground.

Fermentin' Away

I think the photo says it all.

We've been re-using the yeast cakes from our beers, meaning that after we transfer one beer out of the primary fermentor to the secondary fermentor, we put a new beer--or wort really--right into the "dirty" fermentor, on top of yeast that's collected at the bottom of the fermentor. Some brewers will clean and rince the yeast and put it into a clean carboy, but so far we haven't had any problems. And we're not selling our beers to the masses. Yet.

It's still lager season. The Mai Bocks share a yeast, as do the the Schwarz and the porter. We should be able to get 6-8 beers out of each yeast packet we buy.

Thanks for the photo, Tony.

Winterfest 08

Winterfest, the annual winter celebration of Minnesota beer, took place last night at the Landmark Center in downtown St. Paul. Sponsored by the MN Craft Brewers Guild, Winterfest is known for showcasing many of the more unique--and often higher alcohol--beers of local breweries and brew pubs. Don, Peter, Ryan and Dawn were great drinking partners, always willing to share their grabs, meaning more samples and overall lesser quantity. The full program is here, and here's a list of my tries:

Schell's
-Eisbock
-Dry-hopped Maifest Kellerbier

Barley John's
-Munich Dark Lager
-Belgian Triple
-06 Dark Knight

Brau Brothers
-04 Dubbel

Fitger's
-Park P0int Pilsner
-Imperial Pilsner
-Gale Force Cranberry Ale
-Edmund Imperial Stout, Bourbon barrel aged
-Blue Label Grande Reserve, Pinot Noir barrel Aged
-Bellnickle Wheat Wine
-Hair O' the Monk
-Mr Spock Eisbok

Flat Earth
-Winter Warlock golden barley wine

Great Water's
-Trippel Braun

Mantorville
-Stagecoach Amber

McCann's
-Prairie Porter
-Tripple Trouble

Minneapolis Town Hall
-Eye of the Storm
-Granny Triple
-Barrel Aged Imperial Stout
-Chocolate Rasberry Bourbon Stout
-Simcoe Pale Ale

Rock Bottom
-Fallen Angel Abby Ale
-Smoked Porter
-Silver Mullet Oatmeal IPA

Summit
-Cask IPA
-Cask Great Northern Porter
-Cask Winter

Surly
-Darkness
-Two
-Tea bagged Furious

Yup, 33 beers in three hours. Mind you, most pours were about 3 ounces. Your palate gets pretty burnt early on, so I generally tried to drink stouts and darker beers for awhile before switching to Belgian styles. My favorite stout/porter/ dark beer was of course Surly Darkness, but the ones from Town Hall were pretty good, as was the one from Fitgers. And the one from Barley John's was outstanding as well. Oh wait, that's all of them.

The standout Belgian-style beers were the Town Hall Granny Triple (aged on granny smith apples) or the Fitger's Blue Label Grande Reserve triple, aged in Pinot Noir barrels. I've long had a disdain for lambic-esque sour beers, so maybe this marks a turning point in my palate, as they both had qualities that I seem to have disliked in the past.

Another great event by the Guild. Good food (although bad setup), a mellow jazz band and I love the Landmark Center. Pics coming soon.

$$$

You'll notice that the format for "Current Musical Endeavors" to your right has changed. If you're thinking of buying any of these albums, please link to them via my site and I'll get a few pennies. I was linking to Amazon.com previously, so I thought I might as well use their program and make a few bucks.....

Ah, capitalism.

Ah, the Internet.

5 year olds for Obama

Dylan and I made the trek to the Target Center today, along with 20,000 other Minnesotans, to listen to Barack Obama tell Minnesotans why he should be president.

While Dylan enjoyed the train ride to the event, Golden Smog "opening" for Obama, the dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe after, I'm not convinced he was sold by the turnout, the speech or the enthusiastic crowd.

I was.

I was.

Caucus for Obama on Tuesday.

This Shit is Serious

Stouts have been on my mind a lot these past few weeks. Not just any stouts, but Russian Imperial Stouts. Imperial meaning big. Way big. Chocolate, toffee, roasted coffee, 10 percent big. They seem to have come to popularity in mid- to late-19th century, as the Empress of Russia was a huge fan of the style, importing stouts and porters for her and her crew. They can take extensive cellaring--25 years in some cases, but more often 3 or 4, or, if you're like me, a couple weeks.

I was working my way through some of the more readily available ones--Victory Storm King, Bell's Expedition Stout, North Coast Rasputin--to do a review, when I got an email inviting me to a private tasting of stouts at Thomas Liquors.

Now, I expected a few people, maybe 4 or 5 bottles. No, 8 people, 18 beers. I'm not sure if I'm happy or sad that I left my bottle of 06 Dark Lord from Three Floyds at home for another time. This is what the end of the night looked like:
If you can't read the labels, those are imperial stouts from (L-R):
Stone
Rogue
Southern Tier
Sprecher
Great Divide 07
Great Divide Oak Aged
Great Divide 04
North Coast
Bells Expedition
Bells Batch 7000
Nils Oscar
Milkeller
Surly
Fish Eye
Dog Fish Head
Ølfabrikken
Missing from the the photo:
Oskar Blues Grill & Brewery
Leinenkugels

Lots of crazy shit there. By the 5th or 6th one, the ability of my palate to pass accurate messages to my brain was seriously diminished, but I think my favorites were the Bell's 7000, Stone, Great Divide 04 and Surly. All dark, syrupy but smooth, complex. Least favorite was the Sprecher.

[Ok I gotta get this out. Sprecher has a problem with their water, maybe their yeast, or something. Most of their beers have an after-taste heavy in iron. Not pleasant. At all. It's unfortunate, because they produce several great styles which have a lot of potential, if it weren't for the rural water taste. You know what I'm talking about.]

But I digress. If you want to take in one or two, I would suggest heading to someplace like The Cellars which sells single bottles. Or throw down the $12 - $14 for a sixer of Bell's or Victory, and store several away for a few years. If ya don't like 'em, give 'em to me in a year or two.

Surly Mild: Why?

If it's one Surly Brewing is known for, it's for pushing the envelope, trying new things with traditional recipes and challenging it's drinkers. So I was a little surprised when I read that Surly was introducing a new beer, Surly Mild.

I brewed a mild ale a while ago. It wasn't horrible, but it lacked any real depth. It tasted like it was supposed to taste, I suppose, but in the end I guess I'm just not a fan. That's how I felt about Surly Mild.

Maybe that's the way Surly anticipated it would be. They're known for extreme beers, and so they wanted to challenge the concept of what Surly is. And I would say they succeeded. Maybe a whole new crowd of beer drinkers--the folks who think that Bass is a heavy beer--will give the Mild a try and then move on to Furious. Maybe, just maybe, they've duped us all and will get the hopheads and fans of high ABV brews to recognize there's success in subtlety.

Which is fantastic.

But for me, I'd rather drink my Darkness imperial stout or some crazy bourbon barrel aged cranberry ale.

Cheers

On pins and needles

It's been awhile since I posted something non-beer or non-political, so I figured my first acupuncture experience warranted a post. I learned today that the excruciating pain I've had in my neck, radiating down my arm, and keeping me up at night is a pinched nerve. After picking up my muscle relaxant and Tylenol 3, I took a friends recommendation and made an appointment for acupuncture.

It was incredible. Within seconds of the 15 or so needles being gently inserted in my legs, hands and scalp, I could turn my head left and right, up and down, with almost no pain. As I rested in the provided-recliner arm chair, with relaxation music playing in the background, I was already looking forward to my next session.

Obama for President?

I'm getting pretty close to supporting Barack Obama for president. See, I've been luke warm on the whole situation for a while now. I supported John Edwards 4 year ago, but it seems clear he's not really going anywhere. I think Hillary Clinton would make a damn good president, but her whole "I-voted-for-the-war-before-I- realized-that-wasn't-popular" thing feels like de ja vu. And Obama just seems young.

But that seems like it's to his advantage now.

I took a look at Facebook, a rapidly expanding social networking site highly popular with college kids, and how many supporters the candidates have:

Edwards: 33,463

Clinton: 61,892

Obama: 208,551

Criminy! Granted it's clearly not a scientific method, but it seems like Obama is damn popular and will be the eventual nominee. I mean, a Black candidate winning in mostly white Iowa? And my dad like him.

Where do I sign up?

Homebrew Update

Lagers and more lagers. We have two lagers in bottles now--a Pilsner Urquell clone and an Austrailian one using Ringworm--er wood--hops. We also brewed our 20th batch--that's 100 gallons--of beer since we started brewing together this summer. Batch 20 is a maibock, and will be ready around--you guessed it--April.

Brew52.com

Wanna drink a Minnesota beer once a week and share your review about it? I do--hell, I'm drinking them and occassionaly posting my thoughts about it here anyway. So join up over at Brew52.com. Don't worry about not being a beer geek like me; you'll notice the reviews come from Miller Lite fans and less experimental drinkers, as well as self-professed brew snobs. Even if you're not up for it, it's a great resource.

Holiday Re-cap

The holidays always brings out the top brews. My cellar has been expanding with barley wines and imperial stouts and specialty Belgian beers, bottles waiting to be opened. I had hoped this would be the year to delve into the depths of my basement corner, but it was not to be. At least, not as deep as I had hoped. A lack of turnout on New Year's Eve meant that the barrel-aged barley wine from Sprecher and the 2006 Three Floyds Dark Lord imperial stout would have to wait until another time. But it's just as well; these are beers meant to be drunk in a couple years.

Amidst the two Town Hall growlers I had to finish a day after New Year's and the multitude of 22 ounce speciality releases from Three Floyds and Full Sail, a couple of beers stood out amongst the group.

On Christmas Eve, my brother-in-law posed to me the question of which beer would I drink if I could drink one beer for the night. Naturally, I wasn't going to not have any beer at my parent's Christmas Eve party, but still, the question--or rather the answer--was an easy one: Surly Darkness. So, upon arriving back at my house after said party, I poured two goblets from one of the bottles of Darkness I had stood in line for the previous weekend.

It was amazing. So much better than on tap. Deserved of all the hype an hysteria. Better than that. Chocolate and molasses and plenty of hops filled out glasses, and subsequently overwhelmed our palates. I can't wait to try the second bottle in a year.

The second stand-out beer was poured at midnight on December 31st, 2007.

Flo and I aren't big fans of champagne. Maybe mixed with orange juice it's tolerable. So New Year's Eve was an opportunity to try something new. For my birthday she had gotten me a bottle of 2002 DeuS from Bosteels Brewery. Deus means God, and rightfully so. This beer runs upwards of $30 for a 750 ml bottle, and is bottle-conditioned similarly to bottles of champagne, rotated every so often to force the yeast "bung" from the bottle. It's strikingly a Belgian beer, full of Belgian-yeasty goodness, but bubbles and tingles like the best champagnes. Apple and citrus fill your nostrils, and it tickles your tongue as it warms your palate. What a way to welcome the New Year.

Not only were these two beers the best of the 2007 holiday season, but possibly the best two that have ever graced my tongue.

Happy Firkin Holidays

The Groveland Tap was the place to be tonight for beer geeks. As part of their "12 Nights of Christmas," which features a different drink special every night leading up the birthday of Christ, tonight they offered five firkins of different beers from Schell's (Pils), Summit (Winter dry hopped with Fuggles), Surly (Bender bourbon barrel aged), Bell's (Cream Stout) and Big Sky (Powder Hound). (A firkin is a keg for serving cask-conditioned beer. Cask beer is beer which is carbonated in and served directly--"pulled" from--the container.)

Reps from most of the breweries and other notables made an appearance, along with other beer fan-boys and girls . I joined the MnBeer.com folks, and between us, we were able to sample most of the offerings. The Summit Winter was hands-down my favorite, followed by the Pils. The Bender, despite a nice bourbon undertone, seemed a little premature, as it was still a bit uncarbonated. The Bell's was good, but nothing to write home about. We unfortunately didn't get around to the Big Sky.

Many beer-related events are on the calendar this time of year, giving my palate a nice warm-up for the coming week with Christmas and New Year's Eve.

Get yer hot beer here!

I'm not one to go out my way for a limited release beer or anything (hahahahahaha), but I was especially intrigued by Town Hall Brewery's Festivus 2007, a Belgian Dark Ale aged on Belgian Dark Chocolate. It was rich and creamy and, yes, chocolately. I picked up a growler of it for an upcoming holiday gathering.

I also had a cup of hot mulled ale, Town Hall's annual Christmas present to their loyal customers. Yes, hot beer, but not any hot beer. It was a scotch ale with spices and a shot of rum. It was more incredible than I thought it would be, much better than mulled wine. It went especially well standing around a camp fire adjacent to Washington Avenue and Cedar Avenue during rush hour.

It's getting very dark

If you've been keeping up with MnBeer.com lately, then you know that Surly Brewing put up for sale a limited number of 750 ml bottles of their imperial stout Darkness this past weekend. Simple enough, right? Wrong. The first people to show up at the brewery on Saturday morning were some crazies from Iowa, setting up camp around a fire pit at around 2am.

Ok, truth-in-advertising here: I was crazy enough to arrive at 8am and stand around in the cold for an hour before Omar and crew opened the doors. But 2am?

I'm not that surprised, really. Darkness has swept the beer community, which will go to extreme lengths for hard-to-find beers. Surly had only 480 bottles to sell, allowing two per person. With no one really knowing what would happen--all we knew is that sales were to start at 2pm --our originally-planned arrival time was 10am, but it kept getting earlier and earlier as the hype kept increasing. I was lucky I suppose to get my two bottles, but tickets didn't sell out until 12:30pm on Saturday. Still, it was a good time and Surly took care of it's loyal fans with free samples all day, live music, and an inviting atmosphere.

My friend, neighbor and fellow homebrewer Don shot some video of the day. Check out his results below.

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.

Beer + Turkey = Good?

I was charged with (or took charge of) preparing our family's turkey this year, my first attempt at the task. You may find this shocking, but in searching for a recipe, I turned to one of my most reliable sources for everything beer, BeerAdvocate.com. Their turkey recipe was simple and still intriguing. While it called for injecting a Märzen or Octoberfest into the turkey, none could be found and so I used some of my homebrewed alt. I'd like to think it made a huge difference, but even though the bird was quite delicious, I'm not convinced it did. The alt was good with the bird, but maybe not so much in the bird.

My wife has a more complete account of the meal on her blog.

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.

Grrrr, Darkness!

With the onset of late fall-early winter comes the many stouts and winter ales of the season. Perhaps the best is Surly Darkness. I had my first one of the season at the Autumn Beer Review, but needless to say it was well into the afternoon, so I must say I don't really remember anything about it except that it was good. So last Friday my wife agreed to dinner at Busters on 28th in South Mpls, which allowed me to have one in style. While I understand that the proper way to enjoy Darkness is in a Surly goblet, I also understand that most places are selling a 12 ounce pour for about $7. Being the cheap-ass that I am, the $5/pint during happy hour at Busters made it an all that much more enjoyable of a stout.

Speaking of amazing stouts, I shared an Avery Mephistopheles with Tony while camping a few weeks ago. Darkness is amazing, but Mephistopheles is beyond amazing. Ok, maybe it was only really really really really good, but at 15% for an $8-12 ounce bottle, it seemed that much better. Especially on a chilly October night around a camp fire next to the Kettle River.

Speaking of the Kettle River, I'm looking forward to the 3rd annual Sandstone Icefest the weekend of December 7th. Ok, I'm skipping the majority of the events and am only attending the final night, for the Frozen Kettle River Homebrew Challenge and Chili Cook-off. I'm not a huge ice climber, or for that matter even a small ice climber, but I do like winter camping. And besides, Surly is a sponsor.

Town Hall Anniversary

It's a solid indicator that the Twin Cities craft brew scene is alive and well when a brew pub survive--and thrive--for 10 years. Me and a couple buddies helped Town Hall Brewery celebrate their 10-year anniversary last weekend. Each day of the week they released a different beer, and on the Friday we attended it was Eye of the Storm, a 10 year aged beer made with 10 different kinds of honey, clocking in at 10% abv. It was a bit sweet for my taste, but Town Hall always put in an amazing effort and hits on the mark the style they were striving for. I preferred their Anniversary Ale, a very drinkable IPA, but it still didn't compare to Masala Mama, their hallmark IPA which I finished the night with.