engineering at its best

Here’s what it alls gets down to.

Hardware:

5 gallon Cornelius keg (soda keg)

5 lb. CO2 tank

dual gauge regulator

Software:

beer (obviously)

So here’s how I understand the process to work. (I who haven’t actually kegged anything yet but have read about it.)

1. I’ll clean and sanitize the keg. It used to hold soda, and it still smell like it when I open it up. This will not do.

2. I’ll prime the beer just as I would before bottling it.

3. I’ll siphon the primed beer into the keg and pressurize it with 5 lbs of CO2 to get rid of any oxygen in the tank.

this looks more complicated than it is--I hope

4. I’ll wait until the beer’s carbonated, and then start drinking my own draft beer.

Since I’ve also got a refrigerator waiting specifically for this keg, there’s little stopping me from being the coolest kid on the block now. I’ll have my own kegged beer.

This is how it was.

This festival had several good beers to try. Rogue was there, Merchant Du Vin was there (the Samuel Smith beers), Abita, Lazy Magnolia, Sam Adams, Yazoo were all there as well. And I tried at least one beer from almost all the different booths/tables.

The thing was sold out. So there’re more people in MS who care about beer enough to go to a beer festival and stand in line for 2 oz. samples than you might think. And the convention center it was in was easily big enough to make the experience comfortable.

Friends were there. We went with a group of friends, most of whom we don’t get to see very often (two friends I met up with I haven’t seen since high school, which was quite a while back), because if you’re going to be drinking small amounts of beer for four hours, you should be well equipped with good company. And we were.

The good people at the Diamond Bear booth were very generous with their pours near the last half hour of the festival. Which is exactly the time you want more than the SOP pour of 2 oz. (As you’d imagine, we basically camped out right behind the line at this booth for the final hour of the festival.)

So these are good things. Must’ve been an ass-kicking, no-name-taking festival.

If you can’t say something nice, you better be fucking right. So I’m about to be right all over the place.

Top of the Hops seems to be a product of the Red Mountain Entertainment co. (which is a Birmingham based event production co. boasting such concert productions as U2, the Stones, Wilco, Sonic Youth, etc.) and the Jackson Convention Center. Which, this in itself is not a bad thing. We need beer festivals in MS, so I’m glad they made it happen. But. This festival gave me more the feeling of being in a Walmart than a place where people could drink and learn about beer.

Because the booths weren’t manned by actual brewery staff, and they were set up in rows with tables in front and uniform ‘Top of the Hops’ signs listing the beers offered against a plain backdrop. Guess what was more prominent on the sign. Only by reading the plain text on each sign was it clear which brewery and beers you were getting in line for. So, OK, maybe I’m being picky about that–it was still visible. But one of the great things about beer festivals is that you go to a booth put up by the brewery and, usually, manned by someone who either makes the beer or has at least tried it and can talk about it. This, mostly, was just not the case. (Mostly–I’m sure there were plenty of people who were able to talk about the beers they were pouring. I might have just have only asked the wrong people questions.) Most, or maybe all, of the people pouring beer were volunteers wearing Mellow Mushroom shirts. The only brewery with an actual tent was the Diamond Bear brewery.

Because the majority of the beers were being poured out of bottles. Again, this in itself is not necessarily a bad thing. But it didn’t take long to cultivate the impression that somebody just went and bought a shitload of beer and was pouring out little samples into my plastic beer mug (and I’ll get to the mug in a second). Like I said, part of what should be great about a beer festival is the face-to-face interaction you can have (albeit short interaction) with the people who make/care about/drink the beer they’re pouring you samples of. Not that the actual brewers wouldn’t bring beer in bottles, but when a booth runs out of beer within the first hour and explains that ‘we’re going to get some more,’ it seems more like I’m visiting an empty trough than a booth where the brewers simply underestimated the festival goers’ interest in their beer. Call me nuts.

Because the ticket price was more expensive than either of the other two beer festivals I’ve been to. Both of the other festivals had at least as many or more beers offered with more of an emphasis on microbrews than the Big Three beers. Both the other festivals had booths that seemed to have been manned by the actual breweries. One of the other two festivals didn’t make DDs actually pay to get into the festival. You had to pay $15 as a DD just to walk around the place at this festival. And the $35 ticket got you a souvenir sampling mug–which was plastic (and was actually still wrapped in plastic when you picked it up). Either a glass sampler or a full-size pint glass (picked up on the way out) would better justify the ticket price. Come on.

So to wrap up this already long post, I did have a good time. Even though there weren’t any beers I couldn’t get at the store, I enjoyed the beers I had. The problem with the festival was not the beers but the festival itself. End of bitching.

So and also, this is the first post in a month. But. I’ve got stuff coming up including new beers (homemade and nonhomemade) and new equipment.

There are many ways to drink beer: from a 12 pack of cans while sitting on your couch watching [insert favorite sport]; through a rented picnic tap while being suspended upside down above a keg by two, hopefully, strongish frat guys (aka a keg stand); and/or out of a 6 pack of expensive, though not necessarily good, beers at a party (stuffy or not) thrown by colleagues.

Or you might drink a beer at a bar. Where it’s been pulled through the appropriate apparati from a keg. Where a bartender prepares you a draft beer. Where you get a beer the way it’s meant to be gotten–drawn from a big barrel and poured into a glass (but not a chilled glass, please). Draft beer is necessarily poured by a bartender, and this bartender, same as a fish monger and/or butcher can affect your fish and/or cuts of meat, is someone who can seriously affect your beer-drinking experience . So let’s consider the bartender.

(Forewarning: This post will probably get long–relative to my other >700 word posts. So if you need to go get a beer, know that I had to do the same while writing it. Nobody’s counting.)

Also, with regard to this blog’s focus, we’ll only consider bartenders’ roles in bringing beer to the patron. But obviously bartenders have multiple other duties and drinks to deal with. Actually, we’ll mention some of these other factors later but only in as much as they relate to the beer.

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Every bartender should, at the very least, be able to bring you a beer in a clean glass. But good bartenders can do quite a bit more. Good bartenders can tell you about the choices of draft beers and help you pick the right one. They can also recognize patrons interested (or not) in conversation and talk to them (or not). Good bartenders can take care of other duties, such as making mixed drinks, but still make sure that you’ve got a beer on the way when your glass is close to empty. And they will always ask if you’d like another/different beer, just in case. Or in the case of regulars, they will have the usual beer on its way when a regular sits down at the bar.

One of the most helpful qualities in bartenders is their knowledge of the draft beers and willingness to tell you about them. And to be comfortable telling you which one they like and why. This type of bartender will have tried all the beers on tap–like a good restaurant server will have tried all of the menu and can explain different items. It’s extremely disappointing to ask a bartender about a certain beer, or which beer they’d recommend, and get the all-too-familiar sounding response: ‘Oh, I don’t drink beer.’ This seems comparable to asking a car mechanic which tire is best and being told that the mechanic doesn’t drive cars. And it’s always nice, even if some patrons don’t consider it, when bartenders can tell you about a certain beer, whether they like it or not, and why. You can trust that even if you don’t like your choice, you at least weren’t led to it dishonestly.

Good bartenders are also either naturally, or through practice, very good at social interaction. When someone is alone at the bar, bartenders should be able to either engage the person in conversation or fairly quickly realize that the person would rather be left alone. Just because someone or a group of people are sitting at the bar doesn’t mean they’re interested in talking to the bartender, and the body language and/or signals usually make patrons’ interest in talking pretty obvious.

The last essential quality of good bartenders is the ability to juggle all their other drink orders, server questions, food orders, ice bucket refills, and inventory while making sure that the patron with an almost empty glass has the next beer of choice soon on its way. This implies a couple of things: (1) that the bartender is aware of the patron’s beer glass and makes sure the patron doesn’t have to wait on the next beer (or check, if the patron’s leaving) and (2) that the bartender asks what beer the patron would like next. Not everyone always drinks the same beer for the duration of the visit–I usually don’t order the same beer, so it’s always nice when I’m asked what I’ll have next instead of having to stop the bartender before he/she gives me another of the same. And good bartenders recognize regulars and, given a certain type of regular, will have that regular’s usual beer on its way to the regular’s seat as he walks into the bar. You’ve doubtless seen this happen in the presence of a good bartender (or you’ve probably seen Norm walk into Cheers on TV)–the patron walks in and the bartender automatically grabs, say, a PBR, opens it, and puts it out in front of the patron as he/she is sitting down.

The most important underlying quality of good bartenders, which I haven’t explicitly mentioned, that you could call a theme of my argument, is the understanding that patrons come into a bar for a good drink (in our case a draft beer) and a comfortable place to enjoy it. Whether that means conversation or silence. Three of the same beers in a row or three different beers or two of the same and one different.

Very good bartenders, and I’m sure you’ve got one in mind, are able to develop a connection or agreement, even with a one-time-only patron, that produces or sets up a comfortable environment for a patron to enjoy his/her beer of choice. These types of bartenders enhance the patron’s experience at the bar and, more often than not, will determine whether the patron decides to come back to the bar. Any bar can usually get the same group of beers on tap, but good bartenders, really fucking good bartenders, don’t just fall off the beer truck.

Now, this argument obviously focuses on what I think makes a good bartender. I have never actually been a bartender, but I have spent my fair share of time in bars. Talking or not talking to bartenders. And my good friend, Ben, happens to be one of the best bartenders ever. So, I’d like to think I know a thing or two about the subject.

Sam Calagione, founder of Dogfish Head Brewery, and Mario Batali, who used to be on numerous Food Channel shows and is the owner of Otto (an awesome pizza place in NYC that you should definitely go to if you’re in the city) among other restaurants, are part of a group of people about to open a brewpub on 5th ave. in NYC. From what I understand, the brewpub will be on the roof of a building that will also house several Italian restaurants and an Italian market.

The idea of the brew pub is to combine craft beers made with both Italian and American ingredients with a menu designed by Batali. Calagione is one of four brewers working on the project, and two of the other three brewers are from Italian craft breweries. I didn’t know there was such a thing, which was stupid of me to assume there wasn’t.

I’m a big fan of Mario Batali and his restaurant, Otto, which is the only one I’ve been to, and I am also a documented fan of Mr. Calagione and his Dogfish Head beers. I just about fell off the damn chair when I first read about this.

You can read about it here:

http://www.dogfish.com/community/news/press-releases/dogfish-collaborates-with-3-brewers-batali-bastianich-on-nyc-brewpub.htm

and here:

http://www3.timeoutny.com/newyork/the-feed-blog/restaurants-bars/2010/02/mario-batali-dogfish-head-team-up-for-eataly-gastropub/

Of the two times I’ve been to NYC, I’ve never been to the Statue of Liberty, inside the Empire State Building, or inside any museums. But the next time I’m there, I’ll be goddamned if I don’t go to this brewpub. You might be too. The place will open later this summer at 200 5th ave. Now you have no excuse.

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can you age a beer in a barrel that aged gin? yes, please.

Before we left Atlanta last weekend (for you faithful readers of my humble serial), Steve sent us back with a big bottle of Rogue’s John John Ale. Which said ale is a pale ale brewed with juniper berries (sound familiar?) and aged in spruce (wood) gin (liqour) barrels.

I’ll preface the rest of this post by saying that this beer may be the most complicated, in terms of taste, that I’ve written about so far. Lucky me. And for a pale ale, it makes the synapses go firing on all sixteen cylinders like a trucker’s Mac on Jolt (the trucker’s on Jolt, not the engine). I’ll do my best to articulate this in a halfway coherent way.

First (please do excuse my freshman comp. transition), the beer’s a pale ale. So, surely, it has to taste like a pale ale. Which is to say hoppy, but not IPA hoppy, and mildly malty. Balanced. And this beer does a pretty goddamn good job. You can taste the hops and the malt pretty evenly. I do not know what variaties of hops or malts, I apologize.

First-last-place. This beer is made with juniper berries. The same berries used to flavor gin. Which, kick-ass, awesome. And also it tastes good in the beer. These Rogue guys have gotten onto something with the juniper berries in the pale ales. Will have to investigate. (Note to self supra.)

And but so also, this beer was aged in spruce gin barrels, and you can smell it on the beer. I could be wrong, but I think the spruce comes through in the taste as well. This beer tastes as much like juniper and spruce as it does like hops and barley. Like I said, it’s a beer puling a hefty amount of weight taste-wise.

But it’s so light in color!? Yes, it is.

Do not judge a beer by its color.

Thumbs up or thumbs down? This is a beer that I’ve only seen in big bottles, but I’d ask for a pint in any bar or a sixpack in any curbstore that has it.

The Software:

8.8 oz. Briess Caramel malt (90L)

6 lbs Northern Brewer Organic Light liquid extract

1 oz. Columbus hop pellets

1 oz. Citra hop pellets

1 oz. Galena hop pellets

Wyeast 1764 (Pac-man ale yeast (what Rogue uses for many of their beers))

First, just like almost every other beer I’ve written about making, I steeped the caramel 90L grains in 2.5 gallons of water at about 150 F. For 30 minutes. This was made a bit more tedious because my electronic thermometer kicked the bucket a while back, so I had to use a regular old meat thermometer, which is just not quite as accurate. But so it worked Ok, and the grains were steeped. I used the 90L grains only because I already had them, and it made for a darker color than I’d generally associate with a Pale Ale–being that the name indicates a certain lightness of color. But the color wasn’t so dark as to raise any flags, so who cares. It’s a slightly less-pale Pale Ale.

the analog beer thermometer. its blurryness is matched only by its inaccurateness--almost.

After the grains were finished, I took them out (saved them for bread possibly or compost definitely) and brought the liquid to a boil.

When the liquid came to a boil, I added the 6 lbs of extract, 0.5 oz. Citra hops, and 0.5 oz. Columbus hops. This boiled for 88 minutes before the next step.

Yes (I’ve heard you were a close reader), this was a 90 minute boil. A departure from the norm (at least my norm) and the basic directions you get with kits (this beer was not a kit).

With two minutes left in the 90, I added the other 0.5 oz. of Citra and Columbus hops. And 0.2 oz. of the Galena pellets.

i know it looks like hamster food. i assure you it is not.

After the next two minutes, I took out all three muslin bags of hops and started cooling down the wort. I had big plans to build myself a wort chiller before this beer, but I ended up just using an ice bath instead. It worked just fine. When the wort got down to about 75-80 F, I pitched the yeast and closed that bitch up.

It started fermenting pretty good by the next day, and it was completely finished by about the 4th or 5th day.

The OG was 1.045 (5/10/10)

And on 5/15/10, I dry-hopped the beer with the last 0.8 oz. of Galena hops.

This afternoon (5/20), I bottled the beer. It smells holy-shit-good.

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Before you read this entry, you should (if you haven’t already) read the first part.

Monday, my wife and I did a little experiment in which we tasted the Gulf Porter, Sierra Nevada’s Porter, and Lazy Magnolia’s Southern Pecan (which, on Sunday, I was afraid the Gulf Porter mimicked too much). I got her to taste all three beers blind and tell me what they tasted like, then what she thought they were. Then I did the same thing.

We cracked little eggs of science all over the place.

beer+science=hell to the yes

So here are the abridged results:

We both picked the Gulf Porter as the Sierra Nevada Porter–and vice versa. And, obviously, we both picked the Southern Pecan accurately. These results basically settle the initial perceived problem (that the Gulf Porter was just like the Southern Pecan).

And we basically agreed, blindly, that the Gulf Porter was favorable to the Sierra Nevada Porter. Which to both of us felt a little like picking Bud Light (which is far from either of our favorite beers) as our favorite beer in a blind taste test.

So, conclusions: Lazy Magnolia’s Gulf Porter is completely different from their Southern Pecan. The Gulf Porter also wins over the control Sierra Nevada Porter.

Thumbs up or thumbs down? Empirical (to us) evidence says the Gulf Porter gets a thumbs up. Also, it comes in a half gallon jug, so I’ll always be glad to pick it up.

After I made the Scottish 80 Shilling beer, I had a pound of Simpsons Crystal grains to do something with. Normally, I toss all the grains and hops into the compost bowl, but I’ve read that these grains can be used for other interesting means. So I figured: We buy whole grain bread, and I make beer, which can’t be all that different from making bread.

Light bulbs, virtually and figuratively, exploded.

Here’s how I made bread using some spent brewing grains. (I promise a picture at the end.)

Software:

3-5 cups bread flour (sifted)

1 cup spent brewing grains

1 cup beer (I used Sierra Nevada’s Porter (one of which I’m saving for the blog))1 tbsp butter (unsalted and organic if you can swing it, and I hope you can)

1 tbsp olive oil

salt & pepper

1 pack of active dry yeast ( 7.5 g)

First you’ll (I’ll do this post in the form of directions–it seems to make more sense that way) want to proof the yeast by dumping the whole package in about half a cup of warm water (105-115 F, or what feels mildly warmer than body temp when you hold your finger under the running water). Let the yeast sit for about 10 minutes and it should kind of foam up.

While you’re letting the yeast proof (foam up), pour the beer in a small bowl and stir it around to try and get rid of the carbonation. (I’m no baker, but I imagine the carbonation would add some CO2 and affect the rising of the bread in some way, so I try to get rid of it to even the proverbial playing field.) Also, now’s when you should add the butter (so it melts) the olive oil, and the salt and pepper.

When your yeast is ready (fully foamed) add it and the beer/butter/etc. to the flour and grain in a large mixing bowl and start stirring it together.

I usually start with about 3-3.5 cups of flour in a bowl and mix it with the wet ingredients before I move it to a cutting board waiting with a generous amount of bench flour to mix in. The dough should be very wet, but hanging together well, when you transfer it to a cutting board.

This is the point that is potentially the most intimidating–the dough might seem like it’s not coming together, but it will. It’s universally better for the dough to be too wet rather than too dry. You can always add more flour to a wet dough, but you’ll have to pull off some intensive quantum physical acrobatics to get water out of a too-dry dough. So, basically, don’t worry, keep kneading and adding flour and it’ll work out.

Here’s the fun part. Now you knead.

Knead the dough for about 10 minutes. You’ll have to add flour periodically–you’ll know when the dough sticks to your hands, just dust your hands with the flour and toss a little on the dough ball. After about 10 minutes, the dough should be relatively smooth. Roll it into a ball and set it in an oiled (w/ olive oil) bowl, and cover it for about an hour so it can rise. If there’s a particularly warm part of the kitchen, place the bowl there.

After an hour, punch the risen dough down. Then you’re ready to bake some damn bread. I usually divide the dough into two (arguably) rectangular loaves so they cook through easily.

Start the bread out at 450 F for the first 10 minutes, then turn the heat down to 350 F for the next 45-60 minutes. It’ll be done when you can stick a knife, or toothpick in the bread and it comes out clean.

I should’ve told you to preheat the oven earlier, but you’re probably not using this to cook by in real time. And if you are, don’t worry, that dough’ll be fine to sit while the oven preheats.

So, homemade bread demystified. It ain’t hard, and you’ll be glad when you’ve made it–it’s definitely a shitload cheaper than the fancy bread at the grocery store

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i like big beers. and this one's just about the right size.

I haven’t posted a ‘Drinking It All’ in a while, and I’ve got a fair amount of beer piling up in our refrigerator (so much that I’m considering plugging in the beer refrigerator downstairs to catch the overflow). But I recently acquired a jug of Lazy Magnolia’s Gulf Porter, which I opened yesterday, so I’ve got to write about it soon–as in now.

Lazy Magnolia is the one, lone, single, solitary brewery in Mississippi, and people who live in Mississippi, I think, are pretty proud of the beers that Lazy Magnolia makes. The flagship beer, Southern Pecan, is a good brown ale brewed with pecans. And it is a pretty good beer. The folks at Lazy Magnolia recently (like this winter) put out a porter in 0.5 gallon jugs as part of a brewer’s select (or something equivalent) line of beers.

Porters, in style, are close to stouts. The main difference being the use of roasted barley (in stouts, not in porters)–and this difference is apparently highly debated. So I’ll just say that porters and stouts are similar, and we’ll leave it at that. This porter is dark, like you’d expect, and fairly sweet in a heavy way. It’s light on carbonation, but then again I did open the jug yesterday. There’s just enough bitterness from the hops to balance out the sweetness of the beer.

To be honest, this beer tastes strangely like Lazy Magnolia’s Southern Pecan. I had my wife taste it to be sure I wasn’t nuts, and she agreed it tasted an awful lot like Southern Pecan. And it’s also a little lighter in color (although still dark) than porters I’ve had before.

I’m trying to convince myself that I didn’t get an odd collector’s worthy mix-up of Southern Pecan in the Gulf Porter jug. I got to taste the Gulf Porter back during the winter, but I can’t honestly say what I thought of it then other than that I liked it.

Here’s what I’ll do. Tomorrow, I’ll have a blind taste test of this porter, Southern Pecan, and possibly a control porter, and we’ll figure out what the hell’s going on.

Thumbs up or thumbs down? To be continued…

I got no pictures of the brewing process, but here’s what I do got: an Ommegang Hennepin Belgian Saison to drink and Hollywood Town Hall on the stereo (Mostly, Jayhawks w/ Mark Olson>Jayhawks w/o Mark Olson. Mostly).

So anyway, here was the software for the 80 Shilling:

6.3 lbs Northern Brewer Gold liquid ext.

1 lb Simpsons Crystal grains

1 oz. Fuggles pellet hops

Safbrew S-33 dry yeast (I went cheap on this one)

For this beer, I brought 2.5 gallons of water to a boil w/ the Simpsons crystal.  When it came to a boil, I took out the spent grains (and I used them in bread, which I’ll post about soon) and added the 1 oz. of Fuggles hops and half (3.15 lbs) of the extract.

I let this boil for 45 minutes and then added the rest (3.15 lbs) of the extract for the last 15 minutes of the boil.

When the wort cooled down to about 75 F or so, I pitched the dry yeast. My digital thermometer kicked the bucket on me, so I finagled (in an honest way) a combination of guessing (somewhat uneducated) and a shitty meat thermometer (the big needle kind with a (somewhat unreliable) dial on the end) to get the temp. right before pitching the yeast.

Fin. Game over, man. Game over.

It’ll be ready to drink in about a week. So I bottled it about a week ago and have (lazily) just posted about it today. Chances are you (dear, appreciated, patient, and tolerable reader) are not going to get to try it, so I’m guessing my tardiness is not much of an issue for you. Although if you read this and personally know me, and want to try it, give me a ring-a-ling on the tele-phone.

Also, the only record I managed to listen to while making this beer was Iron Maiden’s The Number of the Beast. And I bet the beer tastes as awesome and devilish as the record sounds. We’ll see.