Shiner marks 100th Anniversary with Commemorator Ale
And if that isn’t good enough news (I’m hoping this isn’t talking about commemorator) - Spoetzl Brings Back Kosmos Reserve
Kosmos Reserve was without a doubt my absolute favorite Shiner (Truth be told I’d love to do a taste test of kegs of Kosmos and Shiner 96 - but that would require a time machine or an incredibly friendly brewer). Very exciting for 2009 indeed!
If you’ve been following my tweets you’re probably a little confused about now. I was originally going to write this up before I got started but it just didn’t work out that way - so better late than never right…
Several months ago, I put in an order for a brew sculpture. This honking monstrosity of a brew system was something I’ve been dreaming about since I first got into homebrewing five years ago. As a kind of combo birthday, first baby, IPO gift it seemed to fit the bill :)
There is only one problem. Basically our brewing schedule as elongated from once every three months to once every 8 months (it was a crazy year last year and annie giving up beer didn’t exactly motivate me to keep brewing). It seemed like every time we fired up the kettle I was getting rustier and rustier instead of better and better at brewing.
That’s when Annie came up with a great idea - a brewing staycation. Staycation is one of the new words (for an old concept) that has come out of the recession and high gas prices. It is where you take a vacation but don’t go anywhere. Sometimes that’s just what the doctor ordered! By the title you can tell this was a staycation with a purpose - namely brewing.
The plan was a simple one - brew every day for five days. Get really comfortable with the new rig and produce enough beer that we can throw a party next year that will require a lot of drinkers to show up.
Things got off to a little bit of a bumpy start. In the past when I did larger scale production (namely 20 gallons for my wedding) I was making a single kind of beer. In this case, I’m doing 5 different ones. That meant a lot of different yeast starters. That mostly worked out except I got nervous about the health of the last two yeast colonies so I fed them again on Wed. I had also ordered in enough primary vessels for the fermentation - but forgot to get enough caps and air locks - something I eventually sorted out.
I brewed at all hours - on Tuesday I ended up having to go into work after all for a lunch meeting so I got up at 6am to start the brewing cycle and managed to have the beer in the fermenter in time to walk out the door at 12pm. My mistake was rushing out without finishing the cleaning process. I did that a second time when I started at 2pm and ended up finishing well after dark. I left everything overnight - what a mistake. It took me an hour and a half in the morning to get things ready for that day’s brewing session.
The plan was 5 beers - namely - Irish Red Ale, Dry Irish Stout, Cream Ale, Wit Beer, and our Happily Ever After Ale (A hefe with a special honey ingredient). I’ve made it through four of them and am halfway through the Happliy Ever After Ale as I write this.
This has been an arduous and awesome task. The moving and cleaning the pots seems to take a lot more strength than I have. I once read that when DogFish head started out - Sam (the founder) brewed everyday on a 10 gallon system not too different than the one I’m using. I feel for how much labor went in to keeping everything ship shape for the next round of brewing. I also get how brewing that often would allow you to really tweak the beer and get a sense for the recipe.
The awesome part has been being able to really spend time thinking about the details of the brewing process. Timing the sparge - balancing the pH - controlling the mash schedule. I feel a lot more confident as a brewer after this (though truth be told I won’t really feel good until I finish kegging all this beer and see smiles on people’s faces as they enjoy it).
I was a little worried that now was the time I would have to leave the brewing hobby behind - being a dad and such. But after this week - I guess I’m going to have to spend time talking myself out of packing it in as a developer and starting a brew pub. I have to admit even the hard parts where fun!
Ok I know this one is older - but I haven’t been a-blogging lately…
Looking at the AP report:
Couple of things from all of this. Bud Light Lime - so far every “Lime” flavored beer I’ve had has been terrible. Instead of being acidic (you know like lime), they end up being sweet like a lollipop. Yuck!
I wonder where they are brewing all this stuff - since their 13 breweries must be optimized for lagering. Actually that was one of the things that totally changed Killian’s Irish Red after Coors bought the original brand. They changed it from an ale to a lager to make it easier for them to produce.
I’ve always been surprised there wasn’t more of a push into ales since my guess is they are cheaper to produce. I mean you don’t have to lager them - and temperature control is concerned with high temperatures. Maybe there isn’t that much difference - but at this kind of scale you would think it would add up.
The last thing, I wanted to say is about the brand. Maybe the news is right. Maybe what InBev wanted was Bud’s brand. I mean it does have a dominant position in the market place and owns the concept of yellow fizzy beer in the mind of mass beer lovers and haters. That being said - I think they bought them for another reason. I don’t have proof of this - but based on my limited time married to a beer distributor (I’m still married to her - but she got out of that business thank god!). I think it was the distribution channel that mattered as much if not more than the Bud brand itself.
InBev now has the ability to push its full line of beers out in the Bud trucks. In my mind, that is worth a lot. Since that is something that is incredible complicated and time consuming to set up - especially in a country as big and spread out as the US. Getting your beer to vendors, plus jockeying for shelf space is a big part of the gig. This is something that Bud has down. I mean it would be easy to say - look you can have Bud as long as you allow us to put up these other beers as well.
I guess there is an easy way to see if this is really part of their thinking. Next time you look at your beer case look for any of the following -
Staropramen, Leffe, Becks, Stella Arois, Brahma, Hoegaarden, Boddingtos, Labatte, Lowenbrau, Mackenson’s XXX, (or more obscure Skol, Cass, Jupiler, Quilmes, Klinshoye, Lakeport, Chernigivske, Ozuksko, Antarctica, Bohemia, Alexander Keith’s, or Sedrin).
And then keep looking to see if more and more of them show up. The whole goal of InBev is to get more people drinking more beer (That probably isn’t their mission statement but sounds like a good one to me - and not a bad business plan to boot). They have an arm’s length list of beers already - which will get longer.
It is hard for people to try a new beer if they can’t get their little hands on it. It would seem that Bud’s distribution system would make that a very easy problem to solve.
I for one hope I’m right - just from the perspective that I like Staropromen,Hoegaarden (even if it isn’t as good as it used to be), and Boddington’s a lot. So making it more available suits me just fine.
In a word - WOW - shame he built it around a plastic tub instead of a steel conical fermenter :)
‘Beer Hunter’ lifts 40,000 pints of Guinness | The Register
Guinness’s St James’s Gate brewery in Dublin has been hit by an audacious raid in which an evidently thirsty man dubbed “the Beer Hunter” made off with 40,000 pints of the famous stout.
According to the Times, the perp simply drove into the brewery yard in his own HGV, hitched it to a “well-provisioned” trailer and drove out again. The total pintage nicked was 360 kegs of Guinness and Budweiser and 90 kegs of Carlsberg, worth a total of £46,000.
Sucks that he got stuck with Budweiser kegs in the process…
For drinkers of craft beer, prices may soon be hopping
Hops and malt, a form of barley essential to fermentation, are both in short supply nationwide. The shortage is caused by poor crops, high demand, the weak dollar and the increasing popularity of ethanol, which has prompted farmers to plant corn rather than hops or barley
Tom Seefurth’s Mamma Mia Pizza Beer
Be terrified - though if I find a 6 pack I’m totally buying it - it can’t be any worse that Miller’s Chill (And I drank one of those).
This is a short video of home brew fermentation in all its bubbly glory - enojy!
Seattlest: Fermentation Envy
John W. Cornwell Beer Launching Fridge
Cool idea - shame it’s limited to canned beer…
Wells Banana Bread Beer - Charles Wells Brewery and Pub Company Bedford - www.charleswells.co.uk
This unique brew (Alc 5.2% vol) combines all the traditional qualities and style of a Charles Wells bitter with the subtle flavour of banana. Its flavour unfolds with a sensual sparkle and a smart crispness, which balances its aroma perfectly. Tropically fruity; its ripe banana flavour, emphasised by a hint of bitterness, comes from the addition of real fair trade bananas and finishes with an emphatic, steely dryness.
Wow - I can’t decide is this sounds great or the sort of thing that truly great hangovers are made of.
