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If you are on the quest to experience beer, more so than just drinking it, then aging beer is an important part of that journey. To see how a beer changes over the year or years can be a lot of fun and well worth the wait. Now, you will hear me talk about my beer cellar, or this or that, but I want you to know that I don’t have a special walk in freezer, or walk in room with temperature and humidity control. As nice as that would be, it is not within my budget. However, there are things you can do on the cheap to store beer for long periods of time. Please keep in mind that my recommendations are not suited for beers with a generally short shelf life, such as average IPA’s, wheat beers, average strength beers, and so on. This is primarily for your barleywines, strong ales, high alcohol Belgian styles, or any other heavy hitter. So without further delay, here is what I use for a beer cellar………
A Styrofoam cooler is cheap, large, a good insulator, stackable, and easily replaceable.
…a Styrofoam cooler. I store them under my bar, and they do the trick. Now there are a few things to consider when using this method. You need to have a cool basement. On average, my basement is 62-65 degrees three feet up from the floor. It is cooler at the floor level (upper 50′s to 60 depending on what time of year), and by placing it on the cement floor itself it is in the about the best way to get the coolest I can. The main thing to worry about is keeping the beer out of light, keeping a constant cool temperature, and avoid drastic temperature fluctuations. All of this is achieved with a Styrofoam cooler.
Here is a shot inside of a cooler. This one has some New Glarus Unplugged from 2007 (Belgian Quad, Bourbon Barrel Bock), Third Coast Old Ale, Bigfoot, Imperial Saison and Iced Barleywine from last year, Lagunitas Imperial Stout, and Thomas Hardy Ale from 2005 to name a few.
For long term storage, like if you plan to age something for more than 10 years, I have an idea to help reduce the oxidation that may occur over time, even through a cap. Even if this does nothing, it also does not hurt anything. I vacuum seal beers I don’t plan on trying for many years. Here I have two beers I don’t want to open until 2015 or beyond. A barleywine from New Glarus and 2005 Thomas Hardy Ale.
vacuum Packing, does it help? I don't know, but it can't hurt.
OK, so to start to wrap this post up, you don’t have to have an expensive walk in cellar or build a fancy multiple shelf system if you don’t have the space or budget for it, just some good insulated coolers will do the trick. They HAVE to be kept in a cooler than a normal place though. You want to age big beers in the range of no warmer than mid 50′s to mid 60′s. Beers of average strength and below are recommended to be stored at temperatures even cooler than 55. For these, I simply keep them in a fridge (Please note that many beers today come corked, and a refrigerator has a drying unit in it to keep humidity out. So this can dry out a cork. Store corked beers in a humid environment or they will dry out and ruin the beer, trust me, I had it happen to a nice Gueuze I had kept in the fridge).If you don’t have access to a separate beer fridge, I don’t recommend buying more beer than you can easily drink in a short period of time.
Keep average strength beers in the fridge if you don't have access to a temperature controled cellar.
Keep those beers cool and out of light my friends, no beer likes being kept 70 degrees or warmer for extended periods. Also, keep beers stored upright, not on their sides, unless its corked. But even then it probably is not necessary, most corks today are part synthetic and will not dry out under normal conditions (Only if very dry climates or the fridge, so if you live in the desert, maybe keep your corked beers on their sides).
Brooklyn Brewery's Black Ops..........it does not exist
According to Brooklyn Brewery, this beer does not exist, and if you look for it on their website, it appears to be true. At least I could not find it. But somehow I got a hold of a bottle from one of my fellow bloggers over at Simply beer. The label is just great, it does give the beer an air of mystery, all in fun. Here is what the back label reads “Brooklyn Black Ops does not exist. However, if it did exist, it would be a robust stout concocted by the Brooklyn brewing team under cover of secrecy and hidden from everyone else at the brewery. Supposedly, “Black Ops” was aged for four months in bourbon barrels, bottled flat, and re-fermented with Champagne yeast, creating big chocolate and coffee flavors with a rich underpinning of vanilla-like oak notes. They say there are only 1000 cases. We have no idea what they’re talking about.”
It has taken me a little while to get around to posting my review of this one because I enjoyed it on Valentine’s Day but took some notes on it to share with you. This review is a bit more informal and probably not as in depth as they are when I am drinking and writing about it at the same time, I also will not be scoring it. However, if I were to score it, it would get a very solid “A” from me, that’s for sure.
Initially the aroma is thick with bittersweet chocolate and coffee notes, some alcohol, and a very nice refined vanilla character from the oak. The combination of alcohol and residual bourbon from the barrels gives a nice background hint of just a splash of bourbon. The actual woodiness of the beer is very low, which I like. The aroma is very complex and you could spend a long time swimming in that vat of delicious aroma, finding something new each time the beer warms slightly.
The flavor is much more drinkable than one would think with a such a big stout. The roast is well balanced with a bit of sweetness lending to a mostly bittersweet chocolate flavor. However, it does not end there. The alcohol is quite evident and the rich vanilla notes combined with bourbon come through in the finish, but not overwhelmingly so. The beer as a whole is rich, smooth, and has a very nice mouthfeel to it. The main note I have written is “Dangerously Drinkable”, which means that for such a big beer, it does not go down hard. Complex with many subtle malt flavors, this beer is easily one of my favorite Imperial Stouts…..that is if it existed and I were able to experience it.
I found this pretty cool, it made me think that this beer really does have a galaxy of complex flavors and aromas contained within. You be the judge.
- The New Tongue Map, Mosher, R. (2009). Tasting Beer: An Insiders Guide to the Worlds Greatest Drink.(p. 32)
There have been many new discoveries in the realm of taste but not many have been talking about it. The most I have read as it relates to beer is in Randy Mosher’s Book, Tasting Beer. So what exactly is new you ask? Well, what we have been taught since we were kids about how the tongue perceives flavors is completely wrong. The sad thing is, many places are still teaching the old tongue map, where you taste sweet at the tip of the tongue, salty on the front sides, sour on the back sides, and bitter on the back side of the tongue. What they have found, is that all of these flavors are tasted equally over all over the tongue. However, there does seem to be a bit more sensitivity to bitterness on the back and some sour on the sides. This does make sense to me, because when I have something sour, I do taste it everywhere, not just on those front side portions of my tongue. I taste it throughout my whole mouth.
If you look at your tongue, you will see many small bumps, these bumps are not taste buds, but rather papillae. Inside these papillae are your taste buds, and there are many contained within one papillae (usually between 50 to 150 taste buds per papillae). These buds taste many different flavors and the combination of what we have been taught sweet, sour, bitter, and salty among other chemical components give us taste. Aside from these traditional flavors it has been discovered that fat is a flavor as well, and people can taste fat. There is also a new member to the arena and this new one is called umami, which mean savory or deliciousness. Umami occurs when foods or beverage with glutamate is eaten or drank, MSG (Monosodium Glutamate) for example is a glutamate. Beer can contain Umami, and will usually occur in the bigger beer styles, I think it mostly comes from the aging of the beer and breaking down of the yeast cells, but I could be wrong. Umami can come across as mushroomy, meaty, or just overall a savory sensation. Now on a personal note, I have seen Umami being described in beers that I personally couldn’t see there being the sensation of Umami present, but just like anything new, people want to jump right on it and appear to be in-the-know. So just be careful when describing Umami, just because a beer tastes good or is delicious, does not necessarily mean Umami.
Another important consideration, especially if you are tasting and talking with others about a beer, is that not everyone perceives chemicals of the same concentration the same. Contrary to what people think a beer (or wine) judge or expert should be, we are not identical machines manufactured to the same specs. All people perceive different concentrations differently, even not at all. For example, over time I have learned that I am not sensitive to Diacetyl. This means that if I pick up diacetyl in a beer, chances are the concentration is pretty high. When it comes to this, I need to rely on other judges to pick this up in lower doses. What I am sensitive to is Dimethyl Sulfide, or DMS when it comes to aroma. I seem to be able to pick this up in many beers. Since I know I am almost overly sensitive to it, if I pick it up in very low amounts, I probably don’t even bring it up. But if it smashes me in the face, I know it is at least at the level to mention it as a flaw. Being aware of your level of tolerance for different chemicals is important when working with others. If they ask you if you get DMS in the beer, but you can’t normally pick it up, you should explain that.
Being honest with what you taste is also important. Because we all perceive flavors and aromas differently, nobody can tell you what you taste and/or smell. They can suggest what they smell or taste, and you can agree or still not get it. Just because someone thinks a beer has a winelike character, does not mean it does. It means that according to that persons experience, and their perception, they think it does. When in fact you may think it is more like dark fruit, like a plum. Both of you are right. What bothers me the most when someone tells someone else what they taste or smell. Granted, some people are more accurate than others, but you have no real way of knowing that someone is not in fact tasting caramel in a beer, even if that other person does not get it.
This holds true for all aspects of both flavor and aroma perception. Just remember that if you are honest with what you perceive and how you perceive it, you are doing your job. If you are faking what you taste or smell, that does nobody any good.
First I have to say I had to go back to the old look, the new look didn’t seem to support bold text, and that annoyed me. So with that out of the way.
I spent the afternoon at Titletown Brewing Co in Green Bay on February 12th, 2010. I enjoyed a fine Gueuze, a great lunch, and got to speak with the Head Brewmaster for Titletown Brewery, Dave Oldenburg. Dave has won a silver and a bronze medal at the Great American Beer Festival in the past two years, he has been the Headbrewmaster at Titletown for about 3 1/2 years. The Bonze Medal winning Dark Helmet was on tap at the time I visited as well as the silver medal winning Railyard Ale. So here it is, the first interview in the Wisconsin Brewer Interviews.
Dave Oldenburg: Headbrewmaster for Titletown Brewing Co.
Bold=Barleypopmaker
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Download and Listen Option (Right Click then “Save As”) Approx run time is 30 min.
How long have you been Brewing? I started in 2002.
How long have you been the head Brewmaster at Titletown? Between three and four years. I started in 2006 in the summer, so 3 plus years.
Were you a homebrewer before becoming a Pro Brewer? Yes, definitely.
What was the most challenging process to transition from homebrewing to pro brewing? Scheduling. (You mean the Scheduling of the beers or mash?) Scheduling of what’s in what tank at what time. That would probably the single biggest thing. Because all the process is pretty much the same. I mean, a lot of the process is the same because brewing is brewing whether its big or small. But the Scheduling is something I never had to do until I got here. Well, that and filtering I guess. Filtering would be another one. We have a very feisty filter that likes to break and likes to cause me problems. So I’ve had to tame it.
What type of brewing education have you had, if any? I learned most stuff from homebrewing, but once I got the job here, they sent me to Siebel. I did the six week version of Siebel which is everything except the cool trip to Germany. I did two weeks a year for three years. So that was good, I did learn a lot of stuff. Other than that, that’s it. (like you said, homebrewing is pretty much the same process, just on a bigger scale.) Yeah. (I also know that Dave is a BJCP judge as well)
How do you come up with new recipes? Is it by instinct and feel or do you find for yourself its more technical planning? Well, it’s both. There’s the ideal way and the way when you’re in a hurry. The Ideal way is I sit somewhere calm, like in the back yard when it’s warm out. I write up an evaluation of the beer for the recipe. So I pretend I’m tasting it and then I’ll write out, Here’s what it smells like, here’s what it tastes like, here’s the mouthfeel here’s whatever. Then I’ll take from that, I’ll make specs. So say I want it to be 15 degrees plato, and I want it to finish between 3 and 5 plato, or I want it to be this much alcohol. So from there I take it and I write out what percentages of what malts I want to use. I’ll say I want to use this as a base and I want to have 10% caramel malt or whatever it might be and then what yeast I want to use and fermentation temperatures. So I write all that stuff out, and then I go into my brewing software, which is beersmith, which I’m sure a lot of people reading the blog will probably use with. (I use that too). Yeah, it’s rather geared more towards homebrewers than pro brewers, but its flexible enough that you can use it either way. So then I go into beersmith and plug all the stuff into beersmith and I play around with exactly what amount is it going to be and what colors I want. So for example, if I see it’s going to be this color and I think I want it to be a lighter color, I change this or that. So let’s say it a complicated beer, like maybe there’s a fruit addition, some other interesting technical thing, dry hopping, or anything like that. Then I sit and maybe do a bit of research on the Internet. Like I made a cherry beer a while ago, and I wanted to know how much cherry I wanted use, so I go look on the forums and I see this guy used this much and this guy used that much. (So does that go mostly by percentage or total poundage?) Well, I hardly ever do fruit beers, but when I do, it’s just a measurement of pounds per batch, or pounds per barrel. What I did with this most recent fruit beer, was I said “OK this guy recommends 10lbs of cherries per barrel, this guy recommends 5”, and so I always go on the low end with weird ingredients so I go with five, then I multiply it by the how much you’re going to make. But then you end up with “I need this much”, but you can only get it in this size pack so we’ll buy three packs of whatever’s close and use that. But the essentials of it are I start with evaluating the beer I have in my head first and then build the recipe. Again, this is the ideal situation. If I’m in a hurry, I may just skip that part.
So do you produce test batches on a small scale first? Nope. None. I should say that there are certain styles that I have not done, and if I had the opportunity to do test batches, I would do those styles. I don’t do it though because it takes almost as long to do a test batch as it would to do a full batch and I don’t have that kind of time. The way I look at the test batch thing is that we are a brewpub and nobodies looking at your recipe to taste any particular way. So if you follow three or four rules, you’re going to get good beer. It may not taste the way you intended it to taste, but it’s still going to be a good beer. That precludes the need for a test batch because you know it’s going to be good, even if it’s not what you intended it. So worst-case scenario is you have to sell it as something else, and that’s not always such a bad thing to happen. That does not happen all that often usually we are able to hit it pretty close. (As a side note, I am sure what Dave is meaning is that if he brews an IPA but it doesn’t quite come across as he envisioned, he is OK with selling it as a pale ale instead. What he does not mean is if a batch is infected he would sell it as a Belgian so-and-so or here is an American Brown Gueuze)
You’ve been pretty successful at Titletown, you’ve won some medals at the GABF and Titletown is a very popular brewpub, so what you say is the key to your success here at Titletown as a brewer or Titletown Brewery as a whole? We have a pretty good management team in place a lot of it comes from that. As far as the brewery end, we have had a pretty good up surge in popularity in the last few years, I think a lot of it comes from we are committed to doing a variety of outstanding beers. At least that’s the idea. Maybe a year after I started we increased our number of draft lines we have available so instead of being able to have 9 beers we could have on tap at one time, we went up to 14. That gave us a lot of flexibility to be able to do a lot more seasonal and a lot more variety. So it works out that maybe that every two weeks on average we’ve had a new beer. So if you don’t come for a month, you may miss a whole beer. And you can’t try them all in one sitting unless you have the little samples, so if you want to have a pint of every beer we produce, you have to be in here pretty often. I think that a lot of it, and making them interesting and putting a variety out there. Making beers like Bamberg brew once in a while, where you know it’s not going to sell that fast, but the people who buy it are really going to like it, and it’s really a niche thing. That keeps the variety up there even though it’s not a real popular beer, not everyone likes their beer that tastes like bacon like I do.
Titletown not only has great beers, but great food as well. This double decker club was phenomanal. And the bread is made with spent grains!
Out of the beers you offer at Titletown, what is your favorite beer to brew? That’s a good question, I never really thought about that before. I sort of enjoy the Dark Helmet (Schwartzbier), because it just smells really good in the brew house. You have that coffee smell, and just a real strong smell. It presents a couple of challenges but then there are a couple of little fun parts of the process that maybe make it a real decent beer. It’s also my original homebrew recipe, it has changed a bit, but it started as a homebrew recipe so that was fun. Yeah, it smells good in the brew house, it’s not a particularly challenging brew, and there are not a lot of problems. Of course hop monster smells good in the brew house too because there’s just a ridicules amount of hops. So that’s good too, but that one’s more challenging because you really have to be on top of your game with making sure you have all your hops weighed out and you have hops everywhere and keeping track of them is tough. You really have to focus, while Dark Hemet you have just one hop addition. Well technically, there are two; one is just first wort to keep foaming down in the kettle.
What would be your least favorite beer to brew, not necessarily a bad beer just a bear to brew? We don’t have it on the board right now, but the worst one is the Dousman Street Wheat, because that is the only one that I do a step mash. Doing a step mash in our mash tun involves about 45 minutes of constant stirring of the mash by hand while it heats. We don’t have any mash rakes, with this size system is just about the size that we could have mash rakes or maybe we wouldn’t. But if you had a size any bigger than this, you would have to have mash rakes, so we are right at the point that we can do it by hand, and we do, and that’s OK. But when you are stirring for 45 minutes, and there is wheat in there so it’s a sticky problem besides the stirring. Although I really like the beer, but it makes for a rough and long brew day. I sure can feel it the next day.
Do you have any beers that you brewed here that you were surprised at how well they were received? Like maybe, you thought it may not be a good seller, but it just flies out the door? Oh yes, I had one that I was trying to do the English Summer Ale style, which is not listed as a BJCP style, but it is listed as a World Beer Cup/GABF type style. I wanted to do that and I thought I’m going to Nitrogen infuse it just for fun. So I was going to have this Nitro infused beer that was and it was supposed to be real malty with a little bit of floral hop smell. I don’t remember exactly what went wrong with it, but I just didn’t like it and it wasn’t selling very well. I cannot remember specifically why I didn’t like, but nobody liked the idea of a nitrogen beer, well actually they like the stout on nitrogen, but the idea of a yellow color beer on nitrogen seemed to just turn people off. So I said “Oh my Gosh nobody likes this.” I end up blowing the nitrogen out, and then adding more carbonation and serving it conventionally, and that did some damage to it besides. I thought, I can’t wait for this beer to be gone. And it just flew, and one of our managers just loved it. Yeah, it was gone really quickly. I will never make it again, because I hated it, but that was one that surprised me. We also had some that surprised me the other way too. I had them where I thought they would fly and they didn’t.
Besides your own beer, what is in your fridge at home right now? It really varies, I actually have a kegerator, and I tend to put Titletown beer in it. I really don’t have a favorite, I will go the liquor store and see what they got, and I’ll buy a few things, try a few new things. But I don’t really have a beer that I always have on hand though. A lot of people do but, if I had one, it would be a nice Gueze, but I’m too cheap to buy those.
From time to time Titletown will also offer Guest beers. I opted for one of these seeing as how I love a good Gueuze and they had one to offer. Here I had Drie Fonteinen Oude Gueuze before my lunch.
Who or what influences your brewing? What I mean by that is if there is a particular brewer or brewery, you look to aspire to be like? I was always aspiring to be like the Great Dane in Madison, but not any particular beers of theirs, just that every time I went in there they had real good beers whatever kind it was. Whatever they made was great, they had four or five casks on tap, well probably more like 2 or 3. They did a lot of things really well, and I think we’ve gotten to be close to that. Well, 2 casks are broken but they are coming back, we still have 2 so that’s close enough. When it comes to my brewing Heroes, it kind of depends on the beer style I guess. If I’m trying to make a pale ale I’m looking at Firestone Walker, if I’m trying to make a Bock I’m looking at Ayinger. Usually what will tend to happen is I will go to some fest like the GABF and I will have something that just blows me away and then I want to make a beer like that. Last summer we had something (at Titletown) called loose caboose, it was an American Pale Ale but fermented with a bit of Belgian yeast and that was an idea I got when I went to the GABF and I had a beer done that way and I thought it was just wonderful. So then, I thought I have to make something like that. So it’s kind of like that, I don’t have any one brewery but I may have a beer that I want to make something like that. I had the Drie Fonteinen Gueuze (a beer they have as a guest beer at Titletown at the time of this interview) the other night and I thought, “I have to figure out how to do a Gueuze here.” I have figured out how technically I can do that here. Actually, that’s an advantage homebrewing has is you can do something like that. I have to figure out where I can store that beer for 1 year to 3 years, plus think about contaminating the rest of my brewery. That’s true for homebrewing but the stakes are a little lower (when homebewing).
Can't Decide? Try the sample platter (mine is pictured above), with 9 beers to choose from. You get 6 of the year round offerings, and 3 of the seasonals. I chose Citra Pale ale, Hop Monster, and Throwback for my seasonals.
One of my favorite beers here at Titletown is Hop Monster; can you tell me a bit about how that beer came about, such as what influenced your choice of ingredients such as the hops and stuff? I did it because for one I have never done a double IPA ever, and I’m trying to knock off all the styles I have never brewed. So you will see a Dopplebock coming shortly which is a style I have never done before, a dry stout, which is a style I have never done. So we are trying to knock a few of those off, and one of those was the Imperial IPA. Just as I was thinking of doing it, we had the hop shortage and so it was quite a while before I was able to get hops. Once I realized I could get a bunch of “C” hops, I wanted to take advantage of it. We spent the money on the hops because they were still rather expensive, but at least we could get them. So I said let’s do the Imperial IPA. The way I came up with it was again the same way I do other recipes. I did however listen to The Brewing Network’s podcast about Pliny the Elder, and took some of the info from that and I took a couple tips form that as far as the grain bill and how there is a bit of corn sugar and a some carapils, which is sort of weird. The hopping was an entire day’s project because I had to figure out how much I could get of each hop, so it was not just make it up and get what you need. At the time, they had an allowance for each kind. So I had a big spreadsheet and this spreadsheet had hop allowances. So basically, it was I had this much hops and I wanted to do three additions, and they were these amounts, and at the end I would see if I would run out of hops or if I could get enough. So I had that for each hop I wanted to use. So I just used my favorite “C” hops and whatever ones were available to me. For example, I bought 20 pounds of Amarillo and they all came in one-pound bags. That may sound like a lot to home brewer, but when you’re brewing on our scale. We usually get our hops in 11-pound sacks. So I had a graph based on the recipe, which is hard to visualize, but it was a stacked line graph and on one axis was the amount of time that the hops were going to be in the beer. It would start with dry, then whirlpool, then five minute, 10 minutes and so on. Then on the other side, it had the amount of hops, so then it would stack each variety on top of each other. So it would show the dry hops and it would show a big amount of Amarillo, a little cascade and a small amount of palisades. SO I had a visual of what I thought the beer was doing to taste like. The dry hops I would smell and taste first, and underneath that would be the whirlpool hops.
Do you listen to any music while brewing? If so, what? Yes I do. It does vary; I’m kind of a NPR nerd so I listen to that. Other times I set my laptop in the grain room and play it in the speakers in the brewery so I can put on whatever I feel like. I sometimes listen to The Brewing Network Podcasts, sometimes other podcasts, sometimes classical. One time when making a Scottish Ale I played bagpipe music in the brewery to try get some influence into the beer.
What is your feeling on Fruit Beers? Most of them suck, but when they don’t they are great. It has to taste like beer with fruit, not fruit with beer. I do like them in principle but most of the ones I’ve had not been great.
What can we expect to see from Titletown in 2010? First, we are going to keep doing what we are doing as far as keeping the variety and keeping up with quality. We are pursuing some more off-site sales, so hopefully you will see us at a lot more bars. Hopefully around the state. We increased our capacity late last year by 25% so we will be able to do a little bit more of that.
Are there any new beers in the works? We will be tapping our Procrastinator Dopplebock, which is the first beer out of our new tank. So we got that fifth tank and decided to make the dopplebock because we were able to let it sit a month. We will tap it the same day as Fat Tuesday, which is the 16th I think. Then there is a dry stout coming next, which is about to go in the tank so that will be a few weeks. We want to tap it on St. Patrick’s Day, and we have a Saison planned, which I don’t have the recipe for yet, but we are working on it. In addition, we will have a bunch more stuff coming out; I just haven’t planned it yet. Every time I plan way ahead it ends up changing anyway.
Look at this. By the time I got to Bridge Out Stout (An oatmeal stout), the head on it was still very nice! That's a sign of good quality.
At one time there was talk of bottling your beer, is that been put aside for the time being? We are going to hopefully get bottling. I don’t know if that will happen in 2010, but it might. It’s something that’s still there, but putting beer in a bottle is more expensive and difficult than the rest of the process so we are still working on how that will work. We have space constraints; we only have what we have when it comes to this building so we are limited in what we can do with it. However, we are looking at a couple of options we have for bottling. I am concerned though because bottling your beer is one of the worst things you can do for it as far as quality goes. What I mean is wheb you put beer in a bottle it’s going to take damage and we want to minimize that damage. I’m really concerned that we maintain a reasonable quality level in the bottle. I am not naive enough to think it will be as good as draft, particularly if it gets beat up between here and the when it gets to the customer, but we want to at least be good. Because I’ve had a lot beer, where I’ve had it at the brewery and it’s wonderful and then I buy it and it’s horrible. And I don’t want to be that brewery. So we are taking it very cautiously. This is the reason it’s taking so long. We just really want to make sure we get it right.
If you could give a homebrewer, or aspiring pro brewer one key piece of advice to improve their beer, what would that be? Take a style that is relatively difficult to brew, I used English bitter but you could do Pilsner you could do something where mistakes can’t be hidden very easy and just keep brewing it over and over until it’s really awesome. And keep good notes!
Do you have any recipes you may like to share with the homebrewers out there who are reading my blog? If anyone has any questions about any of our beers, they can email me and I’ll help guide them in the right direction as far as percentages and ingredients go, as well as a basic brewing method. Obviously, there are some things we do that I can’t give out, but overall I’d be more than happy to provide some insight. After all, every system is a bit different and the beer may not always turn out the same on someone else’s as it does here.
Thanks to Dave for a great Interview!
Titletown Brewing Co.
Golden Ale
Today I have Hook and Ladder’s Golden Ale. This one is a bit on the tough side because I have to come up with a category for it. Golden Ale is not really a style to define, so I will try to put it in a category I would enter it in, if this was a beer I brewed. Based on the brewers description, I will review this as a Blonde Ale. I have not reviewed a blonde ale yet, on here so this should prove interesting. According to the guidelines, we should expect a blonde ale to be “Easy-drinking, approachable, malt-oriented American craft beer.”
Aroma: The aroma is soft and sweet, with a mild fruitiness. At first sniff, the beer seems a bit flat, with a small amount of hop presence. But if you spend a little time there, you will get a bit of citrus and slightly spicy hop aroma, a soft malt profile, and some estery fruit aroma. All of which are acceptable to the style in the levels given, just not in this balance. There should be a bit more malt forward, and I feel the fruit is a touch too high. However, the aroma is nice and not off-putting. (7 points)
Appearance: The beer looks real nice. With a nice gold color, great clarity, and nice rocky head. The head retained a small but solid layer for almost the whole pint. (3 points)
Flavor: The malt profile in the beer on the flavor side is a bit small. There is a small bit of sweet and clean malt, along with a nice biscuit tone. The hop bitterness is spot on for this style, its balanced well with the level of malt sweetness and prevents the beer from becoming too sweet. There is a bit more of the citrus and spice bite in the hop flavor that I enjoy and wish there was more of it. There some fruit in the flavor as well, but not as much as the aroma, which is good. In the end though, the flavors that are there are nice, just a bit too small and the beer finished a touch too sweet for me. I wish it was a bit drier. (13 points)
Mouthfeel: The mouthfeel is in the medium range, with some good carbonation. The beer is smooth and creamy as the style should be. (5 points)
Overall: Overall the beer is quite good, just not outstandingly great. I really like the flavors and aromas in the beer, but just wish they were a bit more full. The fruit in the aroma was a tad high for my liking, but the hop choices and malt work quite well. In the end, this is a very easy drinking beer, I just wish it was a bit drier so the soft sweet malt didn’t linger so long into the finish. (7 points)
In the end I gave this beer 35 of 50 points. This is a solid B- or so in my mind. With a bit more of a bold punch in the malt end, with a touch less sweetness the beer would be up in the low 40′s for me. Still, this is a great gateway beer to serve your macro only friends.
Firebrick
Today’s choice is August Schell’s Firebrick Vienna lager. Vienna Lager is one of my favorite lagers to drink, but there really are not too many of them out there. Vienna lager is one of the beers that is complex in its simplicity, if that makes any sense. The malt profile should be soft, yet flavorful. What is commonly misunderstood, is that caramel flavors are not appropriate in this style or in Oktoberfest. If you don’t believe me, take a look at other review sites and see how often they review Oktoberfest or Vienna lagers with caramel tones and give it high marks. Sure, the beer may taste good, but if you are evaluating it against what the brewer says it is, you need to pay attention to the parameters of the style. If caramel is not not appropriate, or hop aroma is not appropriate, you cannot give the beer an overall score of an A+ if the brewer states its a Vienna lager. You can however, note in the overall impression that you liked that flavor, but it should not be shown in this style of beer. Make sense?
Vienna lager and Oktoberfest fall under the same major category, European Amber lager with Oktoberfest being the slightly larger brother of the Vienna Lager style. With that, lets take a peak at this beer.
The aroma is quite clean, with a real nice Vienna malt character. Toasty and slightly nutty aroma. The malt aroma here is very nice, with not much in the way of hop aroma. There is a bit of sweet malts in the aroma as well. I don’t think it is strong enough to detract much, but it is borderline. Nice clean malt profile. (7 points)
The color is a rich coppery color, with very good clarity. The head poured was small, but dense and long lasting. (3 points)
The flavor is quite good. A nice toasty malt flavor with some mild sweetness. There is a touch of hop bitterness. and a slight citrus note, that is not appropriate. The bitterness balances the malt very nicely and the lingering toasty malt finish is my favorite aspect of the flavor. All in all the flavor is quite good, and the only thing inappropriate is the citrus flavor, even though it is light. (10 points)
Mouthfeel is medium light, with a nice creamy feel. Carbonation is good. (4 points)
Overall I think this is a very good Vienna style beer, but has some minor stylistic faults. The citrus in the flavor is not per style, but does not make for a bad beer, its just not right for the style. I think the best quality is the lingering malt finish, which is pure toasty Vienna malt. Vienna lager should be Oktoberfest’s little brother and I think this beer fits that bill.(6 points)
In the end the score is a misleading 30 points, which would equal about a C+. The beer is actually better than my grade indicates. The reason is because I scored the flavor so low because of the inappropriate citrus flavor. But in the end the beer is quite drinkable.
Beer Taste Wheel (Can Be Downloaded on Beer Evaluation Page)
Since this beer blog’s main focus is the evaluation side of beer culture, I just realized I never posted anything on sensory training, and how one could do this at home on their own. I do want to say that in order to taste beer, you don’t need any special training, you already have all the tools you need with your eyes, nose, and tongue; you just need to listen to them and trust what you perceive. However, it helps a great deal to take a BJCP course (or other course like it), and take the test to validate your skills, especially if you want to judge competitions. But all that aside, I have met people with no formal training who could identify flaws and evaluate beers like no other, and the other way around. However, if you want to hone your skills, practice, or simply learn exactly what Diacetyl tastes like in beer, or how oxidation tastes, you can doctor beers to help teach yourself what these flaws or beer attributes taste like.
In some cases, you already have an idea of what you are looking. For example if you have ever had microwave popcorn with butter flavor, you will have a idea of what Diacetyl is like. Diacetyl is butter flavor that is used in a lot of artificial butter microwave popcorn. If you have ever made a spit ball and chewed paper to get it wet, you have an idea of what flavor would be in the beer for a stale or oxidized beer. But the way the flavor or aroma interact with the beer and various other flavor components can throw you off a bit. So this is where this type of training really comes in handy, and you can do this at home by yourself, with some friends, or in a homebrew club.
When doing this doctored beer lab, I find that some newer people even have a hard time detecting any difference in the concentrations given. So don’t be afraid to bump some of them up a touch for your first time through. The idea is to be able to detect these levels, then over time you can reduce the amount used to see how low you can detect the difference. It is best to first do labs like this with a beer like Budweiser or Miller, basically a very neutral low flavor and aroma beer. You taste an undoctored sample side by side with one where you have put in an additive. As you progress, you can try to doctor other beers with more flavor and aroma to see how the flavor and aroma components interact and change with the stronger malt or hop flavor and aromas of other styles. Many people just stop at the Budweiser sampling when they get a feel for what “sour” is. I suggest at least doctoring a few more intense beers with the same concentration just to see if you can detect it.
Below is the recommendations for doctoring beer from the BJCP Exam Study Guide, this is a basic lab that covers the major flaws in beer. The BJCP also sells a sensory training kit, if you are interested you can buy one there http://www.bjcp.org.
| Flavor | Adulterant | Quantity |
| Sour/Acidic (lactic) | USP lactic acid | 0.4 ml (1/3. tsp of solution of 1/8 tsp lactic acid plus 3/8 tsp distilled water) |
| Sour/Acidic (Vinegar/Acetobacter) | White wine vinegar | 3/4 tsp |
| Bitterness | iso-hop extract | 1 or 2 drops, to taste |
| Sweetness | sucrose (table sugar) | 1/4 tsp dissolved in 1/2 tsp water |
| Astringency | Grape tannin | 2 tsp. of solution of 1/8 tsp tannin dissolved in 5 Tbsp water |
| Phenolic | Chloroseptic | 0.4 ml (1/3. tsp of solution of 1/8 tsp Chloroseptic plus 3/8 tsp distilled water) |
| Clovelike | Clove solution | Make solution of 8 cloves soaked in 3 oz. of beer and add liquid to taste (about 4 tsp) |
| Sulfitic | Potassium metabisulfite (Should not be tasted by persons with asthma or sulfite allergies.) | Make solution of one tablet dissolved in 3 oz. of beer and add to taste (about 1/2 tsp) |
| Alcoholic | Ethanol | 2 tsp (increases alcohol by 2.7%). 3 tsp vodka may also be used |
| Sherry-like | Dry sherry | 3/4 tsp |
| Nutty | Almond extract | 0.1 ml (1/8 tsp of solution consisting of 1/8 tsp. almond extract plus 5/8 tsp. distilled water) |
| Papery/Stale | N/A | Open bottles to air, reseal, and keep at 100 F or warmer for several days (I like to pour the beer from the bottle into a sanitized bottle to give more air) |
| Winey | White wine | 2 Tbsp |
| Diacetyl | Butter extract | 4-5 drops |
| Estery | Banana extract | 6-7 drops |
| Lightstruck | N/A | Expose commercial beer in green or clear bottles to sunlight for 1-3 days. |
| DMS | Juice From Can of Corn | 1 ½ tsp of juice from a can of corn. |
This is just the basics, you can use other additives to taste for different flavors, for example you could dry hop various hops to see the affect they would have on the beer. Get creative and you the possibilities are endless. For example, if one had the time, they could make small batches of beer without hops, that accentuate specific types of malt. You could also make a basic base beer with a light malt profile, and hop it with a single hop type to learn what type of bitterness, flavor, and aroma each hop adds to a beer.
For a lot more on this topic, I highly suggest Tasting Beer, by Randy Mosher or for even more advanced (and a much drier read) information, Evaluating Beer. As always when relating to this subject, the BJCP website is a good source of information as well, and its free.
Garde Dog, a Bière De Garde
I am a bit excited to try this one today for one reason. I have never had a commercial example of Biere De Garde. Biere De Garde means to Beer that has been kept, or stored. This is because traditionally, Biere De Garde was a French Ale, brewed in early spring, then kept or lagered in cool cellars until the warmer summer months. Biere De Garde can be either blonde, amber, or brown. Just by pouring this, i am assuming this to be the blonde variety. Also, from those I know who have had traditional examples of the style, each ale usually has a “house” flavor from the cellaring where it is stored. I don’t think this beer will have that character but we will see.
In the aroma I find that toasted malt is the dominant aroma, followed by some mildly floral hop character. Aside from the toast, there is some spicy tones to the beer, which I am not sure if it is from the hops, rye, or yeast but I am suspecting from the use of the rye malt. There is an underlying peachy sweetness. I do not detect any real cellared character or funkiness. Just a good solid malty brew. (9 points)
The color is a pale gold and quite clear. The head was quite thin and dissipated quite quickly. This style should have a good amount of head. (1 point)
The flavor is quite full of toasted malt as well. Some fruity esters, again similar to peaches, and a slight hop bite. The hop flavor is slightly herbal and the rye lends a spicy note to it. I feel the beer finishes out a bit too sweet. For the style, the malt balance is nice when compared to the hops. It definitely takes to the front lines, but lacks a bit of depth I would look for here. I get quite a bit of toasted malt, but not much else. I know that this is the paler version of Biere De Garde, but a bit more depth would make the beer a bit more interesting. The spicy and herbal character are my favorite. They linger long into the finish and taste quite good to me. I do think I get t touch of alcohol here, but at only 5.5% I am thinking it is more the herbal tones than real alcohol here, but I am sure the alcohol is playing a small factor. (14 points)
The mouthfeel is medium with some high carbonation. No astringency. Overall the feel is very smooth and velvet-like. (4 points)
Overall this is a very good beer, but is lacking some depth in the malt arena. I think the toast character is nice, and the spicy/floral/herbal tones are very nice. But a bit more complexity, even in this paler version, would have been nice. Still, I think it’s an easy drinking beer with some definite high points. One other nice touch would have been to dry out the beer just a bit more. I my perception, I felt if finished out a bit sweet. (7 points)
In the end, I gave this beer a 35 which is a very good beer, or a C+ to B- in my opinion. Per the style the beer fits quite well, but is lacking some depth and minor tweaks that would make this an excellent beer in my opinion.
