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I got my scores back from the National Homebrew Competition last week. I only entered one beer, and although it did not go through to the finals, it did score fairly well. Since I also judged at this event, I already knew my beer didn’t advance to the next round. My overall score was a 33.3, with scores ranging from 31 to 36. That is pretty close to what I thought the beer might do. I could have got lucky and received a higher score, or it could have ended up like one competition where the beer was quite good and it bombed. It happens. But in this case it was right around where I felt it was as well. What I do want to show you is some prime examples of a couple of good scoresheets. One good scoresheet, a good scoresheet that is missing one key component, and one very poorly written scoresheet. I will black out the names of the judges who did these to protect the innocent. But I think this is a great example of the highs and lows of what to expect in competition when getting feedback. Still, out of three judges to get two decent sheets with feedback is still not acceptable. All three should have at least put forth an effort, at least that is my take. Whether I think they are right or wrong, or I agree with what they say or not doesn’t matter. The effort put forth is what does.
The goal of competition is obviously to put your beer up against other homebrewers beers of the same category and fight for bragging rights. The secondary, and sometimes most helpful aspect of competition is to get feedback on how to improve or tweak your beer. As a beer judge, you owe it to whomever paid the entry fee to give honest and complete feedback. Regardless of what you do while judging, as long as you put forth an honest effort to this, you are a good judge in my eyes. Always remember that on the other end of that beer you are tasting, is someone who paid their hard earned money to not only pay the entry fee, but also pay the shipping charges to have that beer on your table. For this reason, I do get upset with large flights and long judging days. I just feel that by the time you get to the end beers, you are unable to give the same feedback that you do to beers number 1 through 10. Anyway, lets dissect my results.
Cover Sheet
First thing to notice and pay attention to is where your beer was in the flight, and how many beers were in this flight. As you can see from my cover sheet to the left, my beer was 5th in a flight of 12. This is actually a good position. The judges have gotten the first beer out of the way and even had a few others to gauge where the average beer in the flight may be. Typically the first beer tends to score lower than it may really be. Many judges feel you can’t score the first beer as 40 points, because what do you do in a flight of 15, if 3 other beers tend to be just a bit better than that first one? Where do you go? Also, being last is not good because by then the judges may have palate fatigue or just simply be bored with the flight. It does happen, whether any judge would like to admit it or not. So 5th is a nice spot in the flight, however there were a lot of beers after mine so when it comes to who to move forward, my beer could easily be forgotten as well. Also, flight size is important too. If there were 4 beers in your flight and you took 3rd, well you got a ribbon/medal, but is that really where you want your beer to be, 3rd out of 4th? However, change that up to 3rd out of 15 or 20, and that means a hell of lot more. I can live with that.
Now lets start with the bad and work our way to the good.
Example of a bad scoresheet
So let’s just for a second forgive the judge because hopefully he is inexperienced (Apprentice usually means they are a new judge waiting for the scores. But now they have a selection for that) Because he has a rank, he took the exam and did not do too well. Well, I can see why. If he gave feedback like this during his exam, I can see why he didn’t even get above 60 points. Anyway, lets look at why this is so bad. First off, the comments he leaves are very vague and hard to understand what he means. Aroma: earthy, malty. Appearance: medium head retention, off-white head, bright amber color. Flavor: malty, citrusy dry finish Mouthfeel: Nice carbonation, med body. Overall Impression: Malt back ground, dry citrusy finish, ??? ??? hop aroma, ?????? in body and finish. That my friends is a total of 35 words…..actually 33 full words and only 32 I could read. There is no reason for point deduction, no recommendation on what I could do to make the beer better. Now to get even more picky, there is no description of what he was tasting. He took 5 points off for aroma. Why? Not enough hops for him? Too much Hops? Why take a whopping 10 points off in flavor for an American Pale Ale which is malty, with a citrusy hop presence and dry finish? You get the picture. When you get a scoresheet like this. You really have to contact the Competition Director (comp_director@bjcp.org) and let him/her know. Judging like this is waste of your money and it is obvious this judge either doesn’t care and is there for reasons for himself, or needs more education. But he is not doing anyone any favors.
OK, now for a much better sheet.
Better sheet
This is a much better sheet. The judge here obviously was tasting the beer and was interested in doing her job. The comments on what she was tasting are good, and well described. Although I would be looking for a bit more info in my scoresheets. For example, what could I have done to push this beer into the next level for her? I like to know that, and really we should be telling the people that. They may agree or disagree, but we need to let them know what they could have done to do better.
The last scoresheet is pretty similar to the second one, but he does give some helpful insights into what I could have done to boost my score.
A good sheet
Now, granted, the BJCP wants you to fill all the lines. That is a good guideline to start with when filling out sheets. You should try to leave no line not filled in with some observation or suggestion. But, this can be very hard in lighter styles, very one-dimensional beers, and lifeless beers. But as a rule you should try. I am sure this judge did, based on several of his lines filled out (especially when compared to sheet #1). I am just stating that for reference. Overall I was happy with the feedback I got, except for the one sheet. I would have been quite upset if there were only 2 judges at the table I got a sheet back like that. That did happen to me once, and I didn’t contact the director. However I do it now. Otherwise judges like that will taint the reputation of those of us who at least try.
This was a topic from my old site, but seems to get a lot of hits yet. Unfortunately, I don’t have the draftbox any longer and for some reason, at this time cannot find my old pictures. But here are the directions for building a draftbox for the 5 liter mini kegs and philtap.
1 – Valve Stem from an old inner tube (A.K.A. Schroeder valve) ($0 if taken from an old inner tube, or a buck or two if you buy one new.
Here is what the valve stem looks like
4 – 1/4″ hose clamps
8″ of 1/4″ inner diameter vinyl tubing or nylon braided vinyl tubing. (Less than $1.00)
1- Faucet Assembly with 3″ shank (2″ will work too) wing nut, tap handle, nylon washer and tailpiece and short segment of beverage tubing (or use the picnic tap tubing that came with the philtap). ($35.00)
1 – 28qt cooler ($10.00)
**optional 6″ of 1″ inner diameter tubing cut in half and glued to the inside for storage of 2 extra CO2 cartridges.
All I did was Drill the holes in the cooler with a small hole saw and for the tubing used a large drill bit. All you need to do is assemble the faucet assembly (it’s so self explanatory I am not going to list how to do that.)
For the gas line you have 2 options. You can do what I did and use the valve stem, or you can cut the gas inlet tube off the phil tap, and use the 1/4″ I. D. tubing as a jumper. What I did was drill out the stopper valve in the valve stem and then placed the vinyl braided tubing in boiling water to soften it. I then put a little bit of caulk on the valve stem and inserted it into the softened vinyl tubing. I then tightened a hose clamp around the valve stem. I now have a gas in hose. Slide the tube into the hole you drilled out for it and fill the gaps with caulk and let them set. Then connect the other end to the phil tap and secure it with the other hose clamp. You should be all set from there.
I also had some old 1″ tubing left over from a blow off tube and I just cut some small sections and glued a plastic bottom on them and glued them to the inside of the cooler. That way I can have 1 co2 cartridge in the dispenser and carry 2 along with me so I know I will not run out of CO2 at a party.
This cooler also fits perfectly in my beer fridge and it was how I kept beer on tap in my bar.
I am trying to dig up some old pics from somewhere, but here is the only picture I can find of the draftbox.
Only photo left of the draftbox at this time. It fit 2 mini-kegs inside
If I find the pictures from inside the draftbox I will post those for clarity.
EDIT: I could not find one anywhere. I can’t believe I deleted them. Anyway, here is a crude drawing of what the inside of the cooler would have looked like, then from the outside above, you get the picture.
Crude drawing of the innards of the draftbox.
NHC Midwest Regional
OK, today Poker is considered a sport right? They broadcast it on ESPN after all. Then beer judging in competitions could be considered a sport as well, if there was a competitive angle between judges. At least this is my thoughts after this weekends National Homebrew Competition Midwest Regional round of judging at Capital Brewery in Middleton Wisconsin. I have judged big flights of beers, and I have judged fairly large competitions…..but I have never been exposed to something of this nature before. My day went like this. At 9am we had our calibration beer. Then we started the actual rounds of judging. Throughout the day I went through 34 labels to put on my scoresheets, which means that I judged 34 beers. I was also the lead judge on two tables, so I had to partake in 2 best of show rounds to find out what three beers from the category would advance to the final rounds. These best of shows 8 beers in one table and 12 on another. This comes out to having 55 different beers cross my lips that day. And I was by far not a unique case. The judging lasted from 9am to just after 5:30pm. Which is a good average actually, it comes out to judging one beer every 6.7 minutes with a 1/2 hour lunch.
The competition was well run and very well organized.The whole thing was run by the Madison Homebrewers and Tasters Guild, who did a bang up job on the competition. I really have to tip my hat to those guys. It was really well run. They even had their judging assignments figured out to not allow any judges to judge in a category they were entered in (pretty standard for all competitions), mixed up judges the best they could to mix up clubs, and paired experienced judges with inexperienced judges. That may not sound that hard, but I think mixing up all three in a competition this size would have been tough. Also, I think perhaps the online registration made things run a lot more smoothly than a hand checking method. If I remember correctly the competition was maxed out at 750 entries and there were just over 50 judges. So right there you know you are in for a big run.
Now, I know there was no way around this. It was a huge competition. But I felt bad that night when thinking about the last round I judged. It turned out to be a big flight (which I think all the flights were big by regular competition standards), and I think my judging skills were shot. I was tired, my palate was extremely fatigued, and my nose didn’t seem to be picking up much of anything at that point. Here is where is seemed a lot like a sport. You can’t just give up. You have to push through, re-evaluate your body and try to reset yourself in some way to evaluate that beer. Someone on the other end of that paper paid good money to have you evaluate that beer. You can never lose sight of that. And I think that is where I think my bad feelings were coming from. I just don’t feel those people in those last flights get the same quality as those in the early flights. Unfortunately, that’s just the nature of the beast. But still, even though you do the best you can at that point, you just are not fresh enough to give a good evaluation. I’m not even mentioning how tired your wrist and forearm are from writing all day. Wah Wah….I know.
All in all though, I personally had no real bad beers that day. I think the lowest score I gave was a 24 or 25. Nothing below 20. However, there were some tables who got beers like this one.
Is this a beer or our breakfast muffins?
If you send a beer like this to competition, I can pretty much assure you that it will not do well. I just hope the reason it was sent in was to help find out what went wrong, and not actually expecting an excellent score. Unless of course, this was a freak bottle from that person’s batch. Normally, a gusher like this is a sure sign of some sort of infection, and the tasting of this beer did prove it. I did not taste it, I have had enough infected beer in my day to know what it probably tasted like, but the guys next to me who did get this beer gave it a full evaluation. So kudos to them 
This beer continued to gush even when half full, and for about 15 minutes after the pour.
A highlight of the day came after the judging was over. The Madison Homebrewer and Tasters Guild took good care of us. After judging there was a party at Capital brewery where there were several beers on tap, including the Blonde Dopplebock, Hopplebock (a blonde dopplebock highly hopped with Tettnanger if I remember correctly), and Capital Vintage Ale among other Capital beers. However there was also a Three Floyds Berliner Weisse on tap as well as the Ale House’s Hopalicious. We also had a brewery tour where we got to taste a beer I can’t recall exactly which one, right from the fermentor. I think it was a weizenbock, but I could be wrong because I had a few beers and some mead by that time.
So in the end, it was a lot of hard work judging all those entries. But it was well worth the three hour trip for me. I got to meet some people, experience a competition of this size, and hang out with a room full of beer lovers. It was a good time!
OK, I am not going to get into a lot of depth in this post, just the basics to help push you in the direction of all grain brewing, if that is something you are interested in. All-Grain Brewing can be as difficult and technical as you want it to be, or it can be just as simple as extract brewing….with some additional time. This post is not a complete instructional post on all things all-grain. This post skips any technical data or brewing science and just shows you the process…..the bare basics of the process. If you read this and find you want to learn just a little bit more than I provide here, check out John Palmer’s Website “How To Brew”, here is a direct link to the All-Grain Brewing chapter.
So why go all grain if you can make perfectly good beer with extract, and extract takes less time? Well, the simplest answer is that you have more control over the brewing process and you can more accurately brew styles that are very difficult to master with extract. The reason is because when you brew all-grain, you are mashing whatever grains you want or need for that beer. If you use extract, the bulk of the grain bill is decided by whomever produced your extract. Even using light or extra light extract, you have not control over what brand of grains or the mashing temperature. In all grain, you are creating your own extract, just not concentrating it. This gives you more control, more room to be creative, and you can create styles using grains that require mashing. Also, lets be honest. There is a a step up in the pride factor as well for brewing a beer you created 100% from scratch. I want to stress this, all grain brewing does not produce better beer. If you are having a hard time making good beer with extract, you will not make good beer all-grain. You will read all over the net, several homebrewers stating that all-grain makes better beer, or once they switched to all grain their beer got better. This is all bunk. If that were true, all-grain beers would be winning all the 1st place, gold medals, and best of show in competition. What it does do is produce a wider range of styles more accurately than extract, and many times ferments out a bit more than extract. The “All Grain=better beer” mentality comes from a combination of more brewing experience, “I did this all myself” pride, and the control over ingredients. Not many brewers start out with all grain, and when they make the jump to all grain they know that they love the hobby enough to stick with it so are committed to brewing quality beer, and have learned to pay attention to sanitation and brewing practices. There is also a mental sense of pride when you do something all by yourself from scratch, that makes the product seem….well, better. We already covered the range of ingredients that all grain covers, and that is every single grain available. If you use fresh malt extract (the age of the extract does make a big difference in extract brewing), and pay attention to cleanliness and sanitation, you can make beer that is almost indistinguishable from an all-grain beer. I promise you. The part most often ignored is finding extract that is as fresh as possible, most imported extracts are not good in my opinion just because of this factor.
There is a few downfalls to all grain brewing. The first is you are probably going to add a few hours to your brew day. You have more water to heat, the mash takes 60 extra minutes, you have the sparge (even batch sparging will add a few minutes), and most of the time the wort takes longer to get to boil if you are not already doing full boils. There are also a few more technical details that can go wrong. I am not going to cover them in detail, but you need to be aware of them in case you need to troubleshoot your beer. You may need to do water adjustments if you have problems with your PH in your mash, you will need to monitor the crush you get from your grains, and water temperature is crucial in all grain brewing (this I will explain later).
So to show you how easy all-grain brewing can be, I am going to show you how to make a simple Nut Brown recipe, without making any water adjustment or using any complicated equipment. All you need is a mash tun (home-made is just fine and cheap), a good thermometer (preferably a digital one where you can set an alarm when it reaches a specific temp) a boil kettle big enough to hold 7 gallons, and a smaller pot to use as a hot liquor tank, and a fermentation bucket or carboy with an airlock (I personally like buckets. I used glass carboys for years but like the bucket for easy cleaning, will not shatter, and they are cheap to replace). That is about it. Optionally you can use hop bags, stainless mesh balls, and either an O2 or aquarium pump with aeration stone, hydrometer with test cylinder, and PH meters . But those are not required to make good beer, but having them will help make consistently good beer.
Jaba’s Busted Nut Brown
(download the recipe below if you want to brew this, it is basically Northern Brewer’s Nut Brown Ale Recipe)
Brewsheet – BeerXML – Beersmith Format
The first thing you need to do is determine your water volume. By far the easiest way is to use brewing software. What this does is take into account the amount of grains (because the grains will retain water after the mash), the evaporation loss, and loss to trub and transfers. Next the software will ask what temperature you want to mash at. I wanted to do this at 154, so with adjustments made (by the software) for grain and mash tun temperature, I need to bring my water to 169 degrees to have my mash equalize at 154 degrees.
Almost there....only 2 degrees left.
So once the 2.66 gallons of water was added to the mash tun, then I added the grain and stirred. It showed a temperature of 153......which is not bad. But it has not equalized yet, you may get readings a few degrees higher and lower for the first few minutes.
I stirred the mash to make sure there were no dough balls, or other dry spots in the mash. You want to stir it very well, then place the cover on to allow it to equalize. I leave the thermometer in the mash to monitor temperature.
……and now it equalizes at…….
....at 154. Just as the software calculated. Sweet! Now if you are off by a degree or two, it is not the end of the world. A slightly cooler temperature will result in a more fermentable and dryer beer, while temps higher than 156 will yield a more full bodied and sweeter beer.
Now you wait 60 minutes after the temps equalize. Halfway through the process you want to start heating your sparge water. I do batch sparging because it is both faster and easier to do than fly sparging. But you can choose whatever method you wish. You want to heat your sparge water to above 180 degrees, but I like to avoid boiling. Too hot and too long of a sparge can extract tannins from the grain husks. So I heat my sparge water to between 180 and 185.
Once your mash is done and the sparge water is heated. You want to get your boil kettle ready to catch the first runnings of wort. If you have only 1 pot, you can run your beer into a plastic fermentation bucket until you are into your final round of sparging. I do 2 to 3 rounds of sparging, depending on what I need for a final water volume (which again is determined by the software). In this case I needed 5.75 gallons of sparge water. Below are some pictures of the first runnings and sparging.
You want to run your first 2 to 4 quarts of wort into a pitcher or bucket then re-circulate into the top of the mash. The reason is the first little bit has a lot of protein and husk material that when poured back into the top is filtered by the grain bed. This will result in a better looking beer, and reduce the chances of tannic astringency.
Recirculation...the cheap way.
Some people defuse the pour by using the back of a spoon. I have not found any difference in using a back of a spoon or not, so the choice is yours.
Once the 1st runnings are out of the mash tun, you want to quickly pour in your hot sparge water. If you wait too long the grain bed can become compact and a bit harder to work with. Once the sparge water is in, you want to stir well to dissolve any sugars in the grains.
Here is just a shot of how I collect my wort. Directly into my boil vessel.
Now I did two rounds of sparging here. Below I am showing you three pictures, all of the same beer. What this will show is the amount of sugars and other goodies you are extracting from the grains. The first picture is from the 1st runnings, look how dark the wort is. This is the highest concentration of malt sugars, then compare that to the second and third runnings. This is normal.
1st runnings
2nd runnings
3rd runnings
Here are the spent grains. You will have some sugar left in them, so if you taste it, it will be slightly sweet. If it is real sweet, you probably didn't stir your sparges very well or used too little water.
From here on out is the same as any extract batch. But for fun, here are some more pics of my all grain process.
I don't have many of these, so they don't work well for very hoppy beers. But for 1 or 2 ounce additions these things are great. THey help keep the hop mess down when it comes time to drain the cooled wort. You have to remember that the hops will expand when wet, so I only fill them to less than half full. But they work better than hop bags in my opinion. They don't float and keep the hops submerged.
2 balls perfectly hold 1 oz of pellet hops.
Chilling is very important in all grain beers. From my experience, you have higher DMS levels in all grain beers compared to extract, but maybe that's just me. So the faster the chill and more vigorous the boil, you eliminate the DMS factor.
I also like to Aerate. This is not a requirement but it does help with yeast health and getting a solid full fermentation from your yeast. Here you see my home-made set up. I use an aquarium pump with an inline hepa filter, and a racking cane with vinyl hoses. All this NEEDS to be sanitized well because it comes in contact with the cool wort. I boil my stainless diffusion stone and soak the lines in Star San.
Aeration set up
Last, add the yeast. I love to use a good quality dry yeast. I use US-04 for clean and American styles and s-04 for British styles. Other styles I use liquid yeast because those special strains just are not as good in dry form. But for your basic American and English ales, dry yeast is very good. For this beer I am taking a suggestion from my Brewer Interview and using more dry yeast. For the same cost or even cheaper than 1 vial of White Labs or 1 smack pack of Wyeast, I get 2 packets of dry yeast with a very high cell count and no need to do a starter. (I also sanitize the yeast packets prior to opening them and sanitize the scissors that I use to cut the packets open)
That’s about it. I would like to give a quick shout out to Mike and his buddy who did not participate in this blog entry, but a good time was had none-the-less.
Hinterland Brewing Co.
If you have not heard of Hinterland Brewing, chances are you soon will. Especially if you live in Wisconsin or the surrounding area. Joe Karls from Hinterland Brewing makes some damn fine beers, and now that the brewery, based in Green Bay with another restaurant location in Milwaukee is bottling their own beer right on the premises. With this new addition, they have the ability to pretty much bottle whatever they want, where prior to this, their beer was brewed and bottled at Grey’s brewery using Joe’s recipe and Hinterland purchased ingredients. The Pale Ale, bottled in 12 ounce bottles, was pretty much all you could find. But now you can find the beer in 16 ounce bottles, and as I type this they have their flagship Pale Ale, Luna Coffee Stout, Maple Bock, and an Amber in bottles with a plan to bottle a Cherry Wheat for summer. They also have several beers on tap as well, and while at the brewery I was lucky enough to sample the bock. All the beers I have had so far have been great, with my favorites being the Pale Ale and Coffee Stout, but I did go through a growler of the Bock on Easter. OK, enough chatter, lets get on with the Interview.
Quick Note: This is the abridged version. I learned from the last interview that transcribing it word for word is a long and arduous task. For the complete audio from the interview, download the MP3 here.
Joe Karls, Brewmaster at Hinterland Brewery
How Long have you been Brewing? I started homebrewing 25 years ago, but I have been brewing professionally for, actually I have been brewing here for 14 years. Actually it was my anniversary just a couple of days ago.
Have you ever brewed anywhere else? Only as a volunteer. Just day brews here and there. I brewed at Cherryland brewing with Mark and Tom up there, which is now defunct. When I was just getting into brewing professionally I went down for a brew session with Gray’s Brewing, just a few things like that.
What was the most challenging process to transition from homebrewing to pro brewing? My last job was not really a physically demanding job. Brewing on this level is very physically demanding. I was very tired for the first couple of weeks before I got my feet under me. There are three levels here: the basement, the main level, and the upper level. During a brew day I’m hitting all three levels multiple times. And I’m squatting, climbing, lifting bags of grain, and lifting half barrels. For example today I just lifted 24 half barrels onto pallets. (Joe does all this himself. He is the only brewer employed at Hinterland, so he does all the brewing, cleaning, and hoisting of the barrels.)
These are the actual Half Barrels (and yes they are full) that Joe had stacked prior to my arrival. All this done by hand.There is no forklift or chain lift at Hinterland.
What type of brewing education have you had, if any? Most of my education, like most people in the industry, came primarily from homebrewing. Once I got into it, I read everything I could get my hands on like books, magazine, and periodicals. Once the Internet became more than just dial-up, that was a fantastic resource. I talked to brewers before I got into the profession. Then I took the short course at Siebel Institute in 1994. I did that to solidify the knowledge. And the short course is just that. It solidifies the knowledge you picked up while homebrewing. If you were not a homebrewer, you would be confused as all get out in that course. So the short course helps you solidify that knowledge as well as make the transition from small recipes to large recipes.
How do you come up with new recipes? Is it by instinct or more technical with a lot of planning? There are two phases. There is the idea of the recipe. That can come from myself, the customers, or the owner of the company. Even the distributors will come and say “I really want to do this cherry wheat, we’ll go out and we’ll champion it, and really push this. Can you do something like this.” So I said sure, then we talked about what we wanted this recipe to be all about. So the idea has to come from the fact that I have the cellar space, I want to start with this new yeast I have coming in, so what can I brew with it that I have not brewed before? So that’s where it comes from. The idea of a new beer.
After that, I go to the liquor store and buy maybe a dozen different beers related to that style. I’ll sit down with the owner of the company and we will taste them and talk about “Yes this is what I’m thinking” or “No, I want it a bit more hoppy than this one”. What attributes to these beers have that we want to target? Then we pick a few of those beers and figure out what we would change to meet our expectations. From there, we take what we want our end result to be and I work backwards, all the way back to the beginning starting with the water analysis.
Hinterland, dining area
So do you produce test batches on a small scale first? I used to, but that was before three kids and a wife. When I first started, I would make a test batch in my kitchen and Bill and I would talk about any changes we would want to make. But now that we’ve been doing this for quite a few years, and knowing our system and our raw materials we are using we can get things fairly close without a test batch. We may make some tweaks to the recipe as we remake it.
What would you say is the key to your success here at Hinterland? It’s passion from everyone involved. I’ve been doing this for 14 years and still love it today. We recently put in a new bottling line and that ignited the passion for putting beer into bottles again. One other thing I love here, is the owner Bill Tressler, is a brewer himself. He has a passion for beer. That’s huge because this was a brewery set up by a brewer. A lot of the brewpubs and places like that are set up by restaurant owners or entrepreneurs, and those places may not be set up the way I would want them set up, as a brewer.
From right to left, the Hot Liquor Tank, Mash Tun, and Boil Kettle.
Out of the beers you offer at Hinterland, what is your favorite beer to brew? I don’t know if I really have a favorite to brew. From a selfish point of view, the ones that are easiest are best. I have a lot to do in the brewery, so if I can get the brew done that is best. But If you forced me to pick one, it would have to be a stout. I really love to brew that when I have someone in the brewery who is not a homebrewer or just getting into brewing like a distributor or sales staff. I love to brew that because it’s amazing to see what they think of a stout recipe. “You mean it’s not all burnt grains, it’s 85% fermentables.”
What would be your least favorite beer to brew? Weizen. Sticky? We do a honey wheat and a cherry wheat and those are just 30% wheat, and not so much from a stuck mash, but sometimes they cloud up on me because they are so much more doughy. So I’ll have to stop and re-circulation or re-vorlauf my mash. Then our Weizen is 50% wheat so that’s a bear. So yeah, Weizen.
Do you have any beers that maybe you thought may not be well received, but turned out to a be huge hit? Or do you have any that you thought would take off that just didn’t seem to do well? I do have a couple of cases of each. People always want whats new, like a seasonal. When you first tap them, they go like gangbusters, then level off. But one that surprised me that I think is a fantastic beer, we only have about 4 gallons of it left right now. Brewed it last summer to get a new lager yeast started. It’s called River Rock Red. It’s a red lager, it’s a bigger beer at about 7% alcohol content, a lot of hop character (we used hallertau hops) I loved it. I think its fantastic. I brewed last June, and here we are in April and we still have some left. On the flip side the owner wanted me to do a raspberry beer. I want to do a raspberry rye because the rye beer will mask a little bit of the sweetness of a fruit beer. I didn’t want to bitter it up with hops, I didn’t want a sweet beer I wanted a dry beer, and that’s what rye malt does. It helps create a bit a dry feeling beer. Anyway, I thought the beer was alright, but wasn’t going to set the world on fire. But to this day I still get comments, when are you going to do it again?
Besides your own beer, what is in your fridge at home right now, what beers do you usually have on hand? I have a lot of things. I’m not one of those guys who are down on the macro brews, I think they are a great product just like any other style of beer, a well made style of beer. I think they are great product depending on your mood, the time of year and things like that. So in my refrigerator right now, well I like to work out and I watch my weight, so I do have Miller 64. We do distribute with Miller so I do try to keep their products. I do have Pabst, Shiner, Summit (I’m a big fan of Summit), I do have some Budweiser that someone brought over. I do have Sam Adams Nobel Pils at home as well. I have a lot of stuff in there, only a few of each, but a lot of stuff.
Fermentation Room. Funny story, when we were in here there was some solid fermentation going. Even though it smelled awesome, we could only stay in a short time, even that short time we started to become winded from low oxygen levels.
Do you listen to any music while brewing? No I don’t. I don’t even have a radio in the brewery. I’m usually running around the brewery and don’t have time to hear the radio. If I would have something on, it would be NPR.
My favorite beer from Hinterland has to be the Bourbon Barrel Aged IPA, it’s outstanding. I had the beer in 2007 and at this year’s Beer Lover’s Brewfest, and how it aged was very interesting. Can you tell me what inspired you to brew that beer? We first brewed this beer in 2001, and the inspiration was Bigfoot Barleywine. The beer has changed a little bit, and I think we came close to nailing it. We didn’t oak age it at that time. We did oak age (not that beer), we started oak aging in 1999 in not only bourbon barrels but also new oak barrels. Some beers turned out great and some not so good. Over time we learned what types of beer take well to the oak and what didn’t. You know, you don’t want to put a pilsner in an oak barrel because it’s just too strong of a flavor for that beer. The oak masks all the flavors that make a good pilsner. Big beers, hoppy beers, dark beers those all take to oak aging very well. When we came up with the Imperial, we called it a Barleywine and it was not oaked at the time. We had so many guests at the time who were not beer savvy, and they would come in and see on the board “Barleywine”. They would say, “oh, I don’t want a wine.” They would just dismiss it. Our staff was constantly explaining that it was not a wine, but a beer but it has similar strength in the alcohol and such. So we thought if you get into a real high alcohol Imperial IPA and you look at the terms Imperial IPA and Barleywine, they are very similar. I’m just going to shoot off on a tangent here for a second Many of the styles overlap a lot. Moreover, many people who are beer savvy, some who think they are beer savvy, will criticize for it not being true to style. I am not one of those guys. I’m in the business of selling beer, so I want to remain true to the style of beer, but I want to be able to market it as well. So anyway, we switched the name to an Imperial IPA and suddenly people got it. Well we started putting it into oak, and I was testing every couple of months. Early on it had hard edges and it was strong, and the bitterness was up front and really biting. Well, like a fine wine, as you aged it, the edges will round and become softer, the flavors on the palate will become softer, and the flavors will blend. We discovered that this beer was at its peak at about 18 to 24 months so I don’t even release it for at least 12 months. The beer that you had, depends on the generation, how many times I used that oak barrel. The more times I use that oak barrel, the less bourbon and flavors from the oak you get. So if I’ve use that barrel three times. I may leave it in there for 18 months, or 20 months. The beer you had this year at the fest was aged 20 months in that oak barrel. To pull some of those flavors, can take that long. The beer you had was brewed in October of 2007, and you tasted it in February of 2010. (here is where we have a short discussion on the two versions of the beer I had, barrels, and touch more on style and judging. It doesn’t really fit the interview, but you can listen to the audio to get that full discussion. If you only want to hear that portion, you can start it at 21:00)
What’s your take on fruit beers? It’s just like my take on any beers. Just like people slamming micros who are macros drinkers or people who are into micros slamming macro beers, I don’t slam any beer. From time to time I like fruit beers. I like most subtle fruit beers, I don’t like the hit you over the head fruit beers…unless they are supposed to be. Like New Glarus Belgian Red, the fruited lambics like the Framboise. Otherwise I like a lighter style of beer with a subtle fruit.
Some of the bourbon barrels in the kegging room
What can we expect to see from Hinterland in 2010? We have beer in bottles, and we expanded our distribution. That’s different from the mid 90’s when you would go to different distributors and you hope they take you. So your sort of lost and floundering hopeful someone picks your beer. Now, we actually have distributors coming to us saying they really want our beer. So now we are expanding our distribution throughout the state, where before we were limited to our keg product which was pretty much just northeast Wisconsin. So back to the beer in bottles, we have our Pale Ale now which is in 16 ounce bottles which is brewed and bottled here. For the last few years it was brewed and bottled using our recipe and our raw ingredients at Gray’s in Janesville. But now we are bringing that back in house. So we have our Pale Ale, our seasonal which is Maple Bock is in bottles, our stout is in bottles, in about three weeks our Amber will be out in bottles and our Cherry Wheat. Then later we have an Oktoberfest coming out which will be bottled.
The new bottles and beer offerings from Hinterland Brewery
Are there any new beers in the works? We have no plans to release anything new that we have not done before. Normally every year I do one or two that is a new or different when I have the cellar space, but this year we just don’t have the space. Our production has gone way up, it is for sure double, maybe triple our production. We are actually going to be cutting back on more styles. That being said, we are going to be doing our bourbon barrel stout. It’s basically our Luna Coffee Stout and aged in bourbon barrels. So that we are kicking around. I don’t know how much we are going to produce. I don’t know if we are going to bottle that, or just keep it in kegs. So we are working that out.
The new bottling line at Hinterland Brewery
You offer a vocation vacation where a person can test drive their dream job of being a brewmaster under your mentorship. What would a typical person’s experience be like for this package? We were approached five or six years ago by Brian Kurth from Vocation Vacation. That was his idea. He had this idea to test drive new vocation’s. He does have this in several counties around the world. If somebody came up to me a few years ago and said, “Hey, I’m really into brewing and can I brew with you someday?” Normally I would have said, come through for a tour and I’ll show around. But you know I’m busy, I’d have to change my schedule to accommodate them. I start brewing at 2am, and chances are somebody may not want to get up at 2am to come start brewing. Then you have the liability issues, if someone gets hurt or something. That is actually something our lawyer brought up. But Brian got that all taken care of. So now for a fee, you can come do that. What I have been getting, is people have been giving these as gifts to people who are homebrewers and maybe want to see what it’s like to brew on a big scale like this, but maybe have good jobs and don’t want to get into this for a living. Then I do have some people who are actually thinking about changing their career, either starting a business or starting a brewpub. So Brian takes care of everything as far as liability so we don’t have to worry about that, and he goes as far as taking care of travel and hotel reservations. So within a package, all you have to do is show up. We have had some great guys come in, we have not had any gals yet, but some great guys. What we offer, being a smaller brewery and me being the only [Brewery] employee, we offer a full day, start to finish half batch, which is 15 barrels instead of 30. We do that so you are not here for 14 hours, you’re here for ten instead. It’s all hands on. I go through what all the equipment is about, how to work the valves and I assist them. They do all the work. They have to hook up all the hoses, they have to scrub out all the grains, they have to spray out the mash tuns and clean them up. I just answer the questions. So they get all the hands on experience. So if you are looking at this as a career change or opening a brewpub, like we had a guy come through two weeks ago. He wanted to sit down with Bill the owner [of Hinterland] and find out what it takes to run a brewpub. Bill owns a Hinterland restaurant in Milwaukee, he owns this Hinterland brewery and restaurant, and he owns the Whistling Swan Inn and restaurant in Fish Creek. So this guy was able to sit down with Bill and talk about the pros and cons of micro vs. brewpub, what is like working with staffing and so on. He got to bounce all this stuff off of Bill and get a lot of these types of questions answered. He got to have him [Bill] as a dedicated teacher or mentor for an hour and half. (If you are interested in trying the Vocation Vacation, click here for more info )
If you could give a homebrewer, or aspiring pro brewer one key piece of advice to improve their beer, what would it be? I don’t know if I can give just one. Cleanliness, attention to detail, and take good notes. What I always tell homebrewers, and I think this is something I hope anyone reading this or listening takes to heart is always over-pitch. I remember when I started homebrewing and I would get this little packet of yeast, and I would think, “Is this really supposed to ferment all my beer.” No, you need more than that to get good active fermentation, and a quick fermentation. One of the things I have learned is to over-pitch. So I would throw away that packet if it was a dry yeast and go out and get three packets of five grams, and pitch those. If using liquid yeast I would grow it over and over and over, and use it from batch to batch. To get off flavors in your beer, like rubbery flavors, you would have to pitch so much yeast it is almost unimaginable. So over-pitch, you get a faster fermentation, you get no lag period, and guarantee your beer will turn out better. I over-pitch here in the brewery and it works. I have been doing it for 14 years here with no problems.
A lounging area at Hinterland.
Thanks to Joe and Hinterland brewery for giving the opportunity to tour the brewery and provide a great interview. As a side note, Hinterland would a be a great place to stop in Green Bay and make a mini-brewery beer crawl out of it, Titletown Brewery is right across the street. So if you are heading to Green Bay, both of these great places are right by each other.
It has been a little while since my last post, but there has been a lot going on. First I have been working on finishing a brewhouse just off my garage (pics to come when fully complete). That has sucked up a lot of my spare time over the past two weeks. The good news is it is done except putting in the ceiling, and I will be brewing in there tomorrow. The second thing is I was gearing up for my interview of Joe Karls from Hinterland Brewing in Green Bay. I completed that interview this morning and will start working on posting it right after the Easter Holiday. So keep an eye out for that. But in preparation for that interview, I wanted to review Hinterland’s Luna Coffee Stout. All I can say is I have had some of Joe’s beers from Hinterland and I have to say, that guy can brew! If you have never had a Hinterland beer, you have to get your hands on them. I have never had this one, or another one I will be reviewing shortly, the Maple Bock, so I am pretty excited to try this one.
Hinterland's Luna Coffee Stout, no doubt about the coffee here.
As you will find out in the interview, Hinterland’s bottled version of their pale ale was previously brewed at Grey’s brewery using Joe’s recipe and ingredients, but using Grey’s equipment and bottling line. Now, Hinterland has a new bottling line right there at the brewery in Green Bay. This will help them expand the beers they offer in bottles, and give them much more control over the whole process. The new bottles are 16 ounce German bottles, that are pretty heavy duty, so you fellow homebrewers out there can really utilize these bottles after you empty them. Currently they have this coffee stout, their flagship Pale Ale, an Amber, and the Maple Bock available. There will be a Cherry Wheat ready for summer that will replace the Maple Bock. Ok, enough with that. I’ll save the rest for the interview. Let’s get started with the review.
This beer is a coffee stout, which has no official category, but is within the style in American Stout, I am unsure if coffee is added but I am going to assume so, so it would actually be in category 23 as an American Stout with coffee added.
Aroma: The first thing that hits me from the pour is there is a distinct coffee aroma. If there is no coffee added to this beer I would be shocked. The coffee aroma is so bright and clear I couldn’t imagine it being anything other than real coffee. Some subtle chocolate are floating around in there as well. There is also a nice roasted grain aroma, typical of a stout. I don’t get much in the way of hops here, but I think that is by design. It is a coffee stout and it delivers coffee, and roasted barley character. (9 points)
Appearance: The beer is almost completely black at first sight. However, if you hold it up to the light you will see some deep ruby or garnet tones, and also notice it has some great clarity. The head is a nice frothy tan head that last long into the pint and provides some great lacing. (3 points)
Flavor: No surprises here. The flavor is coffee, but I don’t mind that. That is what the beer is billed to be. In the flavor, there are a few more components coming through a bit stronger than in the aroma. For example the dark chocolate is picked up a bit easier, there is a creamy……well….cream flavor that is bouncing around as well. There is just a subtle sweetness that prevents this beer from becoming quite dry, and makes is very drinkable. I don’t get much in the way of hop bitterness, and it seems a lot of the bitterness comes from the roasted grain. I have to say I am very impressed with that factor. I know there are hops in there, but the bitterness I perceive is not derived from the hops. Which to me, means that this beer is in perfect balance between the malt and hops, and again the coffee character is showcased. A dry bitter coffee flavor lingers into the finish, along with some roasted grain. (18 points)
Mouthfeel: The beer is a touch on the thin side. Although personally I like that, there should probably be just a touch more body to it. The texture is creamy with just a bit of roasted grain astringency…or maybe from the coffee (4 points).
Overall: OK, I know it may seem like I’m trying to build up to the interview. But trust me when I say I am not. If you go out and try this one, and you like stouts, you will not be disappointed. First off, I am not a fan of coffee, but I can tolerate it is certain circumstances. This beer actually makes me want to go out and drink coffee, if I knew coffee tasted this good. The balance is outstanding, the brightness of the coffee combined with the dark chocolate and mild cream is a winner in my book. If I were to make any suggestion it would only be one, just a touch more body. The aroma was very nice, maybe could be pushed up a bit more, but maybe the coffee wouldn’t come through as bright. The flavor is almost magic to me. This would also be the perfect beer to enjoy with your dessert. (9 points)
Overall I give the beer a 43, which would translate to an A or A-. All I can say is I have a new stout to add to my favorites.
