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Wood Lake at Kohler
If you are like me, you may be on a budget, but allow a few splurges when it comes to beer, and beer events. Generally these events run upwards of $30 and up but rarely over $100 for a single event. Heck, I have yet to pay over $60 for a single ticket (however I think this year things are going to change because of price hikes). Kohler runs their event a bit differently. They have several events over 3 day, these events range from a golf tourney to beer and food pair demos. Each event requires a ticket, excluding the golf tourney these prices range between $25-$65 per event. Or you can opt for a day or weekend pass for a bit less than buying all the tickets. This year though, they extended a special offering to BJCP judges who would judge the homebrew contest, and gave us 1 ticket to Cheers to Beers (their main beer festival Saturday night), 1 ticket to Shorts and Chefs (a high-end cooking event), and 1 ticket to Blues, Brews, and BBQ (which is the closing festivities and is exactly as it states, a music event with beer and BBQ). We also got an all access pass for ourselves to all the events, and could use the tickets to bring a guest. I could not attend the Blues, Brews, and BBQ because of my nephews birthday, but I did attend a few events Saturday and Sunday and thought it was well worth a write-up.
The Homebrew Festival (ticket price $25)
3 of us Judged Best of Show, which was 10 beers sent on to BOS.
The Homebrew festival actually starts at 10am, way before the doors open to the event. They host a homebrew contest which I at first glance seemed a bit off-putting to some from what I heard in the homebrew community, but once I experienced it, it made total sense. The entry fee was a bit steep however, at $10 per entry. As judges we did end up discussing the cost of entry, and a positive side it added to the contest is that the beer sent in was really good. The thought behind it was if you are going to spend $10 to enter a beer, you want to make sure you had a really good beer to send. I don’t know if this was Kohler’s intent, but it was a theory we came up with on why the entry fee for such a small event. Most of the entries were local however. It was clearly stated in the rules that in order to win best of show, you had to be present at the homebrew festival to serve your homebrew. You needed to bring 5 gallons of beer. It did not have to be 5 gallons of the beer you entered, but it did have to be homebrew. Although this limited the entries to mostly local brewers, it also does promote the hobby. I do wish though, that if if they required you to serve up your homebrew, you didn’t have to pay the hefty entry fee. If you break it down, you have $25+ for ingredient cost to bring 5 gallons of beer, plus the $10 entry fee. That comes out to a conservative $35 per entry. Each category received 1st-3rd place awards, then Best of Show had trophy’s awarded for 1st-3rd place in BOS as well. And the trophy’s were not cheap plastic, but a metal and marble, so that was a plus. The actual event was quite nice. I am not sure how much homebrew there was there, but they had a good turn out ( I estimate 100 people attended this small event, but that is not an official number), and some good beers were served as well.As you can see below in the picture I took as the doors opened, food was included in the ticket cost. The spread was pretty decent as you can see.
Food was included in the $25 ticket price
Cheers To Beers (Ticket Price $50)
Cheers to beers was a lot of fun and the lineup of beers was worth the price, the food was just a bonus. It was held at the Kohler Design Center which houses displays of many bathroom fixtures that are produced at Kohler. This made for an interesting evening when combined with some top-notch beers. For example, the first booth you saw when you walked in was from Mikkeller, and featured the Black Hole Series of beers and the single hop IPA’s. I stuck around here for a while and sampled the same beer, but aged in different types of barrels (port, rum, whiskey, and bourbon) as well as the single hop Amarillo, Simcoe, and Tomahawk beers.
Mikkeller Black hole Imperial Stouts, and Single Hop IPA's
Also present were a wide variety of Belgian Beers, one of my favorites of the night was and Oud Bruin from Brouwerij Bavik called Petrus Aged Pale Grand Reserve. It was pleasantly sour, with hints of cherry and vanilla goodness. All your major players were also there in full strength: Goose Island, New Glarus, Capital Brewery, Dogfish Head, Left Hand, Brouwerij Duvel Moortgat with Maredsous 8 just to name a few. The food here was also provided, this included a full dessert table, which I didn’t have time to sample because I kept heading back to the cheese bar. here are a few pics for your enjoyment before I move on to Shorts and Chefs.
Cheese Bar
Authentic Cask Ale
because it's just not a brewfest without it, and a random drunk guy pic
Yeah, Eiffel Tower baby!
Shorts and Chefs (ticket price $45)
Shorts and Chefs
First I have to make it clear that shorts and chefs is not a food and beer pairing event, which the Kohler Festival of Beer did have, but rather a showcase of the top chefs in the state of Wisconsin. Each chef was paired up with a brewery, but the pairing of the food and particular beer was not intended to be a pairing. You were on your own for finding a good pairing for various foods. With that said, I loved this event and when you see the pics you will see why. Although this event was casual, the cuisine was not. You had everything from ribs and pulled pork, to lamb chops and couscous to choose from. The breweries featured were the same as Saturday nights Cheers to Beers event, so it was not difficult to find some very nice pairings. Again, the food and the beer was all included in your ticket cost, and you could each as much from as many chefs as you wanted. Of my top four favorite dishes, the number one for me was a lamb chop smothered in a yogurt and curry mixture atop some Israeli couscous which I paired up with some more Maredsous 8. It was excellent. My other top three was some type of tiny squash hollowed out and stuffed with a crab meat mixture and garnished with greens and a marinara, a grilled pork belly served with watermelon dipped in a chocolate and balsamic vinegar sauce topped with feta, and an excellent appetizer which was grilled bread cheese (which does not actually contain any bread) on a skewer with a venison brat and served with a date chutney. All four of my favs are pictured below.
Grilled bread cheese topped with a venison brat served with a date chutney
The grilled squash and crab meat dish
Grilled Pork Belly with watermelon dipped in chocolate and balsamic topped with feta
The lamb chop smothered in a yogurt and curry mixture atop Israeli Couscous
In the end, although a bit expensive, if you are a beer lover and a foodie, you will find the Kohler Festival of Beer an event worth the price. I just wish I did not have prior commitments so I could have attended the beer and food pairings and the Blues, Brews, and BBQ event. But from the ones I did attend, I was very very pleased. The beers offered were great and in many cases above the normal beer festival standards, the food was great. And best of all, everything was included in the ticket price. So even if you spent every dime on tickets, you still got to eat.
I am compiling a more complete list of brewers and offerings that were there, so check back and I’ll post a list shortly.
Capital Brewery
Last week Friday I had the pleasure of interviewing Kirby Nelson, the Brewmaster for Capital Brewery in Middleton, Wisconsin. Kirby has been brewing since the late 70′s and continues to this day making some very fine beers. Lagers mostly, but some ales as well. In today’s age of souped up imperial styles, Kirby likes to approach beer from the standpoint where he wants you to be able to down a six pack of his beers. So he shoots for a easy drinking beer for most of his offerings. Don’t confuse an easily quaffable beer with a boring beer, some of Kirby’s beers are my go to summer favorites. Wild Rice, Rustic Ale, and the now retired 1900 are some of my favorite summer slammers. Their new beer Supper Club, I have not had the chance to try yet, but I will be soon. Kirby says that beer is flying off the shelves and I am anxious to try it. Their Autumnal Fire is one hell of a Marzen and Dopplebock Hybrid as well. With that, I will let the interview speak for itself. Since I have since become lazy with transcribing the audio, it is much easier to just download and listen, it is roughly only a half hour long. Again, I am not a podcaster and know I have some lacking audio interview skills. But Kirby is an energetic and to the point kind of guy. I’m sure you will enjoy the audio better than reading it anyway. So Enjoy!
Interview with Kirby Nelson, Brewmaster for Capital Brewery MP3 Download (Click the link and a download page will appear)
As a Correction Note, a few weeks ago I posted a segment on finding Capital beers in a can. I found out in the interview that they have had their beer in cans since about 1997. I don’t know why I have not seen it here where I live, because I am not far from Madison. Maybe the 12 packs escaped my radar or no liquor stores I went to carried the cans. But either way, this was not a new development for Capital, but rather a new discovery for me. The information in that post still is valid though, regarding the benefit of craft beer in cans.
Below are some pics I took on my phone during a tour we got during the NHC Regionals which were hosted at Capital Brewery. Picture quality is not the best.
The brewing area at Capital
Some of the tanks, if you look on the other end of where that Dinosaur mascot is, there are many more conicals stored there. But I didn't take a picture of those.
Here we are getting a special tanks sampling of the Weizen Dopplebock. I am not sure if this sampling was Kirby approved, but I enjoyed it. I didn't want to mention this in the interview.
I posted this picture so you can see during the interview why I asked if he plays Frank Zappa in the brewery. Each of the tanks is named after a Frank Zappa song. Peaches en Regalia is an instrumental piece off Zappa's Hot Rats album.
Judging
When you get your feedback and score back from a competition, it is a good idea to try the beer again while reading the scoresheet. However, there is a lot of people who say they have no clue what the judges are talking about. True, there are times when judges just don’t get it right, I myself know I am not a perfect judge either. But, if you want to truly get an accurate read of what beer the judge tasted, you need to take some steps in understanding how your beer is presented in competition. The beer you pour directly from your tap or from a bottle directly from your fridge, may not be the same beer the judge is tasting. Granted, it is the same batch, but there are variables that change the flavor and aroma of the beer itself. Here, I am going to talk about what you can do to taste your beer in a similar manner as it was scored. This technique will also help you gear up for competition as well. Tasting the beer in this fashion before you send it off, may help you decide if you entered the beer in the correct category, or at least prepare you for what beer the judges may be getting. Because your beer straight from the fridge is not the same beer by the time it hits the judging table. Hopefully, if it was treated well it will be close.
The first thing you have to consider is the environment you are in. I don’t expect anyone to leave their house just to judge a beer, or go back to the place it was judged. But consider your surroundings. Are people smoking? Was something with a strong odor recently cooked or eaten? In a competition, most of the time at least, the environment is kept fairly neutral. Sometimes you get stuck in a bar somewhere that they allow smoking. But for the most part it is neutral. So if you are currently in an area that has some strong odors, you may be missing out on some subtle aromas.
The second, thing is beer temperature. Most of the time, your beer is not served at chilling temperatures that your fridge may be set at. Even if the beer does come out cold, many judges ask for cold beers to be pulled early to give them time warm a bit. If you recall from earlier posts, beers give up more flavor and aroma as it warms. So perhaps pulling your beer from the fridge a half hour before pouring would give you a more accurate depiction of what temperature the judge sampled your beer at. There is also a chance, that your beer was last in flight and may even have been sitting for longer. So when sampling, just keep that in mind.
The third thing is glass size and pour size. I can promise you that it would be extremely rare for a full glass size to be poured at any competition. Like it or not, this also may change a bit of perception between your full pint and the 2 oz sample that is poured at the table. In a two bottle competition, one bottle is opened and poured for two or more judges, and then recapped. Any remaining beer may be used for a mini-Best of Show if there is a dispute between the final placement of a beer, or a tie. The second bottle is not opened until the beer either does not move on to a full Best of Show round (where it is consumed by stewards and other judges) or it moves on to the Best of Show and is opened and evaluated again between however many judges are judging the BOS. In order to replicate the sample size, get yourself a small 4 ounce sample glass like the one below. Or,what I like to use is a mini-snifter glass too. It concentrates the aromas giving me a better evaluation.
Tasting Glass. Fill only half full at the maximum at first. (As a side note. this is my German Porter I am sending off to the Longshot. This was my pre-competition evaluation for this beer)
Same Beer but in a Mini-snifter
One last thing I want to mention, is variables that may change your beer that you have no control over. For example, you have to ship your beer. So depending on when and where the competition is, you have remember that transit time may affect the beer. If the beer gets hot and jostled around in a truck for five days, that will change some things. Also, if it is freezing cold and the beer hits near freezing…or even does freeze. That changes things as well. Another factor is how long the beer is stored before the competition, and if it was stored well. I have heard of some competitions where the beer is stored at someone’s house and then the day before competition it is chilled at the site. Well, if that person stored it in a warm room or in a room exposed to sunlight…..that can change some things that the beer in your fridge was not exposed to.
With these tips, I hope you can get a better feel for maybe why when you get a scoresheet back, it doesn’t seem like the same beer you thought you sent off.
There are many craft brewery’s, 45 as of summer of 2009, I am not sure how many at the moment I write this, but I know of at least one more now who are starting to put beer into cans. I came across some tonight and was quite excited. Capital Brewery has started putting some of their beer into cans. There are a few advantages, and some minor disadvantages to this which I would like to give my thoughts on. First lets take look at my find for today…..
Capital Beer in cans
Here they are. Capital Brewery’s Wisconsin Amber and Island Wheat….in cans! There may be other beers from Capital in cans, but these were the only two I found. I also could not find anything on the Internet about this, so I may be the first one writing about it. That would be neat. Anyway, I will start this article with the only drawback I can think of, which is image. In all honesty, the beer in a can image is the only drawback I can think of. There is still a stigma of beer being a cheap beverage and if it is in a can cannot possibly be high end. In reality, this couldn’t be further from the truth. Beer in cans is probably just a bit better than beer in bottles for many reasons.
The first reason that many craft brewery’s find canning the beer as an advantage is it is a very reliable package. What I mean, is that light an oxygen can be very damaging to beer. Even crown cap bottles, even wax dipped or foil sealed, will allows some oxygen in over time. A can is air tight and unless there is oxygen inside the can, the odds of post packaging oxidation are fairly low. The second factor is light. Most beer lovers know that clear bottles are horrible for beer, green bottles are not much better. They let in damaging light that will skunk the beer, literally changing the hop compounds to the same chemical that a skunk produces, hence the smell and the name “skunky beer”. (A quick side note: A skunky beer is not warm or old. Some beer drinkers call a warm or old beer skunky. No, those are just American lagers that do not taste good warm, which is why they insist on you drinking them cold as ice. The cold deadens the taste-buds and also the colder the beer, the more locked up all the volatile aromas are. Basically, without getting all techie, the colder the less you taste and smell.) Even dark amber bottles will become lightstruck. The darker bottles offer good protection, but not 100% protection. Cans offer 100% protection from light. So with this better packaging, you get a high quality and fairly consistent beer. It is for these same reasons that many people swear by drinking tap beer. It comes from keg which is really just a giant can.
There are a few other advantages to having beer in a can. One of which is that you can take it anywhere. Many beaches or events do not allow glass bottles on the premises. However, you can take cans. So you can enjoy your craft beer at the beach, in a can. Cans also get cold faster (however I guess they do lose their chill faster too if you are holding the can in your hand), so if you pick some up and toss it in a cooler, it should be chilled enough to drink fairly quick. Remember, this is not Coors light which has to be “ice cold”. Just a good chill will do most craft beers nicely. One final quick advantage is the durability of the can. There is no risk of your friend or child knocking over your beer bottle and breaking it on the concrete and cutting themselves. Cans will not shatter and leave a mess if they are dropped.
Now there are some myths of beer in a can. The first we covered. “No good beer would come in a can”. I can list many brewery’s who now can their beer. These are not bad brewery’s or bad beer by any means. Oskar Blues, 21st Amendment, Surley Brewing Co., and Keweenaw Brewing Company come to mind right away. Another myth is that “beer in a can tastes like metal”. This is a myth because all the cans today come with a plastic liner. At no time (unless you have a bad can with a scratch in the liner) does the beer come in contact with the metal of the can. IF someone does get this metallic taste, it is probably from the outer part of the can while drinking. Pour it into a glass and the problem is solved. I still drink canned beer from a glass anyway. Even though cans are a good packaging for beer, it is not a good delivery system to your face. Most of your sense of taste come from smell. How much aroma do you get drinking from a bottle or can? Pretty much none. So you should try to make it a good practice to drink beer from a glass or cup, whenever possible. If I had to drink beer from the can, I would, but I wouldn’t make a habit of it.
I am not 100% sure of this, but one other downfall I thought of while writing this, may be that it is harder or more expensive to put a canning line into a brewery. I know a bottling line is fairly simple, especially a crown cap operation, just by looking at how a can is put together, it appears to be a bit more of an intensive project. But I can’t say for sure, and it is too late in the evening to do some real digging. So I will leave it as “I think it would be harder.” and not state it as fact.
So, in the end I applaud Capital for this move and look forward to seeing more beers in a can from not only Capital, but other craft brewers around the nation. Craft beer, take it in the can!
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.
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!
If you are interested, you can check out the guest review I did on the Midwest Microbrews website here http://www.midwestmicrobrews.com/reviews.html . This was the second guest review done the site and I chose to do Sprecher’s Russian Imperial stout. Also, Mario Rubio did a review of Goose Island’s Matilida, which can also be found on the same page.
- 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.
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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.
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.
I am excited to say that I have decided to add some new content to this blog. Very shortly I will begin interviewing Wisconsin craft brewers. I have a list made of the breweries and am gathering my contact information for all brewers I want to interview. I do have my first interviewee, David Oldenburg, the brewmaster at Titletown Brewery. Dave should prove to be great interview. While at Titletown Dave has won both a Silver Medal in the 2008 Great American Beer Festival (GABF) for their Railyard Ale, a Düsseldorf altbier and a Bronze in the 2009 with Dark Helmet which is a Schwartzbier. The date and time need to be finalized, but I am shooting for early February to get together with Dave. A few other brewery’s I am going to try to line up are Hinterland, Stone Cellar, Hops Haven, as well as some larger craft brewers like Furthermore, Lakefront, and New Glarus just to name a few. Hopefully I can schedule interviews with everyone on my list and keep this idea going.
Homebrew Competition
A friend of mine from our homebrew club, The Manty Malters, has produced some very fine beers lately, and I keep telling him that he should be entering these in competition. First of all, he will get some great outside feedback aside from members of the club, but I am confident he will be taking some awards. At our holiday party this past weekend he was telling me he would like to send beer off, but is unsure about how to package and ship his beer for competition. So, this post is for Brian, and others like him who may be a bit unsure about how to send beer in to competition.
First, you need to find a competition to send to . There are two spots you can look that I know of. First is the Homebrewers Association competition calendar, and second is the BJCP Calendar. You will have to look at the specific rules for each competition because not all competitions are open to all categories of beer, and some are club only competitions. Club only competition means your club needs to be a member of the AHA to enter.
What competition you enter is important too. For the best chance at getting great feedback, regardless of winning a ribbon or medal, you want to enter a large competition or one with a great reputation. Smaller competitions are great too, and each will have some great judges. However, usually (but not always) the smaller competitions also have limited numbers of judges and many times some beers are judges by inexperienced or non-trained judges. But on the flip side, your chances of winning a medal or ribbon (if that is all you are looking for) are better with a small competition. After all, a decent beer has a better chance of placing in a competition where your category has 5 entries, compared to a larger competition where you may be up against 18 to even hundreds of other entries. But a win in a large competition just feels so much better. For some of us though, as long as you get solid and honest feedback, that is what we are looking for.
So, now that you found a competition and made sure the beer you are entering fits the category you are entering (This is very important. You want to make sure you read the guidelines and enter your beer where it fits best. You may have set out to create a dry stout, but if it is sweet you are better off entering it as a sweet because that is what the beer is.), you are ready to ship.
Being a shipping clerk and working in the shipping and receiving industry for 17 years, has given me some insight into how to ship these bottles with the least chance of breaking, while still not costing an arm and a leg. I will run this down for you here, then give detailed description on how I pack for competition or trades. The trick is to prevent the glass from hitting each other, double bag the beers (I will explain why later), and pack the box tight so there is no play inside the box at all. The box should feel like a solid mass with no internal movement. If you follow those rules alone, your beer will make it to its destination safely.
Attach Label
First you want to attach the proper label as required by the competition. You are not allowed to have any markings on the bottle or the cap, so you need to affix the paper label with a rubber band. I also suggest making sure the beer is not cold when attaching the label because the condensation can make any ink you use, run, or make the paper so wet it will rip.
Wrap it with foam, bubble wrap, or newspaper.
Next you want to wrap the beer in a layer of foam, bubble wrap, or newspaper just enough so that if two bottles do make hard contact, they will not clink together or make any sound.
Wrapped tight
As you see, you want enough foam or wrap to make a nice barrier. I also leave enough at the top and bottom to protect the neck and bottom. To hold it in place you can use any type of tape.
1st bag.
Now for the bagging. You want to use this first bag as a catch-all for when the carrier handles the package too rough and it does cause some breakage. The foam will help prevent the glass from cutting the bag (as long as you can foam inside the bag first)if it breaks, and the bag will help contain the beer.
2nd bag
Now here you can do it one of two ways. You can bag each bottle in two bags, or do as I have done and place a few bottles that have been placed in smaller bags, in one large ziplock bag. What this does is give you an additional layer of leak protection. If UPS or FedEx (Never ship beer USPS to competition) detects any leaks, your package will be stopped right there. So this way, even if you have breakage, your package will get to the destination.
Layer large shipments
If you are sending many bottles, you will want to place a large layer of foam in the bottom, then place a layer of bottles. On top of that, place more foam, then your next layer of bottles. You also want to make sure that the sides, front, and back are all packed tight too. In this picture, there is a layer of 4 bottles below this, then a layer of foam, and a partial of two bottles here.
Pack it tight.
Last, you want to make sure you pack the box tight with foam. You want to force the top down so that you can pick up the box and shake it, there should not be any movement. I can tell you that FedEx and UPS handle packages a lot rougher than you think, and putting a glass or fragile sticker on the box does little for how they handle it. So pack it very tightly, that is your best protection. If there is no movement inside the box, you will be fairly safe, and foam and bubble wrap are cheap. So don’t be afraid to use them. Newspaper works good too, but can easily compress. DO NOT EVER use packing peanuts. These allow heavy items to settle and there is a lot of movement allowed by packing peanuts. These are best used for lighter items in bigger boxes, but should never be used for heavy or fragile items.
I hope that helps with how to ship beer for competition. If you have any questions, feel free to comment.
There are some brewers who take great pride in not brewing to any particular style, and I think there is nothing wrong with that. There have been times that I have just brewed a beer for sake of brewing something I think would taste good, with no particular style in mind. I think many brewers have done the same. But there are those who think style guidelines or beer styles are not needed or a waste of time. This point of view I do disagree with and here is why.
Without style guidelines, a brewer has no target to make a desired product. Sure you can brew anything you want, but it is much easier to give your audience a preconceived notion of what they may be buying or drinking. For example, if I were to hand you a bottle of beer and tell you it is a Bavarian Heffe, chances are you will have a general idea of what to expect. If I handed you a bottle of beer and said, “here try this” and then tried to describe what it is, sure you may get an idea of what to expect, but how do you convey this message as quickly and efficiently as possible? By grouping the beer into specific named category, the consumer knows what is expected of the beer in general.
Even if you are brewing for fun and brewed a beer with no style in particular, how you tell a friend what the beer is like when you hand it to them? If you are like most brewers I know you will say something like “Well, its like a porter if you put a German twist on it by combining a porter and and weizen.” Well you may not have brewed to style, but used beer styles to tell your friend what you either were shooting for, what you ended up with. Like it or not, style is helpful in brewing to help communicate general assumptions.
I feel I am very forgiving when it comes to style when I am simply drinking a beer, but when judging a beer or drinking a commercial beer that is listed on the label as a specific style, I am looking for that beer to be within the description of that style. I couldn’t buy a Pontiac Vibe and tell you its a Dodge Viper so why would I accept that in a beer? In competition you need to be fairly strict on style, but be forgiving in an informal environment. That’s just my take.
Here are some guidelines links for anyone interested.
Brewers association Style Guidelines
BJCP Style Guidelines
Now just for fun, let me tell you a story on what inspired me to write this post. Back in September I judged in the largest homebrew competition in Wisconsin, and was paired up with another judge who I ended up having a very rough session with. Rank is not a a sign of judging quality but it can be a gauge of experience. I learned that this guy took the exam several years ago and at this point was an apprentice or recognized, I don’t recall offhand but either way I was the senior judge at the table. All seemed pleasant and he stated he was excited to be judging Oktoberfest beers seeing as it was his favorite style. “I consider myself sort of an expert on this style.” he said.
So all was going horribly once we started the flight. He hated every beer at the table and we spent a long time on each beer arguing over almost every beer. Beers that did not fit the style well, he scored high and others that were OK he scored low. In one particular beer he was trying to tell me the caramel character in this beer is OK for the style and that hop aroma is appropriate. Hmmm, you tell me (Oktoberfest Style Guidelines). Finally as thing were obviously starting to get a bit more heated, he says to me, “Well, obviously you are not familar with the American Oktoberfest style, which this beer obviously is.” Aside from thinking in my head that he was a pompous ass, I proceeded to remind him how judging works and you are supposed to judge the beer according to the guidelines set forth by the BJCP, and the category that the person entered the beer in, another judge stepped in and asked to taste the beer in an attempt to settle our dispute. Well, needless to say he agreed with me that the beer was not in style according to the guidelines. The moral of the story is that style guidelines are there for a reason. To have a set description to grade or compare a beer to. In competition, or any blind evaluation you cannot take liberties and change what you feel a brewer was trying to do. If the brewer gives you a beer and tells you its a stout, and it pours a fizzy yellow and has no roast to it at all, you cannot judge it as a different style against other stouts just because you feel its more like a pilsner.
A beer geek, a beer snob, and a beer nazi walk into a bar. The beer geek orders a cream ale and the snob snorts, rolls his eyes, then asks for an IPA. All this time the Nazi walks out because the bar does not carry Sierra Nevada harvest ale and we all know that if a bar does not carry any Sierra Nevada its just not worth the time.
I was working on a post about this topic when my latest edition of Beer Advocate magazine came to my door. Inside was a very nice article about the very subject I was going to post on, so I deleted it. But now I thought, why should I not post my article on the matter just because someone else did it? After all, this blog is not a professional outlet, just my take on beer, brewing, and beer culture. So I thought I would go ahead with the post anyway.
For those in the know about beer, I am sure you have come across all types of beer enthusiasts of all different levels of interest and knowledge. But in my eyes there are three basic types of beer lovers, you have the beer geek, the beer snob, and the beer Nazis. Each has his or her qualities that make up the beer community and have an impact on beer culture. Let me cover the three types.
The beer geek, is someone who not only knows a lot about beer and/or brewing, but also understands that each beer has its place and like them or hate them, even the American lagers are a style to be appreciated for what they are. Websters defines a geek as: An expert or enthusiast especially in a technological field or activity. So in the beer world, a beer geek would be one who may be a self-proclaimed expert in beer, beer styles, or brewing. In my eyes it’s an enthusiast who has taken the time to try to learn as much as they could about beer and styles, and even though there may be beers or styles they are not fond of, they can respect the beer for what it is.
A beer snob is someone who thinks that any particular beer, brewery, or style is the best or maybe specific beer types, such as low alcohol beers or American lagers are not worth their time or inferior because basically they don’t think they are real beers. Snobs can be hard to get along with, but they usually do show a passion for beer. Many people today proclaim themselves as beer snobs, and refuse to drink anything other than extremely hoppy or very high alcohol beers. Anything less is not “in your face” enough for them. This is OK, but in all honesty they are missing out on the whole picture.
A beer Nazi is by far the worst. They take snobbery to a whole new level and think that only barleywines are good beers, or only beers from their favorite brewery are worth drinking, or if it doesn’t have 20 pounds of hops per barrel then the beer is crap. What separates the nazi from the snob is the strength of their convictions based upon their supposed knowledge of beer or brewing.
I think we all know at least two of these types of beer lovers. I’m not saying that if you are a beer snob, then you are a big jerk or anything like that, but I often wonder how one can truly claim to be a beer lover, enthusiast, advocate, or whatever and completely alienate a beer based on what style it is, who made it, or how extreme it is. After all, shouldn’t we be appreciating a beer for how good it is? How well it was brewed? And in some cases how true to style it is? I like to think so, but I know there are some who beg to differ and think that the envelope should be pushed at all times.
Personally, I can appreciate that, but more often than not I just want to enjoy a good well crafted beer regardless of how extreme it is, or who made it. Heck, I grew up on Bud Light, Michelobe, and Bush and once in a great while I get a craving for it. Sure it’s not my beer of choice and you probably will not find them in my fridge, but it’s not because I think they are crappy beers. They are just not what I usually want. After all, who wants a McDonalds hamburger when you have easy access to nice ribeyes for only a few cents more?
In the end, all I am suggesting is that it is OK to have a favorite brewery, a favorite style, a favorite beer, or a favorite type of malt, ect. But as a beer lover, I ask that you try to take a look at the whole picture and open your mind up to all the potential styles, flavors, and aromas that beer has to offer. I know most of you realize that a cream ale, or American lager can be tough to brew. There is not much flavor or aroma to hide behind, so you do have to respect that these brewerys can make a consistent product that is very tough to produce. I’m not saying you have to drink them all the time, but if your buddy offers you a Budweiser or Michelobe Amber Bock, don’t snort at him and turn your head to his offering. Try to look on the bright side and drink the beer for what it is, then go home and crack open that Imperial IPA
Stay tuned for Part 2, A segment on Beer Styles.
This weekend was a fun beer and brewing weekend. It all started off Friday with the Northernbrewer grand opening in Milwaukee. I then built a new mash tun, and had an epiphany related to the brew in a bag method I had tried. Finally, I brewed a Roggenbier this Sunday and tasted the completed DOA IPA which was the total Brew-in-a-Bag method. I will cover all of these in today’s blog postings.
Northernbrewer and The Brewing Network
Friday was culmination of my favorite mega-brewstore as well as my favorite podcast personalities. A friend of mine was going down for the grand opening of Northernbrewer in Milwaukee. I wanted to go, but I only had one day of vacation left. But then I learned that Justin Crossley and Jamil Zainasheff were going to be there as well. Well, that settled it. I could take a half day and tag along and not only attend the grand opening taking advantage of 10% off everything in the store, but also meet two of my favorite beer personalities. I am an avid listener to The Brewing Network since podcast 1 in 2005. Since then I have seen the conception of The Jamil Show/Can You Brew It, Brew Strong, and that other show. So this was a huge treat for me. Justing and Jamil are both great guys and easy to talk to. I would like to say we talked a lot of shop, but really it was more like talking with friends than grilling them about beer and brewing. Below are some pictures from the event.
Me with Jamil Zainasheff
Me and Justin Crossley
Heck, even Bub was there.
Building my new Mash Tun
This section will just be a series of pictures. Overall, this set up is 60 quarts (15 gallons) and cost me less than 50 dollars! I bought the cooler on sale at a local Walmart for $26. You have to wait until they want to get rid of them after summer. The hoses and hardware cost me $17 and some change at Menards. Here is the parts list.
1-30″ toilet supply line.
1 roll of 3/8″ OD vinyl tubing
1 roll of 1/2″ OD vinyl tubing
4 – 1/4″ hose clamps
1- small plastic valve (Drill out center screen).
60 quart cube.
Note, I need to add a 90 degree copper or stainless elbow to get better drainage.
All the hardware parts
The 60 Quart Cube Cooler.
You need to remove the inner hose from the toilet supply line. This can be difficult in a 30" hose.
You need to crimp and twist one end to prevent grains from going through the end.
Now you need to attach the open end to the 3/8" OD vinyl tubing. Then you wet the tubing by soaking it in hot water. This softens the hose and lubricates it. Then force it down the drainage hole in the bottom of the cooler.
Connect one end of the 3/8" tubing to the valve and if the other end is larger like mine was, attach the other end to the 1/2" vinyl tubing. If the valve sizes are the same on both ends, just use the 3/8" OD vinyl.
Inside shot. As you can see the angle of the hole leads the strainer up too high. For my first brew, I just tipped the tun, but I am going to add a 90 degree elbow to keep the stainless strainer on the bottom.
Here is the completed cooler.
Welcome to New Glarus, you will never want to leave.
Yesterday I was lucky enough to attend the New Glarus Hard Hat Brewery tour. This tour is $18.50 and only held at 1pm on Friday afternoons. Now at first glance the price may seem a bit steep for a brewery tour, but this tour is well worth the price and lasted from 1pm until 4pm. You start out your tour, which is limited to 15 people, at New Glarus’s first location. You tour the small brewery and get a good look at the processes and bottling lines here. We got in to the fermentation area and had a great Q & A session with a guy there who specializes in fermentation processes. From here, we move on to the new Hilltop Brewery and get an all access pass in that brewery. There is a self guided tour at this brewery as well that is free, but the advantage of the Hard Hat tour is you have three tour guides, and gain access to areas that are closed off and roped off to regular visitors. We also had a meet and greet with Dan Carey, the owner and head brewmaster of New Glarus. Upon completion of the tour, you are led upstairs for an exclusive tasting of select New Glarus beers including unplugged and R & D beers. Our selections included all beers I have had before, except for Golden Ale, a beer that is only sold from the brewery and you cannot get in stores anywhere. We also had the Coffee Stout which is not going to be released until January, Old English Porter, Cracked Wheat, Raspberry tart, Yokel, and one other one I can’t remember off hand. I got a lot of great information off the tour, and some of it I will share with you guys and gals in this posting. I don’t want to share it all, that way you have more to look forward to when you take the tour. Some of what I heard is great news and some is what I consider very sad news.
Me with Dan Carey (Owner and Head Brewmaster of New Glarus)
The Fermentation Tanks at the old brewery.
There is enough Stainless Steel piping in the new facility to cross Lake Michigan!
One thing that is very evident from our tour, New Glarus treats its employees with great love and respect, and it shows in the employee’s attitude about not only the brewery, but also about their bosses, Deb and Dan Carey. I don’t think I have ever seen this level of love and respect for ones boss ever. It truly reflects the atmosphere of the workplace as a whole. This just shows that quality ingredients, along with quality people and honest love of ones job really creates a high quality product. Our tour was led by Scott, DJ, and Chase and these three really made the tour quite entertaining as well as informative. They made it clear that the tour was for us, the fans and consumers of their beer and without customers like us, New Glarus wouldn’t be what it is today.
One other thing to note is that New Glarus does not have a huge corporation mentality, not only are their brewing processes truly green in that they recycle their waste hot water to heat other processes, but also donate their spent grains to local farmers for livestock food. Yes, donate, not sell. The appearance of the new facility was also designed to not only compliment the local architecture, but also hide any “factory” look the brewery may have. The big red barn on the south side for example, is strictly for aesthetic purposes and hides some unsightly equipment. There is even a beautiful cut stone stairway up to the brewery with a flowing stream as well as flowers, trees, and shrubs. You don’t really feel like you are walking into a stale brewery, but rather a brewing haven.
Some interesting findings I got from the tour, is that New Glarus has no plans to distribute outside of Wisconsin (Sorry rest of the country), even with the ability to brew more with the new brewery. The reason is that even with the increased capacity, they still can only satisfy demand here in Wisconsin. And the demand shows, New Glarus does not distribute outside of Wisconsin, and they are ranked 14th in the US for overall craft beer sales. If you ask me, that is incredible.
I asked Dan Carey about the plans for 2010 as far as the unplugged series plans go. He stated that in 2010 we will see the return of Enigma, Apple Ale, a Belgian (I think he said Belgian quad again, but I am not 100% sure I am remembering correctly), a bock, and some more barrel aged beers. I asked if we will see the return of either Smoke on the porter or maybe another smoked beer, like a smoked IPA. He said the possibility is there in the future, but we will not see anything like that in 2010. He did say that he loved smoked wheat beers, so I personally would like to see a smoked wheat in 2011. So lets keep our fingers crossed. I am fairly excited to see some of the older Unplugged beers repeated for two reasons. First, they were great beers. Second, I saved several of them and if they repeat the beers I can compare young and aged side by side. Off the top of my head I still have a few bottles of Bourbon Barrel Bock and Belgian Quad in the beer cellar so I hope those get repeated.
One bit of sad news I learned yesterday is that Hop Hearty IPA will probably be retired in 2010, and in its place will be a new IPA more along the lines of the west coast IPA’s. For some, this may be a welcome change, but for me it is not. What I love most about Hop hearty is that it is not an American IPA like all others. The malt profile of New Glarus’s IPA has some serious depth and makes them a refreshing change from the overly hopped versions that everyone else has. In the end, I think they will brew a great beer, but I wish it was an addition to the line up instead of killing off an old friend. For me, the Hop Hearty IPA was set apart because of its rich malty profile, combined with the American hops. It was a lot more balanced and offered a lot more complexity than many of the other IPA’s out there. For me, this was an old stand-by if I was in the mood for an IPA that was not like any of the others. I am just happy I have one more year with it.
All in all the tour was a wealth of information about New Glarus and I highly suggest taking the hard hat tour. But if $18.50 does not sit well with you, the self guided tour is free. Another advantage of heading off to New Glarus is being able to by an R&D beer that you will not ever find in stores (but I will be reviewing the Golden Ale soon so stay tuned for that), plus I picked up the Cran-bic Ale which is not supposed to hit stores until November. You can buy it at the brewery, and as a matter of fact, the tour guides told us that they just labeled all those unplugged beers the day before our tour! Talk about fresh.
Another thing to quickly note is that Randy Theil, formerly of Ommegang Brewery now works for New Glarus. Randy was the first American inducted into the Belgian Brewers Guild. So I think we can expect to see some more Belgian influenced creations in the future.
Randy Theil, formerly of Ommegang and the First American inducted into the Belgian Brewers Guild now works for New Glarus.
Here are a few more photos from the tour.
They were Brewing Spotted Cow at the Hilltop brewery when we arrived
Some new kegs full of Snowshoe Red Ale getting ready for shipment in November.
Our tour guides: Chase, DJ, and Scott. A great group of guys who obviously love their job.
The stairway leading up to the tasting room.
We sampled several beers including the Golden Ale, Coffee Stout, and Old English Porter to name a few.
The advantage of making it to the brewery is you get some beers you can't get elsewhere. They just labeled the Cran-bic ale the day before our tour and I picked up 2 packs. The Golden Ale is only sold at the brewery, you will not find this in stores.
Drinking a pint of Fat Squirrel right from the source. I enjoyed this pint on the steps of my favorite brewery, and just soaked in its aura. It was awesome.
Review of New Glarus Cran-Bic Ale
Because I was lucky enough to pick up a few packs of the Cran-Bic Ale, I thought I would do a quick informal review. It will be interesting to see how this ages because I got this the day it hit the brewery’s store. Cran-Bic Ale is a fruit lambic style beer.
New Glarus Unplugged Cran-Bic Ale
The aroma gives off some very mild earthy and barnyard aroma, lighter than I would have thought with the lambic base, but there. For me, the brett is nice and subtle at this point. I wonder how it will progress. What I got most in the aroma was sweet tart fruit (obviously from the cranberry) along with some clean malt. You will not find any hop aroma here, not only wouldn’t you expect it in a lambic style, but you wouldn’t want it in this beer anyway. ( 10 points)
The color is amazingly red, crystal clear, with a pinkish bubbly head to it. Reminds me of cherry 7up. (3 points)
The flavor is a bit sweet, there is some sourness that mingles well with the tart cranberry. For how red this beer was, I was expecting it to be overwhelmingly cranberry like, just like the Belgian Red is very strong in cherry and Raspberry tart is smash you in the face with it’s raspberry flavor, this beer was not quite as fruit flavor packed as those two. The flavor is very good, with just barely enough brett in it for those who want to find it to be able to, but not nearly enough to put off others. My wife even liked it, and she hates geueze because of the brett character. All in all I didn’t find the cranberry flavor all that much as you have come to expect from cranberry juice, but was rather more like semi-tart cherry than dry and puckering like I expected. The lambic side of this beer is tart, acidic, and only slightly funkdafied, which will appeal to the masses. The sweetness is just enough to offset the tart slightly, and also plays with the fruit. As a good fruit lambic should, the fruit takes center stage but the lambic side is noticable. Great beer! (18 points)
Mouthfeel is light, and there is enough body from the malt and fruit to prevent this beer from feeling too watery. The beer is tart, but not astringent. (4 points)
In the end, this will be a huge hit during the holidays, because it is just enough lambic to keep the beer geeks interested, and enough fruit beer to satisfy those looking for an easy drinking, sweet, and refreshing holiday beer. But if you are a hardcore geueze or lambic fan, don’t expect to be hit over the head with funk, I think this beer was meant to be more a sweet holiday alternative to the traditional holiday spiced beers. For me, I would like to see just a touch more lambic quality to the beer, but that will come forward with age. I personally wouldn’t change a thing at this point. (9 points)
Final score is 44 points! That is a solid A in my book and I am more than happy to lay that score on this beer.
Oktoberfest is right around the corner, and to celebrate, I picked up a mixed six pack of Oktoberfest beers to review from six different brewers. Five of which are American brewers and one German. Over the next few days to week or so, you can expect to see a head to head match up between these beers. I will be attending Great Lakes Brewfest on Sept 19th, so I will also comment on that. But that is always a great time.
By far the best book I have ever read on the pairing of beer with food has to be “The Brewmaster’s Table” by Garrett Oliver. On this post I am just going to list some of the most common food and beer pairings he has in his book. This is by by no means the whole list and I strongly recommend getting the book to fully understand the reasons why a particular beer pairs well with a specific food type. Without that knowledge this list is nothing more than a meaningless guide and you have no reasoning behind why these are good pairings. Also, as he states in the book, this is not the definitive list on what to pair together, it really all just boils down to personal preference and taste. A basic guideline is to try to find a beer that compliments, not contrasts the food you want to pair it with. You will get the idea as you see the examples. Also with strong or spicy foods you are looking for high carbonation to cut through the strong flavor. Another great book that goes over this topic is Tasting Beer by Randy Mosher. Although not in as much depth’s as Oliver’s book, it’s still a good reference.
Apple Pie- Imperial Stout, Strong Baltic Porter, Cream Stout.
Avocado (as salad or Guacamole) – American Pale Ale and IPA
Bacon with eggs – Bavarian Weissbier or Belgian Witbier.
Bacon with other savory dishes – Belgian Dubbels, German Rauchbiers and Doppelbocks.
Bass - Weissbier, Witbier, North German Pilsner
Beef (roast) – British Bitter and Pale Ale, German Altbier
Beef (Braised, short ribs, cheeks) Belgian Dubbel and strong dark Trappist and Abbey ales.
Bouillabaisse – Tripel, biere de garde, Belgian strong golden ale.
Brownies - Imperial stout, Baltic strong porter.
Burgers - American Brown ales, Pale ale and IPA, Schwarzbier, Altbier, American Amber Ale.
Burritos - American Pale and Brown Ales, Altbier, Smoked beers
Cajun - American Pale and Brown Ale, Schwarzbier, Dunkel, Saison
Calamari (fried) – Pilsner, helles, Kolsch, American Amber Lager, American Pale ale, Saison.
Liver – Strong Dark Trappist and Abbey ale.
Caribbean - Pilsner, American Pale Ale, Saison, Irish or Foreign-style Stout.
Cheese – See segment below.
Cheesecake – Sweet Fruit beer, Baltic strong porter, Imperial Stout, American Stout *I have to say that my Farmhouse 1871 goes AWESOME with Turtle Cheesecake.*
Chicken (Roasted) – Biere De Garde, Dunkel, Bock, British Bitter and Pale Ale, British Brown ale, Oktoberfest Marzen, Dubbel, American Amber, Belgian Pale ale
Chicken (Fried) – American Amber Lager, American Brown Ale, Altbier
Chicken (Barbecued) – American Amber and Brown Ale, American Amber Lager, Porter, Smoked Beer
Tandoori - American pale Ale, Saison, Belgian Strong Golden Ale
Chili - American Pale ale, Brown ale, and IPA, Irish Stout, Smoked Beer
Chinese – Weissbier, Weissbock, Smoked beer, dunkel, Belgian strong golden ale
Chocolate – Sweeter fruit beers, Imperial Stout, Stronger American Stout, Baltic strong porter
Chowder – Weissbier, Witbier, Helles, Kolsch, Pilsner.
Clams – Pilsner, Belgian strong golden ale, Helles, Kolsch.
Crab – Witbier, weissbier, helles, American pale ale, Belgian strong golden ale.
Eggs – Weissbier, witbier, American Wheat beer, helles, Kolsch
Goose -Dubble, Strong Trappist or Abbey ale, Doppelbock, weissbock, strong Baltic Porter.
Gumbo – American Pale ale, Brown ale, and IPA, American Amber lager, Dortmunder, weissbock.
Ham (Baked) – Irish Stout, Pilsner, Dortmucnder, Hellesbock, Oktoberfest marzen, Tripel, Belgian strong ale, English Brown.
Ham(Aged) (Prosciutto, Serrano, Bayonne) Irish Stout, Schwarzbier, Porter, Hellesbock, Doppelbock, Dortmunder, Weissbock.
Ice Cream – Imperial Stout, American Stout, Cream Stout, Strong Baltic porter, Sweet Fruit Beers.
Indian (spicy) – Saison, Pilsner, Dortmunder, Hellesbock, American IPA
Jambalaya – American Pale Ale and IPA, AMerican Amber Lager, Saison, Pilsner, Irish Stout, Schwarzbier.
Lamb (roasted) – Bubbels, Scotch ales, Strong dark Trappist or Abbey ales, old ale, bier de garde.
Lamb (Grilled) British and American Brown ales, American Amber Lager, Schwarzbier, Irish Stout.
Lasagna – American Amber Lager, Belgian Pale ale.
Lobster – Weissbier, witbier, pilsner, helles, Irish Stout.
Real Macaroni and cheese – British bitter and pale ale, dunkel, altbier, oktoberfest marzen.
Meatloaf – British Bitter, Brown Ale and Pale ale, porter, dunkel. oktoberfest marzen; altbier
Ostrich - Biere de garde, tripel, Dortmunder, hellesbock.
Oysters – Irish stout, pilsner, helles, Kolsch, gueuze, Flanders red ale
Pecan Pie – Imperial Stout, American Stout, Cream Stout, strong Baltic porter.
Pizza – American Amber Lager, American Pale and amber ale, Oktoberfest marzen.
Salads- Weissbier, witbier, American Wheat Beer, Kolsch or with Blue Cheese have Dopplebock.
Salmon – weissbier, witbier, american wheat beer, saison, pilsner, American IPA.
Smoked Salmon – Pilsner, Dortmunder, Saison, Weissbier, Witbier, smoked beer, gueuze.
Steak – American Amber lager, American brown ale, altbier, porter, and dubbel.
Thai food- Weissbier, Saison, American pale and and IPA, American amber lager, altbier.
Trout – Weissbier, weissbock, or smoked beer if fish is smoked.
Veal – Dunkel, hellesbock, Belgian strong golden ale, weissbock, saison.
Venison – Doppelbock, dunkel, old ale, British and American brown ale and porter, strong dark Trappist and Abbey ale, strong Scotch ale, smoked beer.
The word on Cheese and Beer.
I am not going to go into a lot of depth at all on this, but this topic cannot be covered on only a few styles. Besides if you are that interested in knowing, your best bet is to buck up and buy the book, or another book on this topic.
Most people think of wine going with cheese but according to the Brewmaster’s Table, cheese and wine are not a good pairing, except in rare cases. The reason that some people pair wine with cheese is because that is what they think they are supposed to do, but in reality cheese coats the palate and blunts the flavor the wine. This makes harsher wines taste OK, and that is fine for mediocre or cheap wine. But if you are spending a lot of money on a wine or want to experience the actual flavor of the wine cheese is not a good pairing for the wine. Beer on the other hand is a lot better pairing. Part of what helps beer stand up to cheese is the carbonation, even if it is a lightly carbonated beer. The carbonation helps scrub the palate and clear the way for more cheese. There are so many combinations and possibilities with this category that it is really up to you. I will list a few of the suggestions from the book to help you out.
Serious complex cheeses like Aged Cheddars and the like cheeses. You want to find a beer that has a sharp bitterness to work with the cheeses sharpness, some nice fruit character and biscuity malt to match the nuttiness. IPA fits perfectly. Also consider Saison with an Aged Gouda.
With milder cheeses like a Swiss, you may want to consider a Dopplebock. The silky, toffee and sweet matches the Swiss very well.
Also the author strongly suggests that with the very stinky cheeses (some of my personal faves)a Biere De Garde will pair up flawlessly. Another good choice would be a barleywine. And speaking of Barleywine, I just want to toss out there a suggestion he highly recommends. Try Barleywine and Stilton cheese. I have never heard of Stilton cheese, but if you have you may want to give it a try.
I just want to add that one of my favorite pairing with cheese is framboise with Gorgonzola. It is very good together. The tart sweetness of the raspberry melds very well with buttery and salty bite of that cheese.
