Beer and Christmas Carols

This Friday, December 4th, marks the official Beer and Carols release party for Gingerbread Jesus.  Join us at Barren Hill Tavern starting at 6:30 to sample this year’s GBJ as well as a a very limited amount of last year’s version.  I will also be blessing a firkin of Gingerbread Jesús- GBJ aged with Mexican chocolate and anchos that I grew and smoked myself.  We will be singing Christmas Carols while sipping away at some GBJ.  Hope to see you there!

Thanks to Brian Biggs for the artwork. and Erin Wallace and Dave Wood for making it happen.   #gingerbreadjesus.

 

Breaking The Christmas Seal

I normally observe and enforce a strict moratorium on all things Christmas until the day after Thanksgiving.  That means no Christmas music or decorations of any kind.  Normally it would also apply to Christmas beers as well.  But today I will make an exception.  That’s because today Gingerbread Jesus 2015 goes on tap.

It was a lot of fun coming up with the concept, but it has been even more fun making it.  This year we kept the same basic Belgian Dubbel base but doubled the amount of fresh ginger and made sure we used whole cinnamon and fresh nutmeg. But never fear- based on a taste a few weeks ago, the spices do not overwhelm the beer.  Last year everyone agreed that the ginger was too subtle so we hope this helps make this already wonderful beer even better. It goes on tap today at Barren Hill Tavern.  The official launch party with Christmas Carols will be next Friday, December 4^th and will include a keg of last year’s GBJ and a firkin of Gingerbread Jesús- which will be enhanced with cacao and ancho chilies.  Hope to raise a toast with you there.

In the meantime I wish you a blessed Thanksgiving with family and friends.

Beer-vangelism

This is Rachel.  Rachel is awesome.  She raises bees and chickens.  She makes her own pickles and preserves.  She is also a really, really nice person.  But Rachel has one fatal flaw.  She hates beer.  I don’t mean that she just doesn’t like it.  I mean she flat out hates it.

But you know what.  I refused to believe it.  Because like you, I know that  beer covers a really, really big range of styles and flavors and I was pretty certain that she just hadn’t found the beer that was right for her yet.

So with a little planning we decided to put this theory to the test.  At the latest gathering of The Franklin Society (our parish beer/homebrew club) we assembled an epic lineup which I was certain would get Rachel to rethink her opinions about our favorite beverage.

We tried to cover all the bases.  We started with a straight forward beer- Half Acre Daisy Cutter.  No bret, not wet hops, no bourbon barrels, no blood orange, no rosemary.  You know- the kind of think you drink and say- “Yep, that’s beer.”  This was not for Rachel but rather to help the rest of us to establish a baseline for the kind of flavors that we knew she didn’t like.

From there we moved into lighter, fruitier and/or sour flavors.  This included Steigl Grapefruit Radler, Lindermans Framboise, Lancaster Strawberry Wheat, an Oude Gueuze, DFH Namaste, Fraoch Heather Ale and a Pear Saison from Tired Hands.

We had some measured success here.  Rachel didn’t hate the Radler, Framboise or the Gueuze.  She didn’t like them particularly but they didn’t lead her to grimace and dump the rest.  Interestingly the veteran beer lovers had no use for the Radler or Framboise because there was nothing beery about them.  We were surprised that she still picked up strong “beer” flavors from the Namaste which we thought might have also been more appealing since it was so light and spiced.  Yet to her it was still bitter.

The next round got into some heavier flavors and higher alcohol and included DFH Positive Contact, Troegs LaGrave Triple, a Lemoncello IPA from Siren/Hill Farm/ Mikeller, Young’s Double Chocolate Stout, DFH Noble Rot and DFH Theobroma.  Overall this round was far less successful.  With the exception of the Lemoncello IPA and the Noble Rot the “beery” flavors kept overwhelming the rest of the experience for her.  We thought it was pretty interesting that she liked the Lemoncello since the hops were not only very prominent but also very catty which was a bit of a turn off for some.

After a good palate cleansing we headed into the home stretch which was an epic mix of big ABV’s and big flavors.  We started with a Founder’s Nemesis from 2010.  It was a long shot but I was banking on the paradox effect.  At 12% ABV and 100 IBU’s this beer is a bitter but balanced monster.  Turns out my instinct was right- Mikey liked it.  The aging may well have helped here since it really helped integrate the flavors.

Rachel with her favorite 5

I was feeling pretty good as we popped the Rochefort 10.  One of my all-time favorites I have used it before to convert self-professed beer haters.  Yet this time I was wrong.  She didn’t hate it but even with all the rich dried fruit flavors Rachel still tasted beer.  This brought us around to the closers.  We started with a 2012 Lost Abbey Deliverance which is aged in both bourbon and brandy barrels.  Now it may have been the cumulative effect of the previous rounds but for the first time Rachel moved from tolerating to actually liking a beer.  The flavors of the barrels definitely had a hand in this success.

A 2012 Bourbon County Stout closed us out and again, Rachel actually liked it.  The aging helped minimize any bitterness and the rich complexity won her over.

And the winner is…

By this point in the evening we were all plenty happy and everyone, especially Rachel, had a great time. And I think paying close attention to the flavors and listening to how she perceived them taught the rest of us a thing or two.  In retrospect we wish we had also included DFH Midas Touch, a Flemish Red and a completely oxidized treasure like Utopia or Baladin Xyauyu, but heck, nobody’s perfect.

Of course none of the beers she liked was of the sessionable variety.  In most cases you’d only want half the bottle and then only with food or as an after dinner treat.  Even so, we proved the point,  And while you will never see her with a pale ale in her hand, we are proud to say that Rachel no longer hates beer.

What about you?  Have you ever successfully challenged preconceptions or better yet converted a beer-hater?  If so, please share you story.

 

Recyling Beer

Its not what you think. In college I tried using beer to water a plant.  Apparently the plant did not appreciate the idea since it died.  And although I sometimes get desperate to find a topic to write about here there is just not much appeal in writing about recycling my beer into the toilet.  But it turns out there is another way to get the most out of beer that would otherwise go undrunk.

All whiskey starts its life as beer.  I knew it in a academic sense.  This past summer in Kentucky I got have close up encounters with huge cypress wood tanks of fermenting “distiller’s beer” which is a higher gravity, unclarified beer made without any hops or other additions that then gets distilled into white dog whiskey.   But until a couple of weeks ago, it never occurred to me that you could take an actual commercial beer and make whiskey with it.

Then I got a call to stop by and see Walt Palmer.  Walt, along with his wife, runs WP Palmer Distilling just a few blocks away from my house.  Although Liberty Gin is their flagship, Walt had started to dabble with making whiskey and plans to market Manayunk Moonshine.

Then he was given 10 kegs of coffee kolsch beer by a local brewery, St Benjamin.  Walt was planning to make whiskey with it but needed some help in figuring out how to move the beer from the keg up ten feet in the air to fill his still.  With the help of a CO2 tank and a long piece of rubber tubing the problem was solved.

The process of making it was actually rather straight forward.  Once we pumped all the beer up and in it was then just a matter of time until the foam, which was taking up twice as much space as the liquid, could settle.

 

The next day, after taking a while to bring to a boil, the still started do its work.  The resulting first running clocked in at about 25% alcohol (the original beer was 4.8%).  After another run Walt hopes to wind up with a final product that is about double that strength which will then be aged with oak.  Look for an update in a future post.

I have no idea what really to expect but look forward to seeing if any of the original coffee flavors make it through. A huge thank you to Walt for expanding my education!

Gingerbread Jesus is Back

Making beer is hard work.  Period.  End of discussion.  Homebrewing is a good way to begin to learn this lesson.  It teaches us about measuring and quality control and after a while we start to understand that making beer, especially good beer, takes a lot of time, focus and dedication.  But industrial brewing, even at a small scale, is a far better teacher.

I was privileged to be invited back into this classroom last week when I returned to Barren Hill Tavern to again lend a hand in making Gingerbread Jesus. One of the first lessons of the day was that sometimes, not everything goes as planned.  We found this out upon walking in the door to discover brewmaster Dave Wood struggling with the grain mill.  For some reason not all the rollers would spin which meant we couldn’t crack the barley.  And, if you can’t crack the barely you can’t brew beer.  After an hour or so of taking the machine apart, making small adjustments and putting it back together again about 3 times we finally were ready to mill the grain.

This is where we got the experience the physical part of brewing first hand.  Hauling and lifting 50 pound sacks of grain and then hauling and lifting the tubs that held the cracked grain into position. 

Once added all that grain has to be carefully worked in so that is thoroughly wet.  The all steel paddle used for this purpose looked kind of like a canoe oar but could also have been the sort of thing you’d see in the hands of a Klingon warrior.  Moving it through a thick slurry of wet grain is no easy feat.  Dave made it look easy but when I took my turn I found it was a whole lot harder than it looked.  It’s not brutal work but it does teach you that brewing is a very physical art form.

After we finished mashing in it was time for a coffee break.  Which leads to another reality of brewing that few non-brewers actually get… namely there is a lot of waiting.  In professional facilities they definitely find ways to make use of that down time.  There is no end to cleaning, checking things like gravity and ph, and generally doing whatever else you can to make sure the equipment is ready to make the next batch.

After a while we moved things over to the boil which meant we could clean out the mash tun.  600 pounds of dry grain doubles in weight which meant there was a lot of scooping into plastic trash can and then dragging said heavy cans outside so they could be picked up by a local pig farmer.  This marked the end of the strenuous activity but hardly the end of the work.

Hops had to be added and then later the spices.  Since we were working to perfect last year’s recipe this meant doubling the amount of fresh ginger but otherwise we kept the balance of cinnamon and the nutmeg about the same.

All told the process took more than eight hours.  I’m grateful to Dave and Erin not just for making this crazy idea happen again, but also for opening the brewhouse so that I and other members of the church beer club could get hands on experience and deepen our understanding of how beer gets made.

Look for more updates on Gingerbread Jesus and the launch party with Christmas Carols very soon.

“Where have you been?”

I stopped by my local beer distributor and those were the first words out of their mouth. “Where have you been?”  After thinking about it for a moment I realized he was right.  I hadn’t dropped by more than once the whole summer.  Of course some of the time I had been away, but the real reason for my absence was that this summer I fell in love with bourbon.

It started out innocently enough.  About five years ago my aunt brought us a bottle of Blanton’s and we were immediately smitten.  This will come as no surprise to most bourbon drinkers since Blanton’s is pretty high up the food chain selling for $60 or more.  To put it in beer terms it’s kind of like starting out with a St Bernardus 12.  Of course we didn’t know any of that at the time.. we just knew we liked it.

In time we started to try other, less pricy bottles like Four Roses and Jefferson’s.  It wasn’t long until you could find a bottle bourbon in our cabinet all the time.   In time rye joined the party as well.

By 2014 that gift of a single bottle had ballooned into a regular part of our routine.  But beer was still far and away my go to beverage.  All that changed this August.  In the course of a single week bourbon managed to eclipse beer as my evening libation.

So what lead to such a radical conversion?  The answer was an amazing six day trip to Kentucky.   With some expert guidance from the great Lew Bryson, my wonderful wife managed to map out a way for us to hit 11 distilleries in 5 days plus squeeze in a trip to Mammoth Cave to boot.  I’ll go into more details about where we went and what we learned in a future post.

But this brings me to perhaps the most ineffable, yet also most important, reason why that week altered my preferences in a way I would have never thought possible… namely that the love of bourbon is something my wife and I now share.  Don’t get me wrong- she likes beer just fine.  But in over 25 years together she has never, and I mean never, showed the kind of enthusiasm for discussing and analyzing beer that she does for bourbon and rye.

Said lovely wife dipping her finger into a fermentation vessel at Buffalo Trace

That added value is what finally toppled beer from its long held zenith.  That few minutes of discussion about which of the now many different bottles we’d like to share that night or the enjoyment of trying something new together… well it really enhances the experience and makes an already delicious beverage all the more enjoyable.

I confess that I am still getting used to this new order of things.  At times when I go to the liquor cabinet for a night cap, it feels like I am cheating on my poor beer fridge out in the garage.  And who knows?  In time beer might just climb its way back to the top.  But for now both my beer fridge and my local distributor will have to get used to seeing less of me.

Going on vacation….. just to wait in line

I have oft been accused of trying to structure vacations around beer.  While my wife does an amazing job with the more critical logistics of accommodation, transportation and cultural highlights, I tend to focus on locating breweries and opportunities to sample beer that I can’t get at home.  My annual trip to see cousins in Vermont is no exception.

It’s no secret that Vermont boasts one heck of a beer scene.  Names like Heady Topper, Lawson’s Liquids, Hill Farmstead and now Fiddlehead get geeks very excited.  But with only 3 full days in state and the need to actually spend some time with family meant that there was no way I could hit them all.  Looking over schedules and maps I determined I could hit the weekly Lawson’s release in relatively nearby Woodstock and then two days later make the two hour trip (each way) to Hill Farmstead.  Fiddlehead would have to wait for next year.

Here’s the thing.  Both trips meant waiting in line.  Lawson’s went on sale at noon and when I arrived at 11:40 there were already 6 people in line ahead of me.  Looking into the cooler I could see that I would definitely get some Sip of Sunshine but it was not clear that I would score some Super Session #2.

While my cousin held my place I browsed the bottle shop and loaded up with local brews.  The line for Lawson’s kept on growing. At 11:55 the clerk took pity on us and started selling.  My cousin helped me to double my score getting his own four pack of Sunshine and six pack of Session.

Wednesday came and I set out on my own with every intention of getting to Hill Farmstead well before the noon opening.  My only other trip there had been two years before for a special bottle release of Genealogy of Morals and Phenomenology of Spirit.   It was a total shit show with geeks flocking in for hundreds of miles.  It took over two hours to get my bottles of these rarities and then get my growlers filled with IPA’s.  But I figured that had to be the exception, not the rule.  Today I imagined I could breeze in and out in 30 minutes or so. 

Thanks to a closed bridge which did not show on my phone until I got there, my arrival was delayed until 11:50.   I was greeted by a full parking lot and a line that stretched out the door.  On entering the building an employee helped orient me to their system which meant I was given a checklist to fill out with how many bottles and growlers I planned to buy.  Once filled out I turned it back in and was assigned an ignominious number “46.” Obviously this was going to take longer than I thought.  But very soon my hoped for departure time of 1 pm became 1:30 and then 2.

Trying a tasting flight of four different drafts helped pass the time.  The fact that beer geeks are also a pretty convivial bunch meant lots of conversation with people of Vermont, Boston and Connecticut.  Even so, it was just after 2 pm by the time my order was filled and wheeled out to my car.

To their credit the staff was quite apologetic.  I learned that Wednesday’s are usually their busiest day and I suspect that if I had arrived at 3 pm my wait would have been much shorter.  Ah, the best laid plans.

It can be argued that no beer is worth waiting in line that long.  But the truth is that most geeks have done exactly that at one time or another.  The question is, Is that a practice we should ever repeat?  In the case of my trip to Hill, given that I spent four hours driving just to be there, there was no way I was going home empty handed.  But the question is, how much time and energy is a beer worth?

There is no doubt that these expeditions can be fun and thus have some intrinsic value that is independent of the liquid goal.  But the investment of time, gas and energy does leave me wondering about the cost-benefit analysis.  Just how much is that beer worth?

Without a doubt the fruits of my efforts are world class.  Yet I can also get world class beers from local breweries via a five minute trip to the local distributor or bottle shop.

What do you think?  What is the furthest you have traveled to get a specific beer?  How long have you waited?  Was it worth it?  I’d love to know.

I Rise to Offer an Amendment

“I rise to offer an amendment to resolution A158.”  Thus I began my plea to ensure that the Episcopal Church did not effectively ban Theology on Tap, Pub Theology, The Biblical Brew Off and other beer-centric programs that are so near and dear to my heart.

Let me explain how I found myself standing on a podium defending beer-based ministry in front of 1000 people. It started back in late December when now former Bishop Heather Cook struck and killed a bicyclist while drunk.  You can read more about the details and my thoughts here.

The result was a great deal of internal discussion. While there were many questions about complicity and failure in her election process, the more important issue centered around about the role that alcohol play in our common life as Episcopalians.

With General Convention on the horizon there was a bit of hyperbole and handwringing with some even calling for Convention to be alcohol free.  But in time the online fervor started to die down.  However a special legislative Committee on Alcohol and Other Drug Abuse was formed to ensure continued engagement.

This Committee produced two primary pieces of legislation.  The first had to do with acknowledging and repenting of our complicity in creating a culture that enables substance abuse and can be hostile to those in recovery.  The second focused on establishing policies and procedures meant to ensure that our parishes are safe and welcoming places for all people including those who are in recovery.  This was a very thorough piece of legislation that covered a whole range of circumstances.

The trouble was that it singled out “Theology on Tap” by name as a program that could not use reference to alcohol, bars, etc., in promotional material or advertising.  (Disclaimer: TOT is copyrighted and owned by the Roman Catholic Church.)  While this requirement would bring our related programs in line with other church activities, it would also effectively kill them.

This was the crux of my argument to strike “TOT” from the resolution.  Unlike a “wine and cheese party” which could easily be re-titled as a “garden party” or the like, there is no way to remove the association with alcohol from such beer/bar based programs. If the legislation remained unchanged it would have halted one of the most creative and effective means we have for reaching out to those who might otherwise feel alienated from the Church.

Thankfully the amendment passed overwhelmingly, in part thanks to the support of many people from the Committee on Alcohol and Other Drug Abuse in moving the amendment.  To ensure their support we added additional langue to the amendment in order to ensure that any such gathering have fellowship, conversation and evangelism as their primary purpose, as opposed to simply being drinking clubs.

I will share more about this collaboration and what I learned  in a coming installment.

Can I get I drink?

First my apologies for being offline for a month.  Life, work, family and travel kept pushing writing a new post to the back of the que.

When I learned that I was going to be spending 10 days in Salt Lake City in order to attend the General Convention of the Episcopal Church, I inwardly groaned.  Salt Lake?  Really?  How boring. More importantly, would I be able to get a decent beer?

Turns out I had nothing to worry about.

Within just a few blocks of my hotel there are at least a dozen bars including two brew pubs, Squatters and Red Rocks.  Indeed within just a few outings I found that there were many local breweries making pretty decent stuff.

Of course there is a wrinkle.  While booze can be easily had the states’ Mormon heritage still shows through.  Most noticeably is in draft beer.  All draft beer in the state must be 4% ABV or less.  While this might sound like a terrible idea to everyone except Mr. Session Beer himself, Lew Bryson, it actually leads to a lot of creativity and some pretty tasty beers too.  The restriction harkens back to the old “3.2 beer.” Since 3.2 measured alcohol by weight as opposed to volume it works out to be the same strength.

While I can imagine that it makes a brewer’s job much harder, they actually manage to put forward some solid offerings.  I’ve had a few solid helles and pilsners but beyond that there are other more interesting options.  Naturally the “session” IPA’s and pale ales are ubiquitous but I’ve also had a really good cream ale and porter and saw a “chocolate, chocolate rye.”

Of course higher test beers can be had in cans and bottles and I’ve had some really solid options there too.  Sometimes the ABV isn’t all that much higher.  I’ve had pilsners and lagers that were 5.5% and tried several IPA’s as well.  I even had a good nut brown and a 12% ABV RIS.

Bobcat Nutbrown at Red Rocks Brew Pub

The other vagary that I’ve encountered has no upside.  High West distillery is just a half an hour away on Park City and makes some great ryes in particular.  I was excited to find a number that I haven’t tried readily available and for a reasonable price.  I found out the catch when the waitress brought me a pour of “Son of Bourye” and I had to ask her if it was as full pour or just a taste.  Turns out that all hard alcohol must be poured out through a device that strictly measures out an ounce.  You also can’t order a double pour although if you have a drink with several alcohols in it then it can have up to 2 1/2 ounces in it. Doesn’t matter how nice you are to the barkeep, those skimpy pours are all the law allows.

So even though there are some real differences I have to say that SLC is a worthy beer destination after all.

The Countdown to Philly Beer Week: Sometimes there’s just too many choices!

Once when I was in first grade my grandparents took me to NYC.  I don’t remember many of the details but one thing that still stands in my mind was going to FAO Schwarz.  For those of you too young to recall, FAO was simply the greatest toy store on the planet.  Back before the net, the FAO catalog that would come before Christmas was pure crack for us kids.  But to actually travel to the Mecca itself- to walk in through those glass doors was like entering Nirvana.  The experience could be quite overwhelming, making it hard to know where to go and what to gawk at first.

That’s kind of how I feel now as I am poised on the eve of another Philly Beer Week.  For the next ten days our city (and metro region) will be deluged with amazing beer some of which is appearing here for the first time or is a one-off brewed just for the occasion.  There are chances to meet some true luminaries and to indulge in carefully paired beer dinners.  There’s also the chance to have some fun doing things like racing to assemble IKEA furniture after chugging two high proof beers and other such creative nonsense.

The problem is that it is actually overwhelming for me to try and assess what to do.  There are after all, only so many hours in the day, so much time I can take away from work and from family and of course only so much abuse my poor liver can endure.

Four or five years ago it used to be easier.. pick a few premium events featuring world class opportunities to taste or talk and make the time.  Now I feel like the first grade me all over again… I look at the PBW schedule and have no idea where to begin.

Look- I am not asking for a pity party here.  As problems go, this is a good one to have.

The best thing for me to do is to admit from the start that no matter how hard I try simply cannot do everything I want to.  Welcome to adulthood, Kirk.  In years past this would have driven me nuts. I would have lost sleep trying to figure out how I can be in two places at once or how I can skip out early on some critical meeting in order to try and get a taste of Super Dooper Barrel Aged Monkey Butt Ale with Brett (on the off chance that is actually a beer name I apologize for infringing on your IP).

But you know what, somehow it doesn’t matter quite so much anymore.  I’ve tried a lot of beers and I will get to try a lot more and even though I may miss out on some amazing brew that I will never get to taste again, what really matters is that my life is still pretty well complete and quite fulfilling anyway.

And so this year I will get out to the Brew Off and together with a Rabbi and a Minister I will again walk into a bar, but beyond that I may only get to a few other events.  And you know what- I’m OK with that.

But, if you’re in the area, do yourself a favor and go to something- anything- cause its all pretty good and this week is something that Philly does better than any place else on earth!

Thanks for indulging me and allowing me to use the blog as my confessional and who knows… maybe I’ll see you out there for Philly Beer Week.

 

PS-  I just learned that the iconic FAO in NYC is closing 😦