Month: January 2010

Nashville, TN area

Hi club-
Below are the nominations for the 2011 MCB officers. The floor is still open to nominate someone or yourself. Elections will be at the February meeting.

Thanks
Brandon

Nominated:
President- Chris Rueger
Vice President-Brandon Jones
Treasurer- Steve Johnson
Secretary- Millie Carmen
Burgermeister- Gil Cupp
Communications-?

Please follow the link below for the results of Fugettaboutit 2010. Congrats to Phil Snyder for his 1st Place BOS win with His English Copper ale (Category 8A). Also congrats to the other MCB members for their wins.

http://www.barleymob.com/fugetaboutit/2010.php

Jonathan
___________________________________________
Club-
I was thrilled to see MCB’s strong showing at the Barley Mob competition! Nice job to everyone who took home a medal.
Continue reading “Club Update: Music City Brewers”

Not actual picture of solar cells used

Written by David Young for the Fort Collins Coloradoan

The second Fort Collins brewery in less than a week has launched a photovoltaic solar electrical system to utilize the sun’s rays to help make beer.

Mere days after New Belgium Brewing Co. launched the largest privately owned PV solar array in Colorado, Odell Brewing Co. activated its own solar array Thursday.
Continue reading “Odell Brewing rolls toward sustainability by activating its own solar array”

Misery Bay
Erie Brewing
IPA
Erie, Pennsylvania
6.5%

Profiled by Ken Carman

I am very familiar with these brewers. They used to be in the old train station in Erie when they had a brewpub. Now a fine brewpub called The Brewerie occupies that location. Expect a Brew Biz on it probably sometime this year.

Most of Erie Brewing’s beers are OK, but pushing any envelope? Big stand outs in craft brewing in any sense? Eh, hell no would be an appropriate response to both questions, at least the last time I had one: and I have had several including their signature beer, Mad Anthony. Not impressed. But I must admit; it’s been a while and I have never had their IPA… until now.

I was surprised.

Cascade nose up front with definite caramel sense. Mid-gold color. Less dark than smell would insinuate… you would think all this caramel-like malt sense would “brown” the quaff more than this… at least a bit of very light brown, or tan. Carmel mouthfeel with moderate carbonation. Clings to roof of mouth. Head dies soon.

Taste: lots of carmelization. Seems heavy body-wise/mouthfeel at first, but drops off fast. Not knocked over, but probably best beer had from these brewers I’ve ever had.

I recommend it.

I believe Misery Bay might be where the colonials hid their ships on the eastern side of Presque Isle where they couldn’t be seen when being chased by the Brits, They hauled them by hand across the peninsula that sticks quite a few miles into Lake Erie. That left the Brits wondering what magic trick had made our ships disappear.

It is a pleasure to drive and walk the beach on the western side these days, but I suspect when the colonials kept disappearing as they chased them around the western side the King might have considered Presque more of a curse. Or maybe some huge middle finger lifted right in the face of the British.

It also serves as a graveyard for many patriots.

Written by Charlie Papazian

From Examiner.com You can follow this series there, but please check out other sources, like bjcp.org for taste evaluations, defects and judging standards. This should provide a more complete picture.

(Prof. GA- Is it possible the Examiner missed printing part of this article? Some spaces were blank and descriptions incomplete or somewhat askew. But the information is still interesting.)

Several quantitative variables differentiate one beer from another helping to define beer styles.

During the 1980s and early 90s analytical variables measured by Professor Anton Piendl of the Institut für Bräuerei-Technologie und Mickrobiologie der Technischen Universität München at Weihenstephan established a baseline for identifying beer style characters.  More than 500 different beers were analyzed.  The data helped American Homebrewers Association and Brewers Association begin its work more than 25 years ago to help develop its current guidelines for beer types.  Professor Piendl’s work was published over a 13 years period in the 1980s and 1990s in the German brewing journal Brauindustrie.   Here is a list of the values he measured.
Continue reading “Beer Styles: What Do Beer Scientists Evaluate?”

“MR. Colbert! How DARE you steal Scribe’s pronunciation of ‘report.'”


Courtesy Beernews.org

Harvest Dance
Wheat Wine Style Ale
Boulevard Brewing
Kansas City, Kansas
9.1%

Start with unpredictable foam. Scribe doesn’t mean “open and run like HELL to the sink.” That happens and wheat can do that. Brewers USE it to bolster head. Scribe means: open it, start to pour and part way through the pour the glass suddenly fills and the bottle overflows. Let it sit there and it overflows, then not, overflows, then not. In other words: about as unpredictable as a cat dropped unto a bed of hot coals.

Ruined a TV control. That’s OK. Mrs. Scribe wanted to watch soap operas.

BARF.

9.1? Tastes like more and still loads of sweet. Aroma: sweet and wheat. Maybe just a bit of peppery yeast. Maybe.

Mouthfeel? Scuse Scribe for a sec. What did ya feel, mouth? Oh, yeah. OK. Scribe will tell them. “Foam, wheat and sweet.” This beer has about as many dimensions as Flatland. That would be: two. YUP, that’s about it: sweet and wheat. The foam doesn’t count because it’s so &^%$#@!)*&^ unpredictable.

Misty yeast/wheat haze. Slight light gold color. If labels made beer grand, at least the packaging would save this. But it doesn’t. Why didn’t they keep the red provided in the picture culled from Beer News? Looked better. This was kind of a Dracula BLAH-se’ brown.

Did they fully ferment this sucker? Barley wines can be sweet too, but to claim this is cloying is like saying the only problem a puking kid is the cement-like PBJ sticking to the roof of his mouth was a teensy weensy “cloying.”

If not for that: “drinkable,” if you can get enough in your glass between explosive foam pours to drink. Drinkable: yes. Interesting: hell no.

Now, please excuse Scribe again. He needs to go steal a jackhammer from the county to get the “cloy” out his mouth.

Written by Leah McLaren for The Spectator (UK)

The government acts as if booze is the root cause of all our social problems, says Leah McLaren, but it’s not. Drinking is an important part of British culture, the pub is the hub of the community, and health warnings can even be counterproductive.

“No drug, not even alcohol, causes the fundamental ills of society. If we’re looking for the source of our troubles, we shouldn’t test people for drugs, we should test them for stupidity, ignorance, greed and love of power.”

— P.J. O’Rourke

Happy new year! But don’t pass the bubbly. Haven’t you heard? We are all in danger of losing our souls to the demon liquor. According to the government, alcohol expands your liver, distends your pancreas and turns your brainstem to jelly. It makes you gamble and stumble and sleep with women who aren’t your wife. It’s highly addictive, full of harmful nitrates and the latest craze among schoolchildren aged four to six. Rampant swilling explains why the NHS is overburdened, unemployment is high and Gordon Brown looks so exhausted. It makes poor people beat their babies to death and rich people put money in hedge funds.

And you wouldn’t want that, would you?
Continue reading “Don’t Worry — Drink and Be Merry”

Peter Fowler

Written by Ben Ellery for Oxford Mail (UK)

THERE are bitters, bitter bitters and then Peter Fowler’s latest creation, which he hopes will earn him the title of bitterest brewer in the world.
Continue reading “Brewer’s Bid to Be the Bitterest”

Nashville, TN area

Please be sure to attend the January meeting of the MCB. We need nominations for officers for the year 2010 (election is held in February). So far, the only nomination I know of is Brandon Jones for President. Members must be current in their dues in order to be eligible to vote in the election. Let Jonathan know you are coming – we need a pretty close head count I guess.

The club has big plans this year for the annual competition – this will be our 15th! Come and hear what’s on tap!

Thanks – and Happy New Year to everyone.

Liz

January 9th @ 2:00 pm
108 Bridge Street, Franklin, TN 37064

The Topic- How NOT to Judge Beer

Written by Ken Carman

I opened up the beer: pre-competition judging. I think I had judged 3 or 4 competitions at that point: at best. I wasn’t BJCP yet and hadn’t thought through my duties to those who had spent so much time and effort brewing and submitting beer. The smell literally filled the big upstairs room at Boscos where we were judging. A National rated judge at the other end of the table gagged and said, “Whew, all that in one bottle?”

Hence the birth of “dirty diaper beer.”
Continue reading “Brew Biz: Werts and All”