Month: November 2015

Starbucks has done it. Taco Bell has done it. And now it’s the microbrewery’s turn. The 40ft Brewery in Dalston, London, opened earlier this year. Its name comes from the fact that it was constructed out of two, 20-foot-long shipping containers that sit atop an old car park.

“The spot has a very short rolling lease from the council due to being part of a greater redevelopment plan for the area,” co-founder Andreas Pettersson says. “So by using shipping containers, we can turn this derelict place into a place to brew and serve great beer. If or when we need to move we can pick up our brewery to a new plot of land, we own the brewery and the containers.”

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Written by Franz Hofer for A Tempest in a Tankard

To age, or not to age?

This temporal variation of a timeless existential question is one that’s being asked with growing frequency in the craft beer world.But even if cellaring beer has become an increasingly popular topic of conversation of late, it’s still relative terra incognita for the craft beer community writ large.

Beer and Time. To age, or not to age? You’d be forgiven for considering the question absurd, for we’ve been conditioned to think that old beer is bad beer. And in most cases, beer doesn’t fight a winning battle with time.

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Profiled by Ken Carman

Creamy tan pillow head that fades fast. 30 srm, or tad lower. Edge of glass cling lingers once head disappears. Obsidian: strong light only shines through showing murky, yellow, highlights.

Aroma: ginger and a whiff of lime.

Mouthfeel: silky and abrasive at the same time due to spice/lime dominance. Low carbonation, almost no tingle from that.

Flavor: to be honest the spices conflict with basic stout recipe. And the spices are harsh, abrasive. Except color, there’s little stout here, just spices. The lime creates an annoying tang that doesn’t compliment, simply distracts: and I like lime. Maybe with just a slight hint might work, even then: questionable.

Where’s the stout? If any it’s the roasted barley combining with spice, and the lime, to increase the abrasiveness.

2.8: probably the lowest rank I’ve ever given a Sierra. In fact it may be one of the lowest ranks I’ve given at PGA. This is so out of balance it’s almost offensive.

Welcome to the PGA beer rating system: one beer “Don’t bother.” Two: Eh, if someone gives it to you, drink. Three: very good, go ahead and seek it out, but be aware there is at least one problem. Four: seek it out. Five: pretty much “perfecto.”

___________________Beer HERE

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Warning! Warning! Ken Carman to your left! Reverse thrusters! Collision alert! Oh, dang, there you’ve gone and done it: you got some Ken Carman on our flying spaghetti monster.

Well that experience was a little… WARPED.

 

When I started brewing about 3 years ago, I jumped right into all grain using 1 gallon kits then soon after bought a batch sparge setup with converted coolers for larger batches. I made many good beers, no doubt, but I found myself pining for a less complicated method, one that didn’t involve as much setup or clean-up but resulted in a finished product with similar quality. It wasn’t until a year or so later I learned about Brew In A Bag (BIAB) and, amid a run to win my homebrew club’s Homebrewer of the Year title, abruptly adopted it as my primary approach after buying a used e-BIAB system on a whim, sending me down a much simpler and less time consuming path.

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If you are familiar at all with the 2008 BJCP guidelines (AKA every competition for the past seven years) then you are mostly familiar with the major categories for the 2016 competition–with three differences:
1.American Pale Ale, American IPA, and Strong Stouts (Tropical, Foreign Extra, American, and Imperial) have all been split into separate categories to better distribute entries in highly impacted categories.
2.Specialty IPA is now a sub-category of IPA, so stop entering your Black/Brown/Red/White/Session IPAs in the Specialty Beer category! 🙂
3.Many of the new 2015 BJCP styles have been added to what are essentially the 2008 major categories, so go wild entering your Gose, Wheatwine, and Sahti (amongst others) as first-class styles.

Otherwise everything else should feel pretty familiar, just make sure you review the updated style guidelines; many of them have been significantly updated. For instance, English Pale Ales mention significantly less caramel character than previous years after the guideline committee admitted the older guidelines were based on old/oxidized imported examples (which increases perception of caramel).

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