Month: February 2020

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Profile: Saranac Bee Catcher

Profiled by Maria Devan

Golden amber color with an eggshell white head of foam that fell clinging leaving some bubbles and a light film.

Nose is grassy hops with a touch of mint and a sweet breeze from honey. Light lemon backing to these hops give a delightful nose. Clean, no diacetyl. No acetaldehyde, no fruity esters from yeast.

Malt is a sweetened cracker without any fruity scents of its own to offer. Drinks with moderate carbonation and surprisingly bready flavor. The taste of honey permeates but doesn’t dominate. Moderately strong carbonation and a balanced bitterness to leave some of that sweet honey flavor behind. Delightful beer. This beer will pair with my Mexican style lamb chops and cumin rice.

4

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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.”

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___________________________Beer HERE

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Lupulin Powder vs. Pellets Experiment

Lupulin Powder in the Hop Stand

Intense juicy and resinous hop flavor and aroma, less astringent vegetal flavors while using half the amount of hop material–I’m interested! In this article, I look at some of the research surrounding hops, proteins, and clarity and how those might apply to using a new product called lupulin powder. I brew an experimental side-by-side Mosaic pellet to Mosaic lupulin powder beer and reach out to two breweries who have been included in the testing stages of LupuLN2 to get their opinions and results.

YCH Hops was nice enough to send me samples of their Mosaic lupulin powder product called LupuLN2, which they describe as being a purified lupulin powder containing most of the resin compounds and aromatic oils derived directly from whole hop flowers. They create LupuLN2 with a proprietary cryogenic separation process that preserves the aromatic hop components and removes most of the vegetal leafy material.
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HERE!!!

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Imbibing Beer and Flemish Splendour in Ghent

Ghent

Written by Franz Hofer for A Tempest in a Tankard

Belgium’s compact size and its efficient transportation network make it a paradise for beer travelers. Say you’re staying in Brussels and want to head to Antwerp or Bruges for lunch and a few cultural excursions, followed by drinks in classic beer cafes. You can easily do that because you’ll be in each of these cities within an hour, give or take a few minutes.

But you wouldn’t be alone in places like Bruges. All the more reason to consider Ghent, a Flemish city home to languid canals, impressive Romanesque and Gothic churches, and quiet cobblestone streets lined with ornate facades. And beer, which is a solid enough reason in itself.

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Beer Profile: Oscar Blues’ Death by King Cake

Profiled by Ken Carman


Perfect clarity, golden quaff. Head is slightly off white and fades very fast into sides of the glass. Tiniest of bubbles. Yellow highlights in pure gold.
Mouthfeel is off dry with light carbonation. There’s the slightest harshness that clings to the roof of the mouth, like a bittering hop that popped through.
Aroma is vanilla and a slight sour. I do get slight cocoa nibs, orange peel, no cinnamon in the nose, no pecans. Balance in aroma differs from flavor.
To be honest the flavor is this is somewhat annoying. Unlike aroma orange peel is dominant: so much so, combined with vanilla, I get no malt, almost nothing else. Carbonation is medium and carbonic. It has a hint of a bite. Aftertaste is slight sour with orange peel, as well as in the finish. Very slightly dry, unlike King Cake. I have had King Cake. I have had the BEST King Cake: sour dough, not the coffee cake version. I think this was an attempt at the sour dough version of King Cake. An attempt. Not all that successful.
If I ordered this I’d probably give it to someone else after half a glass then order something I’d like better. It simply doesn’t quite work. The ale is indistinct, not that much of a base for what’s supposed to be King Cake. That would be OK if the King Cake were really King-ish. Missed that mark. A King Cake would be sweeter and the flavors more balanced. Same for aroma, except that balance is different.
The secret here would be in having it finish a little more sweet, balance out the spices, the nuts, and maybe just a hint more of the ale. Otherwise the only “death” here is the concept this is King Cake-ish at all.

untappd 3.5
BA 84%
RB 3.74

3.2

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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.”

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__________________Beer HERE

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Beer Waste Saves Montana Town $1 Million On Water Treatment


As America’s craft beer industry continues to boom, the waste it generates can pose challenges for sewer systems. But if it’s used in the right spot, in the right amount, it’s potentially beneficial and can actually save wastewater treatment plants money.

In Bozeman, Mont., the Water Reclamation Facility treats more than 6 million gallons of water every day from sinks, showers, toilets — really anything that goes down a drain. That includes liquid waste from more than 10 breweries in this city of nearly 50,000.

Because it’s rich in yeast, hops and sugar, brewery waste can throw off the microbes that wastewater plants rely on to remove nitrogen and phosphorus. The two nutrients can cause algae blooms in rivers and kill off fish.

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A Beer Judge’s Diary: Savannah

Picture judging glasses courtesy Sandy Cockerham
By Ken Carman
By Ken Carman
 I have headed a few mead tables. The fact I have headed every mead table I’ve been at up until now says something important: we need more actual mead judges in the BJCP. In fact at the first few I headed, well over ten years ago; closer to twenty, I got the sense mead was, like Harry Potter, the poor stepchild of BJCP world: living under the stairs; only because the favored son (beer) was the star of the family. Not cruel, as in Harry Potter, more an anomaly in an organization started around beer.
 There were reasons for so few mead judges. Back in the legacy days you had to find a sit down write test for beer that included tasting. I drove to Knoxville for my second legacy test out of Nashville, beer-wise. Tests local enough to drive to were tough to find, sometimes. Mead was worse. Has that improved? Yes. But even now finding a mead tasting test in the southeast is tough. Thankfully, like beer, they went online with the questions. Tasting, so far, has been long drive to out of Nashville, and there are so few… in comparison.
 I certainly would love to give mead tests, but first I need endorsement, obviously.
 As I started to study again for an upcoming test, I decided judging a mead only competition might be helpful. I chose Domras because I entered a Dunkelwiezen Braggot a while back and the comments I got back were quite interesting and helpful. The fact it did well was secondary, at best. Continue reading “A Beer Judge’s Diary: Savannah”

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Bend, The Rules: America’s Stylistically Liberated Beer City

Written by Stephen Body

Bend, Oregon…no matter what anyone says, my vote for the mythical (and mostly bogus) title of “Beer City USA” – besides the presumptive winner, San Diego – would have to go to this explosive brewing mecca, out there in the arid middle of Oregon’s High Desert. It is certainly, even including SD, the most per capita great brewery nexus in the country and the only real challenger is the far more tiny Hood River, Oregon, about 150 miles up Oregon Route 97. One quick scan of the breweries located in Bend makes the case eloquently…

Deschutes Brewery…

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