Author: Ken Carman

Ken Carman is a BJCP judge; homebrewer since 1979, club member at Escambia Bay, Salt City and Music City Homebrewers, who has been interviewing professional brewers all over the east coast for over 10 years.

The Topic: Wasps and Beer, a New Beer Frontier

 

Listening to NPR this morning I heard a report about how the European hornet contributes to the complexity of wine. Apparently they are, unlike other insects, able to pierce the skin of grapes. Inside these hornets there’s a yeast they regurgitate into grapes that helps make wine more complex.

Think that’s “gross?” Well if you like alcohol, then you don’t even want to know what yeast are doing that creates alcohol.

Question: a new frontier for brewers?
Continue reading “Brew Biz: Werts and All”

These are my beer tastings I run every year in the Central Adirondacks. Below the “more” feature you’ll see a picture of one of the entrances to Beaver River. Will post more in a week or two, when this ad is reposted…

Three FREEBeer Tastings!

Beaver River Station, New York and Stillwater, NY

Have a remote Adirondack adventure WITH beer! Beaver River: a town with no roads going to it, is on the eastern edge of Stillwater reservoir, a few miles past Big Moose, NY. Every year Certified BJCP judge and homebrewer, Ken Carman, offers plenty of free beer and interesting information about styles of beer for beer lovers and the beer curious. These are not your average quaffs. Ken collects VERY weird beers. And during the first beer tasting Salt City Home Brewers will be there: homebrew club out of Syracuse, NY. Homebrewers LOVE to discuss beer and, if you want to more learn about homebrewing, you’re in luck! Imagine all this in an idyllic, remote, Adirondack setting: two of the tastings in a town with no roads going to it!

When and Where?

First date: August 25^th. Salt City Homebrewers (of Syracuse) will be there with Ken, behind the Thompson family’s Norridgewock in Beaver River Station. Need to do one of the other tastings? Ask Ken: he’s been brewing since 1979, when Jimmy Carter made it legal.

Sept. 1^st: in front of,one of the last, classic, Adirondack hotels: Beaver River Lodge,

September 22^nd, Stillwater Hotel, Stillwater, NY.

All tastings: 2pm, except Stillwater, which will start @ High Noon. The ghost of Gary Cooper will NOT be there, nor the ghosts of the Earps, a last name that sounds a tad like what you do after drinking beer.

How do I get there, what if I need to stay over?

Well, on the first two dates the Norridgewock Riverboat leaves at 12:30, and you get a tour of the lake too! Return: 3:30. Tasting begins at 2 in Beaver River, plenty of time, (Tasting starts at 12 in Stillwater 9/22.) You could use your boat or take a boat taxi. Walk in from Twitchell Lake. Norridgewock, Stillwater Hotel and Beaver River Lodge all have rooms. Directions to Stillwater, where your beer adventure begins: from Lowville take the Number 4 Road, then right on to Stillwater Rd, From Big Moose: Big Moose turns into a dirt road. Keep going. At the “T” take a right. Stillwater Hotel on the left about ½ a mile. Going to Beaver River? Please call and make arrangements from there in advance. And PLEASE don’t just keep driving past Still water Hotel. Cars don’t swim.

Unless you have a working Amphicar, then lucky (???) you. Note: better bring a Brit mechanic with you just in case.

Want to know more? Looking for contact numbers? The bear you asked was lost too?

Beaver River Lodge @ 315 376 3010 Stillwater Hotel @ 315 378 6470

Norridgewock @ 315 376 6200 Ken Carman @ 315 376 6625
Continue reading “Free Beer!!!”

This week’s topic: Beer Assumptions Gone Wrong

Whomever thought of all these things when it comes to beer probably didn’t realize there are all kinds of palates out there: palates like mine… like yours.

Two examples…

“Summer” beer: and these comments go for all “seasonal” beers. I have no problem with the sales technique of having seasons for beer, but for my palate the idea I might not want a nice Barleywine by a campfire mid-July is nonsense. The idea I have to enjoy a Wheat Beer that time of year equally foolish. As the years go on, and the more I judge, the more I can appreciate. But even now: wheat beer and I respect each other at best. Give me a nice pale ale if I want to go on the light side, or even a sour. Hmmm… “Sour.” That… I have developed a taste for: I think it started when I started brewing rhubarb ales.

Watch the acid! It’s very acidic and, if you like your rhubarb pie like I do: rip the flesh off the inside of you mouth sour, carbonation may insist you call it a “still.” Ironically it has always fermented, it’s just a carbonation killer when rhubarb is at its mouth twisting best.

Continue reading “Brew Biz: Werts and All”

RICHWOODS, MO. • Les Nydegger bought 55 acres of rolling woodland west of De Soto about 15 years ago, thinking he would use the land for hunting and fishing some day. But earlier this year, after retiring from a quarter-century-long career at Anheuser-Busch, he decided he hadn’t gotten quite enough of the beer business.

So he cleared an acre of forest, stuck 20-foot-tall cedar poles in the ground and planted hops.

“We thought it would be a neat thing to do, especially for the craft brewers,” Nydegger said, standing near his fledgling hop yard, about an hour and a half southwest of St. Louis. “This is my chance to be a farmer.”
Nydegger has company. In the past several years at least three other area brewers and farmers have planted hop yards, joining a surge of new growers around the country who are trying to cultivate beer’s key flavoring ingredient.

Want to read more? Please click…

HERE

Profile by Ken Carman for professorgoodales.net

There was music in the background…

…no, wait, that was a saw, or a drill, or a grinder…

Maybe all three?

The air was filled with the scent of sweet hops…

Well, it will be, but on the day I visited Fat Bottom, the brewery had tanks, kettles and busy workers remodeling what had been Fluffo Mattress into Fat Bottom Brewing. Fat Bottom will sit on the south side of Main Street; probably THE major northeast conduit out of Nashville… turning into Gallatin Road a few miles from here. Yes, “Gallatin Road,” which ends up in, well, um:  Gallatin… eventually.

I’d been here before. No, not Fat Bottom. Fat Bottom was still under construction: not up and running for the public when I typed this. But a few months ago I wrote about The Pharmacy: a beer and burger place just north east of Fat Bottom… both are in a part of Nashville that’s been spiffing itself up since we moved here in the late 70s. We didn’t know. We had been mostly in “avoiding” mode since the late 70s. Back then all that lived here were grody vampires, werewolves who had been kicked out of London and an occasional visit by the Blob to wipe off excess blob-ery.

I’m joking! Let’s just say this part of East Nashville has come a long way, and places like The Pharmacy have contributed to one great “spiff,” and soon to spiff up the area even more: Fat Bottom Brewery.

Enter brewer and brew dreamer: Ben Bredesen.
Continue reading “Brewery and Brewer Profile: Ben Bredesen and Fat Bottom”