Author: Professor Good Ales

You may remember Ken Carman’s two columns here @PGA: one on their brewer, and one on the brewpub, Bandwagon. Here’s more on their brewer and this Ithaca brewpub. In picture posted below Lars Mudrak is standing to the left.- PGA

Written by Matt Hayes for theithacajournal.com

Ithaca — The best craft beer in all of New York State is being brewed right here in Ithaca.
Bandwagon Brewpub earned that distinction from judges at the 2012 TAP New York Craft Beer & Fine Food Festival, who awarded the Cayuga Street restaurant and craft brewer with the gold medal for Best Individual Craft Beer in New York State. Judges chose Bandwagon’s High Step Weizenbock out of more than 200 individual brews from more than 50 New York State brewers at the April 29 festival. This year’s festival featured the most competitors in the event’s 15-year history.

For Bandwagon, submitting the winter seasonal beer had been planned as a last hurrah for the Weizenbock, a strong, dark wheat beer among the favorites of brewer Lars Mudrak. Now the beer, which was to be transitioned out to make way for summer beers, will have a permanent spot on tap at the brewery. A new batch is being brewed to be ready for consumption at Bandwagon by Monday.

“People have been asking about it a lot,” Mudrak said. “I feel it’s kind of Ithaca’s, too; it’s not just Bandwagon’s. It’s all our customers’. They drank my mistakes along the way so they should enjoy in my successes as well.”

The beer making talents displayed by Mudrak are distinctly Ithacan in origin. The 23-year-old began covertly experimenting with brewers in his parents’ Coddington Road home at the age of 15. “I think my record was 25 gallons of beer brewing in my closet at once without my parents knowing,” he said.
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Lindemans Brewery

Written by Tom Becham for professorgoodales.net

Are Sour Beers the New Black?

As a beer geek friend of mine said to me recently, “You know what sour beers and World Cup Soccer have in common? Americans discovered they kinda liked both of them in 2010.”

It’s true. Sour beers have become a big trend in craft beer circles. If you’ve never had a sour beer (well, a GOOD sour beer), you may wonder why that is so.

A typical sour beer (they are always ales; lagers do NOT make for good sour beers) can be anywhere from pilsner-yellow to stout-black in color. The taste of sour beers has been described as acidic, acetic, vinegar-like and vinous. All of those descriptors can be true, but if you’ve never actually had a decent sour, then the words won’t mean a thing to you. Sour beers are also some of the most useful beers to convert wine lovers into craft beer lovers. Anyone who loves a brightly tannic red wine will also likely appreciate a sour beer.

What makes an ale sour? Well, there are a couple of things that can. First is a “wild” yeast, usually of the Brettanomyces strain. Of course, now these yeasts can be cultivated and used deliberately instead of just resulting from a “spontaneous fermentation”. Second is any range of bacteria, from lactobacillus (the stuff that sours milk) to pediococcus. Again, these bacteria are now frequently introduced into beers, though the randomness of barrel aging still seems to produce better results.
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Written by Kevin M. Cullen (Archaeologist: Discovery World: Milwaukee WI)

The recipe that we chose to brew for this special program was an Iron Age honey mead, found in a bronze cauldron at the foot of a Celtic chieftain who was buried in a central burial chamber, beneath an earthen mound near the village of Hochdorf in southwestern Germany. Excavations led by Dr. Jörg Biel in 1978-79 revealed that this elite male was buried around 550 BCE. To discover an intact burial chamber from this period was a rarity, as most were looted over the centuries. Included in the burial was a wagon with nine bronze plates and three bronze serving platters. Nine large gold decorated drinking horns, likely aurochs horns. Eight of them could hold 1 liter of liquid, yet the largest horn which hung above the chieftain’s head could hold a 10 pint (5 liter) capacity (that’s a “power drinker”). Additionally, a very large Greek-imported bronze cauldron with a capacity of 70 gallons (ca. 265 liters) was placed at the chieftain’s feet. Upon analysis of the desiccated remains, it was determined to have once been mead (honey wine). Such a volume of mead was quite an extravagance and very expensive to obtain, particularly considering the Celts did not have formalized apiculture.

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HERE

Written by Andy Brownfield for The Gadsden Times and AP

Alabama beer lovers are pleased that the state Legislature passed a measure to allow beer to be sold in larger containers, but they’re still awaiting the fate of a measure to legalize home brewing.

The Legislature sent the bill to allow larger bottles to Gov. Bentley’s desk on May 9. A Bentley spokeswoman said he’s still reviewing the proposal and hasn’t decided whether to sign it.

The bill that would make Alabama the 49th state to allow home brewing – Mississippi would be the final holdout – was passed by the House on May 8 and is awaiting Senate action. The chair of the Senate committee that decides which bills make it to the floor could not be reached for comment.

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HERE

Written by Brandon Jones for Embracethefunk.com

So I’m reading over the finished Q&A thinking about how to intro this interview and the song Doowutchyalike by Digital Underground keeps popping into my head. While it might be a stretch, Shaun Hill of Hill Farmstead is doing what he likes, having fun and batting pretty close to 1000 while he’s at it. Hill Farmstead is doing what I think is the perfect brewing dream: brewing phenomenal beer in a farmhouse setting… the way he wants to on family land that looks like something out of a painting. In between making the beer that sees a lot of “ISO” on many websites Shaun sat down for a Q&A with me….

ETF- What beer was your sour or brett beer epiphany?

Continue reading “Hill Farmstead (Brewery in VT) Q&A With Shaun Hill”