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Brew Biz: Werts and All… Straight to Ale, BIG Plans and BIG Beer, Part Two

tasting bar
Strange woman at bar in STA Tap Room who, for some reason, has been following me for years.

Written by Ken Carman

Ken Carman is a BJCP judge; homebrewer since 1979, club member at Escambia Bay, Clarksville Carboys and Music City Homebrewers, who has been interviewing professional brewers all over the east coast for close to 20 years.

Straight to Ale, 3200 Leeman Ferry Road, Huntsville, AL 35801
(Behind the Matrix gym) straighttoale.com

Part II


Courtesy 2012.igem.org
Courtesy 2012.igem.org
 You may remember last episode of Brew Biz the monster brews of Straight to Ale had successfully endeared themselves to the villagers in Huntsville. So “successful” STA has gone from the woodshed in Dan Perry’s backyard to building an even bigger brewery. Including the current, grand, Leeman Ferry location, that’s an explosive amount of growth. Straight to Ale seems to be Huntsville’s WLP99. That’s a super yeast, in case you don’t know.


 In part one I mentioned a conversation I had with one of the Straight to Ale brewers. His name is Bob Giles. I asked Bob how he got into brewing, about any training he might have, and what advice he might have for homebrewers…

 I was a homebrewer and working part time at something else when I applied to work here. I’ve been here three years. My advice: have fun when you’re homebrewing, do what you want to do. Don’t just try to do other people’s recipes. Be patient when brewing and always be sterile. We use boiling hot water to sterilize and a PAA. That’s what we do. We use 212 degree water for about 2 hours for our heat exchanger, and for everything: anything, the beer is going to pass through.”

  I asked, other than homebrewing, what else attracted him to brewing… Continue reading “Brew Biz: Werts and All… Straight to Ale, BIG Plans and BIG Beer, Part Two”

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Elysian and the AB/InBev Sale: The Response

TPFIn the wake of my criticism of Elysian’s former owners for their sale to AB, I expected to get a lot of scorn and derision for what I wrote from those who have anointed themselves and each other as the TRUE movers ‘n’ shakers of craft beer…and I was not disappointed. I completely understand that many people are close to Dick Cantwell and love Elysian and could not possibly have been happy to see them referred to as “lazy”, “uncreative”, and as giving a big “Up Yours/Fuck You” to its fans. What I had thought was frankly beneath them was an attitude that nobody counts in the beer biz unless they own a brewery or suck up to those who do.

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Analyzing Budweiser’s Hypocritical, Anti-Craft Beer Super Bowl Ad

Courtesy businessinsider.com
Courtesy businessinsider.com

“Let them sip their pumpkin peach ale, we’ll be brewing us some golden suds.”

Only losers drink pumpkin peach ale. Everyone knows this. Except, wait, what’s that? Elysian Brewing, the Seattle brewery that Anheuser just purchased last week, makes a … yes … pumpkin peach ale. It’s called “Gourdia on My Mind .” Anheuser is literally mocking the consumers of the COMPANIES THEY NOW OWN. Honestly, how devastating is that for the Elysian brewing team? Your owners think your customers are pretentious hipsters. These are the people who own your business. I’m sure you’ll be surprised to learn that Twitter handles of employees like @ElysianMatt have already been deleted after they informed the public that employees weren’t even informed of the acquisition before it was announced online.

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They Love Each Other

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Rules were made to be broken, right? There’s no hard and fast logic that says wine has a lock on pairings with cheese. In fact the malty-sweet, fruity, bitter, spicy, and sometimes sour flavors in craft beers from cheese-loving regions like France, Germany, Belgium and Holland, the U.K., and the U.S., pair beautifully with a variety of cheeses. Weekly Pint recently teamed up a delicious evening with maître fromager Max McCalman, Belgian beer importation pioneers Vanberg & Dewulf, and craft brewing powerhouse Firestone Walker of Paso Robles, California. We found McCalman, the easygoing and author of three excellent books on the subject, including Mastering Cheese, which has a full 16-pp chapter on pairing cheese with beer—an invaluable resource.

Where to start? “You’re looking for balance,” says McCalman. “In a beer-and-cheese lineup, as with a tasting of wine pairings,” he writes, “you’ll want to proceed from the lighter, milder lager, pilsner and pale ale styles to the deeper, richer, heavier, darker, more complex-flavored styles of brew.” As you progress up the intensity range in your beers (find our picks at Whole Foods), you’ll need to step it up in your cheese, too.

For three mind-expanding cheese-and-beer pairings, keep reading.

1. Fondue & Firestone Walker Double Jack IPA
Delicious cheese and conversation requires a big beer. Artisanal Premium Cheese’s Fondue du Jour is a mouth-watering mix of six alpine cheeses that you can mix at home in any saucepan with the white wine of your choice, serving two for dinner or six as an app. Firestone Walker’s Double Jack IPA makes a great pairing for fondue sessions, with buckets of grapefruity, resinous hop character and an ample, boozy kick (9.5%ABV).

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The Old Slogan

Why Guinness really is good for you.

guinness_wp

The old slogan, “Guinness is Good For You,” might actually be true. Well, partly true. Though the company dropped the slogan years ago, that drinking a moderate amount of Guinness might make you healthier.

The slogan was born in the 1920s after Guinness drinkers kept reporting that they felt good after drinking a pint. While they may have been angling for free beer, it turns out they were onto something–and doctors started listening. Surgery patients, blood donors and pregnant or nursing women were given Guinness because it’s vitamin and iron rich.

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Let Us Now Praise Famous Lagers: Your Saturday Six-Pack (Vol.3)

Written by Franz Hofer for A Tempest in a Tankard

2015 is barely four weeks old, and already we’ve seen the craft beer scene light up with plenty of fireworks. Perplexingly, Tony Magee of Lagunitas filed a trademark lawsuit against Sierra Nevada, only to back down after being “seriously schooled” by the good folks on Twitter. About a week before that hue and cry, a blogger in the New York State capitol region ignited a firestorm of his own, claiming that “[f]lights are dumb, and you’re dumb if you like them.”IMG_9985 Needless to say, not everyone agreed. Just last week, news broke that Anheuser-Busch InBev has continued its craft beer shopping spree, scooping up Seattle’s Elysian a mere three months after the ink had dried on its deal to acquire 10 Barrel Brewing of Bend, Oregon. I suppose Elysian will have to quietly discontinue its Loser Pale Ale, or at least erase the “Corporate Beer Still Sucks” tagline from the packaging.

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The 37 Best Imperial Stouts, Ranked (non-barrel aged)

The 37 Best Imperial Stouts, Ranked (non-barrel aged)

10. Straight to Ale Laika Russian Imperial Stout
City: Huntsville, AL
ABV: 9.75%
Key ingredient: Perfectly controlled fermentation
Perfect for: After-dinner holiday dessert
The verdict: A delicious and unique offering, this Alabama brewery’s imperial stout packs intense fruity overtones of raspberry and cherry which immediately make it stand out. The fruit plays very nicely with heavy, charred roastiness, giving a great contrast. If you love dark chocolate-dipped raspberry/cherry, this is the one for you. Booziness only adds to and amplifies those flavors—this one runs a little hot, despite being lower in ABV than some of the others on the table. Regardless, these memorable flavors helped it rise above the pack and make us very excited to try some of the barrel-aged variants in our next tasting.

31-Laika.jpg17-ClownShoes.jpg

9. Clown Shoes Blaecorn Unidragon
City: Ipswich, MA
ABV: 12.5%
Key ingredient: Malt out the wazoo
Perfect for: Enjoying once you have conquered your enemies and secured your legacy.
The verdict: Clown Shoes is simply a brewery that gets big stouts, whether they’re American, Russian, smoked, barrel-aged, chile-infused or any combination of the above. This one is just a classic Russian imperial stout, on steroids, super roasty but with a milk sugar-like sweetness backing it up, chased by dark chocolate and a fleeting hit of hops. This is another beer you could serve someone as a template to what a “Russian imperial stout” actually entails. In a crowded style, this is still an exemplary beer.

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Brew Biz: Werts and All… Straight to Ale, BIG Plans and BIG Beer, Part One

Written by Ken Carman

Straight to Ale, 3200 Leeman Ferry Road, Huntsville, AL 35801
(Behind the Matrix gym) straighttoale.com

Owner
Dan Perry started Straight to Ale behind his house in a woodshed.
(Hence, at his house, being “taken to the woodshed” in those days was a good thing!)

Part I

 In the 80s, between the record industry, and various radio stations, I transferred expensive cars, occasionally taking one to Huntsville, Alabama. One gig I had was driving a street sweeper there then waiting for the engine to be serviced. I’m fond of saying I spent a century: one week, in Huntsville. At the time it was far more sleepy and had poor public transportation. From outside my motel room I would occasionally gaze to the east at the hills and wonder if the villagers were also getting angry at the company for taking so long fixing their street sweepers. Mad locals would break in and find them working on a monster instead…

  Sometimes I imagine the best small craft breweries are being run by mad scientists brewing Frankenstein beers that the townsfolk, visitors and many others love. Years ago when Miller and Bud pretty much ruled America those beers may have been treated like the misunderstood monster in Shelley’s Frankenstein, but I think folks are more understanding these days. Well, some. The dedicated Miller Lite drinker? Maybe not so much.
  But craft brewers and home brewers are doing an incredible job educating all palates. Continue reading “Brew Biz: Werts and All… Straight to Ale, BIG Plans and BIG Beer, Part One”

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How to Build a Hopback

Hopback_featured

Homebrewers love hops—it’s no secret. You will always remember the first time you smelled those powerful pellets drop into the kettle. The little bitter cones give beer life, personality and uncanny edginess. Without them, beer would often times be unbalanced, overly sweet and uninteresting.

Hops are so important, some people devote their entire lives to the plant—hop fascination transformed into obsession.

The “hop heads” out there, like Tom Lewis from Cheshire, England, are always looking for ways to push the hoppy envelope in their homebrews. A hopback is the perfect way to infuse fresh-hop character in beer just before it hits your glass. Check out Tom’s easy-to-build hopback project below!

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