A Place to Gather and Talk
Homebrewers are America’s beer saviors. After Prohibition killed the production of quality beer in America it was the trailblazers in the homebrewing movement that brought good beer back to the barren American wasteland.
The biggest names in good American beer today — Sierra Nevada, Brooklyn Brewery, Samuel Adams and Dogfish Head to name a few — were born out of the homebrewing movement.
Want to read more? Please click…
***A lot of great response from the first part of my Q&A with AC Golden brewer Troy Casey. So as promised last week here is part 2! Enjoy! ***
ETF: What’s the temp range and the swing of the barrels? I haven’t seen the barrel room, but you said it’s inside of the brewery, so I assume there’s not a whole lot of temp change. Where are you guys sitting, temp-wise, on the barrels?
TROY: When we started aging these beers, we knew we wanted to keep them isolated. So we had a room that we stored all our malt in, and that room had air conditioning, so that was very nice and appealing. The room that it’s in, two of the walls are directly next to outside. When you have a very, very cold winter, I recorded temps in the low 40s. In the summer, the outside temperature maybe in the 100s, and it’s in the heart of our brewery, so that’s even hotter than outside. We work right in the heart of the Golden Brewery. Even with the air conditioner running, we can get into the 80s. And if we trip a breaker, I wouldn’t want to know how hot it could get over the weekend. That really scared me when we first started doing this, you read the literature and the Belgians say you can’t let it get that hot, right? But after talking to other brewers–
ETF: Unless you’re Armand and everybody goes crazy for a hot Kriek…
Firm pillow head: lots of. Great clarity, brown: mid 20s SRM… tad dark for a Quad. Great highlights.
Nose: white Belgian candy sugar sense up front. Sweet in back ground with some pale malt in background.
Sweet mouthfeel: full with a Trappist yeast sense… slight sweet tart funk. Firm caremilized malt behind that fills the mouth just a tad. carbonation slight: low in body. For the style I believe this is off. Should be well carbonated in the body. Nice alcoholic warmth.
Guessing about 8.5 abv or 9.
This is meant to be similar in strength to a dubbel, but in character more like a strong dark among Belgian beers.
Taste: this is classic Belgian yeast: Trappist-like with a tart tang. Malt is both sweet and malty. Nice and complex character that would do well by a fire with your faithful dog by your side. Little bitter, as expected. Medium dry: in that sense more like an Abbey version. There’s a sense of currants, or plums. Perhaps a bit more like prunes.
Overall, with a few off style skews that are slight: very good. A 4…
Cascade/grapefruit nose in the bottle, but upon taste this is no American grapefruit bomb. There is definitely “other” in there: mix of spice and earthy hop. Nice firm bitter complimented by grapefruit nose. My guess: dry hop was one of those grapefruit-like varieties. Pinpoint bubble head with lots of foam too. Great clarity: deep gold.
93 at Rate beer, 84 at Beer Advocate: good but not REAL good. One reviewer claimed 144IBU. No way. I’ve had barely 100 IBU beers with more hop sense. Just a little fresh hop-like, which is why I think some think more hoppy than it is.
Says 9.2abv, but the slight harsh bitter of the hops that cling to the roof of the mouth. And the nice caramelization of the sweet alt that baklances nicely with the bitter, with some more dextrinous malts: if you’re looking for a nicely bittered balanced double IPA where the abv is somewhat hidden, and the overall sense of the hopping might be described as not “zest,” but “spicy orange,” this would be a great choice.
Here’s a link to the history of Napa Smith.
I gave it 4.
Photo by Francois Lenoir / Reuters
As a beer writer, I often find myself preaching the word about craft beer to people who don’t want to hear it. There are a lot of Bud Light fans and people who’d rather sip a zinfandel, even in the craft beer capital of the world, Portland, Ore., where I live. So when a homebrewer friend recently decided to visit my husband and me from Tennessee, I was excited to spend time with a kindred spirit, someone with whom I could share my favorite brews without having to make a hard sell. The first brewery I took him to was Hopworks Urban Brewery, where I ordered us a pitcher of the Velvet English session beer.
After a few sips, I noticed that he had pushed away his glass. “I’m sorry, guys,†he said when he noticed our puzzled expressions. “This is just way too hoppy for me.â€
Want to read more? Please click…
I finally finished typing up my latest brewer interview and it’s one I think you will find really interesting and eye opening. A few months ago I spoke with Troy Casey a brewer at AC Golden with their Hidden Barrel Project: A project that is turning out  Sour and Wild Beers in the heart of the Coors Brewery. Since this is the lengthiest interview I’ve done to date, I decided to split it up into 2 parts. I’ll post the second part next week. So meet Troy, a wealth of knowledge and fantastic brewer….
ETF: Okay. Let’s just start out with one of the questions I ask everybody… what was your sour beer epiphany moment, that one beer that made you realize, “Hey, these sour and wild beers are pretty darn good and there’s something else out there besides lagers and IPAs�
Continue reading “Troy Casey of AC Golden Q&A Part 1”
A brewery in Bolivia has come up with a way to get buzzed in more ways than one: coca beer.
Combining the thirst-quenching capability of beer with the stimulating effect of the Andean nation’s coca leaf, Ch’ama is a coca and barley-based alcoholic drink that brewers claim helps locals and visitors cope with Bolivia’s notorious high altitude (close to 12,00 ft).
“As good Germans we love beer,” said Hamburg native Malina, according to The New York Daily News
. “There are many types in Germany, but this coca beer is good because here in La Paz it helps us handle altitude sickness.â€
The Alaska hub scores well for family vacations and for being a great springboard for excursions into the wilderness. If you don’t make it as far north as Fairbanks, you can always pick up a to-go growler of the town’s Silver Gulch brews at the Anchorage airport (its Cheechako IPA pokes fun at Alaska newcomers). In Anchorage itself, beer nerds might take note that the Anchorage Brewing Company is home to Alaska’s first coolship—a shallow vat used in open fermentation beers—and one of its signature beers, the Rondy Brew, salutes the city’s annual Running of the Reindeer.
Want to read more? Please click…
You must be logged in to post a comment.