Beer Profile
Written by Ye Olde Scribe for Professorgoodales.net
Avast Maties! Sprecher the Black Bavarian pirate here. Tis cold these nights as we look for booty on the high seas. But da women think we stink too much so we gets no booty at all? So, to satisfy our thirst, and down our lustful desires, we often down a bottle or ten of Sprecher Black Bavarian, named after da Captain himself, otherwise known as Ye Olde Scribe with extra sea barnacles. No extra charge.
It glimmers in the glass like dark ruubies and has a nice roasty nose right in the glass. Just fish it out with your nostrils, landlubbers! Tis almost a stout to the taste. Did they put some roasted barley in this delight? A medium body, far nicer than the on ship wench who graces the front of the boat. Ya’y ya may get wood looking at her but since she’s made of wood, good luck.
Has just the right amountr of bubbly to it. A great malty mouthfeel yet medium to medium low body! The brewer tis a Captain of Brewing, he is, if not an admiral! Almost as if a double concoction was used, what ever da hell dat means!
Something’s Brewing – and it Ain’t No Storm
Picture: Adam Mathews, co-owner of Backyard Home Brewers and Education Center in Humble, offers a wide range of products needed to brew home-made beer.
Written by STEFANIE THOMAS foryourhoustonnews.com
Adam Mathews and Jon Denman aren’t giving up their day jobs just yet. They’re not interested in high-pressure sales tactics, they say, or making fortunes. They just want to share their passion: making beer.
A few days ago, with the incorporation of Backyard Home Brewers and Education Center, Humble became home to a home-brewing supply shop, with all its untapped potential.
At Backyard Home Brewers and Education Center in Humble, a couch is waiting in the corner for anyone who wants to plop down for a chat or a taste of brew. The dress code is casual. Strangers are greeted like old buddies – or maybe Mathews and Denman just never met a stranger. The scent of hops, barley and malt lingers like an olfactory premonition. Buckets of more than 30 different kinds of grains are stacked to the ceiling. Flasks and packets and tubes of yeast are neatly organized in a cooler in the back of the store. Kegs loom on the top shelves.
“Jon and I’ve been home-brewing for quite a while,†said Mathews, a Medicare consultant employed by a major insurance company who lives in Kingwood. “Last summer we went camping and we brought some homebrew out there with us, and we decided to open a homebrew store. We plotted out all kinds of ideas.â€
The two friends say they depleted their savings to follow their dream of providing area home-brewing enthusiasts with quality products, a place to share the successes of their endeavors, bringing newcomers into the fold, and delivering support through education.
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Hogtown Brewers Enter the Toronto Craft Beer Fray
Canadian brewers following a trend set here in America-PGA
Written by Ben Johnsonfor blogto.com. Photos by Traven Benner
session beer. Thankfully for those people, the guys at href=”http://www.hogtownbrewers.ca/” target=”_blank”>Hogtown Brewers agreed, and decided to do something about it.
Founded by six guys who play rugby together, Hogtown Brewers was born out of a desire to create a local beer that had a decent amount of flavour but wasn’t so complex or heavy that you couldn’t drink a half a dozen or so in an evening (see above re: six dudes, rugby).
The idea, according to Pete Shippen, one of the brewery’s founders, was to develop a beer that was “just drinkable enough not to alienate.” With the help of experienced brewmaster Jay Cooke, that seems to be precisely what they’ve done.
Hogtown is probably Toronto’s only Kölsch-style beer, a lagered beer that is essentially Germany’s answer to the British Pale Ale. It’s a beer with a rich brewing tradition in Cologne, and the style choice is a reflection of brewmaster Cooke’s training at brew schools in Germany.
The beer is a pale straw color with a noticeable but not overbearing hops presence and a middle-of-the-road alcohol content of 5%. I can certainly confirm its easy drinkablilty, and if the throngs of after-work drinkers at the Duke of Devon, where the beer is currently being poured, are any indication, others agree.
Hogtown officially launched this past weekend, slightly ahead of schedule. The owners of the Duke of Devon told Shippen that they’d start pouring Hogtown on Wednesday, just as soon as the current supply of Alexander Keith’s Red was expected to run dry. Anxious to get their beer out there, however, Shippen and the rest of the Hogtown Brewers enlisted some friends and saw to it that the bar’s supply of Keith’s Red ran out ahead of schedule and Hogtown has been tapped at the Duke since Friday.
There are plans to take Hogtown to other bars, but in the meantime Shippen and his partners are happy staying a little bit exclusive. “We’ve had a lot of interest,” he notes, “but we want to be able to expand the right way.” The plan seems to be a level-headed approach not to get too far ahead of themselves and to grow the business in a way that ensures they can still service whomever opts to pour their beer.
Shippen brings just some of what seems like considerable business-savvy to a group of brewers/rugby players that comprise a few financial industry types, as well as a current student and a gum salesman. For now, they seem content to take it one step at a time, but during a conversation that included reference to the Duke of Devon as a “focus group” and a chat about their contract brewing (at Cool Brewery) as a “less capital intensive” approach, it seemed clear that the guys from Hogtown Brewers have their sights set on eventual distributing to a wider market. Given the rate at which people seem to be downing pints of their tasty Kölsch-style beer, Toronto’s beer drinkers will likely be ready for them when they do.
Who’s the Country’s Biggest Brewer?
Written by Kim Peterson for money.msn.com
A new beer maker has surged ahead to become the largest in America — and it probably isn’t the one you think.
Anheuser-Busch, the maker of the No. 1 beer Bud Light? Nope. That’s a subsidiary ofAnheuser-Busch InBev (BUD +1.88%), which is based in Belgium.
How about MillerCoors, which makes No. 2 beer Coors Light? Nope. MillerCoors is a joint venture of London’s SABMiller (SBMRY -0.88%) and Molson Coors (TAP -0.73%), which operates out of Montreal and Denver.
The biggest U.S. brewer is now D.G. Yuengling and Son, based in Pottsville, Pa., the Allentown Morning Call reports. Yuengling saw shipments soar 16.9% last year to 2.5 million barrels. As a result, it barely squeaked into first place, surpassing Sam Adams maker Boston Beer (SAM -1.00%), which rose 8% to 2.4 million barrels.
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Crowd to Craft Beer via Facebook
Written by Donna Goodison for Bostonherald.com
Samuel Adams is giving its social network a say in the brewing process by crowd-sourcing a beer.
Using the “Crowd Craft Project†app, Facebook fans can determine the color, clarity, body and character of the malt, hops and yeast for the collaborative ale, which will make its debut during the South by Southwest Interactive Festival in Austin, Texas.
“We’re reaching out to our Facebook fans to engage them at the beginning of the beer-marking process, asking them for their ideas on what their perfect beer would be,†Sam Adams brewer Bert Boyce said. “We’ll put that input together and we’ll brew a beer for them.â€
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Escapes: The Old Brewery’s Gone, but There’s Still Lots Brewing in Mount Joy, Pa.
Picture courtesy howderfamily.com and panoramio.com
Written by James F. Lee for Washingtonpost.com
Alois Bube was urging us on. “Drink plenty of beer!†he cried. “I put plenty of myself into every keg!â€
Not needing any more prompting, I went up to the bar and ordered a Bube bock draft — rich, slightly sweet and with a hint of a coffee taste. As I sipped the dark brew, I wondered just what parts of Alois Bube I was drinking
The Central Hotel bar is decorated like a fin de siecle Parisian brothel, with dark wallpaper, low lights, a ceiling painted green and portraits of scantily clad ladies in various poses gracing the walls. Great atmosphere. Perfect for a murder.
My wife and I were making a weekend of it at Bube’s Brewery in tiny Mount Joy, Pa., between Harrisburg and Lancaster. This lovely area of rolling farmland has long been dominated by residents of German descent; back in 1876, Bube, an immigrant from Bavaria, opened a brewery in a two-story stone structure on North Market Street to serve them his popular lager. As his fortunes rose, he outgrew the old brewery and added a bottling works next door. In 1879, he built the three-story, Victorian-style Central Hotel, notable for its intricate brickwork. It backed onto the other side of the original brewery building, completing the block-long row that still stands today. Bube’s empire lasted until 1920, the year Prohibition was introduced, and the brewery closed for good.
Continue reading “Escapes: The Old Brewery’s Gone, but There’s Still Lots Brewing in Mount Joy, Pa.”
The Joys of Bottling (REALLY!)
Written by Will Trice for the AHA
Which is better, bottling or kegging? It’s one of the great homebrew debates, right up there with extract vs. all-grain and batch sparging vs. fly sparging. Both bottling and kegging have their advantages and disadvantages, and both can be onerous at times. Peeling labels off of used bottles is one of the worst tasks in homebrewing. But in the frustration department, finding a CO2 leak in your system when the beer is already in the keg is right up there.
I find that most homebrewers are strongly in one camp or the other. But I straddle the line, happily kegging or bottling each batch as my mood and circumstances guide me. And to be honest, I actually enjoy the bottling process more than kegging because I have found the five paths to bottling nirvana. But this wasn’t always the case.
Seventeen years ago, after just my third time homebrewing, I went out and bought a humongous, 1960s era, avocado green refrigerator and a very used CO2 bottle. Add to that a few used soda kegs, some fittings, hoses, and a picnic tap, and I was out of the bottling business for good. I hated bottling—the sanitizing, the filling, the capping. The chore of bottling was way more effort than I was willing to put into even this, the most satisfying of hobbies.
The Eternal BEER Debate
Beer Profile
Profiled by Ken Carman for Professor Goodales
Nice long lasting head, brown, caramelized nose but not much else, lots of body to the mouthfeel with darker malt sense: perhaps a tad to heavy for a Scottish, this is very interesting. Kind of an odd Scottish Heavy with parts of the profile on steroids, and at least one a little bit off.
Did they put chocolate malt in this? Maybe Marris Otter too? The Marris is already, but I’d drop this amount of chocolate in the mouthfeel and taste.
The carbonation in the body is light, which is OK for the style. Not as sweet as say Old Peculier, but a tad sweet malt-wise. Hops: none, but none expected. Way in the back of the taste if at all. But that’s the style.
This is a beer you should try for yourself. 
This had none of the astringency, and even had a hint of peated malt: not unexpected in the style.
But I think I’ll try another French Broad. Hopefully she won’t slap me with astringency again. Damn, there I go doing what I promised not to do!
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