first day on the job

Posted on February 17, 2010 by Brian

Yesterday was one of those days, as my friend Andy put it, that when I’m on CNBC some day, I’ll be telling stories about how “I remember when.” Yesterday was my first day working part-time at Thomas Creek, our local brewery in Greenville. It’s my first paying gig in a brewery.

As the saying goes, any time you start out at something new, it’s at the bottom. For those of you who may romanticize working in a brewery, my first shift consisted of removing cobwebs from the rafters and changing fluorescent light bulbs. Not exactly glamorous work.

Call me crazy, but I loved it. I’m sure that if that’s all I did every day, it would get old very quick. However, I find it very rewarding that I am contributing, in however small a part, to craft beer. I hope that I can bring a valuable dynamic to the team, and if they find me the least bit competent I’ll soon prove my worth for larger responsibilities. Maybe like cleaning the bathroom :)

I am very excited about my new venture. As with most things in my life, I don’t know exactly where this will lead, but I feel it’s on the right path. I want to be a sponge and learn as much as I can. It’s an awesome opportunity, and I know of so many people that would love to trade places with me.

The people at Thomas Creek have been great so far, and being in a brewery just feels like home. I just hope they have patience the first time I screw something up badly…

Here’s to new beginnings. Cheers!

Posted in Breweries, Untamedbeer news | 7 Comments

all-grain brew day video

Posted on February 4, 2010 by Brian

Back in September, my friend Dan and his girlfriend Holly came over to the Untamed Brewery to shoot a brew day using his fancy-pants HD video camera and one of those fuzzy boom mics. Lord was also with us to assist.

It also happened to be National Bacon Day, so we had legendary BLTs for lunch. It was a fun day.

It’s funny to looking back at my brewing process from just five months ago. It’s amazing how much more I’ve learned since then and how a few new toys have made brewing much easier. Namely, getting a 10-gallon water cooler which I use for a real mash tun. It makes a huge difference.

I do think this is a pretty good overview and illustration of the all-grain brewing process, but it was never intended to be an instructional video. It was just to show how I did things, the Untamed Way. In fact, there were several points in the video where I just shook my head and muttered, “Oh, September Brian, what are you doing?”

So if you disagree with my methods or what I’m saying, or if what I’ve said is completely wrong, I’m not surprised. I never claimed to be perfect, especially not back in September!

PS, if you don’t want to sit through all 3 parts, fast forward to about the 8:30 mark of part 3. We get a little silly.

Posted in Homebrew, Videos | 3 Comments

Brewing in the Snow

Posted on February 3, 2010 by Brian

Last Saturday I had my first experience brewing in the snow. I brewed up a Scottish Ale, so the snow cover outside seemed appropriate. I thought about waiting a week for the weather to improve, but I can just hear the scolding I would receive from some Scottish highlander for being a pansy. So I grabbed my Siberian hat and fired it up.

Brewing in sub-freezing temperatures wasn’t all that bad. Luckily, it wasn’t very windy, so the propane burner provided a suitable amount of heat. Even though I have an insulated cooler that I use as a mash tun, I kept it inside so it would minimize heat loss.

The toughest part of the process was getting my wort to boil. I was doing a 10-gallon batch with a 90 minute boil, so I started with 13 gallons of wort. Even though the wort started out at nearly 155 degrees from the mash and sparge, it still took nearly an hour and half to bring it to boil. I was beginning to think the old adage was true, “a watched pot never boils.”

On the flip side of that, I was able to cool the wort using my immersion chiller very quickly. I was able to get all that wort cooled to 60 degrees in about 45 minutes.

I had a great time, and it felt awesome to be outside, making beer in the freezing cold. And aside from forgetting to fill my propane tanks the day before the snow hit and having to go out and exchange one of my tanks and almost not making it back up my driveway, everything went smoothly.

Here are a few photos for your enjoyment.


 


 

Nicole getting ready to stir the mash

 

Vorlauf!

 

Somehow, the combination of extreme cold and the heat from the Bayou Classic unleashed a torrent of electromagnetic energy, transporting us back to 1978.
Posted in Homebrew | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

World Beer Festival – Columbia 2010 Awards

Posted on January 21, 2010 by Brian

This past weekend I had the opportunity to come back into my old home town, Columbia, for the All About Beer Magazine World Beer Festival. The good people of Columbia are starved for good craft beer, so I am very happy to see the festival come back after a successful debut in 2009.

I wrote a full review of the festival over on HopPress, so you can read more there if you would like. Here I am posting the Untamed Beer – World Beer Festival Awards.

I only attended the noon to 4 pm session. There was another from 6 to 10 pm, but I was beaten down at the end of four hours of beer tasting and I had to get back to Greenville that night.

On a side note, I am also despondent that I missed out on the Beard and Mustache Society meeting later that evening. Darn obligations!

There were 250+ beers to try and sample in my four-hour window. I obviously did not get to them all. Actually, upon review of the list, I think I only had 20-25 beers. Beforehand, I had identified 60 beers that I have never tried, so I didn’t even get through one-third of my list.

So what the hell was I doing!?!? I was pacing myself, for one. I’m in the middle of marathon training and had to run 12 miles the next day. That’s no joke. I was also trying to spend more time talking to people, rather than racing around trying to slam as many beers as I could get my hands on. Call me what you will…

So, these awards are not a comprehensive overview of everything at the festival. Please feel free to comment if you have some other beers you found particularly great, interesting or terrible. I’d love some feedback from others to know what they thought.

Without further ado…

Best of Show

Thomas Creek Up the Creek IPA run through a Randal

For those that are unfamiliar with Randal, it’s an ingenious device that is constructed from a household water filter. However, instead of filtering water through carbon, you filter beer through hops. It adds an incredibly fresh hop aroma and flavor to beer that cannot be accomplished through traditional brewing and dry hopping methods.

Thomas Creek took their Up the Creek IPA, which is already a hoppy malt bomb, and ran it through the Randal containing Cascade and Amarillo hops. It took the beer to a new level of hoppy goodness. Up the Creek is such an intense beer (it’s 12.5% ABV) that it has a malt backbone that can easily handle more hop character and stay balanced.

I also give Thomas Creek kudos because that was the only beer I found at the festival that received any kind of special treatment to make it unique and different from what you can buy in the stores. I never found any other special rarities like barrel-aged, cask or special batch beers. Again, I didn’t hit every booth, so let me know if I’m mistaken.

Honorable Mentions

  • Koningshoeven Brouwerij Duppel
  • Brasserie Lefebvre Barbar Honey Ale
  • Avery Hog Heaven
  • Coast Blackbeerd Imperial Stout
  • Terrapin Hopsecutioner

Most Interesting Beer

Sweetwater Happy Ending

My first impression of the Happy Ending was that it had very little aroma, which was deceiving. The flavor had an intense smoke on the front end and it finished chocolaty. It totally took me off-guard.

Weirdest Beer

Bud Light Golden Wheat

Even though I’m not much of a supporter of the Big Three, or two, or whatever they are now, I still feel that I need to give all beer a chance. My curiosity of the Bud Light Golden Wheat was compelling me to try it, but I didn’t want to invest in a whole bottle. That’s the beauty of a beer festival. I can try a small amount with no harm done.

Well, the Golden Wheat looked like a wheat beer. It was golden yellow and cloudy, as expected. It had an understated aroma. The weirdest part was the flavor. It wasn’t bad, but it reminded me of pizza crust. I can’t really explain it, that’s just what I tasted. Very weird…

Best Food

Gigantic Brats Smothered in Peppers and Cheese

Courtesy of Friendly Catering. I didn’t have one, but it looked phenomenal.

Best Facial Hair

Patrick

Best Outfits

Alice in Wonderland

These lovely ladies were manning the Mellow Mushroom tasting station. Luckily, we also ran into them at the Mellow Mushroom after the festival.

Best Cardboard Body Armor

It gets physical at beer festivals. You can’t be too careful with your personal safety.

Posted in Beer events | 3 Comments

January 2010 – RJ Rockers Black Pearle

Posted on January 8, 2010 by Brian
You shall not take my beer, swarthy Gnome!

I thought I’d kick ‘010 off with something different, and RJ Rockers’ Black Pearle fits the bill. (I wrote a full feature on the brewery for the HopPress earlier this week, if you care to learn more about the brewery.) Black Pearle is described as a dark IPA. A dark IPA, you ask. How can this be? Well, let’s explore the depths.

The color is as the name says, dark. Sitting in the glass on the counter, the beer looks black, like a stout. However, hold it up to the light and you can see a deep ruby color and it is slightly transparent.

The aroma brings in some citrus hops and candied sugar. It has a strong malt aroma which allows the hops to be somewhat understated. The flavor is certainly reminiscent of a strong IPA. Solid malt backbone and sweetness topped with a bitter hop finish.

The twist with the Black Pearle, which to me makes it unique, is that is also comes with a roasted toffee flavor that you would not expect from a traditional IPA. I’m assuming that’s from the roasted malt that they used to produce the deep ruby color.

I believe that the Black Pearle is the perfect example to debunk the misconception that many people have that a dark beer must be heavy. This beer shows that color does not necessarily correlate to body.

Brewers can use a small proportion of very dark malt and produce the same color as using a large proportion of a not-as-dark malt, but with very different flavor and body.

The Black Pearle a 9.5% ABV beer, so it’s going to have a big body and intense flavor. However, if I drank this beer blind, I would not call it a stout. It doesn’t have the creamy mouthfeel and intense roast of most big stouts.

I’m sure there are some purists out there that scoff at this notion. “How can they call it an IPA when it’s that dark!?” Well, I don’t care.

So often we feel like we have to play within these established style parameter, but what fun is that? I say push it, do something off the wall, and give people a new experience. Who cares what’s on the label?

Posted in Beer of the Month | 5 Comments

I have draft beer in my house!

Posted on December 28, 2009 by Brian

I feel as thought I have turned a corner in my life. I now have draft beer accessible in my house. This could be both a blessing and a curse.

The blessing: kegging homebrew is SO much easier than bottling. This will save me hours of sanitizing bottles weeks of conditioning time. This is the second best homebrewing investment I’ve made, behind the wort chiller.

The curse: now that I have easy access to nips of beer without the commitment of an entire bottle, I may be perpetually buzzed. I need to invest in one of those pig livers…

My first beer on tap: Chocolate Cayenne Stout. Just as a teaser, the stout is very tasty. I’m going to post the recipe and do a full-fledged review of it later this week or next. I think I got the cayenne just right. It was a major cause of anxiety, as there is a fine line between pleasant tingle and “it hurts to pee.”

If you want to relive the experience of my first homebrew keg tapping, here it is in live video:

Posted in Homebrew | Tagged , | 7 Comments

Oskar Blues beers aged in Stranahan’s whiskey barrels

Posted on December 10, 2009 by Brian

Last night at Barley’s we had a flight of Oskar Blues beers that had been aged in Stranahan’s whiskey barrels and served from casks: Mama’s Little Yella Pils, Old Chub and Ten Fidy.

If you have never had a barrel-aged beer, or a beer served from a cask, please, I beg you, find a cask night or a barrel-aged beer at a fancy beer store and drink it. It will change your life.

Now, I’m a huge fan of Oskar Blues regular selections. I think Dale’s Pale is a staple for any session or camping trip, and Old Chub is one of my favorite choices when I’m looking for something sweet and malty. The whiskey oak-aged versions of these beers did not disappoint. They were delicious.

Mama’s Little Yella Pils

I started with the Mama’s Little Yella Pils. This was a very unique selection, as I’d never had a barrel-aged pilsner before.

The whiskey aroma was dominant, but more of the oak came through in the flavor. I would not have guessed this was a pilsner. It was a very tasty and unique combination.

My only criticism is that the body seemed a bit watery. The regular Yella Pils has a nice body and mouthfeel, so my only thought is that this was due to the cask. Either way, it was tasty and I wouldn’t call it a failure.

Old Chub

The Old Chub was the opposite of the Yella Pils. I noticed a lot of the oak in the aroma, but the whiskey came through wonderfully in the flavor.

Perhaps from the combination of malt, oak and whiskey, but I tasted a banana malt milkshake thing going on. It was smooth and delicious.

Ten Fidy

The barrel-aged Ten Fidy was a huge malt bomb wrought with whiskey and oak aromas. It was sweet, bready and smooth. Excellent, although if I had another, it may have put me on another planet.

My choice for best of the night was the Old Chub. It was somewhere in between the Yella Pils and Ten Fidy in terms of intensity and body, which made it a very smooth drink. The flavor was simply amazing. That’s the kind of beer that I could nip on all night.

Posted in Beer, Breweries | Tagged , , , , , | 5 Comments

Untamed-PSG Collaboration Coffee Stout

Posted on December 7, 2009 by Brian

A couple months ago, I was approached by my friends at the Palmetto Software Group to brew a beer for their company holiday party/customer appreciation gifts/general consumption. After an evening to tasting a variety of beers at Barley’s they settled on a stout.

But not just any stout. They wanted 20 gallons, so we had the option of adding a variety of flavors to the four 5-gallon carboys during secondary fermentation. We opted on one regular stout, one coffee, one chocolate, and one bourbon oak.

Now that the beer is finally ready, I brought the coffee variety to the Upstate Brewtopians meeting this past Saturday. It was greeted with an extremely position response, and I actually took home the honor of winning the beer-pendant-trophy thing.

The coffee stout was voted best among 20 entrants in the open competition, so I am very honored and proud of my beer. It’s the first award of any kind I’ve won for my homebrew.

The coffee stout was jet black with a very apparent coffee aroma. The coffee flavor was right on, not overpowering or harsh. I used a cold extraction technique to add the coffee to secondary, and I think it worked very well. I describe the steps for the cold extraction below.

What I found most intriguing about it was the additional flavors I tasted in the beer. It was nutty and chocolatey, and I even tasted some vanilla. Despite the high IBU, I didn’t get much in the way of hops or bitterness. The malt and coffee were well-balanced with the hops.

The body and mouthfeel were solid for a stout. Not nearly as thick as my mythical Troll’s Blood (more on that in the coming days), but substantial and satisfying. In the past I’ve had trouble with thin stouts, but I think I’ve found the cure: more grain. Don’t be scared.

I do believe this is one of my best efforts to date. Good flavor, good body, and everything was in balance. I hope PSG and their associates enjoy it as much as I do.

Here is the recipe for a 10-gallon all-grain batch:

Mash
12 lbs 2-row
10 lbs Munich
2 lbs Crystal-120
2 lbs Chocolate malt
2 lbs Black Patent malt

Single step infusion mash at 152 degrees for 60 minutes.

Hop Additions
60 min:
2 oz. U.S. Golding
2 oz. Northern Brewer
30 min:
2 oz. U.S. Golding
2 oz. Northern Brewer

Yeast: Wyeast 1084 Irish Ale

Secondary
Cold coffee extraction (per 5-gallon carboy):

  1. Freshly grind 1/2 lb of coffee beans, preferably a medium roast.
  2. Put grounds and 24 oz. water into a sanitized container.
  3. Allow it to sit for 24 hours.
  4. Run the mixture through a coffee filter or fine strainer.
  5. Add the filtered coffee liquid to secondary.

Stats
Original Gravity: 1.070
Final Gravity: 1.021
ABV: 6.5%
IBU: 73
SRM: 50

Posted in Homebrew, Recipes | Tagged , | 3 Comments

from the Hop Press: an interview with Tom Davis, brewmaster & founder of Thomas Creek

Posted on December 3, 2009 by Brian

My latest post on the Hop Press:

An interview with Tom Davis of Thomas Creek

Tom and his father, Bill, talked with me about why they got into beer, how Tom started brewing, and what gave him the desire to go out on his own and start his own brewery.

Posted in Breweries, Interviews | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

December 2009 – North Coast Brother Thelonious

Posted on December 1, 2009 by Brian

Author’s Note: It has been five months since my last Beer of the Month nomination. I have been focusing a lot more on homebrew over the past few months, so I haven’t been drinking as much commercial stuff as I have in the past. Either way, that is way too long, and this December I am going to close out 2009 with a beer fury. As Mike Tomlin, coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers, said after their recent loss to the Ravens, “We will not go gently. We will unleash hell in December.”

North Coast has long been one of my favorite breweries. My love of their beers began with the Old Rasputin Imperial Russian Stout, which I rank right up there with Great Divide’s Yeti as my favorite stouts on the earth. I finally got my hands on one of their legendary beers that I had not yet experienced, Brother Thelonious.

North Coast is a big fan and supporter of jazz music and named Brother Thelonious after famous jazz pianist Thelonious Monk. For each case of Brother Thelonious that they sell, North Coast makes a contribution to the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz. They are also the official brewery of several jazz festivals, including the Monterey Jazz Festival.

Brother Thelonious is a Belgian-style abbey ale. Much like the musician this beer was named for, this is a smooth, yet complex brew. It’s a dark red ale, and the color forebodes the flavor within. It’s full-bodied, upwards of 9% ABV.

The aroma has fruit and spice all over it. Raisins, prunes and currants all dance together as if in a Sufi whirling ceremony. The finish coats the tongue in a sweet sugary glaze and lingers for many moments, leaving me in a Belgian trance.

I very much enjoy the mellow intensity of this beer. My senses cry out for more, and alas, I shall have another glass.

Posted in Beer of the Month | Tagged , , | 6 Comments