Pfiff!

Introducing the second annual Pfiff! beer and food tasting - The Italian Modernists

2009-07-08T14:28:00.000-07:00

It was last August when we found ourselves sitting around the patio table, weighed down in our seats by the twin burdens of good food and good drink, when the topic of conversation turned to what unifying themes we could explore in subsequent gatherings. But while there's no end to which we enjoy our fill of barrel-aged imperial thises and thats and peculiarly spiced holiday ales and unclassifiable Belgian nanobrewery miscellany, none of the ideas bandied about managed to spark the dim light of inspiration we needed. It just so happens that we're lucky to exist in a time and place where stylistic panel tastings aren't terribly difficult to come by, thanks to some pretty fine watering holes and the odd renegade social group. Putting on a tasting for a tasting's sake seemed arbitrary and redundant. Not to mention, as it turned out, the greatest pleasure we gleaned from the event came from the challenge of pairing each beer with foods that presented them in their best light, seeing as we were pouring some that were potentially challenging to unaccustomed taste buds. It was obvious that whatever guiding principle the next tasting would be focused upon, the food would play an important, if not more elevated role.

But it wasn't more than a few months after we'd closed the books on that day's affairs that the next subject we'd be attracted to became more apparent. If there's one thing that was made terribly clear at Slow Food Nation, it's that beer is taken very seriously as a part of its ethos. Its interesting to note, though, that despite the attention it lavishes on finely crafted beer, the Slow Food movement has its origins in the loosely populated agricultural heart of Piemonte, an area dominated by wine grapes within a country that's perhaps only second to France in having globally established wine as the cultivated palate's beverage of choice, particularly in consideration when pairing with fine foods. But things appear to be changing. Where the Slow movement has taken root, brewers with similar philosophies are beginning to flourish. In a place that's devoted to celebrating their regional specialties, beers are being designed with ingredients true to their own "Ark of Taste", and envisioned in terms of being enjoyed in tandem with the cuisine as an equal partner in the gustatory experience. Hence this year's event: The Italian Modernists.

Like last year, the event will take place in San Francisco, and will be a small, informal affair with the goal of tasting a wide variety of rare beers alongside some tasty nibbles. Festivities will take place on Saturday, August 15, at 3:00 p.m. Seats for this year's dinner are $45. For questions, or to reserve your place at the table, you can either email me at or leave a comment on this post with information about how I can get back in touch (and as I'm generally able to reply to emails within the day, if you haven't heard back from me, it's a good sign your message has been relegated to my junk mail folder, in which case you might want to tap me a second time). I'm also happy to announce that Healthy Spirits will be officially providing all of our beers this year, which helps guarantee you've got a local resource to stock up on any of the beers we'll be pouring, and we'll have the pleasure of their beer manager, Dave Hauslein, also in attendance. If last year was any indication, it'll be a fun, long afternoon of relaxed tasting, and we hope to see some new faces at this one!

Announcing July's copycat stole a rat put it in her Sunday hat Fermentation Friday

2009-07-07T22:11:00.000-07:00

And for my next trick...

As ruthless experimenters, we're loathe to ever admit attempting to clone anything familiar in our brewing endeavors, instead opting to expend most of our efforts on doing something wholly other, whipping to life concoctions of pure imagination, beat out of thin air, pulled from the dark edges of existence over the precipice of possibility into the weird and funny world of the real. Individual, unique, individually unique, singular creations that pay sole allegiance to the imaginations of their creators. But damn, if there aren't some existing beers for which we wouldn't kill to know the alchemical code, turning cheap bunches of slightly rotted grains into bucket after delicious bucket of perfectly crafted copycat elixir. And that's the topic of this month's Fermentation Friday, which we at Pfiff! have the pleasure of hosting this month: Homebrewed doppelgangers. What beers have you attempted to duplicate in your own homes, or which ones have you always wanted to reproduce, but have been wary of attempting? Here's a chance to not only post some recipes for feedback (or secondary counterfeiting) but also a chance to maybe nail the recipe you've always hoped to figure out, but haven't had luck in getting quite right. Got a spot-on Pliny that shames the LongShot version? Can't quite pin down that elusive whatsit character in your wannabe Orval? Submit your post on Friday, July 31, and either comment with a link here on this post or send an email to in order for me to include your submission in the round-up. Who knows? You may get the feedback you've been looking for to finally nail down that dead ringer recipe for Stroh's that you've been honing for the past 10 years...

The Session #29 - Return to Flathead Lake

2009-07-03T10:51:00.000-07:00

Recently, this comment appeared on a post that I published last year:

Just saw your comment on working through the pain from last year...good comments and helpful hints, except the Flathead Lake Brewing comment "not all craft beer is brewed equal"...this is true, but not in the way you presented it: Flathead Lake Brewing has won every award for brewing in the state, beating out all the big guys, and has actually brought home two World Beer Cup awards, which are the most prestigious awards in brewing. As far as "we've run out of beer, again"...well that's just crap, as an employee there, we have never "run out of beer", we have just run low because we sell so much of it to local accounts...so yes, not all craft beer is brewed equal...if it was, Glacier Brewing, Kettlehouse, and some of the other beers you mentioned would be winning international awards and running low on beer as well...
Anyhow, my two cents...keep up the good work...just keep it accurate. :) Cheers!!! - Info

To which I replied with this:

Info (if that is your real name!), I appreciate getting feedback from employees at breweries I've mentioned, and apologize if it seemed I was ragging unfairly on Flathead. My comment about them running out of beer stems from two separate visits I made back in the summer of 2007, when I was refused growler service because as the person working stated, they were "running out of beer". Without speculating further on what was going on at Flathead back in '07, I will say this: A return visit this past summer showed a *very* different brewery, one that had on tap a number of great beers, some fun experiments in the works, and absolutely no problem filling up a number of growlers for me with some excellent sustenance with which to spend my evening staring at the lake. I apologize for not putting that positive update on this post earlier.

The truth of the matter is, you're put at a serious disadvantage (and I'd be curious to hear what Stan has to say on this) whenever you try to establish an informed opinion about anything, not least of which a brewery, based off brief, singular visits.What's been said about first impressions often haunts the words of blogs (and Info, that's "blog" as in "web log", not to be confused with a travel guide, nor something that anybody reads anyway), capturing quick observations, often read divorced from the greater timeline, one that can frequently be misconstrued as concrete, permanent, final judgments. Unfortunately, though, most blogs, this one included, oftentimes neglect to amend their stance on particular experiences regardless of a change of heart on a subsequent visit. Something tells me if I'd be more proactive in expressing my pleasant return to Flathead last summer, Info wouldn't have felt need to comment in such a way that seems a little disparaging to the other local breweries in his/her community.

This month's Session pertains to tips and strategies on the road of beer travel. Lesson learned? Simply, don't be shy about voicing your impressions, but alternately, be prepared to reevaluate those impressions after repeat visits. And that said, be willing to revisit places that may have disappointed the first time around, because there's really nothing more rewarding than being proven wrong. Ultimately, I'm certainly looking forward to revisiting Flathead Lake Brewing again this summer (if only to fill another growler with that Flanders brown of theirs) to see what fresh surprises they have in store. This time: more pictures, more notes, and a promise to make good on updating our impressions. I'll hunt out for Info, too, if just to apologize in person.

The Session is a blog carnival originated by Stan Hieronymus at Appellation Beer. This month's party is being hosted by Gail and Steve of Beer by Bart. For a summary of the Sessions thus far, check out Brookston's handy guide. You can also follow folks' entries on twitter by searching for posts marked with the #thesession hashtag.

Fermentation Friday - Riding the heat wave

2009-06-26T13:57:00.000-07:00

The requisite farmhouse accouterments

Night in Day

The night never wants to end, to give itself over
to light. So it traps itself in things: obsidian, crows.
Even on summer solstice, the day of light's great
triumph, where fields of sunflowers guzzle in the sun--
we break open the watermelon and spit out
black seeds, bits of night glistening on the grass.
-Joseph Stroud

With the longest day of the year having just past, the inevitable severe weather alerts warning of impending heat waves have begun to crop up. After an abysmally dry year, the hills are already crackling with dry brush, the deer eerily shedding their typically protective secrecy of their young fawns, bringing the whole family out from under cover in pursuit of green food and fresh water. It's an atmosphere that summons the chef away from the fire of the kitchen, preferring instead to let the heat of cooking to dissipate and mingle with the vapors of evaporate waving off freshly watered plants and heady trimmed grass. To my mind, the activity that aligns best alongside the bbq, the requisite lidded yellowjacket-proof bierstein, and the passive deep tissue massage of mellow, warm humidity, is the act of brewing, throwing yet another funnel of steamy aroma into the cloudless sky.

Ironic, then, isn't it, that while doing a bit of brewing makes for the perfect mid-summer's daydream, those same exceedingly high temperatures can easily spell doom for most beers during the subsequent fermentation stage, what with the yeasts most commonly employed for brewing ales preferring a summer in San Francisco's seemingly static sixty-something degrees. But we don't live in San Francisco anymore, and while yeast character in some brewing styles tend to be more subdued by the use of cooler temperatures, particularly those that employ the use of lager yeasts and long periods of cold storage, yeast itself can actually behave like a secret ingredient in many specialty styles, not the least being saison, a beer that happens to often employ a yeast that thrives at stunningly high temperatures. And with the mercury here hovering in the mid-eighties with the promise of high nineties in the near future, it's the perfect time to let nature take its course, and prepare to get your farmhouse funk on by brewing something where the yeast will truly benefit from being cooked, yielding that otherwise elusive level of orchard fruit, pepper spice, and lingering dryness that helps define how we currently think of saison.

Quite simply put, our response to this month's Fermentation Friday topic could be summed up, oddly, thusly:

Q: "How do you beat the summer heat?"
A: "Why beat it when you can join it?"

Brewed as the third installment in the increasingly ludicrously named Aleumination series, a sort of online collaborative open source brewing experiment, the recipe below [this is our version, mind you, and should in no way implicate the other homebrewers involved or imply anything about their talents at composing recipes] is a unwieldy weird beast, one that I'm not entirely promoting you all rush out to replicate. But for all intensive purposes (ie, that of being imbibed to fend off dehydration and give summer yard/farm work a smeary air of rustic delight), it's working out just fine, taking prime advantage of these long, hot days to work itself into condition.

Admittedly, the grain bill is ludicrously redundant, ill-measured, and disproportionate, but I gave it the green light by convincing myself it's true to (some variation on) the historical nature of saisons for them to consist of a variety of farm grains and little else. The real reason though: An interest in brewing something all-organic led me to purchase our ingredients via Santa Cruz's Seven Bridges co-op, where, as it turns out, they just happened to be having their summer sale, at which they were offering up a nicely discounted 15lb sampler pack of their different malts. Long story short, pretty much everything that seemed to fit the "farmhouse" bill made its merry way into the grist, with little worry for measurements or balance. When it turned out to be a full seven pounds worth of specialty grains, though, I put away my bags of spelt, kamut and oats for another day...

Summer Saison 2009, aka "The Insatiator"

Grains:
4.40 lbs. Generic Liquid Malt Extract (Light)
1.00 lbs. Pilsener
1.00 lbs. White Wheat
1.00 lbs. Wheat Malt
1.00 lbs. Cara-Pils Dextrine Malt
1.00 lbs. Pale Malt (2-row) America
1.00 lbs. Pale Malt (2-row) Great Britain
1.00 lbs. Flaked Soft White Wheat

Hops:
60 min 1.00 oz. Opal
30 min 1.00 oz. Tettnanger Tettnang
10 min 1.00 oz. Opal
0 min 1.00 oz. Tettnanger Tettnang

Yeast:
WLP565 - White Labs Belgian Saison I

Notes: Mash for 60 minutes at 149°. Pitch yeast when wort has cooled to 90°. Allow to ferment in a space where temperature doesn't drop below 75°. Rack onto oak in secondary fermenter and bottle when gravity has dropped to below 1.010.

Have at it, if you're game (and happen to have the Seven Bridges sampler pack in your fridge). Of course, none of this pertains to the "you think it's chocolate milk but it's watered down Belgian imperial stout" which we'll be brewing this weekend (except for it consisting of the remainder of the aforementioned sampler pack), but that's where having a cellar that never gets above 60° comes in awfully handy.

Many thanks to John at Brew Dudes for hosting this month's Fermentation Friday, a monthly blogging carnival gathered around the topic of homebrewing, originated by Beer Bits 2.

Local brewery (temporarily) expands

2009-06-19T14:22:00.000-07:00

Optimistic bottles: Not half empty, but half filled...

I am seldom late for work, even by the obligatory rive minutes; I live far to close to the office to ever establish a genuinely feasible excuse. But, then again, I also seldom find my (albeit unlawful) bike route through town obstructed by a fully operational industrial beer bottling operation, sitting in the middle of the sidewalk, noisily huffing through cases of bombers, which is exactly what I encountered yesterday. And but oh, what a brilliant scheme it is. For those of you who have ever wondered, how exactly does a modestly sized brewpub manage to dispatch bottles of four of their releases to accounts far and wide without painstakingly doing it by hand well past the 25th hour of the day, or by utilizing a contract brewer, here's your answer: a door-to-door bottling line:

No bikes or skateboards, fancy mobile bottling machines a-ok

That's right: The whole kit and caboodle rolls right off the back of a truck, plugs in to the tank line, and away it goes. Place labels on roll, empty bottles on the one end, caps on the crimper, and some waiting arms and empty cases on the other end, and you're off. Plenty of folks have seen what a bottling line looks like, but encountering a system like this running at full tilt in the middle of the street is nothing short of a spectacle.

Lining them up while the Altman crew looks on

Of the many good things Christian Kazakoff has brought to Iron Springs, it would seem his dedication to a bottling program has had the greatest apparent impact. Hard at work well before most folks were even up, he, Phil and Mike were already well on their way to filling the 200 cases of empty bottles that had arrived that morning, and by the time I rode past on my way home, there was nary a trace anything fishy had taken place, all the gear packed back up onto the truck, cases put away, but for a stray bottle here and there.

Bottle labels boasting a beer's water source have a long tradition

It's a beautifully reasonable solution, too, one that allows a brewery to flexibly make decisions about expansion without levying the enormous risk inherent in moving beyond "being a brewpub" and "getting on shelves". If it turns out to be a successful venture, you can always stage an encore performance with higher case numbers, and if it ends up applying too much pressure to your bottom line, you can simply write it off as an experiment to revisit later on. There's no equipment to learn, maintain, and pay for, no space to rent, and no fear of outgrowing the scale of your operations. At the end of the day, it's back to business as usual.

One down, 199 cases to go...

Fermentation Friday - Free Improv

2009-05-29T22:21:00.000-07:00

Joy is adding hops whenever your kid thinks it'd be fun.

For a length of time I'm reluctant to calculate for fears I'll have to confront quantitative evidence of just how single-minded (and old*) I am, I've been damned near certain my life would be spent as a musician. How exactly, on the other hand, has been a more nebulous decision. There have been numerous iterations defining musicianship over the years [Um, hello - DJ? What the hell was I thinking?], but one constant has remained. Regardless of what was going to define "being a musician", it was bound to reflect the dominant aspect of improvisation. Whether as a guitarist or a composer or an electronic musician or an arranger (or even as a what the hell was I thinking man that's a lot of expensive gear DJ) there has always been a need to incorporate the element of spontaneous musical composition, because ostensibly, it's only when you loosen the reins and allow the truth of the moment to materialize that you can really embrace the livingness of the art form. In the Shona music of Zimbabwe, for instance, regardless of the fact that musicians play known pieces with names and moods associated with them, they often lack specific beginnings and ends as they see the act of performing akin to making a telephone connection to the spiritual world, and that effect of simply "tapping in", much like turning on a tv in mid-show and turning it off just as arbitrarily, along with a degree of a jazz-like spontaneous interpretation, reflects an ethos that embraces the notion of music as a separate animate entity that we have access to and through which we can communicate our emotions, amplified and transmuted. That "it's there if you're listening for it" approach to creating musical sound can lend to a fascinating viewpoint on what level of control one feels they ever truly have over the creation of their own musical art.

Even musicians trained in the most rigid Western classical traditions respect and acknowledge the discrete variations between various performances and aim for - even under the auspices of cohesively following the written instructions of the composer and/or how they're being translated by a conductor - a performance that transcends the printed page, referring to successful interpretations in terms of being alive, of their emotional resonance, and of their ability to "communicate". And outside of that rarefied sphere of purpose-driven musicianship, in the world of popular, blues, jazz, even now including dance and electronic music, the idea of improvisation as a method whereby a musician can actively exploit the use of time as medium and sound as materials to unveil music that already exists, but which simply needs to be tapped into in order to be brought to light, is such commonly understood routine that discussions over what truly defines improvisation are often eclipsed by the more immediately gratifying discussions over how to do it successfully.

The prevailing argument states that there's no such thing as true spontaneity in improvisation. Any music made on the spot is going to be influenced by so many mitigating factors - previous performance experience, muscle memory, preconceived notions about stylistic guidelines, imitative gestures, unconscious mimicry - that outside of a tiny circle of free improvisers who've made it their guiding discipline to try to divorce themselves from those binding detractions and play from a purely ascended level not unlike a state of trance, all improvised music is pre-composed to some certain degree. Where that line is drawn (not to mention how broad or thick or porous or opaque that line is), between what defines a piece of music and what elements of it have been spontaneously manipulated is where the discussion of improvisation - particularly from the point of view of the composer - becomes richly rewarding, far beyond the talk of "who takes a solo when" or "what scale should I use", breathing life into music by opening the door to the chaotic nature of possibility and potential.

It's near certain that my evolving philosophy on the creation of music has rewired the rest of my brain to the extent that it affects the way I approach pretty much anything that comes up in a given day, with understandably mixed results (let us never again speak of the savory French toast experiment). It should come as no surprise, then, that brewing in this house incorporates a good level of improvisation, for good and for bad, and which brings us to the topic of today's Fermentation Friday. Simply said, the thing that brings me the most joy and the most pain is one and the same: the fact that I can't get through a single brewing session, whether it's in the composing of the recipe or the methods used during the brew to last-minute deviations in hopping to fermentation temperature changes to bottling, kegging, or conditioning choices, it's become quite clear that I'm anything but the type who "leaves nothing to chance". That's all I leave it to, most of the time. And you know what? The beer turns out pretty good. Near disasters provide opportunities to get quickly creative, and unintentional moments of brilliance can make an entire session memorable. Ad-libbed triple decoction? Pain. Spontaneous mini-decoction? Joy. Cutting short a boil time without considering full wort evaporation rates? Pain. Deciding to extend a boil for an extra hour because the weather's nice? Joy. In the end, though, my tolerance for pain is pretty low. Which is why we do so much homebrewing around here: It really is quite simply a joy.

Here's tonight's recipe. I'll post back if anything changes.

* Additional criteria of concern: Adding a power carpentry tool to my Amazon wish list alongside completely unironic enjoyment of the piano music of Handel.

Many thanks to Ted at Ted's Homebrew Journal for hosting this month's Fermentation Friday, a monthly blogging carnival gathered around the topic of homebrewing, originated by Beer Bits 2.

Absence makes the hops grow fronder

2009-05-27T10:48:00.000-07:00

It's heartening to know that despite my absence over the past month, Pfiff! readership has continued to clip along at a reasonably regular pace. Likewise, it's heartening to see that despite my inattention in the garden lately, the hops are diligently following their own course of nature by whatever means available.

We'll be returning to quasi-normalcy soon.

The Session #27 - Tyranny Undercover

2009-05-02T08:51:00.000-07:00

Not the same. But easier than trying to make it from scratch.

There's no denying the truth behind the old saying about best laid plans, which is precisely how someone could find themselves in a situation like this, on a drizzly morning in May, staring at a dust-ridden bottle of Torani Amer and a folder full of unsent email drafts, wondering how these self-imposed writing deadlines can arrive so unexpectedly, and how those once grand statutory visions are often reduced, by necessity and panic, to hardscrabble dirt and mud golems imbued with the hot breath of its composer's hope that it too might live and walk and keep momentum going for just another day. It's all the more shameful when the gifts all seem to align themselves in a row - gifts of the cocktail persuasion! - offering up easy riches in the form of a puckish topic, affable co-conspirators, and the burblings of some potentially avant mixology. It's all past potential now, though, and truly, it isn't even morning by the time this sentence has been typed, another interruption likely on the horizon (how prescient, now that this bit is being typed nearly 12 hours past its inception, that light drizzle having been replaced by a whipping downpour, and my thoughts squarely with those slogging their way into the deep end abyss of Boonville to pitch their muddy tents) and odds even that the publish button below won't even get clicked, despite, as I said, the best laid plans. Certain folks will have to stow their cabinet of tinctural curiosities for a later date, curtains drawn back over the mysteries of the unrealized, and the wings of rootless fantasy clipped and grounded. What could have been, isn't. Let's make us a drink, shall we?

So even though it's already been done, both here (and even before) and now already in this month's Session, we're going to keep it simple with this very brief reflection on a little drink called the Picon bière. The recipe, if you want to call it that, isn't much to speak of. But as our host this month is a neighbor of sorts, he deserves a little more. It was three or four years ago, in the redwood enshrouded grand Victorian dining room of the Lark Creek Inn, an arguably classic dining establishment crippled and shuttered by economic woes, those weird tendrils of financial panic that've traveled even up into the toniest, most insusceptible neighborhoods, a restaurant doomed to soon be resurrected as "affordable", or heaven forbid, something more ghastly like "family friendly". They had - and I hope this doesn't change - a serious, adult, fantastic bar. And it was here that I had the most unlikely of cocktails offered to me before dinner one night, as our waiter recognized my middling response to their beer list (and as for why I was glancing over their beer list, I probably wouldn't have even ordered a beer in an establishment like this, wrought of good, heathful digestifs and aperitifs and punishingly delicious whiskeys, but it's a habit - I always look at beer menus, because there are often surprises, sweet buried treasures cellared away by one discriminating chef who knows that no matter what the others think, his poached sole goes better with that Moinette than any of the wine they've got gathering dust down there) and offered to make me a cocktail made of their Urquell and a dash of Amer Picon. Little did I know how much I'd love it. Littller did I know how much I'd regret making its acquaintance when I discovered that true Amer bitters were entirely unavailable in this country and that the few bottles they'd had on hand in the bar had made their way back across the Atlantic in somebody's luggage. Granted, there are instructions on how to replicate that magical ingredient in the solace of your own home, but they're frankly not much simpler than building an ultralight aircraft in your garage and using it to fly across the North Pole to pick up a bottle of the authentic item. So we have this: From the people who brought you the the flavor du jour in your trendsetting latte, Torani's very own Amer mixer. It tastes only vaguely correct. But it will do.

Mia's working on taking over the photg job here.

Blended with a continental lager, this cocktail makes sense, as the flabby taste impression that old, ship-worn and light-struck bottles leaves little to be excited about, the strange, orangy, botanical, somewhat vegetal elixir of the Picon carrying the drink into a nearly Campari-esque realm, with a gut-stirring astringency and a snap of old fashioned, resuscitative, rejuvenated medicinal edginess. The florals of the hops are accentuated. Front end bitterness is restored. Weird hints of woodsy, rooty, dirty darkness lurk on the edges. But there's as little traditional lager in this house as there is true Amer Picon. And that's how we arrived here, with a bottle of the already lively and wicked Lagunitas Undercover Shutdown ale, a beer that hardly calls for adulterating, being spiked with a splash of Torani's finest 78 proof bitter buddy. In a satanically crimson body it comes off like chugging on a jar of homemade marmalade, a pungent whack of orange sweetness, all fringed in a pithy bitterness that somewhat masks the dangerous level of alcohol. Would I mix one up again? Maybe. But does it compare to that sun-sprayed June afternoon in Graton years ago when a bottle of the stuff disappeared into cup after cup of shabby homebrewed "kõlsch" as our friends wedding spun on around us? No, but that's a whole other story.

And as much as I'm usually not afraid of embarking on increasingly embedded diversionary topics, now it's not even Friday anymore. But it's still raining. Does this really count as a Session post now, being as late as it is? No matter, Mia would be sad if I didn't take the opportunity to show off her new shoes.

The Session is a blog carnival originated by Stan Hieronymus at Appellation Beer. This month's party is being hosted by Joe of Beer at Joe's. For a summary of the Sessions thus far, check out Brookston's handy guide. You can also follow folks' entries on twitter by searching for posts marked with the #thesession hashtag.

Fermentation Friday - But I don't even know her

2009-04-24T21:14:00.000-07:00

Note to mom: Hi mom! Now that you've gotten cozy with your new iPhone and are regularly checking this site to see what your son's up to and whether or not there are any photos of (or by) your granddaughter, I thought it was be a good idea to give you a little "heads up" on today's writings. See, on the last Friday of every month, folks all around the globe post their thoughts on a common theme relevant to the hobby of homebrewing. I have a bad habit of writing seriously off topic items on these occasions. With that, consider yourself forewarned: This one gets pretty "inside baseball", if you will. There are no pictures of Mia, either.

When stuck in a particularly pessimistic mood, this whole "writing about beer" arena can come off as mighty insular at times, insular in a "pop will eat itself" sort of way, all Ouroboros-like in its circular back-scratching and back-biting, that pessimism perversely amplified during a week that's seen the beer blogosphere (which I'm beginning to wonder is just one big centrally located beer blog with one singularly big beer blog brain, based off the sheer amount of déjà vu one gets scrolling through their feeds over the morning coffee) all taking sides in a genuinely retarded debate around the cultural significance of a piece of filmwork whose title may remind you of a certain low-budget space opera from the disco era, alongside the near incessant reposting of another video piece that can't help make me think of a certain Nike campaign.

Thankfully it rarely takes more than something like a kit-bashing puddytat to alter one's perspective on things.

And thusly, one can view this little self-congratulatory micocosm of beer obsessives with a bit of charmed affection. Despite how the collective musings of a beer obsessed army can at times display what appears to be an alarming lack of perspective and a dangerous level of short-sightedness, there's an undeniably sunny song in there, one evangelizing the diversity, quality, and culture that the craft brewing movement brings to the table. And if you zoom in on that happy little planet of malt aficionados, you'd see a sub-population, racing across the surface, doing something for themselves, the worker bees, the oft-maligned but dutifully persistent homebrewers. Granted, they're equally - if not more - insularly referential, but unlike the folks taking up my precious "cats playing drums" bandwidth with redundantly embedded videos and press releases copied so quickly out of their email that there's little bits of broken html floating about the edges, homebrewing bloggers actually spend their spare time making stuff. And then when they write about it online, they typically help explain to others how they, too, can make their own stuff. That's pretty much all that's able to pull me out from under the cloak of blogging invisibility today. Proactive thinking. Let's make some booze, people.

And today's roundtable topic concerns the wonderful world of liquor (cue the dancing bottles). Safe to assume that we're not talking about the heated water that's used for rinsing the grains in your mash tun, liquor, better known as "booze that isn't beer" being put into service in brewing in order to add tints, shades, and shadows of other alcoholic beverages is not uncommon. The word "bourbon" alone appears five times on the BeerAdvocate Top 100 list (four times on the RateBeer Top 50), and the concept of reusing castoff whiskey barrels to age beers has become a stereotypical shortcut for brewers looking to cash in on "special edition" versions of their beers. In drawing inspiration from the craft beer world, a homebrewer has little to go on regarding the use of liquor outside of what would appear to be a conspiracy from the all-powerful secret cabal of coopers (yes, all four of them). Simply put, to most folks, liquor in brewing means barrels. We homebrewers soak oak chips in bourbon and brandy and maybe even get our club to all pitch in and try to fill one of those 31 gallon monstrosities, topping off the angel's share every so often while praying that it ends up tasting even close to its namesake.

Far be it from me to preempt what's guaranteed to be a far superior discussion on the topic, bolstered by one presenter's quantitative research, professional experience, and within an arena where one can even get some hands-on experimentation with the matter at this year's National Homebrewers Conference, let me simply say this: Don't limit yourself to attempting to imitate barrel flavors. Fun for a while, but easy to overdo and frankly, if you're a true hipster, it's totally played out. Instead, consider these two gateway scenarios:

- Once you've divorced the barrel character from the source liquor (and if you allow yourself to stretch "liquor" beyond the confines of simple distilled spirits, allowing for a more all-welcoming family of booze), consider what other flavor components exist in different varieties and how they can best complement what you'd like to achieve in your beer. Take a scotch ale, for example, in which you decide you want to add a particularly peaty character. What would happen if you complemented your addition of peated malt with the distinctively Islay aroma of something like Laphroaig? Or what if, in a an old stock ale, you wanted to add a hint of casky oxidization, and added a touch of musky Amontillado sherry? Or if in a stong, dark Belgian style ale, you wanted to emphasize the dark fruit characteristics of the yeast profile by dosing it with a spot of late harvest zinfandel?

- Beyond even that, think of the excellent extraction properties a high-alcohol solution can provide. The spirit you use need not be the end, but also the means by which you add character to your beers. Tinctures (like those pictured above*) offer a measurable, sanitary, and pleasantly controlled vehicle with which to gradually adulterate your beers. We've always sworn by the technique whereby you prepare herbal tinctures in a neutral vodka base, but in the end, many "spirits" that we know are nothing more than neutral grain spirits with various botanicals infused in them, like sloe gin. Consider the "infused vodka" rage: There's no reason why you can't use the exact same technique to add a touch of orange to your citrusy double IPA, some licorice to your Baltic porter, some lemongrass to your wheat beer, or some juniper to your holiday ale.

I hesitate to think of what might become of combining those two concepts into a third, hybrid gateway, but there's little doubt that the more experimental amongst us aren't afraid of crossing the streams. I'll be first to admit a certain stupid fondness for the odd bourbon-aged this or brandy-aged that , but in the meantime, step back for a minute, and just consider what simple, strange, mystical concoctions you could unearth by simply thinking outside the barrel.

* From left to right: saffron and black pepper; ginger, myrrh, white pepper, and curacao orange; and the ubiquitous whiskey-soaked oak.

Congratulations. You've made it this far! More on the topic, from the archives:

- Miscellaneous musings on the boozy tango between beer and liquor.

- Our first foray into reverse-engineered cocktailesque beers, the Old Fashioned. (With a followup here.)

- The story of Tokyo Fog, the beer who loved bourbon.

Many thanks to Northern Table for hosting this month's Fermentation Friday, a monthly blogging carnival gathered around the topic of homebrewing, originated by Beer Bits 2.

Belgium comes to 94117

2009-04-16T14:57:00.000-07:00

Just over a week ago, on a clear and cool Sunday morning, I slipped into the pre-dawn air armed with a freshly sharpened chef's blade and a fully fueled butane torch, cruised quickly along the empty trellis roads that connect the scattered hamlets of central Marin, and scaled the Waldo Grade only to quietly descend into a still-slumbering and peculiarly vacant Lower Haight, through those fabled Dutch doors, to receive word of my next instructions. After having harvested one of the meal's ingredients the day before, my last directives had been simple: pack a nice blade and get a good night's rest. And thus it began.

Holding the key to my cheese n' beer loving heart.

To backtrack a little... It's Belgian beer month, which means the taps at Toronado are currently loaded with things like, oh Cantillon Grand Cru, Ellezelloise Hercule, and Struise Tsjeeses. It was but a year ago when, in assuming that we'd be the early birds, first in line to tap a flight of David Keane's annual cornucopia of imported wonderments, Des and I headed down to Toronado at our first free moment only to find it shuttered up, thanks to some mysterious and hitherto unknown special event. But based off the scraps of information we were able to glean from some considerably bent and slurry patrons, who shared lusty tales aside proffered dregs of some truly luminous rarities, it was then that I declared I'd find some way - by whatever means, if you want - to be on the other side of those locked doors when the following March's lambs and lions had marched through: in April of 2009, I was going to somehow be inside that kitchen.

More abbey cheese than you can shake a censer at.

And as it so happens, with the rusty tubes of my waking synapses gradually flickering to life as the caffeine made its steady course into my consciousness, that was the spot I found myself: Inside a bar still resonating from the nightlife that had only just departed scant hours before, alongside some familar and equally tired faces, with the unprecedented (and encore) privilege of joining Mr. Sean Z. Paxton for what was to be the culinary equivalent of the Ring cycle, a six-hour long gustatory bonanza nearly a year in the making (that is, since the last one).

Stinky gnomes and Westvleteren. As it should be.

Sean, as a man considered by many to be the premiere visionary in the realm of marrying beer with modern haute cuisine and molecular gastronomy, is no stranger to the spotlight in the foodie-beerie circles. A well-known mercenary chef-for-hire, regular contributor to BeerAdvocate magazine, a speaker at the National Homebrewers Conference, and one who's consulted regularly by publications looking to get edubacted in the art of cuisine à la bière and beer and food pairing, his moniker of "The Homebrew Chef" alludes to his simultaneous passions of brewing, cooking, and finding harmonious inroads between the two. Here, under the auspices of Toronado's Belgian beer month, he's made it his mission to pull out all the stops. In a way, it's his tribute to Dave Keane's fearless ambassadorship of the challenging, palate-expanding beers of Belgium, aside from being a chance to flex some creative muscle for patrons who like having their culinary horizons broadened.

I imagine he's still airing out the suitcase all this arrived in.

First, the beer: Not only were there twenty beers with which to pair, but another twenty beers with which all the courses were prepared. And lest you think we're talking beercan chicken here, note that some of the world's most highly regarded and sought-after beers - Scaldis Noel, Fantome La Dalmatienne, De Ranke Pere Noel, Halve Maan Brugse Zot - never even made it to the table for folks to taste, only existing as ingredients within each of the twelve courses. Lest anyone be concerned that the day's events were going to be a retread of the classics, though, the day began with the first public West Coast tapping of a keg of Duvel Green, the new filtered, non-refermented, draft version of the quintessential Belgian strong golden ale. The next five hours saw a parade of Belgium's rainbow of beer diversity make its way to the tables, from the light and hoppy to the dark and strong through all iterations between, with the closing bookend on the day the 2007 Saucerful of Secrets that Sean brewed himself with Firestone Walker.

Well, that's certainly a lot of caviar. Or is it?

And then, the food: One course which I got to have my hand in (hence the freshly sharpened knife) was the cheese course, consisting entirely of Belgian, mostly abbey cheeses hand-carried by Sean himself in a single, 60 lb. suitcase just days prior to the event. And thanks to the beauty of sous vide cooking techniques, much of the actual cooking had already been taken care of, with curing, infusing, marinading, and pickling all having been done in sealed plastic bags, which was a comforting convenience as Toronado, in case you'd never noticed, doesn't actually have a kitchen.

My, my, what are you going to do with all those black truffles?

Ah, but of course.

That's correct. Somehow, some way, the entire twelve-course meal for seventy-odd diners with prepared with nothing more than an immersion heater and a couple of propane burners. And if there's a real bit of artistry at work in a dinner like this that needs to be spotlit, I think it has to be the orchestration of such a massive culinary undertaking with such limited resources. Sure, there was the "wort honey", a batch of pre-hopped homebrewed beer that Sean made, reduced to a caramel-like consistency, and blended with a local honey. And sure, there was the homemade pork pate and duck rillettes. And yeah, there was the aforementioned Cantillon Iris and bone marrow gastrique. But seriously, managing to supervise an amateur staff in a room primarily designed for drinking, coordinating the delivery of the equivilant of 900 dishes of five-star cuisine via a space the Toronado staff lovingly refer to as "the birth canal", and singlehandedly bringing this menu to life with not much more than a pot of hot water, a couple tanks of propane, a crack torch and a syringe?

Now that, my friends, is kitchen professionalism.

If you haven't already, go ahead and mark off April 4, 2010 on your calendar, as you've now got plans that day.

Because if you were duck fat aioli, you'd be smiling, too.

18 Reasons and at least as many homebrews

2009-04-14T15:21:00.000-07:00

Before we finally get around to completing the now nearly two-week old saga of the Toronado Belgian beer dinner, a quick interlude of the homebrew variety: This Thursday evening, we'll be joining a few other local recreational fermentation enthusiasts for a tasting at 18 Reasons, an arty foodie non-profit space in the Mission as part of the monthly SF Beer & Cheese group we've been semi-regularly attending. Jesse, whose brett-spiked witbier I had the unexpected pleasure of sampling this past weekend, will be pouring some of his wares alongside David, the SFB&C co-founder who introduced me to the group at last year's wild ale tasting, who will have his robust porter to sample, and a couple other brewers bringing the likes of a Belgian dubbel, saison, Simcoe IPA, and a Belgian strong dark ale aged with prunes.

But what are we bringing? In the spirit of Choose Your Own Adventure, I'd like that to be a decision best left to others besides the authors. Like chance music for the belly, the whim of teh internets will dictate what'll be crawling up from the cellar Thursday night. I've embedded a little poll below in which you can vote for as few or as many as you'd like on exhibit. Here's a quick reference guide to the options:

Imperial Pilsner - Just seeming to hit its stride now, a 9% lager based off a strict pilsner malt base and with a fresh bit of dry hopping in the keg. Pictured above with its little hoppy friend.

Black Lav - Definitely further up the dark end of the experimental alley. It's a saison. But it's black! There's some history behind this one here.

Oatmeal Raisin Cookie - The most recent of our "tastes like" explorations, this one's finishing up as this is written, and is a but of a wild card in terms of what it'd taste like as young and green as it is. Details on its origin story can be read here.

X'07 - Our annual holiday ale, this Belgian-inspired dark one from the winter of 2007, which Jesse referenced in his post about last weekend's debauchery, amazingly hasn't all been emptied yet. We wrote a little bit about it back in August.

X'08 - Same idea, different beer. This past season's batch.

The Indoctrinator - Before the Inoculator (the last of which disappeared into the sun-warmed gullets of this past Sunday's Golden Gate Park denizens), there was the Indoctrinator. I bottled a couple magnums when we finished this Belgian-style dubbel back in October and have been sitting on them waiting for the right occasion. Is this it?

Old Ale - Nearly guaranteed to be nasty, it's a two (three?) year (m)old stock ale aged on oak that's seen some serious and strange refermentation in the bottle. Will probably explode. I still have some left.

Appelwoi - A cider. This one. Not beer, but not water either!

Go on, now. Vote!

And sure, it's just 48 hours away, but mark your calendars!

From trellis to table

2009-04-08T16:28:00.000-07:00

Just thought it would be fun to take a minute here to illustrate one of a million elements that goes into coordinating a brilliant dining experience, one thread intertwined with the likes of a 60lb suitcase full of cheese, an impromptu propane tank replacement, a last-minute veggie sausage, and the looming thread of an imminent power outage. In seven acts:

Cutting the red bines, like something out of an Millet painting.

The target crop of our day, Moonlight Farms' baby Cascades.

There's only about a two week window per year you can do this.

"Belgian asparagus" is tender enough to eat raw, leaves and all.

Less than 24 hours earlier, these guys were still pushing the soil.

The prep work's not much other than checking for stowaways.

A little butter, a little water, a little bone marrow gastrique...

And the finished product? You'll just have to go either here or here to check it out.

PS - I'll likely get around to posting a more detailed account of my most recent evening with "The Homebrew Chef", but couldn't resist leading in with this little tale of one the dinner's ingredient's heroic journey from the dusty back country of the Russian River Valley to the tables in Lower Haight.

Fog's a-brewin'

2009-03-30T16:32:00.000-07:00

I've mentioned here recently that we've got a budding shutterbug in the house these days, a pint-size paparazza of sorts who's made her dad's Elph somewhat of a treasured playtime gadget. Here we have one of more recent works, entitled "Yeast". I resisted correcting her, in that it was actually a 2000mL "yeast starter", suspended in a simple wort of dry malt extract and nutrients, as she's likely approaching her subject from an artistic vantage point and not a purely scientific one.

For those of you who don't completely geek out on homebrewing, a 2000mL slurry of yeast starter is more than ample if you're only planning on brewing five gallons of beer. Most folks are content tossing the contents of a pitchable vial of liquid yeast (if not just a packet of the dry stuff) into their beer-in-waiting and letting nature take its delicious course. Why would I bother to waste some valuable wall-staring time with yet another routine of cooking, sanitizing, and nail-biting?

Why? Well, these are the silly types of things you do in preparation for brewing a ~~14%~~ 12% alcohol by volume* batch of beer.

That beer is the topic of today's experiment: Tokyo Fog

...comes on little cat feet

It's oddly addictive, this reverse engineering technique of formulating recipes, attempting to deconstruct the hidden successes encoded in the interplay between ingredients in culinary masterpieces, reimagining them as distilled, ghostly incarnations within this wholly other medium of brewing. One such masterpiece, legendary in its time, without comparison, is the mighty Tokyo Fog. This Atomic Age bachelor pad tour de force, as inimitably described in loving detail by a man who was there to witness its resurrection on a windless July afternoon, is nothing shy of a symphony in three movements, those movements being: Coffee, Ice Cream, and Bourbon.

And what a name! Fog, particularly the coastal fog that's often referenced symbolically around here, develops over the course of the summer months, when the cool, wet air pushed eastward over the Pacific collides with warm, dry air from the inland valleys, accumulating in such bulk over specific spots in the Bay Area that they suffer through far colder summers than the other three months. It boxes and isolates, like acoustic baffling, creating a theatricality in each little space it carves out, making soundstages out of corner cafes, beach boardwalks, sage-ridden headlands, and steep, lamplit streets. Cars pass by as if entering and exiting a frame, existance beyond which nothing more than a muffled world of guesses, creating at once a heightened state of focus - conversations seem close, clear, undisputed for attention - while at the same time lending to a disorientation and sense of waywardness, what without a sun, sky, or horizon to guide you, along with that unsettling enigmatic curiosity about what lies beyond your crippled scope of sight and sound. What better metaphor for the experience of enjoying this unholy assemblage of post-war American pantry staples? And Tokyo? I have no idea. It just adds to the mystique.

But let's return, as we always should, to beer. With a mindset similar to some of our other recent experiments, it seemed high time to attempt to isolate and translate the essence of this iconic, nostalgic treat into beer form. High time, that is, considering that a beverage of this strength and potential complexity could need up to a year to fully complete. No point in waiting any longer that we have to, right? That said, let's cut to the nitty gritty, what makes this kid tick. It's actually rather simple:

See, it's sweating because it knows what's in store for it.

Coffee: There's a nearly inescapable DIY trajectory leading homebrewers to become home coffee roasters. And as an unrepentant shill for the folks at Sweet Maria's, I'd be remiss if I didn't pimp the full city roast Guatemala El Injerto Estate 100% Bourbon beans that made their way into this batch. Taking a cue from - where else? - Randy Mosher's oft-cited manifesto on breaking traditional brewing boundaries - we ground up some fresh-roasted beans, poured some cold water over them in a French press, and let them sit in the fridge for a few days leading up to brew day. The resulting coffee was hugely aromatic, but almost completely devoid of roast bitterness. It found its way into the kettle just about five minutes from the end of the boil. Alongside some appropriately dark specialty grains, it ought to allow for a notable but unpunishing impression of coffee.

Vanilla ice cream: This one poses a bit more of a conundrum, as I'm loathe to add any vanilla directly into a beer. To date, my tasting experiences regarding vanilla flavor as it manifests itself in beer are akin to those with chocolate, in that my personal preference leans towards the impression of those ingredients through brewing slight-of-hand (special grains, fancy fermentation methods, and the like) rather than via stubborn attempts to cram some hunks of semisweet or a few pods of Madagascar bean into the fermenters for effect. For creaminess, though, we thought the judicious use of oats and chocolate wheat malt would help offer that impression through body and mouthfeel, and knowing full well that the preposterously huge amount of malt would lead to an inevitable hit of residual sweetness, we shied away from the too-obvious addition that gives modern-day "cream" stouts their name, that unfermentable loser named lactose. As far as vanilla was concerned, though, we hoped that we could pull some of that off in concurrence with the closing, keystone element of the trinity...

Prepping the potpourri in a lake of liquid love

Bourbon: The key player in Tokyo Fog is the fine oak-aged corn whiskey, "America's Native Spirit", as it were. I've waxed poetic on the joys of bourbon and the myriad joys of marrying it with beer in the past, and to be totally honest, its use in mainstream craft brewing over the past few years has ballooned to a nearly obnoxious scale. Nevertheless, in capturing the spirit of its namesake, that icy treat made permanently slushy by said bourbon, getting some of that liquid fire in there was absolutely essential. As before, we went the Brewcraft route, this time watching nearly a fifth disappear into the oak within just a few days. Seeing as how vanillin is a well-known compound that finds its way into wines thanks to oak barrel conditioning, our plan is to not only take advantage of the "bourbon extract" we'll be generating, but also allow the beer to rest on the physical oak for a while (considering we're looking at aging this for nine months, we've got plenty of time) in hopes that it pulls through and completes the picture we're trying to draw.

Go ahead and click on the carboy geyser for the recipe, if you dare:

If there's a more satisfying image in all of homebrewing than one of a fermentation gone comically, explosively awry, I haven't seen it, and frankly, I've come to acknowledge these perilously violent emissions as harbingers of good luck, as there's seemingly been a consistent messiness-to-deliciousness ratio at work in our kitchen. The results of such havoc? You'll just have to stick around. (For about 6 months or so, unless I weaken and sneak an early sip. Or two.)

* Meet L'il Tokyo:

See, math is not my strong suit. Despite my best intentions, I miscalculated the rate of evaporation over the course of the 90-minute boil, not sure if it was the low level of propane in the tank or the brisk Alaskan wind that kept striking out in whiplash bursts from the north, or that simply, I didn't do the 6th grade level multiplication correctly, which meant that we ended up at the end of the evening with a bit more beer (yay!) than we'd expected, but inversely, at a lower gravity, and hence a lower potential final alcohol level (boo!) than we'd anticipated for. And while Li'l Tokyo might feel left out, as the 1600mL of overflow from the kettle forcibly segregated from the bulk in its little flask, we're already devising plans for how to make the little guy feel special. (In the background is a glass with which we toasted the end of a successful evening of brewing, maybe one of the closest things I've had yet to a beer-incarnate Tokyo Fog, North Coast's Old Rasputin XI. They certainly look related, don't they?) Updates on all to come...

Fermentation Friday - From ground to grist

2009-03-27T22:24:00.000-07:00

I'm hesitant to mention we've already covered this chapter.

I'm a bit reluctant to admit, I feel like we've been here before. One doesn't have to dig deep into this year's paltry archives to see that as far as "doing things differently" in 2009 is concerned, I'd already declared this to be my "year of the session" (which, admittedly, hasn't begun yet, but more on that next week), and figured that the subject of the new and improved homebrewer Rob 2.0 was one best left to wallow in the same closet as the other broken promises, those charted out under a post-holiday sugar-withdrawal delirium, next to the weights, and the Proust, and the vegetables. But while there's an outward similarity in this month's topic to the recent resolution-themed round of Fermentation Friday, our host for this month's carnival does seem to be searching for a slightly different angle, one pointing towards the notion of spring as rebirth, with a vernal air of optimism rather than the stern, dutifully resolute promises made in the winter. Distracted by a languorous breeze choked with pollen and busy insects and an all around procrastinate, lethargic mood, it's difficult for me to chain my body to my desk and my mind to any concrete thoughts. It's a casualty of the kindness of Nature, one that may inspire some to indulge in some spring cleaning while only convincing others that it's high time to find a nice warm rock and sink deeply into the zone of not-caring-itude.

So I turned to read a little Twain:

"San Francisco is built on sand hills, but they are prolific sand hills. They yield a generous vegetation. All the rare flowers which people in "the States" rear with such patient care in parlor flower-pots and green-houses, flourish luxuriantly in the open air there all the year round. Calla lilies, all sorts of geraniums, passion flowers, moss roses—I do not know the names of a tenth part of them. I only know that while New Yorkers are burdened with banks and drifts of snow, Californians are burdened with banks and drifts of flowers, if they only keep their hands off and let them grow...

I have elsewhere spoken of the endless Winter of Mono, California, and but this moment of the eternal Spring of San Francisco."

And my mind wandered to those very same Calla lilies in abundant bloom in our very own garden at the moment, strange, wild, oddly secret eruptions of white and yellow superflowers that haven't paid the slightest attention to how completely disregarded they've been by human care, returning annually with the wild onions and little clouds of gnats and annual grasses that point their seeds up in arrows for kids to throw at one another, and how funny I thought it was to see waves of plum blossoms shook by the wind, laying like miniature lily pads on the surface of our roiling brew kettle and how oddly appropriate it was that the beer's name was going to refer to Tokyo?

And then I bothered to read some Thoreau:

"MEANWHILE MY BEANS, the length of whose rows, added together, was seven miles already planted, were impatient to be hoed, for the earliest had grown considerably before the latest were in the ground; indeed they were not easily to be put off. What was the meaning of this so steady and self-respecting, this small Herculean labor, I knew not. I came to love my rows, my beans, though so many more than I wanted. They attached me to the earth, and so I got strength like Antæus. But why should I raise them? Only Heaven knows. This was my curious labor all summer — to make this portion of the earth's surface, which had yielded only cinquefoil, blackberries, johnswort, and the like, before, sweet wild fruits and pleasant flowers, produce instead this pulse. What shall I learn of beans or beans of me?"

Which, after a quick digression into the words of Edward Abbey, made me think of the peculiar differences in relationships we build with the plants that we sow from seed, for food, and those stowaways that find their way in to disrupt the perfectly aligned rows of life we assume to have control over, and those that just appear as if by magic, through an alchemical confluence of sun, water, wind and food, the wildflowers which come in wicked waves or not at all, and the silly way in which I document the purely ornamental growth of those tenacious weeds in pots in our yard, the ones that climb up the outside railings and banisters, like a lupulin Jolly Roger climbing the mast, flying our homebrewing freak flag high for everyone to see.

And lastly on to a little John Muir:

Father was proud of his garden and seemed always to be trying to make it as much like Eden as possible, and in a corner of it he gave each of us a little bit of ground for our very own in which we planted what we best liked, wondering how the hard dry seeds could change into soft leaves and flowers and find their way out to the light; and, to see how they were coming on, we used to dig up the larger ones, such as peas and beans, every day. My aunt had a corner assigned to her in our garden which she filled with lilies, and we all looked with the utmost respect and admiration at that precious lily-bed and wondered whether when we grew up we should ever be rich enough to own one anything like so grand. We imagined that each lily was worth an enormous sum of money and never dared to touch a single leaf or petal of them. We really stood in awe of them. Far, far was I then from the wild lily gardens of California that I was destined to see in their glory.

And then it hit me. I really need to get outside. And while we've indulged in minor homegrown additions to brews in the past, what better time than right now to really get one's hands dirty, outside, in the garden, with my daughter and a trowel and a misguided set of predictions of how it'll all turn out. We can scheme and plan, shoo away the pesky squirrels and freeze perfectly still when the hummingbirds zip in close, hoping they won't notice us, maybe fly even a little closer. But where to start, if not with the staple hops or grains? Enter this new addition to our DIY library: The Homebrewer's Garden. Don't get me wrong - I have *no* idea what experiments this new indulgence will engender, haven't not even cracked the spine on this one yet (but a hop-free herbal saison does seem appealing). Did I mention it's really quite pleasant out? Like 75 degrees, with a subtle breeze and the hint of apple blossom in the air? Too pleasant to even read, at the moment.

Many thanks to Byron at HomeBrewBeer.net for hosting this month's Fermentation Friday, a monthly blogging carnival gathered around the topic of homebrewing, originated by Beer Bits 2.

Spring hops eternal, again

2009-03-23T22:23:00.000-07:00

There's a predictability in my postings that faithful readers of this blog have probably taken note of. And of no exception, this: the annual "first hops" picture post, along with the painful yet indispensable title pun. Welcome to spring, denizens of the northern hemisphere.

(Don't believe my clockwork tendencies? Check the archives.)

All part of a balanced breakfast ale

2009-03-23T15:56:00.000-07:00

Mia prides herself on being a quality helper in the kitchen, especially in regards to the arena of baking. Any opportunity to don her mini-toque and mix, punch, dollop and squash her way through an afternoon of food prep is one she'll gleefully take up, upon realizing that's what's on the agenda quickly running to unseen corners of the house to noisily retrieve her stepping stool and perhaps even her mini-apron, keeping an eye open for a free whisk or spoon, prepared to warn anyone within earshot when the oven is hot. Astoundingly, she'll see a job through to the end, with hardly any little person attention deficit to speak of. What began as a rainy day rescue plan has now become as routine as reading or playing music or piecing together puzzles. For a kid who isn't particularly driven by food, and has even less of a sweet tooth, it's still the first thing she'll want to fill me in on when I step through the front door in the evening. If there's a totemic symbol of all that wholesome home-centric adorable fuzzy awesomeness, an icon that fits conveniently in the palm of your hand that represents the process and the product in the hendiatris of head, heart and hands, it would have to be the oatmeal raisin cookie. And if there is an act more nourishing to the development of the toddler psyche - from it's fine motor skills to its lessons on procedure and cause and effect and collaboration to its establishment of work and reward - than baking oatmeal raisin cookies, I haven't found it yet (with the possible exception of the wholesome family singalong).

Think I'm getting soft in my old age? A whole post about baking cookies with a little kid? Give me a break. Your reward is forthcoming, for having made your way this far. It's still all about the beer. Nourishing, centering, fulfilling, "breakfast for dessert of vice versa" beer.

Beer, in today's case, born with the heart and soul of an oatmeal raisin cookie. Let's make some, shall we?

Because face it: homebrewing is a lot like baking, in many ways moreso that cooking. Ability to follow directions with an underlying understanding about the purpose of each step, the use of time and chemistry as the major catalysts, and the focus on a core set of a few simple ingredients are all hallmarks of baking and brewing. In the interest of putting together a recipe that capitalizes on the highlights of fresh, chewy, pungent, homebaked delightfulness, entrapping all those facets of a child's culinary masterpiece within a prism of their dad's favorite beverage, it makes sense to single out some slightly unorthodox brewing ingredients that could potentially make the difference:

Toasted oats: Well, duh, you say. Oats, in oatmeal cookies? Genius. Sure, but while oats have a celebrated history in brewing, the typical flaked oats that find their way into a brewer's mash tun have a far more neutral character than those that have spent some time sweating it out in a hot oven. Following a tip from Randy Mosher's most excellent Radical Brewing, we took a half pound of hand-picked Grade A local hippie co-op approved bulk oats and spread them out on a baking tray in a 300° F oven until the house was unmistakeably haunted by the ghost of deliciousness. Allowed to rest for a few days in the interest of casting off any harsh residual chemicals conjured up by the toasting action, they were then added in with the remainder of the grist.

Raisin puree: If it weren't enough for us to be "radical", the least we could do would be to include something "extreme". Thanks to Sam Calagione's treatise on that very subject, we experimented with a new approach to freeing up all the trapped fermentable sugars trapped in a half pound of raisins. Simply enough, put the raisins in a blender with a cup of hot wort from the kettle, frappe them beyond recognition, dump the resultant goo into your kettle about ten minutes shy of the end of your boil, and relax.

Candi, candi, candi, I can't let you go.

All my life, you're haunting me. I loved you so!

Homemade candi sugar: The image of oatmeal cookies as the health-conscious option on the bakery shelf is a bit strained, as everyone knows the most important ingredient is still sugar. Sweet sweet sugar. So what better opportunity, then, for us to attempt to knock out some amberescent candi sugar by following these simple instructions? The beauty of doing this yourself, like the toasted oats, is that you're completely in control of yet another deeply flavorful brewing component where you can dial in to whatever nuance you'd like to convey. As the sugar cooks, it gradually darkens in color, slowly developing more deeply toned aromas, going from a spun-sugar cotton candy scent into something more richly toffee-ish, caramel-like. Next time we'll have no choice but to go even darker to see where that takes us...

Chances are, despite the duplication of some key ingredients and the resultant intensely comforting waves of olfactory bliss that permeated the home with window-steaming warmth, the finished product in the glass will likely be as akin to an oatmeal raisin cookie as our Old Fashioned Ale was to its namesake cocktail (as in, "not very"). But was it delicious? Indeed it was. Perhaps we ought to chalk this up to my budding theory on the built-in success of backwards engineered brewing recipes. We shall see.

The recipe is here. (It's no small coincidence that the ingredient menu has an "odds and sods" look to it, smidges of all sorts of character grains and an odd stylistic ambivalence, because that's exactly what it is: a leftovers batch. But what of the beer that warranted all these castoff ingredients? What possible Frankenstein of an experiment could have yielded these scraps? To be revealed in our next episode: Tokyo Fog.)

The Session #25 - At lagerheads

2009-03-06T17:45:00.000-08:00

A few months ago, the little kerfuffle over the increasingly curious nature of The Session topics came to a bit of a head when Jay posted his "open letter" (like there's any other kind on teh internets), wondering aloud whether some fuzzy barriers needed to be put into place in reining in the subject matter that's taken up each month in this carnival. As someone who gleefully participated in subverting what might be considered an arguably staid (and while we're being honest here, not terribly exciting for folks like myself to read) topic set, I didn't feel it was necessary to chime in regarding what ought to be a "proper" Session question. (I sort of figured that the thirty-one people who opted to respond to my hosting was proof enough that there's room for questions that were a little on the silly side. And I'd be lying if I didn't recognize how obnoxious I was being at the time.)

So the people of the brewblogosphere all lined up like good little ducks and started back on the track of ticking off styles like we're at some BJCP rally. Tripels marked the ostensible return to normalcy, a topic that I played along with mostly nicely. Fine. Always game for a good challenge. But now this. The description might have made more sense if it read like this:

Hey, people. In direct opposition to logic and in the presence of a global economic collapse that's sent most of us into a Stone Age level of hoarding panic, I'd like to ask you all to take some of that very hard earned money of yours and dish it out on swill. That's right. I'd like you to forgo one of the basic foundational reasons why you bother to write about beer (that being the desire to excite and encourage people to explore the world of beer that exists beyond said swill), take some money that could have gone to feeding your child, or fending off medical debts, or keeping the bank from ripping away the roof from over your head, or - oh, who am I kidding? - money that could have to gone buying some really good beer, and give it right back to the same industry against which you waste valuable Boing Boing Gadgets-reading time mustering opposition, and then allow me to sit back and chuckle while you throw yourself through a literary blender trying to come up with something readably interesting to say about how - let's admit it, shall we? - you felt you were on the sick-n-wrong end of a urine specimen test gone horribly awry.

Of course, that might be a little bit of an exaggeration. But the truth is, the division between what many of us would lump into the fancypants beer pile versus mass-produced garbage is almost as linear as the division of the yeasts used to ferment the finished products. Around here (and please note that this whole rant is epicentered on a small stub of land poking precariously into the Pacific Ocean on the western coast of the United States), the roots of the problem are fairly clear - Industrial Revolution brewing practices allowed for mass market, roundly acceptable tasting lager beers that stormed easily back into the waiting and weak palates of the post-Prohibition age. It was only through cultish geekiness that ales made their way back onto the market, and with them, the badge of "craft" honor, the promise of "handmade" beers, made by people who "care", not like some insulting, artificial, machined nonsense wrought by assembly line machines. And it's a badge that ale has somewhat unfairly worn throughout this whole beer renaissance we're currently enjoying, one that has the unfortunate side effect of handicapping high quality lager beers' entries into the fray, and leaving us thirsty folks with a deeply divided selection. There are obvious exceptions: A handful of European imports manage to maintain a "premium" status, and some braver-than-I small breweries like Moonlight embrace the intricacies of cold-fermentation as part of their core mission. But in its current incarnation, the difference between which finger you stick out while hoisting a beer can still be split between the family lines. So while our host this month is looking for "lager love", even specifying "pilsners, light lagers, helleses" - beers that I would trade all the Anchor Steam (kind of a lager!) in the world for, were I on the proper continent - it's the kind of love that a beer geek like me, stuck out here on the edge of the Pacific Plate as I am, finds rather difficult to muster.

To the task at hand: Not to come off like a complete spoilsport, I looked around to see if there were any available subjects, but as it turns out, there aren't lagers of any sort to be found in our fridge, or our cellar, or floating in the melted ice of the old keg bucket in the garden, the most recent treasures to be enjoyed from abroad long gone. The nearest relative in the vicinity is a carboy of homebrewed imperial pilsner chortling dutifully away in the fridge in the garage, but that seems like exactly what our host is asking us to ignore for the time being: a lager in most obtuse sense, brashly American and odd and begging for attention and flirting with all the hallmarks of the extremitude that often go hand-in-hand with the nu-craft scene. I wonder, then, if this can even be counted as a true Session post (see, there's that subversive streak again), as there's no tasting notes to comment on here. No cheap cans of beer around to stage for perverse portrait photos, no desire to crack open my wallet to bring some into the house, just some silly little metal frame built for shoving it up some poor poultry's ass.

In other news, my two-year-old has recently taken up the hobby of digital photography (hence the leading image in this post). I only mention this as in case someone's thinking of making the April topic "Lite and lo-carb beers: How freaking awesome are they or what?!" or some such crap, I'll be posting a gallery of her recent work in silent protest.

The Session is a blog carnival originated by Stan Hieronymus at Appellation Beer. This month's party is being hosted by The Beer Nut. For a summary of the Sessions thus far, check out Brookston's handy guide. You can also follow folks' entries on twitter by searching for posts marked with the #thesession hashtag.

Fermentation Friday - Next to godliness, in housewares

2009-02-27T20:43:00.000-08:00

Unbeknownst to me prior to becoming a father, there is a near-universal bit of singsong that parents and teachers deploy whenever attempting to make the act of "cleaning up" a positive, enjoyable activity. The lyrics to this paean to orderliness likely vary slightly by geography, as all deeply rooted folklore tends to pick up local variation as it germinates. Hereabouts, it goes a little something like this:

Clean up, clean up
Everybody, everywhere
Clean up, clean up
Everybody do your share

And with a loopable melody optimally composed for (or by) a toddler, it's an insidious earworm that only fades into the background when other, more sinister ones crawl out of the darkness (Moondance, anyone?). Furthermore, if you happen to be blessed with a particularly sonant child, the mere act of trying to shovel a pathway through drifts of Legos often results in being rickrolled out of the blue by the overeager youngster, invariably leading one to either bow down and aquiece to having CUCU permanently embedded in ones auditory cortex, or to succumb to living in complete unkempt squalor in hopes of never invoking another torturous utterance.

In related matters, Matt, enterprising homebrewer that he is, looks to be fishing for tips from the rest of us on improving his sanitation practices under the auspices of this month's Fermentation Friday. Lucky for him, he's also a new dad, which means there's just one piece of invaluable advice that's too fitting to ignore:

I hope that helps. Oh, and never allow soap to touch any brewing materials. Plus, you just can't go wrong with one-step. And the oven and dishwasher can also provide good sterilizing if used correctly. That's about it.

Here's wishing Matt the best in all the adventures he has in store.

Many thanks to A World of Brews for hosting this month's Fermentation Friday, a monthly blogging carnival gathered around the topic of homebrewing, originated by Beer Bits 2. And if you really need to get that song out of your head, feel free to get into a round with your friends with this little drinking song from the late 16th century. You're welcome.

Localize it, pt. 4 - Some closing thoughts

2009-02-21T15:10:00.000-08:00

The completion of the premiere SF Beer Week seems an opportune time to close the door on our recent ruminations on "local beer" in its many iterations. In many ways, actually, a local theme did emerge throughout the ten days of competitions, dinners, and other festivities, what with a San Francisco brewery taking a medal at Toronado's storied barleywine fest, some of the country's finest chefs a la cuisine a la biere showing off on their home turf, North and East Bay breweries receiving honors at the Bistro Double IPA festival, Anchor revealing their very first barrel aged beer, and local bloggers hosting events to easily rival the pros, all amidst the reemergence of the "official" beer of the week, a historically recreated batch of pale ale hearkening back to the area's distinction as ground zero for the new craft brewing movement. And despite the appearance of some of the industry's highest profile figures, the most exciting "meet the brewer" event featured none other than one of our own.

And arguably, that could be the best lesson learned from our first ever rally for Bay Area beer, that the bash was at its best when it was celebrating hometown successes, be they brewers or bars or chefs or restaurants. In retrospect, some of the activities that would have been unmissable under any other circumstances - visits from brewers from abroad, for example - looked like nothing more than filler. Hopefully next year, the local businesses who strangely opted to sit out this year's beer week will recognize the goldmine of opportunity that they missed out on, and will enter into the fray when February rolls around again, making it an event where one really does "come for the bay, stay for the beer." We'll just have to see, won't we?

And on a side note, I'm still haunted by those growlers, too, the ones we saw getting filled up at Russian River on the day Pliny the Younger was tapped, how wrecked they must have been when they finally made their way into hands over 3,000 miles and who knows how many warm, oxidized, flat UPS-rattled days away. Retelling that horror story to another aficionado, he replied, "that beer doesn't even taste the same once it's been in the glass for five minutes." At Toronado, the bartenders were uncorking the 20th Anniversary ale in front of the buyers to make sure they didn't try to sneak out with them to post on Ebay or worse, which made me wonder how Vinnie and Natalie must feel about having their hard work represented so falsely and sloppily. Brewers care about how their work is perceived, simply. Something that tastes so good because it's fresh, because it's local, it's hard to imagine what those long distance traders look to really get out of the deal other than a fresh tick on their "to have" list.

And lastly, in closing the book on this first experiment in formally saluting the Bay Area's beer scene, it's only fitting to donate a moment of remembrance to William Brand, whose tragic death wove a somber undercurrent beneath the proceedings. Critically injured just two days into the celebration, finally succumbing to his injuries eleven days later, he was such an anticipated presence at so many of the events that his absence was a somewhat strange and chilling entity, despite the nightly toasts held in his honor in dozens of taprooms, restaurants, dining rooms, and brewhouses throughout the region. There's little I can add to the chorus of sympathies being sounded out around both journalistic and beer circles, but he will be sorely missed.

(Image above from SF Beer Week's culminating liverbasher, the Toronado Barleywine Festival: Firestone Walker Abacus Blend, Elysian Old Cyclops, He'Brew Human Blockhead, and Ballast Point Three Sheets.)

Gold fashioned

2009-02-20T20:43:00.000-08:00

And it's gone. Sitting here with a minute glass of the keg's last sputtering gasp, it's a fair reminder why even the strangest of experimental batches often deserve to be doubled in volume, just in case. The subject in this case is our Old Fashioned ale, five gallons of which has passed on, with another phantom five gallons presumably lurking in a darkened dusty corner of the garage, just waiting for me, ready to appear when I'm at my weakest and say, it wasn't just a dream. Really? You don't remember deciding to make a double batch at the very last minute?

Make no mistake: While excellent, it wasn't by any means a perfect recipe. Of course, an optimist (and as it's an attitude I'm not entirely familiar with, I had to go online to find one to vouch for me) would argue that the success of the first batch only lends to the opportunity for it to be improved upon, a chance to pat oneself on the back with one hand while stirring up a fresh mash in the kettle with the other. Having shared (a tiny amount) with the conspirator who helped me chart out the taxonomy of the classic Old Fashioned cocktail for use as a jig for the composite beer recipe, I was able to wrangle (a tiny amount of) tasting notes from his inital impression: "just slightly sweet, not cloying, with hints of orange in the finish, mingling with spice and a little oakiness".

But did it taste like an Old Fashioned? "Not really."

Oh well. "Inspired by" doesn't necessarily need translate to "unmistakable from", which means we won't be stealing the crown from Southern Tier as the Jones of tastealike brewing expertise. Despite the high level of alcohol, there wasn't nearly the heat one gets from true liquor. Regardless of our bourbon oak aging, there wasn't much by way of toasted char effect as there was the merest hint of vanilla and black pepper. And the cherry came through only in the keg's last few days, as the merest whisper, warning me not to toy too much in the future for fear of creating a potentially horrifying Nyquil-like undertone.

As a cocktail, it was a failure. As a beer, on the other hand, it was a success.

One arena in which that was distinctly true was as a singly-hopped beer, in which just one variety of hops was employed for all the bittering, flavor and aroma, with the organic Belgian Admiral hops we used laying down a distinctive but mellow bitterness on the front end and allowing for some serious marmalade overtones in both the aroma and finish. And as a double IPA (which at its core it really was) it was our most successful attempt yet, sticky and rich with an interplay between bitter and sweet that made it exceptionally drinkable despite what the stats would lead you to believe. Chewy and deep, yet clean on the finish and with a rousing bitterness, the question in my mind now is: What would it have tasted like if we'd skipped out on all the flaming orange and mystery tincture mumbo jumbo? Were those the secret hidden elements that held it all together, or would it have been even brighter, crisper, more satisfying without?

I guess we'll just have to find out, soon. The keg is empty now, remember. So much for the year of the session, eh?

(This post is in part a response to Drew, a commenter who didn't leave any contact info but who cared enough to ask how this recipe came out. For the rest of you, just pretend I wrote it for you because I knew you were so, so curious.)

Session #24 - The trouble with tripels

2009-02-06T14:47:00.000-08:00

"I try to be a good beatnik, but it's hard." - Del Close

I wished I loved, without prejudice, all Belgian ale styles equally and unabashedly. The seemingly bottomless well of variety in the Belgian brewing tradition is, after all, one of its great attractants. Here, in a country smaller than Maryland, one can literally lose oneself in the crisscrossing mazes of traditional styles and groundbreaking innovations, is where countless folks find their first true appreciation of the diversity and depth that the seemingly simple act of brewing beer can provide, myself included.

Occasionally, though, on foisting upon a guest a squat, thick-stemmed snifter of vaporous, glowing ale, bronzenly tinted by a mysterious alchemy of malts and gifted with an aromatic cloud rich with yeasty spices, along with the inviting introduction, "c'mon, then, try it, it's Belgian", the retreating recipient's reply comes back like a reflex: "Sorry, but I rather don't like sweet beers". So goes the uphill battle of beer ambassadorship. There is, in some circles, a stigma or unknown origins, about the relative sweetness of the Belgian beers, one that in light of their jaw-droppingly wide variance, continues to astound me.

And while I'd prefer to believe that their exposure to Belgian brewing is limited to being suckered into sampling some fruity, saccharine-laced bastardization of a lambic or some monastically-themed "abbey ale" of questionable quality, I have to admit that the truth is often harder to face: I honestly find a large proportion of the highly vaunted golden ales brewed with an eye towards the great Trappist tradition unappetizingly sweet. There, I've said it.

I don't particularly care for tripels.

And it's not just the level of sweetness - one that tends to cut through the mouthfeel thanks to the lack of other sensory obstacles, a generally low bitterness level, and an extremely minimalist malt profile - it's the kind of sweetness that keeps me from reaching back for multiple tastes, a type of sweetness that folks often liken to tropical fruits like pineapple and mango, a result of a ton of white sugar (up to 25% of the fermentables, if my memory serves) being chewed up by a distinctive family of yeasts. It's a sweetness, along with a commonly overpowering level of carbonation, that sets my lizard brain into alert mode, warning me of the easy potential for a nasty headache and my stomach in search for something bitter to get it settled.

"with laagje slagroom or ice-cold yet never only because... all gnomes are enraged."

Thankfully, as it's likewise impossible to categorize and classify the whole of Belgian brewing, it's impossible to categorize and classify the entries in the world's field of tripels. This one's different (and one I've already noticed as the subject of a few other Session posts).

Once upon a great rare while, a particularly crazy bunch of artisanal brewers from the gnome-infested forests of the Ardennes comes west to sample what some other Europeans may have dismissed as one-dimensional and harsh, the hop-driven ales of the new craft brewing movement in America, and, returning to their candlelit tree-trunk hovels to lazily rock in a chair by the pot-bellied stove with a tumbler of Chouffe Coffee on ice, look back at those foreignly bitter concoctions with a bleary sort of fondness. That's exactly when something like this happens: the Houblon Chouffe IPA Dobbelen Tripel, an idea wrought of (apparently) enraged gnomes, aggressive hops, and a palate willing for the none-too-sweet.

Emboldened by a liberal use of Amarillo, Saaz, and Tomahawk hops (a gnome with a tomahawk, an image sure to haunt my dreams now), this is more of a loopy mash-up of a beer than anything else, a curious dance between American and Belgian styles that, interestingly, predates a lot of the US takes on the Belgo-American hybrid. There's an apparent bready yeastiness to this one, and a slight minerally sharpness that reminds me of one of the other tripels I do enjoy, Chimay's Cenq Cents. And the hops, while not nearly as muscular as you'd likely find in a stateside iteration, provide an enjoyable interplay that livens up a style that I (in weaker times, long ago, before I knew any better) have dismissed as vaguely dull and one-dimensional. There's almost a farmhouse level of grassy earthiness, too, far removed from the pristine cleanliness of some other examples I've experienced, and a finish that's brighter and sharper than the creamy, dull, hyper-effervescent lingering that also seems to follow the ones I have a harder time appreciating. But is it then really a tripel? Says so on the bottle, so I'll take it.

And share it with my wife I did, per David's instructions, but lamely and distractedly didn't gather her impressions. Such is the way it is, finding oneself discussing things other than beer once in an odd while.

With that, I think it's only appropriate to once again pull this old chestnut off the shelf for some deep listening. Be sure to play this next time you're in the presence of a Chouffe, just to get the full effect. Enjoy.

The Session is a blog carnival originated by Stan Hieronymus at Appellation Beer. This month's party is being hosted by David at Musings Over a Pint. For a summary of the Sessions thus far, check out Brookston's handy guide. You can also follow this month's entries on twitter by searching for posts marked with the #thesession hashtag.

Localize it, pt. 3 - The Younger the better

2009-02-03T11:35:00.000-08:00

Admittedly, I am not, nor have I ever been, a starry-eyed fanatic of Pliny the Elder. Despite passionate dalliances with the coterie of Russian River's offerings, including an ashamedly fanboy exuberance over any of their Belgian modeled brews, this flagship IPA has always struck a curious chord on my palate. Every year, though, along with the demise of the football season and the emergence of a certain gigantic rodent from the frozen landscape, comes another iteration, one that warrants a quick foray up through the construction equipment rental yards, cow pastures, and dreadfully vacant car dealerships that pave the way through southern Sonoma county: Pliny the Younger. And while I was boggled by the level of delusional clamor I saw - people literally purchasing hundreds of dollars of growlers (as it's on tap, and at the Santa Rosa pub only) with the intent on shipping them to folks outside of driving range - it would be untruthful of me not to admit a newfound fresh, starry-eyed fanaticism that it managed to inspire.

The curious chord at the heart of the Elder, for me, has always been its coldly sharp bitterness, an effect I'm tempted to liken to the experience of a morning gone frost-bitten on a subalpine camping trip, one of those places where despite the promise of a warm afternoon, the summer's heat can't compete with the barren cold that follows a cloudless night, forcing one to wake squiting into the sunrise, in shock. There's a quick, prickly forest bite like pushing past pine and fir, cutting needles unyielding in their harsh, scraping way, a somewhat masochistic thrill of taking a deep, bracing breath, calling it invigorating. It's enjoyable, without question, but for me it's enjoyable in the same doses and frequency as camping is. When my palate needs readjusting (to wit, the lupulin threshold shift), when something brisk and just a tad punishing will settle things, the Elder is as honest, fresh, and distinctively local as beer can get. But the Younger, perhaps thanks to the loads of collateral impact that come along for the ride when you try to amp an all-malt beer up to over 10% alcohol, all those peskily unfermentables, that richly complex malt residue, is a completely different beast, with a glowing core of mandarin orange and a strange insistancy, a strange permanence in the glass that just demanded extra attention and a bit more reflection.

Perhaps it was the way that despite its proximity to the most depressing day of the year, the sun limped along in the sky, hesitatingly keeping things warmer far longer that it should have, lingering stubbornly in a rusty sky instead of plummeting behind Inverness Ridge like it was supposed to. This stranger, stronger sibling seems to be wrought of a deeper, warmer wellspring, an effluent life of depth that's only hinted at beneath the frost of its paler brethren. Like an impossibly warm summer's morning, the prickly edges of those evergreen branches have been softened, revealing a greener, more floral side, dense waves of pollen alongside eager blossoms perfuming the air. It is by no means a "hot" beer, the alcohol level is dangerously well hidden, but has a warmth of balance and a restorative sense to it, a soulfulness. This is Pliny the relaxed, Pliny the assured. Any semblance of shrieking , potentially sharp, spiky edges have been muted and mellowed, peaceably calmed, allowing for a richness of essence that lends itself to the kind of deliriously overwrought elucidation that can only come with long, slow, ruminative tasting.

But there's something Italian here, too, I could swear. A connection to the bold digestifs of the culture that brought us elixirs like Campari and Sanbitter, the bitterness that lingers in the back of the throat made me think of Orangina, of a time before sucrose, a strange sort of parallel of being a child newly introduced to taste in five dimensions, and of being the overstuffed omnivore that I am now, settling back into the rhythms of the evening, full, fat and happy with a glass of something comforting and easing to accompany the darkening of the sky.

And soon it will be gone, fleeting, not worth trying to save and store and cellar (and pity those poor folks in far off lands with flat, lifeless growlers of the stuff trying to figure it all out while pretending to ignore the dent it's made in their credit card bill), but exists truly just an act of local beer done perfectly, in a way that no other I can think of at the moment sums it all up, the life out here, so justly, so well, all of it. A great reminder of how lucky we are, and for what's possible.

Fermentation Friday - Happy brew year

2009-01-30T15:49:00.000-08:00

A remembrance of things past...

It's always refreshing to find that you're not the only one out there who takes a certain sick pleasure in pouncing on painfully obvious puns when spinning titles for discussion topics. So it was with a warming tinge of kinship that I read the theme for this month's Fermentation Friday, having hopefully induced a couple dozen groans of my own with the same retarded wordplay back in December in the the Aleuminati forums. If there comes a time in my life when obviously altering text for wincingly comic effect doesn't entertain me, it'll mean that some small part of me, raised on excessive Jumble and crossword exposure from my youth, has died.

Digression aside, today's topic revolves around homebrewing practices and how we resolve to change and improve upon them in the coming year. The timing couldn't be more appropriate, interestingly enough, as this weekend we'll be hosting a bit of a "homebrew inventory reduction initiative" (also known as a "kegger") in order to make a little space for a new year's worth of experimentation. While certainly not indicative of the range of batches we tried to pull off this past year (the bird being long gone, along with that witwheat and various others, long forgotten), there's a certain undeniable trend that cropped up while I was penning the tasting notes for our little soiree. A pattern emerged when I lined up the offerings, one that led me to consider an alteration to our habits, a habit I hadn't really seen spelled out so clearly:

Old Fashioned Ale – 9.0% abv
Black Lav Winter Saison – 9.5% abv
Early Bird Appelwoi – 9.0% abv
X’08 Holiday Ale – 10.0%
Het Mysterie – 7.5%
The Indoctrinator – 7.5%

Turns out we like to churn out stuff that's got a little kick on it, looks like. So, while I already resolved to make a change in my lazy packaging tendencies, another theme has emerged that may end up a dominating guide for 2009's time around the kettle: The Year of the Session. Strong American beers had long been in the minority not because they're any more difficult to produce, unlike what some marketers might want you to believe. They're in the minority because they're expensive to make, and in many places still, illegal to boot. Strong beers require more time, energy, and ingredients, which in turn demands smaller batches at sometimes prohibitively higher retail prices. As the craft beer scene has evolved, however, strong beer has been the battleground where the top producers have been vying for superiority amongst the burgeoning class of beer drinkers with money and the conceit of heightened taste buds, creating a situation where average alcohol levels (and along with them, cost) have been unceasingly building. Reflecting on our own brewing experiences, it's obvious that we're just as guilty.

And while Jay and I were recently joking that the typical 5%, even 6% beers currently labeled as being "session strength" should really be called "re-session strength" [Get it? See? It's that pun thing. I can't get over it], it seems a prudent time for brewers, along with homebrewers, to focus their skills on sub-5% beers that don't sacrifice flavor, proving they can maintain body and retain a geek's attention, worth savoring, warrant excited opinions... and maybe re-root folks to the simple brilliance of a set of styles so transparent and unshielding of their flaws, demanding of respect via the solid obviousness of its craftsmanship. In other words, to tap into something that's been relatively lacking on US soil ever since Prohibition, but something well understood in places like the UK and Germany: moderate-strength beers need not be watery nor bland nor incidental. They can, in fact, be points of pride.

So that's the plan (once the *ahem* imperial pilsner in the fridge is ready). While the next batch we're likely to tackle falls within the "re-session" band of the strength spectrum, it's a step in the right direction. To mild and helles, and beyond.

Many thanks to lootcorp 3.0 for hosting this month's Fermentation Friday, a monthly blogging carnival gathered around the topic of homebrewing, originated by Beer Bits 2. I also promise to cool it on the goofy Lomo photo filter. Next time you see a high contrast vignette on this site, it'll be from our Holga, I swear.

Localize it, pt. 2 - SF Beer Week buddies

2009-01-16T21:01:00.000-08:00

Something happened yesterday, something unplanned, unexpected, and for lack of a better description, something completely unintended. This dainty little blog turned four years old. And of the manifold benefits we reaped this past year, persisting to document some sort of beer tasting thought diary experiment, was the explosive array of new acquaintances we made. While we managed a marked return to our homebrewing experimentation (a discussion I'll save for this Friday), and likewise managed to get our hands on some pretty thought-provoking, sought-after bottles as well, but what was truly unique about this past year was the motley collection of wiseacres we came into regular communication with, transforming this formerly insular little notepad into a place where commentary, insight, and interplay came into the game.

That said, SF Beer Week is nearly upon us, and along with it, as luck would have it, a number of folks I've had the distinct pleasure of getting to know be just happen to be involved in hosting events under auspices of the golden Beer Week banner. Whereas the focus of these events might deviate from "the local", what with Belgian and German beers and whatnot, the sheer number of hardworking individuals - mostly bloggers, no less - organized here in the cause of raising an appreciation of fine beer in the Bay Area speaks volumes about the groundswell influence of local individuals. Where there have been obvious comparisons between SF Beer Week and it's relative Philly Beer Week, one could argue that our East Coast competitor is by the breweries and for the beer, whereas ours is for the people and by the people. In chronological order:

- Mario from Brewed for Thought has organized an Introduction to Belgian Ales at Alpha Sigma Phi on the UC Berkeley campus on Friday, February 5, along with a "meet the brewer" event with Tim Goeppinger of Sonoma Springs Brewing Company on Tuesday, February 10. A fellow member of BABB, Mario's a chatty, knowledgeable guy who fosters a pretention-free appreciation of craft beer, and who would be the perfect guide for someone who'd otherwise be turned off by a snobby introduction to arguably the world's greatest brewing culture.

- Chris and Meredith from thebeergeek.com have organized a German Beer Tasting at Rosie's Cracker Barrel in Carmel Valley on Saturday, February 7 at 2:00 p.m. Last summer I had the distinct pleasure of sitting down with the two of them while they were visiting Iron Springs on their way up to the Santa Rosa Brewing Festival. Good folks with a serious appreciation for German beer (which I've always found a little sadly lacking in the craft beer circles), Chris and Meredith are well-traveled and well-versed, certain to use what they've learned in their time in Germany to provide some excellent insight on some overlooked styles.

- Peter and Sammy from BetterBeerBlog are hosting a Beer & Dessert Tasting Event at Wine Affairs in San Jose on the evening of Monday, February 9. As many folks have been vocal about the decrepit state of craft beer on the Peninsula, this couple has resolved to be a part of the solution, trying to carve out an oasis of brewing appreciation with their beer dinners and pairing adventures. With keen perception on the nuances of beer tasting, they've been boldly creative in finding ways to bring beer to the table alongside all manner of foods. And dessert is, after all, the best course.

- Jesse from Beer & Nosh is presenting a beer dinner benefiting the San Fransisco Food Bank on Wednesday, February 11, hosted by Scala's Bistro. One of the local beer and food documenters that I just happen to run into more often than not, Jesse's a true gourmand of the local scene, and definitely the guy you want with a camera in hand when you're trying to show off. This dinner, subbed "New American Food and New American Beer", with a menu designed and executed by hotshot chef Jen Biesty, looks to be everything you'd want in a presentation that really showcases the elevated status and versatility of the new craft beer scene in this country.

- Sean Paxton is teaming up with Firestone Walker and Toronado for a beer dinner at the Peacock Lounge on Thursday, February 12.

It will be insane.

This last one is of a little more personal importance to me as I'll be donating the services of my delicate, lily-white hands to the man better known as The Homebrew Chef in his kitchen, a position garnered solely through the illusion I've cast as having some idea of how to find my way around a cutting board. We'll just see if I can pull that off. (If you see a bearded, bloodied man running back and forth across Haight Street that evening, there's a one-in-ten chance it's me.) It's a thrilling opportunity to get my hands dirty (after washing them!) in an arena in which we've always itched to dabble.

There ought to be a Pfiff! sponsored event, I suppose. Maybe next year? Or maybe something wild and impromptu will happen on the 8th, with the assistance of my four year-old nephew. On second thought, maybe the 13th would be better. But don't wait up. If you're attending events at this year's Beer Week, make a point of coming to some of these events, as they seem to define, as a group, what beer means to the current indie-by-way-of-foodie generation of the Bay Area.

Localize it, pt. 1 - Towards a reconnection with beer as a staple

2009-01-16T13:15:00.000-08:00

Like bread, milk, eggs... There's no describing the burden of shame and embarrassment that would follow me if I ever bothered to purchase one of those items from a source further afield than I could comfortably drive in a leisurely afternoon outing. But if there's a weakness to be exploited in my professed admiration for all things brewed, it's my relative lack of engagement with the local scene (a weakness I tried valiantly to resolve this past weekend with a glass of Marin Brewing's White Knuckle double IPA, as seen above). Of the breweries represented in the SF Brewers' Guild, I can only genuinely throw my weight behind maybe half of them, for example. But to the extent that my cynical, sarcastic, pessimist attitude allows, I have to concede that some of the core tenets that push the modern foodview (local, sustainable, affordable) are going to be major factors in the beer scene in the coming year. What was beginning to gnaw at me, a flux of super-high cost beers, the elevation of beer to the wine-drinker's table alongside the wine-drinker's price tag, may likely be less of a concern as locals begin to take closer care with their expenses and indulgences. In an area as obsessed with food and dining as San Francisco, though, where neighborhood farmer's markets are the norm, it would seem logical that locally-produced, handcrafted, affordable, fresh beer would edge out the $50 bottles of Brazilian méthode champenoise offerings on the menu. Currently, though, despite how much they may actually sell, and despite their quality, public perception hasn't shifted to acknowledge them as the obvious, socially, politically, environmentally, and health concious choices on the beer menu.

Thankfully, it will soon be SF Beer Week, an opportunity to redeem myself somewhat, and an opportunity for local brewers to perhaps reclaim the crown of percieved quality from their brethren from further afield. Amidst the plethora of happenings, too, there are some that hosted by folks I like to consider friends, some smaller events that will arguably pack in more passion about beer, food and the social, communal, convivial attitiude that belongs alongside them than some of the larger events. And all with a local bent, a local point of view. Expect a post about those gatherings in the next day or so.

Here's to reconnecting. Go out and grab something local to enjoy this weekend. And if you can't find anything local that you can enjoy, ask yourself why not? Why hasn't anyone bothered to fill that void, the simple pleasure of a simple beverage brewed well, freshly, for locals? With all the talk of "carbon footprints", fears over tainted food, the push of the organic movement, the current economic crisis, and the emboldened palate of the modern consumer, why wouldn't everyone have access to reasonable, quality, local beer?