Battle Beer Stout Beerfest

I didn't get to go to the Great American Beer Festival this year, but fortunately there is still beer for drinking here in Pennsylvania. Dr. Tom and I decided to have a beer tasting to celebrate the beginning of fall with some stout. With the variety of stout styles and places that brew stout, we did two head to head tastings and one random beer just for the variety.

The head to head competitions pitted two chocolate stouts against one another and two imperial stouts. Choosing one contender from the UK and one from the US in each category, we drank:

Rogue Chocolate Stout vs Young's Double Chocolate Stout

Sam Smith Imperial Stout vs Victory Storm King

While at the store, we wanted another beer but didnt want another head to head, so we bought a sixer of Dominion Oak Barrel Stout. A perfect choice since we were playing the card game Dominion (it's like Magic the Gathering....yes we are nerds).

We started with the Rogue which has a nice chocolate flavor with some pleasant bitterness. Dr. Tom described it as drinking a candy bar. A strong start to this battle beer. Next up was the Young's double chocolate, a less intense chocolate and didnt have the creaminess that I was expecting (it came in a normal bottle, not in the nitro can that I am used to). While the Youngs was good, the Rogue was much better and the clear winner.

For battle imperial, we started with the Sam Smith. Smokey and meaty. It smelled a little like port with a bit of apple on the tongue. Dr. Tom kept saying candy apple or spiced apple, something he thought was obvious in the beer, but I didnt pick up on it as strongly. The Storm King fought back with a big kick of bitterness. Actually that was about all that we got from it. Sitting here drinking one as I type this, I am tasting a lot more than bitterness but I think maybe with the 3 preceding stouts, the bitterness was the only thing standing out in comparison. Normally I am a big fan of Storm King, but it just didnt match up well tonight. The winner in this battle was Sam Smith.

Finally we just sat and drank the Dominion (smooth, with vanilla and oak flavors) while playing Dominion and discussing the beers overall for the evening. Dr. Tom ranks them as follows:

1. Rogue Chocolate Stout

2. Sam Smith Imperial Stout

3. Dominion Oak Barrel Stout

4. Young's Double Chocolate

5. Storm King

I would switch the Dominion with the Sam Smith, just because I was not a big fan of the port flavors I got from the Sam Smith. Also, I would move the Storm King up in the rankings just because I do enjoy a nice bitter kick in the face.

The Session

So apparently, there is this thing called "The Session" or Beer Blogging Friday where beer bloggers blog on the same topic, on the same day. Once a month one beer blogger "hosts" and gives a topic and compiles links for all the posts. I discovered The Sessions when The Beer Babe announced this week's topic via twitter. Since the topic is all about "the new kids," I figured it would be the perfect first session for me.

The general theme of this week's topic is centered around the large spike in brewery openings in the recent years. Chances are there is a new brewery opening near most of us, and as members of the beer community, we should welcome them. As it turns out, there is a new brewery going in to the Gamble Mill restaurant in Bellefonte, PA. This is only about 20 minutes down the road, so that counts as my neighborhood.

I was able to get in contact with their brewer, Mike Smith, and went down to the brewery to talk with him. He's a real nice guy who got his start with Dogfish Head and moved up to Ithaca Brewing Company for a bit and is now back in his hometown. Since I started my beer drinking career with Ithaca and I am also a fan of Dogfish Head, I was pretty excited to chat with him and taste some of his beers.

The idea of this session was to visit a "new" brewery, and the brewery at Gamble Mill is so new, that they havent even started serving their beers yet. Part of the reason is the PLCB (sucks) and the also had some equipment issues. Good news is they are on track to pour beer soon. The brewery itself is tiny (sorry, forgot to take any pictures)! The fermenters are 7 barrels, but they can only make 3.5 barrels of wort at a time, so a beer made over two brew days.

Right now they have 3 beers in the tanks and Mike poured a taste of each. This was my first taste of beer fresh from the tanks, so that was pretty cool.

1. Golden ale - This is Mike's "stepping stone" beer for those who may be new to the whole idea of beer with flavor. Mike adds corn to the beer because he likes some of the flavors it adds. The nose was very bready and yeasty, which was nice, but I am not sure if that will stick around once the beer is finished and filtered. This beer wasn't my favorite, but keep in mind it wasn't brewed for me.

2. Saison - This beer is closer to something that I would order at the bar. A little bit of spice and nice and refreshing. Nothing crazy here just a good beer. I dont think it will take long for people to step from the golden ale to the saison, I think anyone can enjoy this beer.

3. Pale ale - Mike prefaced pouring the beer by saying that it is a little dark to be really considered pale, but with all these crazy black pale beers, I dont think anyone will give him any trouble about it. As soon as the beer went under my nose, I knew this was a beer for me. Nice strong hop aroma. This is a great pale ale. There must be something about central PA water, because now I have 3 brew pubs within a 30 minute drive with pale ales that I really like (Ottos and Elk Creek are the other 2).

In addition to tasting, we just chatted about beer and brewing for about an hour and I got a feeling that there is going to be some incredible stuff going on here once they get rolling. Mike mentioned ideas for wild fermentations, barrel aging, traditional cask beer and beer dinners. He seems pretty excited about being a part of the community (especially, I'm sure, because he grew up around here) and wants to do a lot of things. Also, he seemed open to starting a twitter account for the brewery, and there is always room on twitter for more breweries.

It looks like Mike, and the guys at Gamble Mill are on the path to being a great brewpub...now to keep a look out for when they start pouring the beer!

Pablo's Wit...takes 2 and 3

Ok, so my summer project did not go as planned. I didn't brew as much as I wanted to and I never really figured out a perfect wit recipe. As a last resort, I decided to do 2 beers at once...the best between the two gets kegged and brought to the wedding. I had 2 goals for these beers

1. The recipe needed to give the beer more body than take 1 (the beer turned out a little bland and watery)

2. The beer needed to have more pronounced spicing (nothing extreme, but noticeable)

Since I basically ran out of time, I had to brew 2 beers in one night, my first double-brew-day. Surprisingly enough, everything went well and both batches are fermenting away in Dr. Tom's basement.

I will post the two recipes separately either later this week or this weekend. Just wanted to give a quick update.

Belgian Wit Take 1

I have a project this summer...I need to make a beer good enough to serve at my friend's wedding. Pablo (his real name is Kevin, but I call him Pablo) asked me to brew one beer, and he would brew another to be served at the reception. We haven't discussed it in too much detail, but since it will be a summer wedding, his first thoughts were an IPA and a Belgian Wit. Since my first attempt at a belgian wit was not very good (no one even pretended to like it) I figure I should get some practice with the style. I decided to start easy, order a kit from Northern Brewer, and just swap out the bitter orange peel that it comes with (that stuff just looks like wood chunks) for fresh orange zest.

The plan was to do this in a scientific manner...I bought a notebook, I was only going to change one thing at a time, write down everything I did...but while setting up for brewday, I broke my hydrometer...aaaahhhh! Now I have to do this "science" project with only half of my "science-y" tools (the other being my thermometer). Oh well, even if I did take great notes and great measurements, the chances of me being able to repeat it is slim.

At any rate, this was my first all grain batch so maybe not knowing that I missed my gravity, or my efficiency is only 12% is a good thing. Here is the recipe (adapted from the directions that came with the Northern Brewer Belgian Wit kit)

3.5 lb Weyermann Pale Wheat

3.5 lb Belgian Pilsner

1 lb Flaked oats

Mash Schedule

Added 3 gallons of 163 degree water to bring to 152 degrees F (ok actually, the water was hotter, so I had to add ice cubes to bring it down to 152, but it went to 151, then dropped to 149 while it mashed for the hour)

Added 1 gallon of boiling water, to bring it to 156 F and started to drain to the brewpot.

Batch Sparged with 1.75 gallons at 172 degrees, plus some hot tap water (.25 gallons)

At this point I am not sure if I am even doing anything right, but I eventually got a pot full of wort, and put in on to boil.

Hops

60 minutes - 2 oz Strisselpalt

10 minutes - 1 oz coriander (whole)

10 minutes - Orange zest from 5 navel oranges

I pitched wyeast Belgian Witbeir yeast (I made a starter the night before, split between 2 growlers) and it is currently sitting in Dr. Tom's basement...we will see

Dark Lord Day 2010

I ended up not getting to Dark Lord Day until a little before 11 and it was already packed. There were no more legal parking places (I parked illegally, but there were too many cars for anyone to do anything about it) and the line was incredibly long. I carried my cooler full of beer and went in search of my friend Shane who had arrived much earlier. After finding each other, we went back to where he was hanging out with his co-pilot/Dad. From where we were standing, it seemed like we were waiting in line near the front... I asked Shane if we were in line and he didnt know. When the doors opened at 11, there were cheers and we started moving towards them...it turns out we were in line! I dont recommend trying the show up late and then cut in line strategy, but apparently it worked for my. I appologize to all that I cut, but in my defense, I didnt know and I only bought 6 of my 8 alloted bottles. The other two I used to get some 2009 vintage.

There they are...in all their glory...my freshly purchased dark lord (along with an empty bottle of Ottos Mt Nittany Pale Ale that I shared with guys around me in line)

Speaking of sharing, there was a lot of it. The sharing was by far the best part of the day. It seemed like anyone that I happened to be standing around was a homebrewer and had homebrew to share. It was awesome. Two guys I met while waiting in line to get a taste of the Dark Lord, Dave and Cy, were very cool and we tasted beer and talked about homebrewing for a while. Apparently they were taught to brew by the guy who is now the head brewer at Revolution Brewing in Chicago and they really wanted to introduce him to me. It would have been cool to meet him (especially since I could go and drink his beer later that night at the brewpub) but they couldnt get in touch with him. They also told me to try and come to some brew fest in Wisconsin, but that may be a little too far for me.

I tried looking for people I knew through twitter, but I had no luck. The cell phone reception was not great and sometimes couldnt get twitter to work properly. Maybe next time. I used my last ticket to get a taste of the alpha king, bought a sausage and went back to Chicago.

I finished the day at Goose Island with Amanda, and had some mussels and Matilda. It was a great dinner. On my way out, I bought myself a bottle of 2010 Bourbon County Stout and a t-shirt. It would have been awesome to be able to hang out for longer, but I had to get up and go to church with Amanda (she was preaching, it was pretty cool) so we called it a night after dinner.

Dark Lord Day was definitely worth the trip and I hope I can do it again next year. Cheers!

Day Before Dark Lord Day 2010

I did it. I went and drove over 600 miles by myself for a beer. Sure, I drank more than one, but just one beer inspired this journey: Dark Lord Imperial Stout, brewed by 3 Floyds. You can call me crazy and I am ok with that.

Day 1. April 23, 2010...the drive to Chicago.

I loaded up the car with some PA beer, both homebrew and commercial and headed on my way. My first stop was slightly out of my way in Cleveland, OH. I had lunch at Great Lakes Brewing Company and tried some of their beers. The bartender gave me a taste of the pilsner, but it didnt really do anything for me. I went with two styles that I normally drink: irish red, and pale ale.

Conways Pale Ale: This beer made me a little nervous because something was a little weird in the nose. There was some grain aroma, but something else that I couldn't really put a finger (a nostril?) on. The flavor was all grain and malt flavors. Nice roasty/toasty notes.

Pulled pork sandwich: This (obviously) is not a beer, but drinking without eating is not recommended on a road trip... A good, but small bbq sandwich with coleslaw right there on the sandwich. I like cole slaw on the sandwich as does James from @basicbrewing...the reason I point this out is because it was a reoccurring theme on his podcasts I listened to on the way.

Burning River Pale Ale: Smells like a brewery with the mash and fermenters going full steam ahead. Nice amount of hops with some sticky/viscous bitterness in the finish. Nothing crazy or over the top, just a nice lunch beer.

Continuing on my way, I drove to Chicago where I was staying with my friend, Amanda. She took me out for some Chicago Deep Dish Pizza and then for a beer. This was really cool for 2 reasons: 1. I have been craving real chicago deep dish pizza ever since I knew what it was, but I had never been to Chicago. 2. Amanda is allergic to gluten, so she could not take part in consuming the wonderful pizza and beer of Chicago, but she came out with me to the pizza place and the bar anyway!

We went to Small Bar and I had 2 beers:

Metropolitan (Flywheel?) Lager: I am not sure if this was the flywheel or not because I didn't write it down and all I remember is that it was a pale lager and I think there was an M on the tap handle. It was good but not great (I didnt take any notes)

Two Brothers Cane and Ebel: This is a hoppy rye beer that was really good. I wish I could be more descriptive, but again no notes, just that I really liked it.

Stay tuned for part two...Dark Lord Day 2010!

Coffee and Pancakes

Java Head Stout Pancakes with Espresso Maple syrup

Sometime I feel that the beer flavor in my pancakes just isnt strong enough. I decided that I needed to use a beer with a bit more in your face flavor and I chose Troegs Java Head coffee stout. This is a great beer with nice coffee flavors and lots of roasted malts. Since it was just me eating the pancakes, I took my normal recipe (here, just replace with a beer of your choice) and just did 1/3 of each of the ingredients. It works out nicely, because you only use 1 cup of beer and that gives you a little left over for drinking.

For the pancakes
Dry:
1 Cups AP flour
1/4 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

1 Tablespoon melted butter

Wet:
1 egg
1 cup beer (Troegs JavaHead)

You may (or not) notice that I switched the butter over to the dry side. I hoped that adding the butter to the flour would stop the butter from getting all lumpy like it does when you add it to the cool beer and egg, but it just makes the flour lumpy and the batter thin and lumpy. In the end, the pancakes were more like lumpy crepes, but they tasted GREAT!!!

To continue the coffee theme for the morning, I wanted to make a coffee syrup to put on the pancakes. I really dont know anything about making syrup, so I just took a shot of espresso and dumped it into my maple syrup. Delicious! (Ok, so the syrup was thin too, but it was still good)

I think that I will be experimenting more with dark beers in my pancakes. Today was a success.