More like: "Inaugural Colorado Crap-I'm-Broke-Because-I'm-Going-To-The-Mountains-For-The-Weekend-So-I-Can't-Go-To-All-The-Ridiculous-Colorado-Beer-Week-Events-This-Week Week."
All joking aside, that's actually a lie. I already went to a Colorado Beer Week event. I attended (what I believe to be, even though Colorado Beer Week didn't officially start until Saturday) the inaugural event of the inaugural Colorado Beer Week. I went to Great Divide's Triple Beer Release Party on Friday night, and it was awesome! It was a celebration fit for Craft Beer Lords and Ladies hailing from the farthest reaches of the state! It was a pretty sweet shindig.
Great Divide was, as mentioned in last week's Tewsday Brewsday post, releasing fresh batches of three beers: their farmhouse ale, Colette (an awesome summer poolside sippin' beer); a special seasonal version of their imperial stout, Chocolate Oak Aged Yeti (the favorite of both Robin and myself); and an oak aged double IPA of the same recipe as last years anniversary ale because it was so wildly popular and darn good that they decided just to brew it again, 17th Anniversary Ale (also delicious, a beer to have a philosophical discussion over). Not only were three beers being released for the first time this year, but they had food, too, included in the price of admission! Gastro Cart Denver provided the grub, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Robin didn't care for it quite as much, but....more for me! Not only were beer and grub included in the price of admission, but they had live tunes, too! I can't seem to find the name of the band that was playing, but they had an upright bass and two acoustic guitars, with all three members singing. They were pretty good, they were having a lot of fun, which definitely rubbed off on the crowd. It was a good time, and I'm glad Robin and I went.
(Note: So I'm trying to get back into this whole "writing every week" thing, and I'm going on week two, but I forgot to sit down and write down thoughts about what I wanted to put in this post. Incidentally, here comes a very jarring segue to the next topic.)
Man, you know what I see all over the place at breweries now? Stranahan's barrels. That is, empty Stranahan's Colorado Whiskey barrels. Breweries are snatching them up like it's going out of style. Great Divide has an entire stockpile of them, no doubt with yummy yummy beer in them. Another local favorite of mine, Dry Dock Brewing, has a dozen or so of these barrels, too. Due to their expansion at the end of last year, these barrels (also no doubt with yummy yummy beer in them) are a part of the decor of their new and expanded sitting area.
Speaking of Dry Dock (hope that wasn't too jarring), they tapped a beer last Thursday that truly inspired me, and redefined for me what beer can be. What was this liquid ambrosia, you ask? It was an Espresso Milk Stout. That was the name of it. "Espresso Milk Stout." That's what it tasted like, too. They used a pound of custom-roasted espresso beans per barrel of coffee, and added a generous amount of lactose (milk sugar; imparts body and mild milk-like sweetness) to the beer as well. The end result is a black, viscous stout, with a beautiful aroma of freshly made espresso, and a flavor like of one of the finest mocha-latte-cappuccino-chocolate-milk concoctions you've ever had, with a mouthfeel of rich, luscious chocolate milk.
Now, there are plenty of beers out there that warrant a fairly similar description, to be sure. I'm sure there are beers out there (and/or in my cellar) that will earn even greater favor from me. The thing is, all of those beers usually pack a whallop; they're usually what I would consider to be "sipping beers," dessert beers, which you almost certainly have to share with someone else, lest you take a coffee-infused nap after drinking an entire bottle to yourself. Espresso Milk Stout, from Dry Dock, is a mind-bending....wait for it....4.3% abv. That's only just over 1% abv higher than O'Douls and the like, and the same alcohol content as Guinness Draught. What's that you say? Guinness Draught has a rich, full mouthfeel, too? Well, that's because Guinness Draught is served on Nitrogen taps. Nitrogen, being a heavier gas than Carbon Dioxide, gives any beer a much fuller and heavier mouthfeel. Next time you're at a bar where this is a possibility, get two samples (or pints, if you prefer) of the same beer, one on nitro, and the other on CO2. Compare them side by side, and you'll see and taste what I mean.
Espresso Milk Stout is not served on nitro, it is served with regular ol' CO2. That's another thing that was so impressive and inspiring to me. They crafted a very beer with the flavor, body, mouthfeel, and overall presence of a much more potent beer without giving it the normally accompanying sobriety-melting alcohol content. Drinking this beer ignited something inside me. I want to, nay have to, explore the possibilities that this beer presents. Imagine an intensely-hopped yet powerfully malty Imperial IPA, with an alcohol content of just over 5%. That's just one example of the many, many more that I want to try and create. I don't even know if all, or any for that matter, will be possible, but my path has been set; I am going to try.
It all comes down to the simple, one-word question:
Why?
I'll tell you why: I'm tired of having to drink beers that nullify my legal ability to drive after just one pint in order to get the kind of flavor that I crave. I drink beer because it challenges my palate and opens my mind. I drink beer because, within its realm, it contains a universe of flavors and aromas which are only accessible through the opening of a brown glass bottle. There is nowhere else you can go, nothing else you can do, nothing else you can eat (edit: there actually is food that I like more than beer... Thai food!), and nothing else you can drink, that will allow you to experience the unique sensory immersion of a truly great beer.
But I'm tired of being subjected to the associated inebriation that comes with it every single time. That is why I want to explore the possibilities. I hope that someday soon, I can share the fruits of my journey with all of you. That is my dream.
Until next week, beer on and beer often! Cheers!
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
And now, an informative piece of blogerature from Tewsday Brewsday.
Here I am again, it seems as though every two weeks is becoming the norm. Really what it is is I just need to get my butt in gear when I'm just chillin' on Sunday, and jot down my thoughts then, rather than waiting for Monday night to figure out what I want to write about. I suppose I'll work on that.
I'm still homebrewing. I'm trying to get a more regular schedule down, so that I can get what HomeBrewTalk (an awesome homebrew forum) calls a "pipeline," having one (or more) batch(es) just starting to ferment, one (or more) batch(es) just ready to be bottled, and one (or more) batch(es) that are just becoming really drinkable in bottles or keg. Right now, my "pipeline" is more like a 4-cylinder engine firing on one or two cylinders: I brew a batch, and it gets all the way through fermentation and into bottles, then a week or so later, I brew another batch. That's about 4-6 weeks apart. Of course, that's probably the best way for me to do it right now, as I am keeping myself from getting too entirely crazy with homebrewing just yet. But, soon. I have a fever, and the only cure is morecowbell homebrew.
Currently, I have a pale-ish ale which has been bottled for more than a month, I have Rasputin's Apprentice and all its variations, which are just past 3 weeks in bottle (and tasting AWESOME), and I have a an all-Amarillo amber IPA in secondary, dry-hopping.
What's secondary? What's dry-hopping? Glad you asked:
---"Secondary" refers to secondary fermentation. It's when you move the beer out of the primary fermentation vessel, where the yeast had most of its activity (and converted the majority of the sugars to alcohol and carbon dioxide) to a clean, empty fermentation vessel - in my case, another 5 gallon carboy - where the yeast will continue to break apart the larger sugars and process them down to alcohol, carbon dioxide, and esters (flavors unique to each yeast strain). As a product of the initial, vigorous fermentation, there will always be a "yeast cake." This is a sediment, composed of mostly dormant yeast cells. As the yeast detect that they're running out of sugar to eat, they go dormant, and settle to the bottom of the fermentation vessel (thanks, gravity!). If beer is left on this "yeast cake" too long, off-flavors can occur.
---Dry-hopping is the process of adding dry hops to a beer, usually (but not necessarily) in secondary fermentation. The essential oils present in hops, which give them their unique and distinct flavors and aromas, are soluble in alcohol. Since most of the fermentable sugars are converted to alcohol and carbon dioxide in primary fermentation, there is plenty alcohol to extract the hops' essential oils into the beer. This lends a much more pronounced hop aroma to beer, which can also be interpreted as more hop flavor, due to the fancy-pants relationship between your sense of smell and your sense of taste.
In the realm of beer that is not my homebrew, we just had our April Brewsday this past month. Brewsday, as previously mentioned, is when me and a bunch of people who like beer get together and taste beer. We're constantly in the process of evolving it; April's Brewsday was our first style-centric tasting. We voted to do Scottish Ale/Scotch Ale (Wee Heavy)/American or English Strong Ale as our styles of choice this time. We ended up with 9 beers, 6 of which were Scotch Ales or Scottish Ales, and the other three being American and English Strong Ales.
There was a lot of information to be extracted from this tasting. First of all, all of the beer was pretty tasty. There were a few standouts for me, the Yorkshire Stingo, Cup O Kyndnes, and Kloster Jul were the best of the bunch. Second of all, the styles for this tasting (Strong Ale excepted) were a fairly tightly-grouped bunch. To me, they all had subtle differences, but beyond subtle, they were all pretty similar. To someone who doesn't have practice picking out subtle differences in beers, I'm sure the beers started tasting the same towards the end. Of course, Arrogant Bastard was a refreshing change of pace, with its in-your-face assertiveness, after a night of deliciously smooth and malty Scottish styles of beer. Third, I expect that the beer style chosen for the tasting will have a drastic effect on how enjoyable it is. If there is room in the style for a lot of difference between beers, then I think it will keep people more engaged, and less likely to succumb to "palate fatigue." Something I think we'll do from this point on is have some sort of palate-cleansing snacks in between each beer, to keep everyone's "palate stamina" up. I had a lengthy discussion with my friend Cedric about this today, and he gave me lots of good food for thought. Brewsday is a constantly evolving thing, and I want to make it the most enjoyable and most engaging for everyone that attends.
It's fascinating how much I'm learning about beer since I started homebrewing. I thought I already knew a lot, just by drinking everyone else's beer, but I didn't really understand the process that went into creating beer. Now that I've been homebrewing for a couple months, and insatiably absorbing wisdom and information about the brewing process, I have a lot deeper of an understanding of the hidden processes in motion within a bottle of beer. I bring this up because the person who hosted this month's Brewsday, and has volunteered to host successive Brewsdays (thanks, Steve!!!), is an avid homebrewer. He had just put his own Scotch Ale on tap in his kegerator very recently. He used a good amount of smoked malt, and his wife described the taste as a "rotting campfire." I couldn't help but chuckle at the description, since "rotting" is actually a not-too-far-off relative of "fermenting," and "campfire" can be a very accurate way to describe a young, or overly assertive, smoked beer.
When I tasted it, I didn't necessarily get "rotting campfire," but I did realize that beers with smoked malts in them definitely require a longer period of maturation than (most) beers without. As a fresh beer, smoked malts can lend an "ashy" flavor to the beer when present in significant quantities. There was a hint of this roughness to Steve's Scotch Ale, but I knew, almost without thinking, that in a few months' time, the smoke flavor would mellow quite a bit, and the beer would be quite a bit different. I told Steve that I'm excited to see where the beer goes.
Speaking of "where the beer goes," that tends to be where I go, too. This weekend, the beer is going to Great Divide for a special party. They're releasing their farmhouse ale, Colette, their Chocolate Oak Aged Yeti Imperial Stout, and their 18th Anniversary Oak Aged Imperial IPA. Color me excited! I haven't had Colette in a couple years, and the first time I had it, I'm pretty sure I only had a sample of it. Chocolate Oak Aged Yeti is probably my favorite in the series because of a little curveball they throw in: they add a touch of cayenne pepper, which comes in at the very end of the flavor, as a very refreshing, but mild, bite of heat. It's an extremely unique and great finish to a deliciously sumptuous, sweet, and seductive beer. The Oak Aged Imperial IPA is another fantastic beer, being that it's got so much going on. How do I know this? It's the same recipe as they used last year, and I loved it last year. There'll be live music, and food as well. It should be an awesome way to spend a Friday evening, and I'm looking forward to telling you all about it!
Until next time, beer on, and beer often. Cheers!
I'm still homebrewing. I'm trying to get a more regular schedule down, so that I can get what HomeBrewTalk (an awesome homebrew forum) calls a "pipeline," having one (or more) batch(es) just starting to ferment, one (or more) batch(es) just ready to be bottled, and one (or more) batch(es) that are just becoming really drinkable in bottles or keg. Right now, my "pipeline" is more like a 4-cylinder engine firing on one or two cylinders: I brew a batch, and it gets all the way through fermentation and into bottles, then a week or so later, I brew another batch. That's about 4-6 weeks apart. Of course, that's probably the best way for me to do it right now, as I am keeping myself from getting too entirely crazy with homebrewing just yet. But, soon. I have a fever, and the only cure is more
Currently, I have a pale-ish ale which has been bottled for more than a month, I have Rasputin's Apprentice and all its variations, which are just past 3 weeks in bottle (and tasting AWESOME), and I have a an all-Amarillo amber IPA in secondary, dry-hopping.
What's secondary? What's dry-hopping? Glad you asked:
---"Secondary" refers to secondary fermentation. It's when you move the beer out of the primary fermentation vessel, where the yeast had most of its activity (and converted the majority of the sugars to alcohol and carbon dioxide) to a clean, empty fermentation vessel - in my case, another 5 gallon carboy - where the yeast will continue to break apart the larger sugars and process them down to alcohol, carbon dioxide, and esters (flavors unique to each yeast strain). As a product of the initial, vigorous fermentation, there will always be a "yeast cake." This is a sediment, composed of mostly dormant yeast cells. As the yeast detect that they're running out of sugar to eat, they go dormant, and settle to the bottom of the fermentation vessel (thanks, gravity!). If beer is left on this "yeast cake" too long, off-flavors can occur.
---Dry-hopping is the process of adding dry hops to a beer, usually (but not necessarily) in secondary fermentation. The essential oils present in hops, which give them their unique and distinct flavors and aromas, are soluble in alcohol. Since most of the fermentable sugars are converted to alcohol and carbon dioxide in primary fermentation, there is plenty alcohol to extract the hops' essential oils into the beer. This lends a much more pronounced hop aroma to beer, which can also be interpreted as more hop flavor, due to the fancy-pants relationship between your sense of smell and your sense of taste.
In the realm of beer that is not my homebrew, we just had our April Brewsday this past month. Brewsday, as previously mentioned, is when me and a bunch of people who like beer get together and taste beer. We're constantly in the process of evolving it; April's Brewsday was our first style-centric tasting. We voted to do Scottish Ale/Scotch Ale (Wee Heavy)/American or English Strong Ale as our styles of choice this time. We ended up with 9 beers, 6 of which were Scotch Ales or Scottish Ales, and the other three being American and English Strong Ales.
 |
| Right to Left: 1. Bridgeport Highland Ambush (Scotch), 2. Samuel Smith's Yorkshire Stingo (English Strong), 3. Ommegang Cup O Kyndnes (Scotch Ale with Heather), Grand Lake Plaid Bastard (Scotch), Stone/Port/Green Flash Highway 78 (Scotch), Moylan's Kilt Lifter (Scotch), Olfabrikken Kloster Jul (Strong Ale with Spices), Samuel Adams Wee Heavy, and Stone Arrogant Bastard (American Strong) |
It's fascinating how much I'm learning about beer since I started homebrewing. I thought I already knew a lot, just by drinking everyone else's beer, but I didn't really understand the process that went into creating beer. Now that I've been homebrewing for a couple months, and insatiably absorbing wisdom and information about the brewing process, I have a lot deeper of an understanding of the hidden processes in motion within a bottle of beer. I bring this up because the person who hosted this month's Brewsday, and has volunteered to host successive Brewsdays (thanks, Steve!!!), is an avid homebrewer. He had just put his own Scotch Ale on tap in his kegerator very recently. He used a good amount of smoked malt, and his wife described the taste as a "rotting campfire." I couldn't help but chuckle at the description, since "rotting" is actually a not-too-far-off relative of "fermenting," and "campfire" can be a very accurate way to describe a young, or overly assertive, smoked beer.
When I tasted it, I didn't necessarily get "rotting campfire," but I did realize that beers with smoked malts in them definitely require a longer period of maturation than (most) beers without. As a fresh beer, smoked malts can lend an "ashy" flavor to the beer when present in significant quantities. There was a hint of this roughness to Steve's Scotch Ale, but I knew, almost without thinking, that in a few months' time, the smoke flavor would mellow quite a bit, and the beer would be quite a bit different. I told Steve that I'm excited to see where the beer goes.
Speaking of "where the beer goes," that tends to be where I go, too. This weekend, the beer is going to Great Divide for a special party. They're releasing their farmhouse ale, Colette, their Chocolate Oak Aged Yeti Imperial Stout, and their 18th Anniversary Oak Aged Imperial IPA. Color me excited! I haven't had Colette in a couple years, and the first time I had it, I'm pretty sure I only had a sample of it. Chocolate Oak Aged Yeti is probably my favorite in the series because of a little curveball they throw in: they add a touch of cayenne pepper, which comes in at the very end of the flavor, as a very refreshing, but mild, bite of heat. It's an extremely unique and great finish to a deliciously sumptuous, sweet, and seductive beer. The Oak Aged Imperial IPA is another fantastic beer, being that it's got so much going on. How do I know this? It's the same recipe as they used last year, and I loved it last year. There'll be live music, and food as well. It should be an awesome way to spend a Friday evening, and I'm looking forward to telling you all about it!
Until next time, beer on, and beer often. Cheers!
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