BJCP Exams

Last year I took the BJCP beer exam for the first time. The test is pretty detailed and takes more effort than one might expect. First, the questions are fairly detailed essay questions. There are only nine of them, but each requires quite detailed responses. Since the test is only 3 hours long that breaks down to something like 15 minutes for each question (there is a multiple choice section too).

If that were not enough, during the exam they bring you four beers to evaluate, these responses are also evaluated. While you are tasting the beers, a National level judge is in the next room doing the same thing. Your evaluation is then checked against thiers to determine your grade on that part.

When I took the exam, I did not score as well as I wanted too. My combined score was in the mid 60's. The tasting score was higher, but the written portion is waited as 70% of the score. True to form for me, most of the information gelled in my head about two months after the exam was over.

This comming April I plan on taking the exam again and this time I have a stategy. There were many things I spent time studying last time that I am going to blow off this time around. For example last time I tried to memorize the stats for every subcatagory of beer. Turns out there is a distinct list of beers that are part of the exam pool, so this time I will focus on those beers. Also there are several "compare and contrast" questions in the pool. This time I plan to have a list of three beers memorized for each of these questions. Then I will only have to write what I know rather than trying to think of three beers each time.

The other major thing that I am going to do is blow off the tasting portion of the exam. I have a decent enough score on that part and it will not do much to pull up my exam even if I score perfectly on it. When they calculate your current score they take the HIGHEST score from each section and use it. So if I get a score in the mid 80's, I can get my score up quite a bit.

The other nice thing is that if I should get a great written score, but not quite enough to get what I want for a score, I can then take the tasting portion without worrying about the writting. Thus I can work on one section at a time until I get them where I want.

The only fly in ointment here is that I am going to be taking the BJCP mead exam in March so I will have to devote some time to that as well. But I am a fairly decent mead maker and that exam is pass/fail at 60% with no tasting portion.

I'm Not Dead!

Wow it has been a while. Part of it was being broke, I did not have much in the way of exploration to be sharing, then I got a job and things got busy. So my early New Year's Goal is to actually update this thing once a week or so.

Today I am going to talk about Anchor's Christmas Ale 2010. This one actually snuck up on me. I was sort of keeping an eye out for it, and lucked into the last six pack that Full Throttle Bottles had. I wanted to get a couple of them for a project that I am launching, but I had to settle for what I could get. The project is to keep an inventory of the Christmas Ale from year to year, allowing it to age and do vertical tastings each year.

I got this idea from my friend Marc Gaspar. He was an incredible brewer and a very kind mentor. When I first started going to meetings at Kansas City Bier Meisters homebrew club, Marc would always be willing to taste my beer with me. He would then give pointers as to what we were tasting. What the problems were, and offered suggestions on how to fix them. He made me a much better brewer and never made me feel bad about my early efforts.

In any event, when they cleaned out Marc's beer cellar they brought it down to the memorial we held for him. In among the bottles of homebrew there were several years worth of Anchor Christmas Ale. This is interesting for a couple of reasons. First, Anchor changes the spices they add to the beer each year. They don't go over the top, just enough to give it a unique character from year to year. Second, being a dark beer it does age quite nicely. Marc inspired me to begin my own project this year. I only have one six pack at the moment, and I drank one of those as we will see below. I want to get my hands on at least one more six pack to age around 10 for the base of the project.

Here are my tasting notes from bottle I drank tonight.

Aroma: Dark roasted malt, low hop aroma, caramel notes and faint spice.

Appearance: Dark brown with ruby highlights, tan head with medium persistance and a fine texture.

Flavor: Bitter roasted malt. Notes of orange, chocolate malt. Light hop flavor, variety does not show. Warming alcohol, Clove? Grains of Paradise? Aftertaste fades from lingering bitterness into coffee flavors. As it warms it presents more malt sweetness, some sour twang, and faint anise flavors.

Mouthfeel: Medium carbonation, light body with some astringincy.

Over All Impression: Unlike many winter warmer and Christmas beers, Anchor's Christmas Ale is a standard 5.5% ABV. This helps to keep it from being too filling to drink more than one at a time, and may make it harder to age. The tannins should help this beer age gracefully, much like they do in big red wines. It will be interesting to see how this beer compares back to these notes over the next few years.

On a more personal note, I am now employeed so I hope to be able to get out and expereince what Seattle has to offer in the future. I have attened many things I should have shared with you, such as the Cider Festival and the Winter Beer Festival, but life was sort of crazy at the time. I said early my New Year's Goal was to update this more often. Note I did not say Resolution, the only one of those I ever kept was to quit making them. Now I set goals for the year to come. Sometimes I do alright, sometimes I suck.

Cider Summit N.W.

Last Saturday I attended the first ever Cider Summit N.W. at the South Lake Union Discovery Center. This was organized along the lines of a typical Washington Beer Festival. A set gate charge that got you a tasting cup and a set number of tasting tickets. Each of the samples is then a number of tickets based on the cost of the cider in question. Extra tickets could then be purchased for an additional charge. One nice thing about this one is that I could take the bus there and back so I did not have to worry about parking or how much I drank.

I was really looking forward to this as I really like cider. There was a time in American history when almost everyone drank cider every day. As pioneers pushed west into the virgin land they carried apple seedlings with them to plant on their new farms. The apples were then used for food, preserved, and made into cider. The cider was then drunk and some portion was allowed to go to vinegar to preserve the other produce from the garden as well. Then the Temperance movement convinced many farmer to chop down their trees, or worse yet do unholy things to their cider to keep it from fermenting. Now in America if you say you are drinking cider, most people picture a cloudy, insipid, still, non-alcoholic beverage.

There were cider makers from all around the area and a few from overseas as well. Almar Orchards were there will their JK's Scrumpy organic cider. A nice cider that is widely available and that I quite like. Making it over from England was Aspall Cider, their product line is readily available here and in Kansas City so I decided to use my precious tickets elsewhere. France was represented by Domaine Familial Louis Dupont Etienne Dupont Organic Cidre Bouché Brut de Normandie and Domaine Christian Drouhin who brought a Perry. Both of these cider makers are in Normandy. I tried them both, but I have to admit that I was more interested in the Perry because you rarely see those commercially made. The final entry from Europe was Possman from Germany with their Frankfurter Apfelwein. This was very tasty, hopefully I will be able to lay into a supply of this in the future.

One of the cideries that caught my eye was Carlton Cyderworks in Carlton Oregon. What first caught my eye was they have a cider named in honor of Carry Nation, who along with Father Welch did more damage to American Society than the "social ills" they were fighting against. Carlton also has a Citizen line that is a traditional cider made with traditional cider apples including Kingston Black and Dabinett. I think Citizen was one of my favorites of the day.

Crispin Cider came up from California, and I have to admit I was a little indecisive about them. They had a large banner up about putting cider over ice, which I think is a bad idea on general terms. The only things that should be served on the rocks is certain liquors and mixed drinks. But they also had a cider that was fermented with trappest yeast too. I decided that I had to give that a try. It was good, the flavor was interesting, but it was not really good either. It had a little too much funk on it for most people. It was even a bit much for me, and I like funky beer and blue cheese.

There was a Ginger Cider from Eaglemount Wine and Cider over in Port Townsend. This was also one of my favorites of the day. The ginger flavor was not overpowering or hot and the was in balance with the flavor of the apples.

There was a cidery down from British Columbia in the form of Sea Cider from Victoria. They were pouring two ciders, thier Pippins and Rumrunner. If I had to choose I would say that Rumrunner was my favorite of the day. There was plenty of vanilla toasty character from the barrel without the cider being acetic.

The last place that caught my eye was Wandering Aengus from Salem Oregon. They had a couple of interesting ideas. One was thier Anthem Hops a hopped cider. The bitterness was quite low and I could not smell or taste the hops at all. I think you are wasting money if you can't detect them, and I suspect if you could the flavor would clash with with the flavors of the apples. They also had a "single vaietal" cider made with Wickson apples. This was pretty good, but it seemed to lack that jena se qua that you get from the interplay of different varieties of apples, each contributing its own strengths to the whole.

There were many more cider mills present, but I focused on those that I can not get locally, or that I had not tasted at other event.

Beerstock 5060-2

Last weekend I attended Beerstock 5060 which is a homebrew festival started last year to celebrate a change in the law that allowed homebrew to be transported and served at meetings and such. Just 150 of you closest friends out for a day of beer and camping. I went as a memeber of BREW, but decided to also look at other homebrew clubs to see if I liked one a bit closer to me, but more on that later.

This was the first event I attened like this. I guess it is a bit like club night at NHC but on a smaller scale and camping. There were 7-8 clubs there with thier own booths and each serving 5-6 beers. So if you tried all of them you would be pretty roasted by the end of the evening. As per most home brew events I only saw a few people that were out of control drunk, plenty too drunk to drive, but only a couple unable to walk drunk.

One of the things I find most interesting about any homebrew event is the wide variety of people the hobby attracts. There are Technicians who can recite to you the specifics of every batch they have ever made. Some guys are Artists that make great beer by feel, they don't write anything down and some of them make etherial beer, but they never make the same beer twice. There is the guy that only makes one recipe, but he does it very well. The New Guy who compares himself to people that have been doing this for 20 years and needs reassurance. Then there is New Book Guy, this is someone that just recently read a new brewing book and got fired up for something and he is going to make it and share with everyone. Normally these guys are most easily identified after reading Sacred and Herbal Healing Beers because they show up with a corny full of "Wild Rosemary and Bog Myrtle" Pale Ale. To distinguish them from Hippie Brewer you need to see what else they have on tap. Hippie Brewer was a rare commodity back in the Midwest, but I expect to see more of them here.

Another thing we did as part of Beerstock was to hold a Beer Judging Clinic. Since I am a BJCP Recognized Judge I took part. This was not a competition (but they did hand out a prize), but rather a chance for brewers to bring in a beer and have two judges taste, evaluate and discuss it with them. We were supposed to take shifts, but I ended up doing the full three hour run. I encountered everyone of the brewers listed above at my table. One guy showed up with his second and third batch and took notes while I talked. Another guy barely remembered his mash temp. I did not taste any that were truly hideous, a few bad ones, and one or two where I could not offer much advice because they were so good already.

Since I did not have beer to serve I brought a few bottles of my mead to share around. One guy in BREW is apparently the Mead King of Washington so I made sure to give him a sample of everything. He had some constructive critizim for all of them, but I am not sure if some of that was because I am new competition or not. He is an old school mead maker that thinks you should leave it in the carboy for 5 years before it is ready to drink. I think I made enough of an impression that people will know who I am when I show up.

During all of this when I visited clubs I was looking for a new home. I really like BREW, but Everett is not exactly next door. There is a club nearby that I have been trying to find a meeting to attend. They don't seem very well organized, online anyway. They did show for Beerstock so I went over to have a look. First thing is I did not see anyone that was older than college age, which is not a defect. However I did not see much more in the way of organization at the booth, which is a defect. I am looking for a club that is organized and has a plan. I am afraid that if I get involved with this bunch I won't have fun because I will either be bitting my tounge, or running roughshod over them to get things moving. Another nearby club did not show at all so I could not talk to them. The most interesting part of this came from a club that I never even thought about.

To give a bit of history. When a friend of mine moved back here from the Midwest he went to a club meeting near his place and was told, basically, that he had to attend three meetings before they would vote on letting him into the club. We are talking about a guy that had 9 beers go through the first round of NHC in this region and took a silver in the second round. When he lived in the Midwest he was High Plains Brewer of the Year for three years running, some of those years he was second of third on the club listings by himself. This is not the way you should treat people in the homebrew community. Last February he was back in the Midwest for my club's competition and he told me this story. So now I come to the great Northwest and am looking for a club. I got in touch with my friend and found out which club had given him the brush-off and marked them off of my list of potentials. So now we get to Beerstock and I am talking to clubs and making it clear that I am set on BREW, but could be wooed away. Representatives of the blacklisted club actually gave me the hard sell for joining them. Not once, not twice, but seven times they talked to me. It is nice to wanted, but I am not going to drive a long way for three months and hope that I get approved in some election.

All in all Beerstock was a lot of fun, but I think next year it will have to be somewhere else because 150 odd people on three acres of land is a bit much in terms of parking and logistics.

Getting My Feet Wet

This past weekend was pretty busy for me. On Friday night I went up to Everett to attend a meeting of the Beer Renegades of Everett Washington, or B.R.E.W.,. This is not exactly the club next door for me, but a fellow brewer from Kansas City is in the club so it was a place to start. The club is a bit on the small side, there were only eight or nine members there that night besides me. There was the normal amount of dorking around in addition to the beer being passed around. The beer was pretty good for the most part. We had a chili porter that could have used a bit more time settling down, and an IPA that had a bit of a lactic infection. Both of those were pretty good too, but each had an issue of one type in my mind.

One of the things that came up in the meeting was Beerstock 5060-2, which is a home brew festival first held last year in honor of the legalization of the trasportation of homebrew for meetings and competitions. There will be plenty of homebrew and socializing. One of the events they are going to do is a Judging Clinic where people can bring in thier homebrew and sit down face-to-face with a BJCP judge to have them evaluate thier beer. The idea is for it to be a low-key friendly evaluation that is intended to make people a better brewer. My friend just got his National judge level and is heading this up (at least for BREW), and I offered to dust off my BJCP hat and give him a hand.

The real fun began after the meeting was over. Mark offered to take me along with he and his buddy as they hit some bars down in Ballard. So I followed him down to his friend's place and then rode along down to the bar. We ended up at a place called Nectar in the Fremont District. We had several beers and I remembered how long it had been since I was in a club. I was not the Scary Old Guy, but I was close. We stayed until the last band finished up for the night. On the way back to the car I got a burrito from a roach coach in a parking lot. The burrito was pretty good that night, but the next morning it did not sit well.

The next morning my brother and I went up to Edmonds to a WAHA event at Gallager' Where U Brew. It was basically a chance for them to show off what the are about and try to get people to come in and brew. I looked at it and it seemed like an interesting idea, but I have a couple of problems with it. First it is all the way in Edmonds, second the batch size is 12 gallongs, third it is expensive. Now they include the cost of equipment and ingredients in thier cost, as well as the storage space and their skills. But that cost does not include bottles. So you would need 4-5 cases of bottles in addition to the other costs. While there I ran into someone from BREW that had not been at the meeting on Friday. Apparently he had spoken with someone that had and had already heard about me. Hmmm...I don't know if that is a good thing or a bad thing. I suppose it is good since he offered to let me come up to his house to brew and he has a 26 gallon all-grain system. I have a couple of all-grain recipes that are burning a hole in my minde so I may take him up on that after Beerstock 5060-2.

Monday I went to a cider tasting at Bottleworks. Getting there was a real little spot of joy. Seattle traffic is a pain in the tuckus and the start time was 5:00 PM, so the freeway was out. Instead I used Google maps to find a route on the surface streets. One problem is that the street I needed to use was under construction and I got turned around trying to figure out what was going on. Next I tried my GPS navigation on my phone. That made it worse by trying to force me to go down a closed street and then nagging me when I did not do what it wanted. I eventually found it, but it took 45 minutes to make a 15 minute drive.

Once there there were two cides from each of five vendors. Wildfire Cider out of Port Townsend. They had one cide and their Apfelwein. I don't remember which cider it was, but I do remember that it was quite good and nicely dry. I did not try the Apfelwein, not because I don't like but rather because I have tried it before. The next vendor was Red Barn Cider. Thier two were a true Perry and a cider made with a percentage of crab apples in the crush. The cider was really good. One major problem with mass market cider in this country is that they don't have enough back bone. The addition of crab apples gives acidity and tannins to give the cider its soul. The perry was something rare though. Most of the Pear Cider that is on the market is apple cider with "pear flavoring" added to it. The real stuff is as different from that as read cider is from apple juice. The bouquet is of ripe pears and the taste is nice. I bought a bottle of each of these.

Next up was Finnriver, they had two ciders there, a Farmstead Sparkling Cider and an Artisan Sparkling Cider. The Farmstand is French cider that is allowed to stand on the lees for a while, which is supposed to give a more complex flavor, I am not sure it makes enough of a difference to make the risk of infection worth it. The Artisan is not allowed to stand on the lees and has a slightly different blend of apples in the must. Both products are bottle conditioned, but the méthode Champagnoise is used on the Artisan.

Snowdrift Cider brought thier Dry Cider and their Semi-dry Cider. I like both of these, but the Dry is a bit too dry for most people. I think most people are looking for a touch of sweetness in cider, otherwise it does not taste like apples to them. I really liked both of these, but I suspect the Semi-dry would be to more peoples taste, however you should know that I think a better descriptor would be Off-dry.

The final vendor was Tieton Cider Works. I had thier stuff at the Washington Brewers Fest back in June. So I did not sample them last night (hey I have to drive you know). I will say that if you see their stuff in the store, you should know that the Cherry Cider is apple cider that is flavored with cherries. Not that there is anything wrong with that, but don't expect a full on cherry cider and get something else.

A pretty full weekend, but I like what I see when I go out in this town. Now if I only had a job everything would be perfect.

First Explorations

Madrona Eatery and Ale House

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Friday night I went down to a local beer bar in my new neighborhood, the Madrona Eatery and Ale House. It is only a few blocks walk from where I live so it will make a perfect local watering hole for me. You should know that the owners believe in being family friendly. During regular hours there are plenty of families with kids, they even provided toys. We went around 9:00 and there were no kids around, so plan accordingly.

The beer selection was pretty decent with around 20 beers on tap, mostly local selections. The food was better than average, but the service was slow. One complaint was with the hummus plate one of ordered. There was just one small sauce cup of hummus and a lot of garnish. I had a CDA and Pike's Wit. My one complaint is the Pike's had so much star anise flavor that it was more like a pale winter warmer than a refreshing summer beer.

Two things I did not like so much was even mostly empty the noise level was pretty loud. There are lots of hard surfaces and not much to absorb the sound. The other is the service seemed slow. Our beers had been poured a few minutes before the same server brought them to the table. None of these are fatal flaws, just things to be aware of.

Then on Saturday my brother and I went to the 2010 Washington Brewers Festival over in Saint Edwards State Park in Kenmore, WA.

The first thing we headed for was the W.A.B.L. tent to get the special beer, an Imperial Porter. It was not bad, but I have a pet peeve about the fact that an "imperial porter" is just a stout with a fancy name and don't like the marketing mumbo jumbo.

After that we headed to the cider and wine tent. We are both fans of cider and there should be plenty of them up here. I think there were seven cider mills, each with 2-3 selections. The one complaint is that the ciders were two tokens each. Back in Missouri, once you pay your way into a festival all of the samples are free. Here in Washington you have to present a token for each pour. You can purchase more tokens, but it is a more expensive deal than I am used to. My brother and I did taste different selections at each booth, so we did get to taste more than what we would have individually. Somehow I ended up with a token left over. I will say the festival is well run and planned. There were even several park and ride areas set up with shuttle busses to make it easier to get in and out of the park.

One thing I did really like was when I found out that Boulevard Brewing is now being distributed in the Seattle area at QFC Stores. Now I can get one of the best things from my old home in my new home.

Settling In

Well I got into Seattle a couple of days ago and I am trying to get a feel for my new home. The streets here are not laid out in a logical manner, at least not logical to me. However I can get from the house to Bellevue and back, and I can find I-90 which will get me to most everything else.

One of the first things I did was to go on the Beer Mapping Project to see what was close to my new place. Limiting the search to a five mile radius still turned up over 100 hits, one of which is right down the street a few blocks. Since my brother and sister-in-law are going to a Mariners game tonight I thought I would check it out and see. However it will have to be late as the reviews I have read all seem to indicate that the place is crawling with Yuppies and their spawn. Seems that the Madrona area of Seattle has been recently gentrified and the Yuppies seem to think that it is a great idea to bring the kiddies to a bar.

The one thing that I did do today was take a walk down to Lake Washington from the house. I am on 33^rd, and the lake is around 40^th. Sounds easy right? Well, most of those blocks are down hill at about a 45° angle. Steep enough that walking down was bothering my knees. The walk back took twice as long as the outbound trip. However if I am serious about changing my life and getting in better shape this is the sort of thing I need to be doing. I think in the future that I will walk to the library three days a week and down to the lake the other two.

Notes From The Road

I left Kansas City for Seattle yesterday to start my new life. The first day my brother and I drove all the way to Boulder for the first day. Our first stop was Avery Taproom. We both had tasters of Ellie's Brown, Ballsmack!!! Baltic Porter, and Seventeena highly hopped black lager. Then he had a Out of Bounds Stout and I had a 2006 Samael's Barrel Aged. As always the beer was great, only complaint about it really is that it is very loud in there so it is hard to have a conversation.

After that we went to Efrains II just down the road from Avery. We both got the Efrain spicy, which is a chef's choice plate. It was quite good, but it was SPICY!. We had to give in and ask for a side of sour cream. It is a good place to eat though, it was busy and good prices.

Today we were trying to go to Medovina Colorado Honeywine, then to New Belgium on the way to Yellowstone. Well that did not work out quite right. First Medovina does not seem to have a tasting room of any sort. Then New Belgium seems to close their tasting room on Sunday and Monday. Why a major brewery that is a well known would not have hours on a weekend is beyond me. It is not like there are state laws at play as Avery is open both of those days. Finally we got all the way to Lander, WY and decided that we did not have time to see anything in the park today and the prices would be higher there. So we stopped for the evening here. The plan now is to get up early and get through the park and as far west as we can that night.

There is one bonus. It seems that Lander has a brewpub, so that is where we are going to go for dinner tonight. I will try to post something about that once we get back to the hotel.

The Right Tool for the Job

I always knew that tasting beer in the right glass made a difference in how it tasted. However until tonight I never knew just how significant a difference there really was. This evening I was lucky enough to attend the Spiegelau Beer Glass Tasting at Boulevard Brewing here in Kansas City. The event consisted of tasting several beer in the standard Shaker Pint, along side the same beer in the correct glass.

The event got started with a everyone finding a seat and finding these five glasses on the table. The guy from Spiegelau talked for a while about the differences between the standard Shaker Pint and their glassware. Two of the points I think are most relevant are the relative amount of iron oxide in the source material and the smoothness of the glass surface. Typical glass has around 500 ppm of iron oxide in it. This is what is responsible for the greenish/bluish tint you see in window and auto glass when looking at the edge. The source material for Spiegelau has only around 80 ppm of iron oxide in it. This results in a much more true color of the beer in the glass, which you will see in some of the images below. The relative smoothness of the glass also keeps the carbon dioxide in solution rather than providing nucleation sites for the release of the gas from the beer. The result is the mouthfeel of the beer is much better with these glasses. Another point made is that some breweries are selling glassware made specifically for their beer. The problem being is that the glass is then not good for much else. I have a couple of the Sam Adams glasses and they are not good for serving other types of beer as the features they specifically designed for their product, work against other beers.

The first beer we sampled in these glasses was Boulevard Pilsner. These two glasses were poured from the same bottle at the same time. If you notice the color of the beer in the Shaker Pint looks ever so slightly green compared to the Tall Pilsner glass. You will also notice that the shape of the Shaker does not support the thick head that is in the Tall Pilsner either. Smelling the beer in each glass showed a difference as well. The beer in the shaker pint had a faint grainy quality and some small amount of hops. The beer in the pilsner glass however had a much richer grain aroma, I could detect the malt and a slight bit of green apple from lingering diacytl. But the real difference was in the hop aroma. The hops in the pilsner glass were very floral and had a discernible Noble Hop character with some spiciness. There was a difference in flavor as well. The beer in the shaker pint tasted somewhat flat and was warmed by the thick glass absorbing all of the cold from the beer. The pilsner glass on the other hand is quite thin so it does not suck the cold from the beer as quickly. Also the carbonation came out in your mouth so the beer was quite spritzy on the tongue and the carbonation carried the hop aroma into the nose and brought out the flavor more. The difference was really amazing.

Next up was the Unfiltered Wheat. I had to contain myself when the woman next to me started asking if there were any lemon slices available, but I digress. Once more you can see there is a decidedly greenish tint to the beer in the shaker pint as compared to the Wheat Beer glass. The differences in the head retention are there as well. There was a similar difference in the aroma of the beers, with the Wheat Beer glass giving a lot more of the subtle notes than the shaker did. The Wheat Beer glass also preserved the carbonation so it would come out on the tongue and enhance the beer flavor and aroma in the mouth.

When we poured the Boulevard Pale Ale the color difference was not as pronounced, but this is mainly due to the darker color of the beer. There was more of a difference to the naked eye than in this photo, but if you look carefully you will see the greenish tinge is still there. The glass that was used here was what Spiegelau calls a "Lager" glass, the rep said it was for non-pilsner lagers, pale ales, and IPAs. This is probably the glass that most resembles the traditional shaker pint, but that is just superficial. The differences in the aroma and flavor are quite distinct. You will also notice the lacing on the shaker pint from where the head rose up as the carbon dioxide came out of solution, but then collapsed fairly quickly as well. The color of the beer in the Lager glass was also much more ruby than the brown of the shaker pint.

Sixth Glass is really where the differences in glassware came into full focus. The photo does not due justice to the color of the beer, but the beer in the shaker pint was brown, almost the color of a brown ale, while in the Tulip glass it was a deep ruby color with copper highlights. Sixth Glass is a fairly carbonated Belgian style quad so the difference in the head is not as large as the other beers, plus I think the hop oils from the other beers were taking up some of the nucleation sites at this point despite rinsing after each beer. The aroma was also an incredible difference. In the shaker pint the beer smelled of faint alcohol, a little caramel and faint hops. In the Tulip glass the alcohol was warm and there were notes of caramel and dried fruit along with the floral hops and biscuity malt. The flavor was much better too since there was plenty of carbonation to carry flavors and aroma around the mouth and sinuses. Plus the shape of the glass puts your nose right into the heart of the aroma as you take a sip. Honestly Sixth Glass was not a favorite beer of mine, but this presentation gave me a new appreciation for it.

At the end I went back and tried the dregs of the prior beers that were waiting in the Spiegelau glasses. They all were still carbonated and nice to drink. They had warmed a bit, but not nearly as much as the beers that were poured into the shaker pint. The best part of the event is that we got to keep our sampling glasses from Spiegelau. A quick word about them, they are owned by the Riedel people and have been in business for a very long time as a family firm. The glasses are intended for the commercial market so they are dishwasher safe and fairly robust for the thin glass would lead you to think. They also were selling glasses at a discount at the event. But since you had to order, then wait 30 days for delivery and then pick them up at the brewery I figured I would spend more getting them sent to me than if I ordered them directly from Amazon. If you get the chance to do something like this I highly recommend that you do. I plan on running this demo for a few friends in the near future to get them to upgrade their glassware.

Stupidity For The Sake of Sales

Normally I don't get my shorts in a bunch over the sort of stupidity that goes under the guise of "healthy eating". Granted most Americans, the Flatlander included, eat too much red meat and are too fat. However most of this reporting is designed to make people feel bad about themselves and thus pump money into the diet and fitness industry when most people could just stand to walk more. Just look at what a mind fuck it has done to our teenage girls. However this is a direct shot at the craft brew industry by an idiot know-nothing.

An online article in Men's Health magazine made the flabbergasting statement that America has a drinking problem. Now Carry Nation may agree at first, but this fool thinks that we drink too much period and alcohol is irrelevant. The article in question lists the 20 Worst Things To Drink, and Craft Beer is on the list. What do they use as an example of "craft beer"? Sierra Nevada's Bigfoot. A really good barleywine, but hardly an example of a typical Craft Beer. They also have these little comparisons of what the drink in question is equal too. In the case of Bigfoot the comparison is an entire twelve pack of Michelob Ultra. You mean 132 oz. of vile tasting yellow fizzy pisswater is better for your health than one 12 oz. bottle of Bigfoot? Really? Michelob Ultra? A beer so disgusting that they are having to introduce flavors like Lime Cactus and Pomegranate Raspberry to trick people into buying the swill.

I have news for the mush-head that wrote this. People who drink craft beer do it because they enjoy the flavor of the product. If getting drunk were the point we would not spend as much on a six pack as a case of MegaSwill would cost. Also we do not drink nearly the same amount that the Joe Six-Pack types do. Have you ever been to a beer festival and seen the guys that are just pounding down as many samples as they can? That is not us, we are the ones that open the guide when we get it and see which breweries are there, and what their listed selections are. We then will either take one of two tacks. First is to try and taste all of our favorites, or more commonly, to try and taste those beers that are hard to come by in our area or are out of the ordinary. We appreciate quality over quantity and are willing to pay for the difference.

Another thing Mr. Snob, if it were not for Craft Beer and all of its fans, there would be no local, artisanal food production in this country today. Craft Brewers were the first into that market space and they still are the best transition into that world for most people. So go check your mascara and do some basic research before you open your metrosexual mouth.

Farewell Tour Part One

Last night a group of my Scouter friends had a good-bye party for me at Waldo Pizza, one of the better local pizza joints in town. What was nice about it for me is that I was not there as a Scout Leader. Several of the kids in the Scout group for the last several years or so have been employees there and we have a tendency to have meetings there. The only problem is that they have a really good beer list, they even have a Cicerone on staff. So I go to this place fairly often, they have a killer beer list and I can't have any because I am working. Last night I was not so I had a few of the more interesting things on the list.

I must admit that I was not there to taste beer so these impressions are not as sharp as a beer review should be.

First up was the 1809 Berliner Weisse which is a German import beer. The alcohol was a bit high for the style at around 5%, and the beer was not as tart as I would expect. Adding any syrup to it would have turned it into a fruity cocktail, I had mine straight. It was nicely tart with some good cider-like qualities to it. I think this would be a great introduction to the world of sour beers for newbies.

The second beer I had was the Jolly Pumpkin Bam Bière, which Waldo listed as a Saison. This is a beer that I have heard a lot about and was looking forward to trying when I reviewed the beer list the day before (is that too beer geek?). I know that Jolly Pumpkin make farm house style ales. I guess so they can dispense with traditional styles. It had the nice crispness and fruity notes that I would expect, but there was a fair amount of funk as well. Now I like funk, I drink Rodenbach and have George Clinton on my iPod, but in this case I thought it was a bit out of style and swamped the more delicate flavors of the beer. I like this beer, I am just not sure it should be called a saison.

The group also bought me a cake and gave me a card that everyone signed. Some people I had not seen for years showed up as well. It is nice to know that some of these people came out to see me off. What was interesting was one of the guys I have known for a while seemed to be getting a bit emotional and gave me a couple of "man hugs". I was quite touched by the whole thing.

Next up: The Oklahoma Run

The Aftermath

Well the movers did get here and the stuff that was on the slate to be moved was. There were a few hitches along the way though. First they were late, which made me twitchy. I am not a guy that is scheduled down to the minute, but when I have a schedule to keep I make sure I keep it. Then there was the drive over to the storage unit. Normally there is no shortage of aggressive drivers in Kansas City, but they were no where to be seen on this drive. First I had a lady get between me and the moving van which was not exactly burning up the road, so I slowed down figuring she would get frustrated and pass me. No such luck, she stayed there for miles until she finally pulled over on the shoulder for some reason. By then there was a whole line of cars between us. Once more no matter how slow I went, no one passed me.

Once we finally got over to the storage unit things were easy. The unload took about 20 minutes, just a bit longer than the drive. Everything is stacked and reasonably secure. I even have about 40%-50% of space left. Which brings up another issue now. Right now I have almost all of the large objects I am moving to Seattle with me over there. The only notable exceptions are my flat-screen TV and computer chair. With the space I have left I want to grab a few more items. One of which is the stand the TV is on and a table that the legs come off of with ease.

What I really need to work on though is my brew gear. I have 10-12 carboys, a mash tun, brew pot, stand burner, a couple of kegs, and some bottles to take with me. I figure I am going to wrap all of the carboys in bubble wrap and shrink wrap. Put those that will fit in my freezer in there and stash the rest in milk crates.

Then once all of that is over there the only thing left to work out is the inventory. I have a fair inventory of beer and wine, well mostly wine at this point. I have two cases of beer for drinking and two for competitions, but at least 8 cases of wine. I have some people that will take some of the wine from me, but I do want to keep as much as I can. But I have two problems with it. One is I don't want to put it in a storage container that will sit in the sun for three weeks before being put on a truck to Seattle. The second is what to do with it once I am there. I will have limited space and I do not want to just leave it exposed to the swings in air temp there either.

I suppose this is a whiny problem to be having, but I need to get it figured out soon. Now back to packing the rest of my stuff up.

Swirling Chaos

I have spent the last two days getting ready for a milestone in my move to Seattle, big stuff day. I have people that are going to help me move the large objects that I am taking, and a big chunk of the boxes into the PODS storage unit that I will use for the actual move. The plan is to load up the stuff that I need help with, then fill in the remaining space with boxes as best I can. After that I can decided what I still have that I thought I wanted that either will go with the rest, or due to space considerations be left behind.

My list of large, important things is actually pretty short. I have a china cabinet and end table that my step-grandfather Pops made. I am pretty attached to them not only because he made them by hand (he was a cabinet maker), but also because they represent the sum total of my legacy from my father's side of the family. That is a long story and this is not the place. Another thing I care about is my Grandpa's chair. My Grandpa had this green vinyl rocking recliner, and when my Grandma remarried and broke up her house I ended up with it. It is not the prettiest girl at the dance, but it is still in good shape and it holds many memories for me. The other things are a chest freezer (for controlled fermentation), my bed, a couple of book cases, an old foot locker, and 20 odd boxes that are already packed. Just about all of my other furniture is either going (or has gone to) a new home, or will be left for the bank to deal with.

What I have to do now is make sure that everything will be ready when the time comes, which means clearing a path for things to move through and making sure everything is empty and ready to pick up. I think I am in good shape for this.

Beer School with Boulevard

Last night I attended Beer School at Barley's Brewhaus in Overland Park. Jeremy one of the brewers and Owner John McDonald were the speakers. Like all of these events they provided a lot of information about both the beers and the brewery. They even brought nice, well detailed information sheets about some of the beers. I suppose I should take it as a compliment that Jeremy (who attends beer school regularly) told me that he was trying to give me some detailed beer geek information so I did not have to ask too many questions. But enough about that, what about the beers?


The first up was their newest beer Boulevard Amber. I have to admit that I am not a great fan of the standard American Amber Ale, I think most of them are too malt focused and tend to end up cloying and sweet. That being said, I did like this beer. The malt and hops are much more balanced that most examples and there was a bit of hops at the end the cleared the palate so it was ready for another drink. They did mention that this beer was similar to the seasonal Irish Ale, but I have not had one of those recently enough to tell you for sure. What I can tell you is that I like this much better than Fat Tire,


After that we had the ZŌN. This is a Belgian Wit beer, the same style as the famous Celis White. What I really like about ZŌN is that it is a nice crisp example of this style. The flavor and aroma citrus does come out from the coriander and the orange peel, but it does not over power the flavor of the beer. So many examples of this style, both commercially and homebrewed either have very little of the spicy character, or it is so far over the top that you can't taste anything else. It takes a restrained hand to make this type of beer well, and Boulevard's is one of the best.

Then the started in with the Smokestack Series. The first up was Long Strange Triple, which is oddly enough a Belgian style triple. I like this beer, it is well made and is just what one looks for in a triple. It is not anything that will knock your socks off, but it is competently made which puts it ahead of some other beers on the market. I have to confess that triple is not the first thing I reach for when I want a beer. I am more of a fan of smaller beers that I can have more of for the same amount of buzz. If you like big Belgian beers and have not tried this one you are missing something and should grab a bottle next time you are at the store.

Next up was the beer I had been waiting for Dark Truth Stout, which is not on the website at this time. I have three bottles of this that I have been holding onto so I really wanted to try it. The beer has a nice roasted barley / coffee flavor, a few hints of chocolate - but not much. I lost track of how many specialty grains they said were in it, ten or eleven, it could be more. There was some flavors of dark stone fruit and port from a little oxidation which were very nice. I am not quite sure if it would be a dry stout or an American stout. I know it does not fall in the other BJCP stout sub-styles, well perhaps oatmeal stout because I remember they said there were oats in the grist. If all you drink is Guinness, you need to buy a bottle of this and taste the real thing.

The final offering of the night was Double Wide IPA. This is an imperialized version of the Single Wide IPA, which I actually like better. The Double Wide seems a bit cloying to me, where the Single Wide is just a good clean beer. I think IPA's should be thirst quenching on a hot summer day, and the big imperial interpretations are just not that kind of beers. Compared to some of the other really big IPA's Double Wide is rather restrained in hopping so it is a nice choice for those that are working their way up to being a hop-head.

Intersection of Beer Geek and Computer Geek

Part of my process to get ready for migration has been clearing out old junk. I have a couple of old computers lying around, both were supposed to be transformed into Linux servers or something else that I never did. I don't want to just throw them out, the electronics can contain all sorts of things you want to keep out of the landfills.

There is an option though, Best Buy has a recycling program that will accept all sorts of things. The only problem is that they don't want to take computer hard drives. Once upon a time I actually built my own computers from parts, I don't anymore and could not even if I wanted to. But I do know enough to take out a hard drive. So then I had 5 hard drives that were stacked in a box. Now I had an external drive that had died that I built a stir plate using the neodymium magnets. I decided to get rid of it before I moved to save space. I want to build a new one once I get to Seattle, but I will need magnets to do that.

So today I sat down and harvested the magnets out of all five hard drives. Once I get to Seattle and have some working space, I will build a new, stronger stir plate. The problem with the old one is that the cell phone power supply I scrounged was only 7 volts and that did not provide enough power to stir a full liter of starter in a one liter flask, it seemed to work fine for one liter of stater in a two liter flask though (I think it was the higher water column in the smaller flask created too much resistance in the under-powered fan). I also have a box of 12 volt computer cooling fans harvested from a few machines as well. The newer machine actually had three fans it in so now I have plenty to work with.

I think if I have fans left over I am going to build a herb/hop dryer using the fans to draw air through the material spread out on screens.

Moving Logistics

Today I have been trying to set up the logistics of my move across the country. Some things were pretty much set by outside factors, such as how long I have before I have to be out of my current place. In order to keep myself from stressing out anymore, I did make a smart decision. I am not going to try and rent a truck and move everything myself. Instead I am going to rent a POD storage container, load that up, and let them move it to Seattle for me. Then on the other side all I will have to do is pay a monthly storage fee to keep my stuff in place until I have a place of my own.

This is wise because I will be living with my brother and sister-in-law until I have a job and can get my own place. I still need to pare down my pack-rat accumulation of junk, but it will not be as severe as if I needed to go down to only what would fit in one room.

I have to say that I am finding it very freeing to be getting rid of the junk that seems to be weighing me down. I have come across clothes that I have not worn since college, VHS tapes of movies that I have since bought on DVD, and paycheck stubs for companies I have not worked for in 6-7 years. Why do I have all of this? I suppose it is because I had space to fit it into and no motivation to clean it out. Well now I have strong motivation and am working like mad to clear it all out.

The trick will be preventing a new build-up of crap once I have made the transition.

Getting Started

This blog is going to serve a couple of purposes. The first is to chronicle my migration from Kansas City Missouri to my new home in Seattle Washington. I will be posting bits about the process and my impressions of my new home once I am there.

The second use, which will take a greater share as I go along, is to serve as a place for me to record my thoughts about craft brewing and home brewing and the brewing industry in general. I know what you are thinking...the world does not need another beer geek sounding off in the blogosphere...and you are probably right about that. But I just want a place to record my thoughts that lies outside of my other online existence.

That said I will make an effort to keep this space clear of topics that are not part of the core mission. Not that I am afraid of controversy, it's just that what you think of the current President is not what I am here to discuss. Comments from trolls will be deleted as well, you may get your nut off causing trouble, but I don't have to put up with it.