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.