Beer on Bainbridge

Last Saturday my brother and I took the ferry from downtown Seattle over to Bainbridge Island. Since we were planning on doing a bit a drinking we took the bus down to the ferry dock and walked onto it.

Once the ferry arrived in Winslow we walked through town to find a restaurant he had read about called Harbour Public House & Marina. It was kind of hidden from the street, but if you follow the Waterfront Trail you will run right into it. They have three things going for them.

1. Good food


2. They are not the first place you run across, so there are fewer day trippers


3. Killer view

Once there we settled in for some beer and food..
First up was a Dark Sour from New Belgium. The beer was tasty, smooth with just a bit of sourness, the perfect thing to drink on a sunny summer day in Washington. This was actually my second, the hostess knocked over my half full first one, so they gave me a new beer. That was the only hitch in the afternoon

I am a big fan of seafood.. I try to eat it when I can but it is normally out of my price range due to limited funds. One of the specials Saturday was cioppino, which is a fisherman's stew with tomato based sauce. The same sort of idea as bouillabaisse, but with an Italian sensibility. As you can see it was loaded with clams and mussels, there was a good bit of salmon and white fish (Pacific cod I think) in there as well. I had an Eightmile Alt with it. The malty flavors paired well with the spicy broth in the stew. My brother had the Asian Salmon Bowl, he said that was really tasty too.

Next up was dessert. I have three desserts I always try to order if they have it, most places don't have any of them. The Harbor Inn had two of the three, so I had to decide between Bread Pudding and Key Lime Pie. In the end I went with the pie, mainly because it was a warm sunny day and the bread pudding was served hot. I had a dark and stormy to drink, which went great with the pie. Most of what I write about on this (woefully infrequent) blog is beer, but I like a good cocktail as well. So much so that I also ordered a Mojito afterwords. I also had an apricot cider before we left. Did I mentioned that we were NOT driving on this little trip? Yes? Good.

After we left we took the ferry back to Seattle. One thing to note is they only charge pedestrians for the west bound leg, east bound you can just walk right on. Once back we stopped off to get some taffy from a shop down at the waterfront and then made our way back to the bus stop. It was only a few blocks, but from the water everything inland is uphill, and the hill is steep. That coupled with the fact that I am way out of shape made me glad to sit on the bus. Even if we were stuck in the traffic from the Torchlight Parade for 20 minutes.

Next up I am going to see if we can do the same trick to Bremerton.

San Diego Bound!

We are less than a week from the 33^rd Annual National Homebrewers Conference. This year it is being held in sunny San Diego California. I am really exited about this because it will be my first one. The National Homebrewers Conference is Comic-Con for homebrewers. Not quite as large of course, but since there is plenty of beer I bet its more fun.

The fun begins before NHC even gets going. My buddy and I will taking a few days to drive down to San Diego so we can do a few side trips along the way. We also have booked a couple of Pre-con events, such as the BJCP Judges Reception some brewery tours and BNA6. If our driving plan works out I will have an afternoon to kill and might even try to get down to Tijuana for a bit.

NHC itself has an interesting set up, technical seminars by day and rowdy social events at night. I have been to other conferences that have a similar set up, notably the Midwest Aquatic Plant Management Society, but the social stuff was off-book there. At NHC there are organized activites so attendies don't need to worry about cabs and such.

The day sessions are serious though, there are panel discussions of what it takes to go pro, advanced meadmaking, hop boil chemistry, beer trouble-shooting, and German brewing techniques. I have already picked out the sessions that I want to attend and put them on my calendar so I won't miss them.

One of the nights is Pro-Brewers Night, this year there will be 48 breweries pouring beer for the 1,900 attendees. The really cool thing is that many of these breweries will pull out the stops not only bring their best beers, but also a selection of really cool one-off small projects and rare beers too. The second night is Club Night. In this case there will be 48 clubs pouring homebrew for the participants. There is also a hospitality room that is running for most of NHC that is also stocked with homebrew. Between Club Night and Hospitality there are supposed to be over 700 kegs of homebrew to be served. The final night of NHC is the Grand Banquet and Awards dinner. The banquet will be done by Sean Z. Paxton, the Homebrew Chef. Mr. Paxton is the leading expert in the area of combining beer and food and his dinners are legendary.

Since I will not be taking my laptop I will try to give a detailed report once I get back.

Been A Busy Few Weeks

Now that I have my chest freezer out of storage I have been gearing up brewing to try and get my inventory built for competitions. Here is a quick run down of the springs brewing activities.

On April 12^th I brewed an American Rye. The recipe was pretty straight forward with 2-row pale malt making up 47% of the grist, 29% rye malt, and the rest being pale wheat malt. I used a single rest mash at 154° F and batch sparged it. I used Wyeast American Wheat to ferment it. I was surprised how well it fermented without a starter. The beer is quite cloudy and after two months shows no inclination to clear anytime soon. The flavor is great, malty and wheaty with a light spicy character from the rye. It would be a perfect lawn mower beer, if I had a lawn that is. I am quite please with the way it came out and I think I will add it to the regular list.

Then on Big Brew I made what I had been calling my Tax Man Barleywine. I call it that because I use part of my tax refund money to buy the ingredients since it is a big beer. This was also the first recipe that I ever created on my own a few years back. The only problem is that once I looked at the recipe in detail with my more advanced knowledge, I realized it is actually a Russian Imperial Stout. The recipe is solid and I have won medals with it, but I have been calling it the wrong thing. I still have half a case of a 2009 batch that is showing all sorts of wonderful age related character.

The big weekend was on May 29^th where I did two brews in one day. I started with a run at a Munich Helles. It seems a bit dark for the style, so I think I will actually be calling it a Vienna. I could not find my grain bag for steeping grains so I made a tea with the melanoidan malt. I think that is where I ended up with too much color. Next time I will be sure to find the grain bag and do it right. The primary fermentation is now complete for that beer and I have racked it into a corny keg to lager.

The other beer that I did that day was a Gose (rhymes with Rosa), which is a historical style of sour beer and is seasoned with coriander and salt. I have only tasted one commercial example of this beer and it was quite tasty. My version smells quite a bit stronger in terms of coriander and I intend to let it sour as much as I can. I did add a bit of flaked wheat to the extract that I used for this. The idea was to provide the haze that wheat beers traditionally have. I also pitched it with a tube of White Labs Berliner Blend. The yeast seems to have run its course, now the laccto needs to do its work.

The most recent beer I made is a total crap-shoot. I am trying to recreate an obscure German beer called zoiglbier. There is not a ton of information about this beer on the Internet, and I only have a few notes about the one homebrew version that I have tasted. But I decided why not give it a try. If that was not enough I added a few new techniques to the process as well. The first thing that I added was a decoction mash. The guy that made the one I have had insisted that decoction was required to make it correctly. That part actually went pretty well. I did not scortch the decocted portion, it cleared up as it came to a boil so I know the starches had degraded. When I put that back into the main mash it hit the next rest temp perfectly. Overall I was very happy with that portion.

The other new technique was to do a fly sparge over my older batch sparge process. I had recently found an old Home Depot gift card with $32 and change on it and Home Depot sells 10 gallon water coolers for around $35. I had the hardware for the valves and fittings from my old mash tun and someone had given me a sparge arm before I left Kansas City. So I got a nice new hot liquor tank for less than $5. This process was a bit harder to gauge than the decoction. The reason for that is this is a small beer, so the actual amount of the sparge was small because this beer was only boiled for 10 minutes. My recipe notes say 2 minutes, but I just did not have the nerve to go that low. This is the way to go, but I will have to make sure I am doing it right.

The final new trick was to do first wort hopping. Basically instead of adding the hops to the kettle after the boil has started, you add them as soon as the wort starts draining into the kettle. I left them in for the boil, but I will have to check to make sure that was the right thing to do.

None of those reason are why I have my doubts about this batch though. The beer never had a proper hot break, nor did it seem to have much of a cold break. The wort is the color it should be, but the examples I have seen are clear and mine is quite cloudy. Of course it could clear up during the lagering phase. I drained it onto the yeast cake from the Munich Helles batch and it took off and it seems to have fermented out already. I am going to let it go though the diacetyl rest and rack it off, so it can lager while I am in San Diego.

BJCP Exam Study

I am studying to take the BJCP exam again this spring and I thought while I did it would be some easy fill for the old blog. Since all of the questions are readily available, I don't think I am revealing any secret information here.

So what I am going to do is post a question and my response to it. Hopefully the process of creating the post will help the information stick in my brain.

Identify three top-fermenting beer styles where the minimum
original gravity is 1.070 or higher. For each style provide a statement describing the style as well as the differences and similarities between the styles by addressing the following topics:

	Russian Imperial Stout	Imperial IPA	Belgian Tripel
Aroma	Rich & complex, roasted grain & fruity esters, dark fruit, hops are light to quite aggressive	Prominent, intense hop aroma from American &/or English varieties. Dry hopping can give an optional grassy character	Complex with moderate to significant spiciness, moderate fruity esters, low alcohol and fruity esters. Esters often smell like citrus
Appearance	Color ranges from deep reddish brown to jet black. Deep tan to dark brown well formed head	Color ranges from golden to deep reddish copper. May be hazy in unfiltered dry hopped versions, otherwise clear. Off-white head with good retention	Deep yellow to gold, good clarity. Long lasting creamy, rocky head with “Belgian Lace” on glass
Flavor	Rich & complex with roasted grain & fruity esters, dark fruit. Hop flavor and bittering vary	High to absurdly high hop bitterness. Low to medium malt flavor. Long lingering hop bitterness in finish	Marriage of spicy phenols, fruity esters, & soft malt character. Low to moderate hop character. Alcohol is soft often with a sweet flavor
Mouthfeel	Full to very full bodied with velvety texture which can fade with age	smooth, medium-light to medium body. No harsh hop derived astringency. Carbonation can give a dry sensation overall	medium-light to medium body, high alcohol adds a creaminess, but no warming sensation. Always effervescent, never astringent
Ingredients/Background	Brewed in England to export to the Baltic countries, was popular with the Russian Imperial Court	A recent innovation for American Hop Heads looking for ever hoppier beers	Spiciness is derived from the yeast, not ingredients.
Classic	Bell’s Expedition Stout	Russian River Pliney the Elder	Westmalle Tripel
Similarities	Ale, OG >= 1.070	Ale, OG >= 1.070	Ale, OG >= 1.070
Difference	Dark roasted malt	very high hop bitterness	up to 20% sugar to lighten body

Port Townsend Day Trip

I had January 3rd off and decided that it was high time I got out to Port Townsend. I love the Olympics and have gone over there several times, but Port Townsend is a bit out of the way so I have not been going up there.

I caught a ferry out to the Olympic Peninsula and was rewarded with a great view of the mountains. I really enjoy taking the ferries up here. Depending on where you are going they can be a huge time saver. At the very least it is a relaxing bit of time to enjoy the view.


Once on the other side I headed straight for Port Townsend. It is a pretty little town with a waterfront that looks like it came straight out of a Steven King novel, the early part before the horrible evil is loosed upon the Maine countryside. The town also has a quaint little downtown area and all of the storefronts are painted up nice and pretty. Except for the spot where Water Street Brewing used to be. Apparently they were engaged in some sort of rent dispute with their land lords and closed down in June. Sampling the brew there was part of the reason I drove out here on a fine January day.

Another part of the reason I went to Port Townsend was to visit Port Townsend Brewing Company, thankfully they seem to be doing just fine. A little hard to find despite being right off the main drag through town. Their signs don't show very well from the main road and you can drive right past them like I did, twice.



As is my normally habit when I first go to a new brewery I decided to order the sampler. When the bartender asked if I wanted a full sampler, or to pick some out; I did not realize that a full sampler was a dozen. Here are my quick impressions of each of the beers. For those playing the home game, the samples were done left to right across each row.

1. Chets Gold - malty beer lightly hopped with cascades, smooth and clean.


2. Pale Ale - quite a bit of c hops, more like an IPA than a pale with a bitterness that lingers


3. "Reel" Amber - the grapefruity c hops overwhelm the malt.


4. "Bitter end" IPA - good malt flavors support the hops, but the balance it to the hops, Northwest type hopping.


5. "Hop Diggidy" IPA - loaded with cascade hops, intensely bitter, cloudy - probably from dry hopping.


6. Boatyard Bitter - inoffensive


7. Brown Porter - dark roasted malt, smooth, chocolate notes and a touch of astringency.


8. "Peeping Peter" Scotch Ale - Peated malt gives a medicinal phenolic note in the aftertaste. True Scottish Ale get their smoke from the yeast, not the grain.


9. Straight Stout Irish Stout - smooth dark, inoffensive


10. Winter Ale Old Ale - caramel malt dominates with some vanilla and toffee notes.


11. Barleywine - Caramel and treacle, hot fusel alcohol in the finish with some astringency. This would probably be much better in a year.


12. Winter Rye - malty, some rye spice, smooth and clean, some banana esters, this is quite good, but the flavors are not quite in sync yet.

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.