Beer Obsessed: Beer and Brewing Journal

Yesterday I made it over to Triple Rock Brewery in time to watch Nathan Smith finish up his Pro Am brewday there. Participating along with him were Brewmaster Rodger Davis and Brewer George Kumparak.
If any of you caught Nate’s facebook posting about this, you know he gave a clue about the beer. He mentioned bringing over some specialty malt and that’s it. So Triple Rock house yeast? Maybe probably. Hopefully we’ll get Nate to comment back with the details since I didn’t exactly ask if I should post the beer. I think folks will be pleasantly surprised as the beer is different than what he has done the past two years (read: session beer). I would suspect it will go on tap at Triple rock in about a month or around the GABF time frame. Look for “Nostalgiaholic Pale Ale” during that time frame.
Hanging with this group is always a pleasure and coincidentally, this is the second year in a row that they brewed their beer on my birthday. That is either luck or a jinx…I guess we’ll find out. During our beer and conversation, Nate the guy that he is, offered to climb in the boil kettle and scrub it down. Rodger offered lots of pointers to him while he was down there…..
Please have a look at the pics and click on any of them for a larger version. I did promise Rodger that I wouldn’t publish any more dumb photos of him so instead I included a dumb photo of myself with them.
Good luck you guys this year at GABF. You deserve a medal!

Nathan not afraid of hard work….the kettle looked pretty darn clean in the end.

Post clean up…..

My apologies to Nate and Rodger for this photo but it is pretty classic. George seems to questions this. Thank you to Nikon for your excellent continuous shoot mode.

That’s all for this year’s brew. Cheers gentlemen. Good luck from the dumb guy in the middle. Nice T shirt BTW.

With what was really quite a smooth trip from San Francisco to Minneapolis, I have now landed in the middle of the National Homebrew Conference.
I’ve hooked up with a few friends that I have met over time and I have tried some really tasty beers. The Brewing Network put on a show from the hospitality suite and I attended the meadmaker of the Year Seminar.
The one thing I was really looking forward to in a Homebrew Conference in this area is mead, and I have not been dissapointed. The mead panel had what is probably the 5 most knowledgable meadmakers on the planet. The meads poured during the seminar were great and the standouts have been the chipotle meads. I have tried a couple and being fruit meads (melomels) they have fruit on the top with a very gentle heat on the finish from the chipotle. Absolutely fantastic.
The seminar was very well attended which shows how much mead is appreciated in this area. The atmosphere was relaxed and light hearted as the panel pretty much just took questions from the audience. The entire time, delicious meads were being poured that the panel had produced earlier in the year.
I’m writing this up prior to club night which starts at 8pm tonight. Clubs from throughout the midwest and beyond will be represented. This is basically the largest homebrew party in the world.
I need a little rest before I go but please enjoy the photos (clicky for a higher res version)

The meadmaker of the year panel.

Mead being served thorughout the panel discussion

The panel was well attended showing the interest in mead in this part of the country.

The Brewing Network doing their thing up in the hospitality suite. The forum was “can you brew it” and it was basically an open mic for questions with plenty of entertaining stories between, Jamil and Tasty style.

Quality, clean beer and I love the label. I don’t get as much aroma as I do off of the oringinal versions of southern hemisphere. The taste exhibits some fresh hop chracter that goes right to bitterness. A nice beer but I think I prefer the last version. To cut Sierra Nevada some slack, they are flying in fresh hops from halfway around the world so they get huge props for their efforts and they have produced a beer that has maintained some fresh hop quality.

Other news:
Looking forward to spending time with homebrewers at the National Homebrew Conference in Minnesota next month. I will be arriving on the Friday so please come say hey to me if you can. From there, I fly to Boston for work and plan to hit some great brewpubs and will haul back as much beer as I can. Unfortunately, my work trip to Kiev has been cancelled. I was looking forward to it but Boston should be fun as well.
Tomorrow, the family and I leave for the big island of Hawaii for some much needed relaxation. I’ll get to the Kona brewpub and check it out but other than that, don’t intend on doing much besides drinking the local beer, sitting on the beach, and swimming with the kids.
Cheers and happy weekend.

Well, where I live epitomizes anti-seasonal drinking. You see, I live in the north side of Berkeley, CA. Locals are already going “yeah, I get it….”, but for the others: The fog that comes pouring through the Golden Gate bridge in the late Spring and Summer (let this be a warning to you tourists…Summer is not the season for SF, the fall is) on its way to the Central Valley, literally being sucked in there by the rising heat of central California, this fog goes right over my house. A cold blanket that hides the heat of the sun. Yes, I have come home and I look to the north, I see blue sky. I look to the south, I see blue sky. I look overhead and I see fog. Literally one “finger” of fog on its way east travels right over my house. Sigh. Heavy sigh if you are my wife. We both do like the heat of summer….

What’s the benefit? Well, last month I tore through a fit of Oatmeal and Sweet stouts (Anderson Vally, Sam Smiths, and Youngs for the former, Mackesons for the latter). This could not have happened (naturally) in most other places. Yes, I did try Coconut Porter once while I was on Maui but I was more into the Bikini Lager. So maybe I am not a natural fit for this session….more of a fit by location.

So what else have I enjoyed in the “warmth” of Spring and Summer? Plenty of my Irish Red and Nut Brown Homebrew…other commercial Nut Brown’s as well. The stouts mentioned above. Scottish ales and Porters. Boy I love a good porter. Anchor Brewing’s Porter or how about one of those Alaskan smoked jobs that I have in my basement? No, I got it….Speakeasy’s Hunters Point Porter. Perfect for a Summer night in Berkeley….the crickets are chirping elsewhere and I have jacket on. Crickets….who needs them? Well, I do actually. I would have had a much harder time resonding to this session if I didn’t live here. My taste for Lager (Bo Pils specifically) is huge in hot weather and I demand quite a few. Enough, that is too seasonal.

Tonight we will be camping with friends. We will be wearing jackets and sitting around a fire. I am packing Strong Darks (bro thelonious) and Stone smoked porter to keep us warm. There will be homebrew….ambers and english browns…..one wheat in case it does warm up…during the day. Sadly my lager (pilsner urquell in the can) will have to stay in my basement. Only to come out during a rare heat wave or after Summer has gone, when the fog goes away and we finally get some consistently warm weather. I’ll keep it brown to dark to keep me warm in the height of Summer.

On a side note:

Happy Fourth of July to you all.

Cheers. 

Thank you Rob @ Pfiff! for hosting the session. Please go to there for a summary of this month plus his write up.