TheWeeklyBrew.com – The Ramblings of a Kitchen Chemist

For those who haven’t been following I’ve been trying to get people to go vote for Portland Oregon for the title of beer city USA. Turns out it didn’t matter though as Portland lost. I know what you’re wondering. How could we loose to Asheville? Well we didn’t. Turns out the winner is Beaver Creek, Minnesota. If you look on the poll you’ll notice that there is no Beaver Creek listed. At the bottom of the poll though there is a choice of other. Turns out a large portion of those other votes were for Beaver Creek. In fact Beaver Creek had such a commanding leed that they shut down the poll early and declared them the winners. The small town of 250 took Charlie Papazian and the beer community by surprise. Charlie said on his site “We never thought we would be rewarding this prize to a town without a single brewery.” I’m seriously miffed. How on earth did we get beaten not only by Ashville, but also by Beaver Creek? I think I may just crawl into a hole for the rest of the day. Let me know when the US gets its sanity back.

Happy April Fools Day

I’m normally not a fan of making deep thoughtful posts about myself so this will probably be neither. For those who don’t know me, or haven’t known me long I figured I’d give a little background about myself and brewing, or as my friend Liz so aptly put it “What is it with you and beer?”

In the Beginning

Basically my fondness of beer, and my aspirations towards brewing good beer started fairly recently. The day I turned 21 beer was the farthest thing from my mind. It wasn’t until like three months later that I even tried my first  beer, and that beer almost put the nail in the coffin in terms of me never wanting a beer again. It was a canned stout that my dad was drinking on our fishing trip in Canada, and that thing tasted so bitter and gross that it’s impossible to describe it in words. After that episode the only “adult” beverage I consumed for awhile was whiskey, and that usually watered down with large amounts of coke. Undaunted though I eventually found myself occasionally sipping beers to see if I could find one I liked. Gradually I got used to the bitterness of the hops, but beer just still wasn’t my thing. The beer that changed that if I remember correctly was Mac’s Blackwatch brewed by McTarnahan’s. As I started to discover what I liked and didn’t like in beers I also began stretching myself in terms of what I’d try. I actually enjoyed bringing sixers home occasionaly to sample a beer I had never had.

The Explosion

About the end of ’07 I’d gotten curious about a little hole in the wall shop in town called Homebrew Heaven. I stopped in on a whim one day, and walked out with a book called Homemade Root Beer, Soda & Pop. Shortly after I started making my own soda I noticed a side note with a recipe for a soda made with tomatoes called tomato beer. Since we had a surplus of tomatoes from our garden that year I decided to make some with one notable exception, I was going to purposely let it ferment and produce some alcohol. It didn’t turn out half bad, and tasted like a really light beer. Well now wheels were turning, and after I got back from my trip to London in January I began buying every beer I could think of to taste.  By the fall of ’08 the part of my brain that switched from soda to beer had another spark and I decided to make a proper pumpkin ale. I got my list of ingredients and headed on down to Homebrew Heaven.

The Carboy

Prior to my pumpkin ale I had done all my soda and beer making in 2 ltr bottles. While I was at the homebrew store I began to do the math on how many 2 ltr bottles it would take for a 5 gal batch and had one of those “We’re gonna need a bigger boat moments.” So while I was there I bought a basic brewing kit from Doug for like $80 (or something like that) that included everything I needed to brew plus a book on brewing and some of his own extract recipes. Later that month my friend Kaylie came over and we brewed my first ever real beer, and it wasn’t too bad. I got alot of compliments about how it wasn’t even horrible like people expected, and I caught the bug.

I attempted to make my first foray in to the world of video stardom on Saturday night. I grabbed my camera, fired up the home brewery, killed the radio star, and tried to make a video. I failed epically. I’m almost tempted to post it just for laughs, but basically during the whole video all you can see is my chest. Nothing above the waist, nor below the neck. Next time I promise to bust out the tripod though and make a quick how to brew video starring me, and not my man boobs. Since I failed to deliver though I’m giving a choice for people to vote on by way of comments. Would you rather see how to make a

1) Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup Stout
2) Blueberry Graham Stout
3) Mt Brew (a beer made with Mt Dew)

I have never made any of these, but they are the top three picks for my next batch, with #1 far in the lead.

Looking over those choices though I’m beginning to think I need someone with common sense to choose my beers for me. What is this thing I have with funky Frankenstein beers? When I go down the beer isle the ones that stand out to me are things like Chipotle Ales, Gruits, and Juniper Ales. Or ones with funky eye catching labels like Delirium Nocturnum. Am I the only one out there who seeks out the strange and bizarrejust for the fun of it? Besides the fact that this has led me to discover some awesome beers it has also led to some horrible ones, like the first ever organic ale I had, so I’m struggling to see the benefit. One of these days I’m just gonna have to let people from the 72mm blog meetings choose what I brew At least their ideas probably wouldn’t be as funky as mine. That reminds me, I make a brief appearance in Ryan’s video he made for his blog. Check it out here.

Spoiled Beer Score 
Added beer boiled sausages and that tincture to the list
me - 4             beer – 0

Friday night when I was getting the ingredients to make some beer boiled sausages I saw something that gave me a chuckle. On a bottle of German beer, prominently displayed, were the words brewed according to German purity law. The German purity law, or Reinheitsgebot was created 1516 to protect grain supplies for bread, and was struck down in 1987.  The ironic part of beers brewed in a way to qualify is that they don’t even meet the original purity law. So how much better is purity law beer? Well like with all things it depends on the quality of ingredients, and the skill of the brewer. I could easily brew a “pure” beer using only hops,  barley, water, and yeast and still make a really crappy beer. In fact the beer I tried during my layover in Germany wasn’t even comparable to some of the top notch micro beers from the States. So why do we have this fascination with purity, and automatically assume it makes a better beer? Well partly it’s because Germany believes their beer is better, and insist on telling the world that every chance they get, the other reason is we have a fetish for all things European. Just look at all the people who drank Heineken in the 80′s and 90′s all the while insisting that it was a far superior beer. I love watching people in the beer isle hovering around the imports as they search for the perfect beer when there’s several amazing selections right in front of them. I could continue to go into all the reasons that the Reinheitsgebot is a worthless piece of junk, but someone already did it for me. If you want more info on the German Purity Law check out this article.

Thanks alot to all you people who bought up every last tub of light and amber malt extract yesterday. I really am gonna try to get this gruit brewed though, and even will try to make a video of it.