TAP New York Craft Beer Festival

This past Sunday I had the opportunity to check out TAP New York, a "craft beer & fine food" festival at Hunter Mountain. To begin with, Hunter Mountain and the surrounding area is absolutely stunning, especially in the early spring. I can't quite explain how awesome it was to be literally 10 feet away from touching snow while the temperature was hovering in the high 70s...all while drinking some awesome beer. For a brief moment I thought I was dead and had gone to heaven, but then I remembered that they probably wouldn't let me in, so I must still be alive.

Alright, enough sappy crap about how beautiful it was. I came to drink beer, not take in the scenery! Firstly, kudos to TAP for giving us real tasting glasses, not prissy little plastic cups. Appearance is a huge part of appreciating any food or beverage, and the real glass definitely helped on that front. Almost every NY brewery I can think of was represented, and they did not disappoint. A few of my favorites include:
-Brown's Whiskey Porter
-Brown's Rauch
-Peekskill Brewery's Vanilla Bourbon Porter
-Peekskill Brewery's Oatmeal Raisin Stout (it had a name, but I can't remember it)
-Chelsea Brewing's Gyle (I can't remember the exact name, but it was basically an American Barleywine)
-Wagner Valley's Sled Dog Trippel Bock
-Brooklyn Brewery's Coffee Stout

One beer that I was looking forward to trying, but failed to deliver in my opinion, was C.H. Evans Brewing's Kick-Ass Brown. I had heard really great things about this beer, I got to say that I wasn't impressed. Maybe it's just not my style, but I think a brown ale should be a little more malt focused. Granted it was an American Brown Ale, in which hops are supposed to be more prevalent, but the BJCP guidelines indicate that the beer should still be balanced. I found the Kick-Ass Brown to be completely out of balance. I was expecting a rich, malty beer with some ample hops to back it up; what I got was a hop bomb that literally kicked my ass (I guess that's where the name comes from).

In other news, I brewed again this weekend on Saturday, throwing together a Belgian Wit with some coriander, bitter orange peel, and fresh orange zest added in the boil (yes, I zested an orange for the first time in my life...all in the name of beer). The Wit is my attempt at a Blue Moon clone for my dad, who only drinks that and Corona Light. I realized after the fact that I used a true Belgian Wit yeast to ferment it, and I'm guessing that Blue Moon probably uses a cleaner American yeast, as I really don't sense any Belgian yeast character in the Coors product. In addition to the Wit, I still have my Marzen lagering at around 35F, where it'll sit for a few more weeks, and my Flanders Red Ale is packed away in the corner for a few months to allow those "bugs" to do their job. And now for your viewing pleasure, here's two pictures of me brewing on Saturday. The first is me stirring the mash before I covered it up to rest, and the second is me enjoying a homebrewed Belgian Pale Ale (though it looks pretty dark in the photo) while the mash is being lautered and the wort drained into the boil kettle.

Earth Day--How to Drink Beer and Save the World!

Today is Earth Day, and I thought it'd be cool to do a little piece on beer and the environment. Regardless of whether you believe in global warming/science (low blow, but it needed to be said) or not, there's no question that we all need to do our part to conserve our natural resources and ensure a sustainable future for our children and our children's children (our children's children's children are on their own though--suckers!). I personally plan on celebrating Earth Day by having a beer or two tonight and then recycling the bottles--boo yah! Or better yet, maybe I should drink some homebrew from the keg, thus not producing any waste.

So, how can you drink beer and save the world? Well, I'd start by reading Christopher Mark O'Brien's tome, Fermenting Revolution: How to Drink Beer and Save the World. I read Fermenting Revolution in college while working on a business plan for a "green" brewery for a writing course I was taking. The book is a really interesting read, and I'd definitely recommend it. O'Brien's website lists 7 reasons beer saves the world. In lieu of summarizing each of them here, you can take the extra effort to click the links and read O'Brien's explanations:
1. Brewers invented recyclable aluminum cans
2. Real Ale slows climate change
3. Fair Trade beer benefits small farmers
4. Beer builds sustainable architecture
5. Beer is patriotic
6. Beer saves water
7. Hemp beer is the answer

During my research for the "green" brewery project, I discovered all sorts of interesting information regarding beer's environmental impact and how brewers manage that impact. Brewing is an energy and resource intensive process. Heating/maintaining high temperatures as well as rapid cooling in the brewhouse all consume an inordinate amount of energy. On top of that, breweries use incredibly large amounts of water between what goes in to the beer itself and the water used for cleaning and cooling. A byproduct of fermentation is of course CO2, and though not much of a concern for smaller breweries, that CO2 needs to be released somewhere. Between yeast sludge and spent grains, there's also a lot of waste produced during brewing.

There are number of things brewers can do to combat these issues, and the feasibility of the solutions many times vary based on the brewery size (and hence the amount of available capital). Here are few environmentally friendly practices that the beer industry has adopted over the years:
1. Saving reserves of hot water to be used for cleaning and/or mashing at a later time. For example, cold water used to cool hot wort in a heat exchanger (and thus becoming hot) can be used to cleaning equipment later or even used as strike water for the mash in the next batch of beer.
2. Capturing and purifying CO2 produced during fermentation to later be used to carbonate the beer.
3. Giving spent grain to farmers to be used as cattle feed. It's a win-win relationship: farmers get free feed for their cattle and brewers get their wasted grain trucked off for free.
4. Recently in the news, Sierra Nevada has begun using spent yeast and waste beer to create high-quality ethanol, which can then be used to fuel automobiles.
5. Using solar and/or wind energy to help power a brewery's operations.

There are number of small breweries doing big things to reduce the impact making great beer has on the environment. Of particular note are Sierra Nevada, New Belgium, and Otter Creek, just to name a few. So, get outside and have a beer for Mother Earth today! And next time you have a pint of the golden elixir, remember drink beer and save the world!

I'm Back Bitches: Coopers Vintage Ale

After a one week hiatus, I'm back at it and I'll be trying to make regular updates again. This past week has been crazy between work and studying for the BJCP exam, which I finally took this past Saturday. I think I did well on the test (at least well enough to pass), so hopefully pretty soon I'll be a Recognized Beer Judge! The exam was definitely tough; I know some people might laugh and think a beer test couldn't be that hard, but it's a really comprehensive and technical exam. For the written portion (worth 70%) I filled up eight regular loose-leaf pages (one-sided though), and I judged four different beers for the practical portion (worth 30%) including a rather poor example of a Belgian Wit, a decent Mild, an excellent Doppelbock, and a (purposely) soured American Amber Ale. Although my hand was cramped after writing for three hours, I had a lot of fun taking the exam and went out to a nearby brewpub, Krogh's, for some beers afterwards with a few of the guys I've been studying with. An excellent day overall!

But now it's a new week, with new headaches at work, and some new beers to quell those headaches. Tonight's beer, though, unfortunately gave me a headache with some unappreciated fusel alcohols. Without further ado, here is my review of Coopers Vintage Ale, an English strong ale from down-under.

Aroma: Sweet malt with hints of honey and raisin. There is a slight alcoholic note on the nose. No hop aroma. The aroma finishes with some caramel and toffee.

Appearance: Dark copper with a slightly off-white head that lingers leaving a beautiful lacing on the glass. There is some haze, but that's probably cause the beer was bottle-conditioned and I accidentally just dumped all the sediment in (long day at work and I was rushing to pour my evening beer).

Flavor: Some biscuity malt, but the beer is fairly well-attenuated, finishing dry. There are some intense solvent-like alcohols, which are a bit overwhelming. Mild bitterness. These higher alcohols are really masking much of the flavor--there's not much else I'm picking up.

Mouthfeel: Medium bodied with medium-high carbonation, lending a slight carbonic bite. The alcohols coat my mouth and provide an intense warming sensation.

Overall Impression: This was a vintage-dated bottle dated 2008, so I probably drank it a bit too soon. Overall, those higher alcohols were the dominating flavor in this beer and were harsh at best. I'm thinking of buying a few more bottles and seeing how it ages over time, as this beer definitely needs some years to mellow out.