Fantasy Hockey

Let's be honest here, I don't post to this blog anymore. You can either look at my newer, but still rarely updated beer blog found at hoppedupblog.com

or

you can look at the logo for my economically-themed fantasy hockey team. I know nothing about hockey.

NEW WEBSITE

Great news everyone!

www.hoppedupblog.com is now live and the first post is....er....posted!

From now on, all posts will be done there, not here. So go on over and check it out.

THE ALL NEW HOPPED UP BLOG!

Mint Chocolate Porter

Now that I’m back from my trip out of town for Thanksgiving I’m happy to be able to start posting again!

One of the great things about Thanksgiving is all of the old friends and acquaintances that come back into town for the weekend. I caught up with all kinds of people I hadn’t seen since high school. That meant that while they described their bank jobs, positions at insurance companies, or careers in the exciting field of human resources I got to talk about driving around the country drinking beer with the brewmasters who make it.

Needless to say, I’m still happy about my decision to write a book about beer!

I don’t know about you but when I’m around old friends we tend to scheme. A couple of people tried to talk to me about the possibility of someday opening a brewery. I had to explain that more than anything else you need two things to open a brewery. Money, and talent as a brewer. I have neither. Although I still have little to no desire to open a brewery I’m still working on my talent as a brewer.

One specific friend of mine, Connor Krause, wants to start brewing and has some unique ideas to try out. We batted a few things around and finally landed on the decision to make a mint chocolate porter. Assuming it comes out well I think it will be the perfect drink for a cold winter evening, especially around the holidays. Connor lives about forty five minutes north of me but we’re trying to figure out a time that works out well for both of us to brew.

I’ll keep you updated on the process as it comes along. Also, the Bavarian hefeweizen turned out very well. It feels strange to drink a hefe in the winter but beer is beer and I’m still proud I managed to brew a decent one regardless of style.

Trumer Rube Goldberg

This video has been floating around the internet for a couple of days now and I thought it was WAY too cool not put up. It's a Rube Goldberg machine made by the people at Trumer International. Watch to the end, I think I might need to install one of these at home!

Yes, I know the video overlaps the side bar. However, you can still watch the video and that's way more important than my cloud of tags!



I found the video on the Brookston Beer Bulletin website. Also, here is a link to the Trumer website (where I couldn't find the original video).

Writing Update

A lot of people have been asking about the progress so far on my beer trip. Currently I’m back in Des Moines, the trip is over, and I started writing the book about my journey early last week.

The book is going to be split into chapters based on the cities I was in. Some chapters such as the one on Little Rock, Arkansas will be short (I only spent one afternoon in town at one brewery). Some, such as the Saint Louis chapter, will be much longer. While in Saint Louis I made it to six breweries and did interviews at each one.

Within each chapter I will be talking about what I did in the cities, the history of the breweries I visited, I will include parts of the interviews I conducted, some of the beer related history of the city, general stories from my travels, and a few other goodies.

After getting started I was already having some serious issues working on the first chapter on the topic of homebrewing. I got myself into a cycle of writing a few pages and then starting to edit. By edit I mean deleting absolutely everything I had written and starting from scratch again. It’s a nasty cycle to be in, even worse than writer’s block. Too many ideas, too many different ways to start, it’s not pretty.

Yesterday afternoon I had an epiphany; I didn’t have to start from chapter one. Instead I began writing about my trip to Boulevard Brewing Company in Kansas City and Free State Brewing in Lawrence, KS and so far it has been incredibly productive. In fact, things are rolling along so nicely that I’m going to get back to it right now!

One last thing, don’t forget to check out the facebook page for All Hopped Up. I’ve been putting up pictures from each stop of the beer trip.

I'm BAAACKK!!!!

It has been far too long. Nearly a month has gone by since I decided to put the blog on hiatus and simply enjoy myself on my incredible beer trip. I was spending far too much time writing a blog about my trip and not nearly enough going out and enjoying myself in these amazing towns I stopped in. It’s going to make for better articles in the long run because instead of hunkering down in a hotel room to write a

(the picture is of my friend Alyse at Rahr Brewing in Fort Worth where she got to sign a burbon barrel)

new post I went out to bars and brewpubs to talk to people about their local beers. No worries though, I was taking copious notes at each tour and recording every interview so I have more than enough information to work for each post about a brewery visit.

Just to give you a heads up about what is on the way my last post was about my visit to Trailhead Brewing Company in a suburb of Saint Louis, it was my thirteenth stop. Before I got back to Des Moines I made it to another nineteen breweries in five more states. Those include everything from the behemoth Miller and Anheuser-Busch facilities in Milwaukee and Saint Louis to tiny brewpubs in Champaign, Illinois and Saint Paul, MN. City breweries and rural breweries are represented. Those who contract out their brewing to other breweries, and some who brew by contract for others. The large, the small, the new the old, pretty much every type of brewery you can imagine.

I’m also going to be splitting up posts about the beer trip with posts about various other beer related topics. It’s going to be a hybrid between how the blog began back in July and how it was with posts about my beer trip.

Watch closely for new posts, they should be going up daily from here on out. Please ask questions, leave comments, and let me know if there is anything you would really like to see discussed on here.

For now, Cheers!

Delays, Delays, Delays...

Sorry, I know I haven't been posting as much as I should. In fact, since going to Trailhead Brewing Co. in Saint Louis, my last post, I've been to five other Saint Louis breweries, one in Champaign, and three in Chicago. All of my traveling along with spotty internet connections has really limited what I can write and post.

Long story short, I'm kind of changing how I do my travel blog. I don't want to half-ass any posts about these great breweries I'm touring and the great people I've been interviewing so I'm putting the blog on the back shelf and focusing more intently on my tour. I think that will make for better postings in the long run. Posts will still be coming as often as I can write them, but it isn't going to be one a day like it had been at the start of the trip.

I'll still be writing a post about every one of my stops but they're probably going to be spread out over a longer period of time. I'm thinking that most of the rest will be put up interspersed with other articles of the type I was writing before my trip began.

If you have any questions feel free to email me at allhoppedupblog@gmail.com

Thanks for reading!

Thirteenth Stop – Trailhead Brewing

I’m going to start doing a series of short articles about the brewpubs I visited in Saint Louis. Although wonderful, I made it to four of them and thought you all might get a little tired of hearing about just one city. So instead I’m condensing each down to a short entry. No fears though, I’ll still have a full entry on my incredible trips to Schlafly’s Bottleworks and Taproom as well as the behemoth Anheuser-Busch facility.

Now, Trailhead Brewing Company in Saint Charles, MO.

Trailhead is a brewpub in a historic area of a historic town. The neighborhood is full of little shops and bars that all fit in perfectly to the late nineteenth century vibe I was getting. Trailhead is no exception. Sporting everything from a beautiful brick exterior complete with water wheel to a 12,000 square foot interior Trailhead’s building’s history provides an excellent air of history while you eat but doesn’t cram you in like many historic buildings are forced to.

I walked in with my wonderful Saint Louis hosts Mark and Danielle who had suggested we eat dinner there. The server was young and didn’t know too much about beer but still did his best. We ordered the spicy chicken wings as appetizers and I got a sausage platter for dinner. Wings, knockwurst, weisswurst, bratwurst, sauerkraut, and potato salad. These are some of my favorite “beer foods” and none of them disappointed. The kraut wasn’t excellent, but all of the sausages were which more than made up for it.

The beer was nothing to write home about, but it certainly wasn’t bad either. I’m usually not a fan of fruit beers but their Riverboat Raspberry went well with the spicy wings. I wouldn’t have ordered it but it came with my beer sampler. The easy highlight of the sampler was the seasonal pumpkin spice ale. I was a big fan of the big flavor that had just enough nutmeg and cinnamon to balance it out.

Despite being a little pricey Trailhead is absolutely worth the trip to Saint Charles.

Up next will be a post about my incredible trip to Schlafly.

The Homebrewing Guest Blogger Returns!

Welcome to another whenever-I-feel-like-writing post on home brewing! From here on out I'd like to move from general brewing procedure to more specific brewing information. Truly, you don't need this knowledge, but that's like saying that, in order to eat, all you need to know is how to make sandwiches. You'd stay alive, but the boring flavor of sandwiches and lack of creativity involved in making sandwiches would be numbing.

I hate working at Panera.

Anyway, knowing more about brewing and the science of brewing can help you create better tasting, more consistent beers. The result of a little learning is a more flavorful, more complex brewsky that you can feel proud of.

So, mashing!!

Mashing is a complex process, involving enzymes, carbon sugars, and complex by-products that ultimately affect the final flavor of your beer to a surprising degree.

To begin with, the grain used in brewing contains several different carbon sugars. Mashing itself is the process of breaking down the grain structure using enzymes present in the mash in order to more effectively extract the sugars for fermentation. Different enzymes are most effective at different temperatures and pHs so manipulating these factors during your mash can be extremely beneficial. I’ll spare you the boring chemistry and simply tell you that your mash can be manipulated to most effectively break down the grain.

The technique I’ll teach you here is called multi-rest mashing. It involves resting the mash at certain temperatures, activating specific enzymes in order to break down key parts of the grain. The procedure is simple:

1. Heat your mashing water to between 114 and 119 °F
2. Add the grain and stir constantly until the temperature drops to 104 °F.
3. Maintain that temperature (plus or minus 2-3 degrees) for 20 minutes.
4. At the end of 20 minutes, apply heat again, stirring constantly, until the temperature reaches 140 °F.
5. Turn the burner off and hold at temp for another 20 minutes.
6. Apply heat again and raise the temperature to 158 °F.
7. Turn off burner and hold for the final 20 mins.
8. Mash out as normal and continue brewing!

From experience, the resulting beer is world’s better. The difference is immediately noticeable (beer is more developed, mature, with a smoother flavor profile) and the procedure itself truly isn’t that difficult. The most frustrating part of multi-resting is maintaining the temperature, but with practice you can master it.

So that’s it! If you have questions about the science involved or the execution of the procedure, feel free to leave them in the comments section and I will promise to attempt to remember to read them and maybe give an honest effort to possibly answer them.

But seriously, if you have any questions or comments, hit me up.

Twelfth Stop – Diamond Bear Brewing Company

I chose to add Diamond Bear to my tour largely because of its convenient location between Fort Worth and Saint Louis. It seemed like too far of a drive without a stopping for a tour at least once. Before arriving I send out calls and emails to each brewery I’m headed to so as to make sure someone will be around to give me an interview and/or a tour. Diamond Bear was one of the very few that never responded to my requests.

I was going in blind. I researched each brewery before my arrival but because of Diamond Bear’s lack of response and my short time I skimmed their history and that’s about it. The plan was to drive up from Fort Worth, go on the tour, and drive on to Springfield where I would stay the night with a friend.

Lucky for me Chuck Heinbockel, my volunteer tour guide, and others made that significantly more difficult than I was anticipating. He and I sat down in the small, but cozy taproom and started talking. Eventually we were joined by Adam, the “taproom attendant,” Bonz, a colorful new employee and avid homebrewer, and the brewer from a local brewpub that stops by on Saturdays to hang out.

Chuck is the embodiment of passion for beer. He is a professional landlord owning stakes in buildings all around Little Rock. I’m making an assumption here, but I think he does pretty well for himself. Still though, he comes down to the brewery on weekends to give tours in exchange for a free case of beer.

Over the last few years Chuck has really started getting into the world of craft beer. His self described “beer quest” began when he tried Abbey Grand Cru from New Belgium at an event hosted by the Little Rock Art Center called Art on Tap. Since then, he has been a changed man.

Chuck became a regular at Vino’s, a local brewpub, where he greatly enjoys the imperial IPA. He also started watched closely for beer events and tastings in the area and got involved with Diamond Bear Brewing as a volunteer.

I never would have guessed but the tour he gave me and the 15 other happy drinkers yesterday was only his fifth. I was complimenting Chuck on being such a quick study and he admitted to having forgotten to pass around the examples of brewing grains and hops. Once he realized it he brought them over to the table where we had been talking and gave me his explanation. There aren’t all that many ways to describe grain and hops but Chuck still managed to throw in a few extra tidbits I hadn’t heard other places.

My favorite was when he showed me the ratio of toasted to regular malt for their porter. He compared it to when you’re cooking gravy. When you’re getting those little caramelized bits it’s extremely important to scrape them up so your gravy will taste…like gravy. However, it doesn’t take too many of them to flavor quite a bit of liquid. Stout beers are the same. The toasted malt is extremely important, but it doesn’t take too much of it to flavor your beer but what you do throw in really packs a punch.

It’s safe to say at this point that as much as I’ve absolutely relished my interviews with various brewmasters and brewery owners, I might have enjoyed by other interviews even more. Speaking with a volunteer tour guide gave me a unique perspective on Diamond Bear Brewing that couldn’t have been matched by anyone else. The same could be said of my interview with Peter Takacs, the manager of quality assurance at Spoetzl Brewing in Shiner, TX. These different people in different brewery positions are showing me a whole new side to the world of brewing.

The book version of All Hopped Up will include much more from my conversation with Chuck and a bunch of stuff I learned about homebrewing from Bonz, who is sending a recipe for his popular jalapeño amber homebrew. I’ll probably post the recipe as soon as I get it, so watch close!