Homebrewing Guest Blogger: I got a job okay?

Welcome to the third installment of my whenever-I-feel-like-posting column about brewing your own beer! Last week (month?) I clued you into the equipment you’d need to become a brewmaster and this week I’ll be piloting my truth plane and carpet knowledge-bombing your brain with the steps it takes to successfully make your first batch (war jokes aren’t in poor taste are they?)

You may need some additional items if your kitchen does not have them already. These items include (for a 1 gallon batch) a stockpot (about 6-10 qts.), 12 empty swing-top bottles (Grolsch bottles or similar, can be ordered online), a strainer, a funnel, a thermometer, honey, and a lot of ice. Once you have these items collected, you’re ready to get started.

Alright, this first step is the most important. I honestly cannot stress enough just how important this is and believe me, when I hear people say that, my brain immediately shuts off. In this case, however, it really does make or break your beer.

Take the sanitizer included with your Brooklyn Brew Shop kit (or the sanitizer you diligently purchased yourself), mix in the proper ratio (given on the package), fill a measuring cup and a spray bottle with the stuff, and sanitize everything. Sanitize the spatulas, funnel, strainer, pots, and your dog. Soak the item, let it sit for a minute, then wipe down with a paper towel (you’re going to go through a lot of paper towels, they’re the most sanitary). Also, keep your tools in the cup of sanitizer to ensure that they’re clean for use.

Once you’ve sterilized your neighborhood, measure the amount of water indicated in your recipe and heat in a pot until it reaches 160 °F. Mix the grain in the water until the temperature drops to 150 °F. This mixture is called the “mash” and should resemble oatmeal (but will not taste like it). Cook this mash for 60 minutes, checking the temperature periodically and applying/removing heat as necessary to stay within the 144-152 °F range. At the end of this 60 minutes “mash out” by heating to 170 °F while stirring constantly.

In a separate pot, heat 1 gallon of water to 170 °F. Set up a strainer over another pot (called a “lautering tun”) in your sanitized sink and pour the mash through the strainer, collecting all the grain in the process; this is called “lautering” (not Lautnering; stop watching Twilight). Take the gallon of water and slowly pour it over the grain, rinsing the sugars from the grain. Recycle this liquid through the grain one more time and you have yourself some good ol’ fashioned “wort”!

Take the wort and apply heat until it boils. Once the wort hits a low boil, add your hops at the prescribed times given in your recipe and stir constantly throughout. The boil lasts 60 minutes and is probably the hardest step. If your boil is too hot, you’ll lose fermentable sugars. If your boil is too low, you won’t get as much out of your hops. It takes practice, but you’ll get it brewmaster. At some point your wort will foam up (called the “hot break”). Simply lower the heat and keep stirring to avoid boil over.

Alright, once the boil is done you’re almost home. Fill your sink with ice, and lots of it. Take the pot off the burner at the end of 60 minutes and place it in the ice bath until it cools to 70 ° (this will take a while). Set up your strainer and funnel over your fermentation jug and pour your cooled wort through it to introduce oxygen. Take your prepared yeast and “pitch” it (toss it in the jug). Shake the jug aggressively and I mean aggressively; I usually set mine on the floor and shake it all over the place. Put your rubber stopper and airlock filled to the second fill line with sanitizer in the top of the jug and place in a cool dark place for two and a half weeks. Note: skip the part in the BBS directions where it talks about a blow off tube since blow off tubes usually just result in the loss of valuable yeast.

And you’re fermenting! It may have made your fiancé complain about the smell (but I’m not bitter) but you’re well on your way to completing your very first batch of homemade beer.

Next time I’ll be discussing bottling and some of these steps in more detail. As always, if you have any questions for me feel free to leave them in the comments section or send me an email at barker.ianjohn@gmail.com.

Cheers!

Musical Beer

Designer Matt Braun has come up with a pretty neat product. He calls it “Tuned Beer.”

You know how every now and then you get bored (or drunk) and start blowing across the top of your bottle to make that noise? As you’ve no doubt realized in your scientific experiments the tone is higher if there is more liquid remaining in the bottle, and lower

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as it empties. What Matt did was to make special marks on the bottles that tell you exactly what note you’re blowing dependant on how much beer you have left.

That is cool by itself, but there is more. The bottles have ridges on the sides that you can drag a stick over to make some other sort of percussion noise. I think it is supposed to sound something like a washboard.

I’m not sure where these little sticks are coming from but they can also be used on the bottom of the unique wooden six-pack carrier. All six “beer slots” are a different size so they can be used as drum heads with different sounds.

Matt Braun’s website has a little note that answered my biggest question. “Yes, a small batch of microbrew was produced and sampled with great success. Tuned Pale Ale is currently seeking larger brewing and distribution options.”

Here is Matt’s statement from the website: “Tuned Pale Ale is a product that explores the musical affordances in everyday objects and promotes social spontaneity. While drinking beer, people become musically encouraged and often start making music with objects around them. This product aims to promote more of this type of social interaction. This product aims to inform users about the musical qualities of existing bottles and to make the bottle a better instrument.”

I’ll keep an eye on his site to see if he ends up getting his beer put into production. I sure hope he does, I’m pretty curious about what note I’m blowing on my Boulevard unfiltered wheat right now!

Check out the link here

Beer Style Poster

I haven’t posted too many links as of yet, but this one is worth it. It comes to us via the website PopChartLab.com. The site must be pretty darn new because as of yet there are only two items available. It looks like they’re going to be offering T-shirts in the future, but just the two posters for now.

The first is a “grand taxonomy of rap names.” Although it has absolutely nothing to do with beer, it is still mildly interesting. I imagine that if I listened to rap it would be significantly more alluring to me.

The other item they have up for sale is a poster under the title of “The Very Many Varieties of Beer.” The poster is a foot and a half by two feet tall and features a beer glass prominently in the middle. The meat of the poster is the cloud chart of different styles of beer.

The first division is obviously between ales and lagers. Then it breaks further into sub-categories such as going from AlePale AleIndia Pale AleDouble IPA. Then when it gets to the terminating style it gives a couple examples of each. In the earlier example the beers they chose were Dogfish Head’s 120 Minute IPA, Flying Dog’s Double Dog Double Pale Ale, and a beer I’ve mentioned a few times, Brew Dog’s extremely high-proof beer, Sink the Bismarck.

It could be a handy poster for anyone who is just getting acquainted with the world of beer, or just something neat for anyone who appreciates beer. The price of $25 isn’t too bad for a big poster, but I’m a pretty cheap guy, so I’m usually not a good judge of stuff like that. Regardless of that though, I want one. Feel free to buy one for me!

Beer Pops Redux

Just like ice cream, my first batch of beer popsicles was an impressive defeat. I should just start by assuming that any time I am freezing beer, it won’t turn out well. In round one of beer pops I did my best to match a recipe used by a restaurant in New York. Much to my chagrin, I even used Tecate, their beer of choice. I didn’t have proportions to work off of so I made six beer pops with varying amounts of sweet simple syrup and lime juice in each.

Every single one was awful. It tasted like…..frozen Tecate with sugar and lime in it. Makes sense.

In round two I did my best to forget any guidelines I had found in my research for the first batch. I went out and bought one of the nifty “pick six” packs from the grocery store. I didn’t choose my favorite beers, but instead went for six that I thought might actually make a pretty decent popsicle.

Here is what I ended up getting:

Brau Brothers’ Strawberry Wheat
Sam Adams’ Blackberry Whit
Big Sky Brewing’s Summer Honey
Capitol Brewing’s Wisconsin Amber
Fort Collins Brewery’s Chocolate Stout
Mike’s Hard Pink Lemonade


Each sample was split into two plastic cups to be frozen. One was frozen as-is but the second had something like a tablespoon or so of simple syrup (one cup of water boiled, then dissolve 1 cup sugar). I was pretty surprised by which ended up tasting good as beers vs. as popsicles.

Here are my brief thoughts on each and a picture of my friend Eriq; he didn't want to try any beer pops.

Strawberry Wheat
w/o syrup: Pretty darn good popsicle. Had a bit of a bitter aftertaste, but still good.
With syrup: One of the best popsicles. The taste of strawberry came through pretty strongly and the simple syrup did a pretty good job of reducing the bitterness. Surprisingly good for a beer I didn’t like drinking straight.

Blackberry Whit
w/o syrup: The only one of the bunch that tasted better without being sweetened. Another beer that I’m not a fan of drinking that surprised me as a popsicle.
With syrup: Very similar to how it was with syrup, but didn’t seem to have a “complete” flavor.

Summer Honey
w/o syrup: Could taste a slight hint of honey, mostly just tasted like an ale that got too cold on accident.
With syrup: The sweetener brought out the flavor of the honey a little more prominently to the front of the profile. Tasted okay, but not something I would make again.

Wisconsin Amber
w/o syrup: Rough finish to this one. The beer itself is delicious so tasting it frozen just depressed me.
With syrup: Much better than without syrup. Had hints of the flavor of straight Wisconsin amber but wasn’t close enough to make me wish I was drinking that instead of having it as a popsicle.

Chocolate Stout
w/o syrup: In the words of my friend Ken who was joining me for the tasting session. “This tastes like feces.”
With syrup: Tasted a lot like a chocolate phosphate. Sweet and chocolaty but also still nice and malty. Very high recommendation on this one!

Mike’s Hard Pink Lemonade
No syrup in either of these two. It’s not like it needed to be any sweeter than it already is. The pink lemonade was my last ditch “I’m going to make one of these work no matter what.” I figured that it would be a popsicle pretty much no matter what I did to it. It turned out to be exactly what I thought it would be. It tasted like a popsicle I had when I was a kid. Well….not exactly like one I had when I was a kid. It would still be pretty good for a summer party at some point though. I wouldn’t buy a Mike’s Hard Pink just for drinking, but for freezing? Yeah, I would do that again.

Beer Pops FAIL

Is it odd that every time I try making something new and completely fail, my website hits spike?

Well, if the level of my failure is at all linked to the increasing hits, this one should be a whopper! I found a Mexican restaurant out in New York that has been making “beer pops” and put up a post about it. The reviews of them were pretty good. People seemed to like them quite a bit. The problem is that I didn’t have a recipe to work from to try recreating them. All I had to work off of was the fact that it only included a can of Tecate, lime juice, and simple syrup.

I set myself to work putting together a little experiment. After a little bit of research I found a few other recipes for “beer pops” on the web with varying amounts of simple syrup (1:1 ratio of sugar to water) and lime juice. The one constant was that pretty much all of them utilized a can of Tecate.

In the name of science I swallowed my pride and bought a six-pack of Tecate to try making my first batch of beer pops. I only say that I swallowed my pride because I have a personal policy to try to avoid any beer made in a country where I can’t safely drink the water. I set up six cans, drank a little from each, and added different ratios of simple syrup and lime juice to each based on the different recipes I found on the web. Once they were nice and mixed I put a stick in each to give it the genuine popsicle effect.

That was mistake number one. Have you ever put a piece of wood into beer? It foams uncontrollably. I had Tecate all over the counters, cabinets, and floor. After some cleaning I tossed them into the freezer to chill.

Day 2 – The Tasting

I was joined by my friend Ken and my mom to try out my creations. After cutting the bottoms off the cans I ran a little warm water on the sides to help them slide out. I wanted to start out by trying the one closest to the recommended recipe I found. A Tecate with two teaspoons of lime juice and two tablespoons of simple syrup. It was bitter, there was too much lime, and not enough syrup.

I shouldn’t have expected much when I started with a sub-par beer, but I made it worse. In fact, every single one of my six trials was bad. The lime and syrup had sunk to the bottom. Then the top tasted like malty, somehow spoiled beer.

DO NOT TRY THIS. I see no possible way that it could have worked out well. Seriously, don’t even consider it.

I’m trying a variation on it and have 12 test subjects in the freezer right now. I’ll put up a post in the next day or two letting you know how it worked out. Unless I get some pretty promising results I’m going to give up on the idea of beer popsicles.

Why the Beer Blog?

I’ve been keeping this blog for nearly two months now and so far I’ve gotten a pretty darn good response. It seems like every week the site gets more page loads and unique visitors. I’m still hoping to get a few more “followers” on the actual blog page (a less than subtle hint, I know), but that will come in time (it's simple folks, just click "follow").

So why am I going through the effort of researching and writing regular posts? Well, I have a dream. The dream of most every 20-something male; I want free beer! I was thinking about that a few months ago on my commute to do my on-air shift at WWHP in Central Illinois and heard a story on NPR about a travelogue writer. Much like an idea planted by Leonardo Decaprio in the movie Inception, I was consumed by my quest to write a travelogue about beer.

After running through many, many ideas on how I could work it all out I decided that I should go on an epic road trip around the United States and make stops at every brewery, brewpub, and beer bar I can get to and then write a book about it all. While on my trip I’ll be doing my best to get interviews with as many brewmasters, owners, and other people involved in the industry as possible. I’ll be writing about all these experiences and then spice it up with some history of beer, information on how it is brewed, and a little bit about the past of the breweries I visit.

The blog relates to all of that because as I said, I’ve been spending a lot of time researching beer. I thought that people might be interested in reading about some of the more exciting or intriguing stuff that I find. That has grown a little bit into me experimenting with making beer ice cream, beer popsicles (in the freezer now), and trying all kinds of new beers I’ve never even heard of before. I have a regular guest blogger in Ian Barker who writes articles about homebrewing. So, it has grown quite a bit over just the first couple of months.


Later, I plan on using it as a platform to keep people updated on my road trip while I’m on it. I will be posting information about where I am, who I am with, and the beer I’m drinking. I'll also be putting up pictures and even a couple of videos that I take from the road.

Then I’ll post about the process of writing a book about beer and way, way down the line I’ll have an occasional update about where the book is for sale and potentially information about a book tour (if I’m lucky enough to work that out of course, I’m counting a lot of eggs before they hatch).

No matter what I’ll continue with the posts about beer and beer related products and issues throughout the whole process. All in all, thanks everyone for your support. The more readers the blog has, the better the chance that the book gets picked up by a publisher. So make sure you forward the site to your friends, post about it on facebook, leave some comments, vote it up when you see my articles posted on reddit.com/r/beer, and become an official follower with your google account.

Thanks for reading everyone!

The Beer Ice Cream Legacy Continues...

Nope, I wasn’t lying and I have Amy Hendrickson to back me up as proof!

A few weeks ago I put up a series of posts about beer ice cream. My first attempt, an embarrassment to desserts all over the world. My second, a near, but not complete, failure.

On try number three I finally got it right. I posted the recipe for my beer ice cream using Stonecutter Stout from Raccoon River Brewing in Des Moines, IA and apparently, people have been trying it out.

The first person to try it out is the aforementioned Amy Hendrickson. Obviously, the beer I got from a brewpub in Des Moines wasn’t available to her so instead she used a chocolate stout from Bison brewing out of Berkeley, CA.



She also used brown sugar instead of white sugar and said it “added a little more color along with a delicious delicious brown sugar flavor.”

So my thanks to Amy for trying out the ice cream recipe. If you try the recipe or have any other beer recipes let me know how it works out!

Oh, and all these pictures? They’re Amy and her boyfriend enjoying the beer ice cream they made together.

A Beer Drinker’s Multivitamin

Drinkwel is self-described as “the first multivitamin specially formulated for people that drink alcohol. It helps replenish nutrients, supports healthy liver function, and improves the way you'll feel the next day.” They come in $39.95 bottles of 90 capsules, which is the recommended supply for a month.

I looked through the ingredient list and found some of the standards for multi-vitamins/herbal supplements like acai berry, green tea, B12, vitamin C, and a few others. They also had a few others I didn’t expect to see like milk thistle, globe artichoke (another thistle variety), and some Chinese herbs like Schisandra. It almost looks like they just found as many “healthy-sounding” herbs and minerals as they could, tossed them in a mixer, and poured the result into a capsule.

Remember how I said that you get a bottle of 90 and that lasts you a month? Well, that’s only true if you don’t drink. Under the FAQ section it says that you’re supposed to take an additional 3 pills with water before you go to bed. If you’re drinking water before you sleep it will already help stave off a hangover. Also, that means that if you drink somewhere around twice a week your supply runs out a full week in advance.

Besides, who wants to take a pill 3 times a day? It sure seems like a better idea to get your vitamins from a healthy diet and drink some water before you go to bed. However, if healthy liver function is REALLY on your mind, this might be a good thing to check out.

Free Beer: The 2nd Annual Iowa Homebrew’s Fest

Free Beer!

It’s a phrase that gets everyone’s attention. In the rare instance that someone has to miss out on free beer, they’re usually pretty broken up about it. That’s why I was shocked that the Iowa Homebrew Fest had a pretty meek turnout. I guess the article
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in Cityview didn’t do quite enough to convince people to drag their lazy butts off their couch for a few hours to suffer the arduous task of imbibing in free homebrewed beer. I thought it was going to be packed shoulder to shoulder. That isn’t to say that no one was there, people came, just not as many as I would have thought.

So here’s the rundown. The Homebrew Fest was sponsored the Iowa Brewer’s Union and Beer Crazy, where it was also held. I showed up around noon and they had an area of the parking lot cordoned off with caution tape wrapped around kegs, more than appropriate!

Inside the beer zone, as I’m calling it, was something like thirty people, a van with attached trailer/grill selling burgers and brats, and a homebrewing set up. It looked like they were doing a seven gallon batch but I didn’t get a chance to talk much with anyone operating it. They were pretty busy getting bits of grain out of their wort after their bag broke when they were steeping it.

They had twelve beers on tap and two in bottles. After being carded I walked over and grabbed a cup that was sitting readily between the two banks of taps. Handwritten on a notebook was the style of beer in each tap and its corresponding tap number.

I started with the amber ale and was pretty disappointed. My first attempt at a homebrew was an amber ale. My first step out from macro-brews was Fat Tire amber ale. Many Americans favorite beer is…you guessed it, an amber ale. It seems like every brewery and home brewer out there tries their hand at an amber so it really takes a good one to impress me. If it were anything but free, I would have been a lot more unhappy. But who am I to complain about free beer?

The next was called “Sailor Spiced Ale” brewed by Dan Haggerty Jr. It was one of the most unique beers I’ve ever tasted! Apparently he added a bit of Sailor Jerry’s spiced rum when he was brewing it. The final product had a strong clove taste, but not overpowering.

From there I tried the Nut Brown, the Spruce, and the Iowa State Fair winning Porter (which was very good). The unfortunate thing about homebrew is that no, none of you will ever have a chance to try any of these beers. But c'est la vie, brew your own!

Oh, and it was also my first trip out to Beer Crazy in Urbandale, Iowa. Very good beer selection, very helpful staff, and a 10% discount on the already cheap homebrew kit I bought today. I think I’m going to become a regular customer over there!

Beer Pops

Today, we have beer popsicles. They’re made by the Mexican restaurant Diablo Royale Este saloon in New York City. What they do is take a can of beer, inject some simple syrup and lime juice, put a stick in it, and leave it to freeze for four days. Once frozen they remove it from the freezer and cut it open with a serrated knife. I’ve also seen written a few places, but not enough to really confirm it, that they sometimes use a samurai sword to open the cans.

I’m obscenely curious to try it out, but it’s Tacate. There aren’t many Mexican beers I’m a fan of, and

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there are even fewer that I genuinely like (Des Equis Amber). Tacate, does not fall into those ranks. In fact, not even close. The best thing I can say about Tacate is that it tastes like beer, but with more water.

When I tried (and tried, and tried) making beer ice cream I used a great local microbrewed stout. So I’m wary of going to a store and buying a six pack of Tacate to try this one out. Hell, I might be embarrassed to just walk into a store and buy a six of Tacate. I guess I have to though, I just wish I had a recipe to work from when I try this one out. Trial and error seems to have been working well for me, so hopefully it pulls through again this time. I’m just concerned about figuring out the right mix but not realizing it because Tacate still tastes like Tacate. Maybe I’ll try it with a different kind of beer. I’ll keep you updated.

Also, tomorrow is the second annual Iowa homebrewer's fest down at Beer Crazy in Urbandale, IA. I'll be heading down with a few local friends and put up a post afterwards.

Homebrewing Guest Blogger: You’re Going to Brew Dammit

Welcome to the second weekly installment of "Ian J Barker's Kosher Brewing Funtime Extravaganza For Adults, Mazeltov!" This week I'll give a brief rundown of the brewing types and go over the equipment you'll need to make your first batch.

Types of Brewing

Let's get right down to it. For homebrewers, there are generally only two methods of brewing beer: extract brewing and all-grain brewing. Extract brewing uses malt extract while all-grain brewing uses actual malted grain. The difference you ask? While malt extract brewing is easier and more consistent, all-grain brewing is considered by most to be the true brewing experience.

Malt extract consists of the dehydrated sugar collected from cooking malted grain and some hops. It comes in cans, jugs, or bags in different roast levels and, like I mentioned earlier, results in a more consistent brew, primarily because the extract is pre-prepared. All-grain brewing on the other hand allows the brewmaster (that's right, call yourself a brewmaster) to customize the sugars and starches that come out in the cooked wort. By cooking the grain yourself, you will have infinitely more control over what your beer tastes like.

Equipment

Now, for your first batch I recommend buying a brewing kit. The 1 gallon brewing kits at Brooklyn Brew Shop are what I began with and I swear by them. They give you all the instructions, equipment, and, most importantly, confidence to really get your feet wet. Furthermore, the size of the kit makes it easier (and less costly) to experiment.

The kit comes with a few items: a 1 gallon glass carboy (jug), a 3-piece airlock, a rubber stopper with a hole in it, a lab thermometer, some plastic tubing, a tubing clamp, a racking cane, and a packet of sanitizer, along with the grain, hops, and sugars needed for brewing whatever beer you choose. If you choose not to purchase a kit with equipment, then these are the essential pieces you need to purchase (though not many retailers sell one-gallon sized equipment and five gallon brewing is simply too much until you know what you're doing).

However, I do recommend that, no matter how excited you are, whether you purchase your equipment independently or not, that you at least purchase an ingeredient kit with pre-measured grain, hops, and sugars. Frankly, I don't even know how to make successful recipes yet!

So you're thinking, "what do I do now, oh Guru of the Grain, with all these dohickeys, thingamajigs, and WTFs?" Well, children, that story will begin to unfold...

Next week.

Cheers!


Note:
Now, at times I may be throwing a lot of information at you all at once. I promise it will all be cleared up. Some of the information in the coming weeks may get a little technical, but I promise I'll do my best to give you the know-how you need to become a real brewmaster. If you have any questions, feel free to leave them in the comments section or drop me an email at barker.ianjohn@gmail.com. As an unemployed college graduate, I have nothing better to do, I assure you.


Note from Brian:
I’ve got a lot of readers in Des Moines and wanted to give a little info for those in the area. Homebrewing supplies in the area are available from Heartland Homebrew Supply or Beer Crazy. Right now the Heartland Homebrew site is under construction and the Beer Crazy site is pretty weak. Both of the stores are pretty good though, go in and check them out.

Many other readers are around Fort Worth. Around there check out the American Firehouse Brewing Supply, Brewhaus, and Brew-Monkey. I haven’t been to any of those so I can’t vouch for them, but please let me know if you’ve been there.

If you have any other suggestions for homebrew shops in your area feel free to post them in a comment!

The Chatterbox Pub

The first time I ever played a Nintendo was in my grandmother’s basement. I watched my older cousin play Super Mario Brothers to near perfection for hours on end. Then one day he looked over at me while I was still intently watching him play and asked if I wanted a turn. I was so excited it almost hurt; it was finally my turn! Of course I didn’t want to be the dumb kid so I didn’t ask what the controls were and promptly ran right into the first goomba I encountered, ending my turn.

Flash forward eighteen years. I’ve gotten quite a bit better at video games, but I never really even got close to the category of “gamer.” So now I’m a 23 year old guy, I enjoy video games, I like good food, and I’m a pretty big fan of beer. Imagine the perfect place for me.

Got it in mind?

Yeah, it’s called The Chatterbox Pub and there are three of them in the Twin Cities up in Minnesota. I was up there this weekend to hang out with a friend from college and he said he had a place in mind that I would love.

We hit the door and were greeted by a cheery, extremely cute waitress (that I tried to get Steve to ask out) that asked if we wanted to grab one of their board games (they have tons), if we wanted to sit at one of their “gaming stations,” or just sit in a booth. The gaming stations are one tv, a gaming system, a retro couch, and maybe a funky, old lamp. Their gaming system options include the original Nintendo, Atari and Sega Genesis. Each system has its own gaming list, the NES one Steve and I got had something like 50 games to choose from, we went with Super Mario and Super Mario 3.

I know, you’re thinking “But Brian, this all has nothing to do with beer at all!” Nope, you’re wrong. Atmosphere can make a great beer taste like swill, a mediocre beer taste good, or in this case, a great beer taste….greater?

After a long sunburned day on a wave runner out on the Saint Croix river I was exhausted. Luckily, the Chatterbox Pub has a selection of their own microbrewed beers available. My server said they contract with some microbrewery over in Wisconsin. They’ve got five options, but I stuck with just one the whole night. The Chit Chat Belgian White ale was the perfect light beer that I needed after a day in the sun. It had a bit more of a citrus flavor than a lot of Belgian Whites, but I liked it a lot.

Always remember that yes, beer is good. However, it can always get better with a great atmosphere. The Chatter Box Pub even made Steve and I late to get to our movie that night because we were having too much fun drinking and kicking Bowser’s ass!

Oh yeah, and their food is awesome too.

I Feel Dirty

You read the title correctly, I feel dirty. I’m a guy who appreciates craft brews for their flavor and creativity. I can appreciate products from the macro breweries like Bud/Miller because of their history, their price, and how good they taste after a long day of hard work. Even when the batch doesn’t turn out all that well I still love drinking my own homebrew because of the effort I put into it.

So why do I feel dirty? I tried the Costco “Kirkland Signature” beer. That’s right, Costco beer. Not only did I try it, I kind of liked it. It was a situation akin to sitting down in a foreign restaurant and having some completely indistinguishable dish put in front of you. The kind that you look at and ask your waiter, “Is this meat?” You close your eyes, try to avoid breathing in through your nose and you take a bite. Then, marvelously, it isn’t half bad.

For the surprisingly low price of $18 (and a Costco membership) you too can get yourself a 24-pack of Kirkland Signature beer. The package includes four six-packs, a German lager, a pale ale, a hefeweizen, and an amber ale. All of the beer comes from the San Francisco brewery Gordon Beirsch.

Like I was saying, when you go into it expecting the beer to be terrible, it isn’t too bad. Just don’t come into this expecting too much. The hefeweizen is easily the best of the group, with the amber coming in second. Their amber ale tastes like Fat Tire if it were brewed by Schlitz. There is something to it, but it’s highly evident that it could be much better if they put some more time/effort into it.

The German lager was mediocre, but passable. The bottom of the barrel was easily their pale ale. It didn’t have a flavor that was very desirable in the least. It was a little bit like they got mixed up and instead of adding hops; they tossed in a few handfuls of grass clippings.

So here is how I would rate those beers on a scale of 1-10 with one being two month stale “Beer 30” and a ten being the hefeweizen fresh from the tap at the Erdinger Brewery outside of Munich.

Hefe: 6
Amber: 5
Lager: 4
Pale Ale: 2.5

I think all of those are pretty fair ratings, but you’re more than welcome to disagree if you too are curious enough to purchase Costco beer.

Peace Tree Brewery

Yesterday I made it out to Peace Tree Brewery in Knoxville, Iowa with four friends from Des Moines. We drove by the building three or four times before we actually found the brewery. Once we found the building it was a pretty nice looking place. The taproom and exterior have a cool minimalist/modern vibe. Before it was a brewery it was a bar and before that a Nash dealership. I mentioned that in a previous post where I reviewed their Red Rambler Ale.

Within the first minute or two of walking in with my friend Ken we were greeted by the owner, Megan McKay Ziller. She, along with her father, Dan McKay, and husband, Scott Ziller, just started experimenting with Peace Tree Brewing last year. While I sipped my way through a sampler of their beers she was kind enough to tell me all about her brewery.

The opening of the taproom was last October, but they just started distributing their beers in February. Before that they were testing the waters with a few different brews seeing what people liked best and what they should focus on. No brewery is cheap to open, but Megan and the others made a very impressive initial investment. The taproom is great, and the moment they got their equipment in they became the fifth largest brewery in the state in terms of capacity (according to the tour).

Megan also told me about Peace Tree’s original name, White Breast Brewery. Long ago around Knoxville there was a bear with a white chest. Obviously, that’s pretty rare, so the locals named stuff after it. There is a White Breast camp, White Breast lake, White Breast Street, and others. To someone in Knoxville, it just makes sense. The problem is that when most of us hear “white breast,” a bear with a white spot on his chest isn’t the first thing that pops into our minds. So instead they opted for Peace Tree, a name that comes from a tree now mostly submerged in Lake Red Rock where Native Americans met with Americans to sign peace treaties. It wasn’t until after the name was decided that Megan, Dan, and Scott found out there are actually a few Peace Trees in the area. Oh well, I guess it just means a broader appeal for the brewery!

Back to the important stuff, the beer! Before my trip I bought a six of the Hop Wrangler (IPA) and one of Red Rambler. At Brewfest I tried the Blonde Fatale and absolutely loved it. The sampler gave me my first ever taste of their Rye Porter, and Double IPA, but I missed out on their root beer. My favorites were the Double IPA and the Blonde Fatale. As of right now the plan is for the Blonde to be packaged and sold in stores, but not until next year. Besides the opportunity to drink that delicious beer more often I’m pretty excited to see the packaging for it. Peace Tree used an excellent graphic designer from Des Moines to put together the labels for Red Rambler, Hop Wrangler, and Rye Porter. I have a feeling that Blonde Fatale will be a fun one!

The only disappointment with the beer came with the Hop Wrangler. No, the beer wasn’t bad, but it was an IPA and it came sitting next to the Double IPA, which was, in my mind, a better beer.

There was also a surprise beer thrown into the mix. A local homebrewer came into the taproom while we were there. Although Peace Tree can’t legally sell homebrew, they sure can give it away. Everyone in my group got a free sample of a delicious, homebrewed bock. I asked and apparently it isn’t at all uncommon for local homebrewers to give away their beer in the taproom. That is just one of the many quirks that made me love Peace Tree. Also high on that list was the fact that no, they don’t have a kitchen, Megan said that they wanted to concentrate all their energies on their beer. They do however have many options available for food. They’ve got a binder full of menus from what seems like most of the local restaurants in the area. They’re fine with their patrons eating in the taproom so you just call and have food delivered to the brewery. I chose to get as many fried things as possible from The Swamp Fox. We were told that the food would arrive in twenty-five minutes. After forty we called and it didn’t show up for another twenty. Besides the wait, the food was pretty good and fairly priced.

All in all, I’m a huge fan of Peace Tree Brewing. They’re new, they’re local, and they’re growing. It also doesn’t hurt that they have delicious beer, especially the Blonde Fatale. I’m really looking for them to do some big things in the future; I’ll be watching them closely, and suggest you do too.