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!

Eleventh Stop - Rahr & Sons Brewing Co.

One visit just wasn’t enough for me. Monday afternoon I went by the brewery in Fort Worth to interview and have a few beers with Fritz Rahr, the brewery’s founder. Although wonderful I had to be sure to make it back Wednesday evening for the open house brewery tour.

In the interest of full disclosure before anything else I should mention that I harbor an extraordinary bias when it comes to anything Rahr. While in college at TCU in Fort Worth I was a regular at the Saturday afternoon Rahr brewery tours and a frequent “sampler” of their products. Rahr’s was also my first American brewery tour when I was of legal drinking age. Because of that, the fact that Rahr is “proudly brewed by a Horned Frog” (fellow TCU alum), and my nostalgia for college nights drinking it on my apartment’s patio with friends, Rahr will always be one of my favorites. There you go; I’m a big, biased fan.

Monday the focus of much of my conversation with Fritz was on the last ten months of Rahr’s operations. Or rather, non-operation for much of it. On February 11th 2010 Fort Worth received 12.5 inches of snow in slightly under 24 hours. I wasn’t keeping track but I would be SHOCKED if that didn’t double how much snow fell in Fort Worth in my four years there. North Texas is used to the occasional sleeting, maybe even a little ice here and there on cold nights. 12.5 inches of snow though? Even a seasoned Iowan like me thinks that would be miserable.

Fritz was supposed to be meeting one of his brewers to get a new batch of beer going on that fateful morning but in light of the snow called and told him not to come in. While still in the five o’clock hour a call came in from Rahr’s alarm company to alert Fritz that the brewery’s sprinkler system had activated; he needed to get to the brewery as soon as possible. Worried about his business he hopped in his car and turned on the radio. On the way he heard reports of damage around the city and started putting two and two together. Massive amounts of snow. Sprinklers running. A flat roof. It could only mean one thing, the roof had collapsed overnight under the weight of the snow.

He arrived at the brewery he had poured so much of himself into over the last five and a half years and was greeted by firemen who were ripping down the overhead door to get in. The damage was catastrophic. In some areas the only thing holding the roof up at all were the fermentation tanks.

The call he received about sprinklers had been more than accurate. They, along with a broken water main, had poured over a foot of water into the brewery. The cooler was crushed. The bar was destroyed. Their bottling line was ruined. Some fermentors were damaged. The list, of course, goes on and on, and on.

Despite how it sounds so far, this really isn’t a tail of defeat. Rather it is a story of rebirth. Rahr worked with Farmers Insurance (about whom Fritz only has the best things to say) and rebuilt. In the four/five months of non-production the brewery created a new identity for itself with new labels and a new logo. They also changed some things about their overall brewing setup they would have liked to have done anyway and a new tasting bar was built that backs up directly to their new cooler.

Even when not producing beer the staff of Rahr was hard at work with one of their partners, CGC marketing, to create a viral video series titled “what brewers do when they’re not brewing. It stars Fritz, and Rahr brewers Austin Jones & Jason Lyon and if I may say so myself, is very funny.

Here is a link to view all ten of the videos.

Now Rahr is happily back in full production and is continually expanding capacity. I’ll be talking about all things Rahr in the book. That will include the rest of my non-roof related conversation with Fritz, A bit of my chat with a former plumber/current Rahr employee, the origins and history of Rahr, and tales of my trip out to the brewery Wednesday night with some old college friends.

Up next I’ll be at the Diamond Bear Brewing Company in Little Rock, Arkansas.

Tenth Stop - Real Ale Brewing

I’m only putting up a mini post about Real Ale in Blanco, TX because truth be told, it was a mini visit. I don’t want to say that my trip to Blanco wasn’t an afterthought, but it wasn’t really at the forefront either.

After spending the early afternoon at Independence Brewing Company I knew I was going to be cutting it close to make it in time for Real Ale’s last tour of the day. As I waved goodbye to Amy and Rob Cartwright at Independence I slammed on the accelerator to try and get to Blanco by four o’clock. The problem was that I only hit the accelerator for 2 of the next twenty minutes; the traffic in Austin was horrendous.

When I pulled up to Real Ale the final tour had started a few minutes before I got there. I saw the last couple people in the group walking into the brewery so I ran along and joined in. The tour was easily and without question the worst brewery tour I’ve been on to date.

No, not because the guide was uninformed or anything like that. Despite my late arrival I was a far cry from being the last one to arrive. First it was a bus from a retirement community that unloaded 10 or so octogenarians that shuffled over to us. Besides moving slowly and one persistently whistling hearing aid they weren’t bad.

The second was a group of seven twenty-somethings. They spent the entire tour standing directly behind me loudly talking. Never once did they whisper or say something under their breath, they just kept talking in at full volume. I couldn’t hear the guide so I politely turned around and asked the pony-tailed asshole to please quiet down. He apologized and said they would stop talking.

That didn’t do a thing, they incessantly kept at it. One little known fact about me is that when I’m angry I get eloquent. “Hey dude. I can’t believe you dudes keep talking. I mean dude, its just not cool, I can’t hear anything dude.”

I don’t believe I’ve said the word dude in normal conversation since the late nineties. For some reason though I thought it would be best way to address my problem would be to drop it a half dozen times in two poorly crafted sentences. The response was an appropriate “sorry dude.”

One of the few things I actually heard was that like many breweries Real Ale disposes of their spent grains by giving them to a local cattle rancher to use as feed. I’ve heard rumors at other breweries and I know some like Independence in Austin occasionally get some meat in exchange for the grain. From the sounds of it Real Ale has a deal for big thick T-Bones for their grain. Not too bad for getting rid of their waste product!

Despite a lame tour the tasting room was still a lot of fun. I got to speak briefly with a couple brewery employees that were hanging around. I also got to sample a few of their beers and get the full story about why their Fireman’s 4 Ale has completely different packaging from the rest of their beers. It was something I had always been curious about and one of the main reasons for my trip.

In the book I’ll tell you all about the Fireman’s 4 Ale, their tasting room, and some history of Real Ale Brewing Company. Oh, and I forgot to take pictures until I was driving away. Sorry they’re terrible.

Ninth Stop - Independence Brewing

I’m realizing that breweries tend to be built where rent is cheap. Because of that I’m slowly gaining a great appreciation for breweries that aren’t in neighborhoods rough enough that I get shifty-eyed when cruising by in my Toyota Corolla. It has significantly stood out in a few of these areas to say the least!

My assumption that all city breweries I visit will be in bad areas left me pleasantly delighted when I found Independence Brewing Company of Austin Texas. It’s in a nice, relatively new warehouse/office park.

That wasn’t all that impressed me right off the bat either. My dad has owned a family business for almost exactly twenty years now so I have a certain appreciation for any true family business. When I hit the door at Independence I was met by the husband/wife co-owners Rob and Amy Cartwright, their one month old daughter Ruby, and their two dogs Jasper and Indy. I don’t know how it could get to be much more family-oriented than that!

More than any of that, it was just a fun environment. I know that every brewery is full of hard workers and Independence is no exception, but they seemed to have some kind of “X” factor that made everyone love walking in the door for work. It might have been the relaxed atmosphere, the cool bosses, or the dogs just hanging out. It may have had something to do with Rob cooking up some BBQ on the grill out front. He had a full rack of ribs, some hand-twisted sausage, and a beer can chicken going. Of course, not just any can though, a custom made one that he could pour Independence Brewing’s Convict Hill Oatmeal Stout into. Rob and Amy even invited me to stay and eat with them but sadly I had to move on and get to Real Ale out in Blanco, TX.

Despite the fact that Austin seems to be a new mecca for craft brewers (at least seven are currently in development stages), Independence is currently the only one that bottles their beer. They still do a brisk keg business. In fact, Rob told me that their keg business has been increasing over the last year to take back a majority of their business.

The increase in keg sales is great but Independence still has one beer that ALWAYS sells out of bottles in a matter of a few days of when it goes on sale. Oklahoma Sucks. It’s an amber beer that goes on sale the week before the annual football game between the University of Texas and Oklahoma. The beer is a creative idea that came about when Rob and Amy found out that a brewery in Oklahoma sells “Texas Sucks” year round.

Watch for the book version of All Hopped Up where I’ll tell you about some of the amazing events hosted by Independence Brewing, more about Rob and Amy, and some other neat stories about the brewery.

Eighth Stop - 512 Brewing Company

The 512 Brewing Company is located in a nice new warehouse park. As has been typical on these trips so far I got there fine but thought I was in the wrong place. 512 has absolutely no signage in front of or on their building. If it had not been for the half open garage door I could see the fermentation tanks through I wouldn’t have found it.

When I did manage to find it 512 it didn’t even matter for a bit. No one answered when I knocked so I went around to the open garage door and hollered in. Even then, no response. It took a few minutes of silence before something blared from the speakers. It was the video series “drunk history.” If you’ve never seen it I highly suggest checking it out. It’s just some drunk guy trying to explain events in history. I’ve got a lot of respect for any brewery willing to take a break in the middle of the day to watch funny videos of drunk people.

At the brewery I spoke with the owner/brewer Kevin Brand. We had a long conversation about how he got started, how things have gone in the two years they’ve been in operation, and how 512 is going to expand.

As it currently stands 512 can barely make enough beer to keep up with the orders they get. And that’s after they had just expanded. Luckily that means that 512 can continue to expand and not worry about overproducing. In fact, Kevin told me that he is going to be expanding into the rest of the warehouse he currently shares as soon as possible.

Every successful brewery has to have something unique. Something that sets them apart or makes them different from the thousands of other breweries in the world. If they’re the first brewery in a city, that can be a gimmick. They’re “Houston’s brewery” or something like that. In Austin, a town with quite a few small breweries cropping up in and around town, you really do have to make a statement if you’re going to get notice. I think 512 has done that with one of his beers, the pecan porter.

The pecan porter comes off extremely well. It is made from locally grown pecans, organic 2-row and Crystal malts, and some black and chocolate malts. It has a nice aroma to it, but I couldn’t really smell much in the way of pecans. That didn’t come until I actually took a sip. The flavor was full and malty with some of the taste of pecans leaking through the malts. When tasting this beer I thought about how it would be an excellent starter beer for someone who thought they didn’t like porters/dark beer.

Since my visit to 512 I’ve gone to Independence Brewing Company in Austin and Real Ale in Blanco, TX. Today I’m headed up to Fort Worth so watch for either or both of those posts to be coming soon.

Seventh Stop - Spoetzl Brewery

I’ve always been a little confused as to why the Spoetzl Brewery in Shiner, TX refers to their beers as “Shiner Beers.” Sure, I could have checked their website or any number of research materials but instead I went to the brewery.

Shiner, TX is pretty out of the way between Houston and San Antonio. So instead of making you head down to Shiner to figure it out for yourself I might as well tell you. The Spoetzl Brewery was started in 1909 by the Shiner Brewing Association to make only one beer, Shiner Premium. Their famous bock beer wasn’t introduced until 1913 when it became a seasonal offering.

Shiner Premium must not have been too stellar because in 1913 the Shiner Brewing Association started a search for a real brewmaster. Eventually they found Kosmos Spoetzl. He was arrived in Shiner in 1914 and purchased the brewery in 1915, which was when the brewery took his name, Spoetzl. However, the identification of their products as “Shiner Beers” never really stopped after the brewery’s name changed, hence my confusion. The name wasn’t the only thing changing with the new leadership though. In just his third year at the brewery in 1916 Kosmos started bottling his beer.

Shiner is one of very few breweries that managed to survive prohibition intact. Spoetzl converted to produce ice and “near beer” during those dark years. My tour guide noted that the near beer produced in Shiner was not produced to be made with no alcohol but instead had the alcohol removed before distribution…usually. Apparently Kosmos was occasionally a little forgetful and would leave the alcohol in the beer when selling to some locals. Kosmos led the brewery until his death in 1950 when his daughter “Miss Celie” took over operations.

You might notice that my pictures at Spoetzl are kind of lame. That’s because Spoetzl’s picture policy is kind of lame. They don’t allow any pictures to be taken while on the brewery tour. Because of that I was limited to just taking pictures around the outside of the facility.

After public relations rep Anne Raabe gave a tour I was on she was kind enough to answer a few of my questions. She also went out of her way on an extremely busy day to try and track down brewmaster Jimmy Mauric or his assistant brewmaster to have a conversation with me. Both of them weren’t even in the town of Shiner that day, but she did find Peter Takacs, manager of quality assurance, for me to talk with.

I’m actually grad I got to talk with Mr. Takacs instead of a brewmaster or owner. His job and his perspective on beer/brewery were completely unique from anyone else I’ve spoken with so far on my tours. We talked for quite a while about the quality assurance process at a brewery and some of the most in-depth history of brewing anyone I’ve spoken with has imparted to me. All of that and more will be coming in the chapter about Shiner in my book.