Fifth Stop – Live Oak Brewing Company

Live Oak Brewing in Austin isn’t in the best neighborhood, they don’t use fancy marketing, and their facility isn’t the most picturesque. None of that matters. When you produce consistently excellent beer that you’re knowledgeable and passionate about you get a free pass on those periphery things.

I made it to Live Oak in Austin and met with owner/brewer Chip McElroy. I was also lucky enough to speak briefly with brewmaster Steve Anderson. The most significant thing I will say about my talk with Chip is that I learned more from him than I have from any single beer conversation I’ve ever had.

I know what wort is. I understand how yeast works. I get what hops add to the flavor of beer. Basically, I know the basics.

Chip however, is a fountain of knowledge. More than that, he’s completely happy and willing to share that knowledge. In fact, it seems like a mission of his to spread the word about good beer to the masses.

One of the many things we talked about was the Live Oak Hefeweizen. Currently, the hefe is ranked on Beer Advocate as the number 67 beer in the world. It also comes in as number two in the hefeweizen category. Not too bad for a little brewery in Austin that doesn’t bottle or can their beer. In fact, it’s downright tough to get their beer.

This is a list of cities where they have at least one tap:

Addison, Alpine, Austin, Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston, Kerrville, Marathon, New Braunfels, Plano, Rockdale, San Antonio, San Marcos, Temple, and Waco.

That’s right, 15 cities. All in Texas.

I looked through Beer Advocate and it seems like most of the ratings of Live Oak beers don’t actually come from cities where they distribute; they come from people who got it in trades. That means someone filled a growler from a bar’s tap and drove it to places like Michigan, Pennsylvania, Florida, or Canada. I can’t imagine they’re getting anything close to the fullest flavor once the beer is driven twenty-four hours in a growler. And yet, it still ranks extremely well.

The Live Oak Hefe is one of their year-round beers brewed in a traditional Bavarian style. The head on it is thick enough that it could probably support your weight if you were inclined to try standing on your beer. The aroma gives off a clear scent of bananas and maybe a little bit of cloves and vanilla.

In the book I’ll write more about the Live Oak hefe, the new brewing facility they have planned, and all kinds of history and general brewing knowledge that Chip shared with me.

Since going to Live Oak I hit Saint Arnold’s in Houston yesterday and Spoetzl brewery in Shiner, TX today. Posts coming soon!

My Homebrewing Attempt: Bottling

Last week I put up an article about the cooking stage of my attempt at homebrewing a Bavarian Hefeweizen. Today, the bottling!

I checked on my brew a day after I put it in my fermentation bucket. True to form it was bubbling away as the yeast ate my priming sugar and pooped out alcohol. Is that not the most magical thing you’ve ever heard of? Well, the yeast kept kicking out alcohol and bubbles through the airlock for the next three or four days. Then I let it sit a few more days and it was time to bottle it up.

I brought up my beer in the fermentation bucket, sanitized the heck out of my bottling bucket, and I was ready to go. By the way, yes, it is extremely important make sure that everything is sanitized again. Even if you’ve already taken care of it, it won’t hurt to do it again.

I always have trouble getting the flow going between the fermentation bucket and the bottling bucket but once it gets started, it doesn’t stop. I use the extremely simple method of putting the first bucket higher than the second and using a hose as a siphon. I filter the beer with a wire mesh thing I found in my kitchen. Filtering the beer isn’t actually all that important for the first ¾ of the process, but gets pretty crucial in the last bit. The bottom of the fermentation bucket is always covered with a weird sluldge. Filtering is a huge help, but don’t even try to get that last part filtered, it won’t work (I tried once). So when it starts getting low, just give up.

The bottling process is simple, but a little tedious. I attach my siphon hose to the bottling bucket nozzle and the bottle filler goes on the other end of the hose. This was my first time using a bottle filler because before this, I couldn’t figure out what the heck it was. It works extremely well and solved the biggest problem I had in past bottling experiences. That problem was that I would always over or under fill the bottles. The filler puts just the right amount of beer in and when you pull it out, leaves just the right amount of air in the top of the bottle.

Once bottled and capped the beer needs to sit in a cool, dark place for a week to condition. After the week you can either leave the beer where it is or move it to a refrigerator. Either way, the official suggestion is that it needs to age for another three weeks. Personally, I always make sure to add another week or two to that for good measure. To me, it usually tastes a bit better.

By the time my homebrew is ready for drinking I’ll be on my beer trip. I think I’ll be in Fort Worth when it’s ready to drink, maybe I’ll bring a six-pack with me. I’ll let you know how it is when I try it out!

My Homebrewing Attempt

I’ve only homebrewed a couple of times. I’ve had a couple of disasters, but mostly just mediocre beer. I’ve tried a pretty decent number of homebrew that was delicious though, so I keep trying. I figure that even if my batch sucks, I can always boil some bratwurst in it!

This time I bought the Bavarian Hefeweizen ingredient kit from Beer Crazy in Urbandale. It’s a fairly simple kit (which is needed for a guy like me). Instead of having to steep the grains I got one that uses malt extract. The only ingredients were a couple cans of malt extract, liberty hopes, yeast, and priming sugar.

As with most things, the process is simple but the devil is in the details. If you’ve been following the homebrewing guest blog series written by my friend Ian then you’ve got this down, but I’ll give you the brief version.

1st – Sanitize everything you’re going to be using. Then do it again, just to be safe

2nd – Boil 1.5 gallons of water.

3rd – Stir in 1 can of malt extract and 1 oz liberty hops, return to a boil for 35
min

4th – Remove from heat, add second can of malt extract and 1 oz liberty hops

5th – Return to boil for an additional 15 minutes

6th – Put 2.5 gallons cold water into your fermenting bucket (vessel if you want to
sound fancy)

7th – Slowly pour your hot mixture into the fermenting bucket

8th – Once mixture cools to under 90 degrees, sprinkle 1 pack yeast over mixture.
Wait 10 minutes, gently use 1 or 2 spoon strokes to stir yeast in.

9th – Put airlock in the lid of your fermenting bucket and leave it alone for about a week

Coming soon I’ll put up a post about the bottling process. For now, isn't that picture of the bottom of my fermentaion bucket disgusting?

Schlafly Hefeweizen

First, a disclaimer: I’m really not a beer reviewer. I’ve tasted a lot of beers in my time but I’ve never tried my hand at a reviewing one outside of pointing to a six pack in the grocery store and saying “that’s tasty!” As a part of preparing for my big road trip and writing my book I’m attempting to purify my palate and familiarize myself (if I don’t already know) with the offerings from at least the breweries that I’ll be visiting and maybe a few others as well. Hopefully it will make me sound a little more intelligent when it comes time to sample beers along with the brewmasters responsible for their creation.

Here pretty soon I’m going to be moving from Champaign, IL to Des Moines, Iowa. There are a lot of great things about Des Moines; one of those is that it has a pretty unique set of micobrews available as compared to what I get in Champaign. I figured that since I’ll only be in Central Illinois a few more days I should spend that time enjoying the beers that I can’t get in Central Iowa.

Tonight I sat down for the evening with a couple bottles of hefeweizen from Schlafly in Saint Louis. The hefeweizen is one of Schlafly’s most popular and largest production beers, along with their American Wheat Ale. The upside of being one of their most popular beers is that the flavor is a bit more consistent than something you might find with the small batch micobrews. The downside is that it doesn’t have as much of the unique flavor and character I love so much about small breweries. It feels a lot more like a beer that would be produced by one of the big box breweries.

The Schlafly Hefeweizen tastes to me a little bit more like a wheat beer than it does a hefeweizen. That’s okay though, I’m more concerned with the fact that it has a solid taste and nice finish. It’s one of those beers that I’m more than happy to sit down with on a nice summer night and drink three or four of on the balcony with some good conversation. There aren’t too many better endorsements I can give a beer than that!

I’m not going to be giving beers I review a rating or number. I don’t think it is fair to rate an IPA and a pale lager on the same scale, they’re just too different. Instead I’ll just be giving brief review of what I think of the beer and if I would buy it again. When it comes to the Schlafly Hefeweizen my final word on it is to say that it is a slightly above average beer that was quite enjoyable and I would buy again in a heartbeat next time I’m in an area they distribute to. As with so many things in life, a good beer is significantly more special when you only occasionally have the chance to get it.