All About Beer Magazine

Birth of a Brewery

It’s rare that a beer lover gets to watch a brewery being born. However, years ago I offered a young man a job at the magazine for no apparent reason other than he seemed really interesting. Along the way he lead the charge to change the alcohol limit law in the state of North Carolina with the Pop The Cap initiative and dreamed up a brewery that connects agriculture and beer.

“Fullsteam’s mission is create a distinctly Southern beer style that celebrates the culinary and agricultural heritage of the South.” That’s Sean Lily Wilson’s brewing idea.

A week ago that dream came to fruition. Fullsteam Brewery opened. Just two blocks from our office, the whole staff has had a chance to watch it grow step by step – from the early fundraising with homebrews and different concepts for the brand, to building the team and opening up the doors.

A master of social media, Sean Lily Wilson, owner of Fullsteam, had created a community icon even before the equipment was bought. And the town showed up for the day when Sean opened the doors. Along with the All About Beer Magazine crew, neighbors from the surrounding businesses filled the room. Government officials from the city of Durham showed up to see the new addition to their constellation.  I overheard one saying the brewery was anchoring the revitalization of that corner of the city. Only blocks away lies a huge residential area and I recognized people walking to the brewery from their homes.

It was a fantastic crowd spilling out onto the lawn on either side of the brewery with the rolling Only Burger truck providing the food.

The look of the brewery brought together a wide variety of aesthetics. The stainless steel system was on display behind a wall of glass. A wooden stage filled an adjacent corner, prime location for singer/songwriters. Old-fashioned picnic tables filled the rest of the space. The steampunk aesthetic donned the walls ranging from construction wall hangings to panels of dials picked up at a salvage shop. They adorned huge vistas of gray and red wall paint set off with rugged industrial warehouse exposed brick.

The beers?  Well, the crowd was there for the beers.  Sure the muffulettas from Neil’s Deli in Carrboro were special. The deserts by Crumb vanished before hitting the table.  But it was beers.

The team behind the bar was so slammed that I stepped in and joined them as a server. What a great way to get the beer passion. People were jammed together six or seven deep and everyone was ordering four to six beers. There were only four of us covering about 60 feet of bar. Plus, Sean had a portable tap set up out in the dining area and his line was pretty steady at forty feet. Amy from our office backed him up on that draft line for awhile.

Sean had five beers on tap. He has created two groups of beers – Plow-to-Pint which features local ingredients, and Worker’s Comp featuring classic styles. From Plow to Pint was Hogwash Hickory-smoked porter, the Carver sweet potato beer, and the Summer Basil farmhouse ale.  From the Workers’ Comp Sean had Rocket Science IPA and El Toro Cream Ale.

As I was running back and forth with handfuls of beer, along with staffers Kevin and Johanna,  I noticed that people kept asking for beer by its agricultural ingredients. Not the Carver but the sweet potato. Not the Summer Basil Farmhouse ale but the basil. Interesting. Yet, the others were requested by style, the Cream Ale or the IPA. However, Hogwash was, and probably always will be, Hogwash, just plain Hogwash. Sean is going to have fun with that mixture of branding challenges.

I’ll save a discussion of the beers for a later time. It is enough to say there was an unending request for pints of beer and I was stealing sips from an IPA when I could grab a moment. I’m going to like this neighborhood brewery/pub/bar.  I think I’ll be bumping into a lot of my friends and business associates there.

Just a close knit beer family

While running errands the other day I got a funny call from Andy at Triangle Brewing Co.  He needed a favor.  Now, you need to understand this.  The Boys From Triangle are some very resourceful, self-reliant, guys not above some serious razzing and I’m one of their favorite targets.  Andy calling me for some help?  Well, I got ready.

The back-story started a few hours earlier, when after quite a struggle with a recalcitrant cask to be tapped at a Alivia’s, (home to Triangle’s weekly cask program), uncovered some technical weirdness with the tap.  Frankly, I’d never seen a gizmo like this thing.

So, the Boys From Triangle decided to borrow a tap from me, which I delivered to their brewery early in the afternoon and picked up my service fee in the form of a pint of Triangle IPA. Sweet.  Nice beer and a nice Good Neighbor feel.

Back to the call from Andy a few hours later.  It turns out my tap didn’t match the threads of their system.  Okay, three serious beer guys and we couldn’t have anticipated that move.  Huh?  By now Andy had inveigled the All About Beer Magazine staff to beat it up to Alivia’s, declaring a state of emergency!  When he called me they were cheering on The Boys From Triangle as they struggled mightily for hours trying to get this cask tapped without disturbing the cask ale.  Time was of the essence because the cask tapping party loomed.

I was doing a site inspection for the World Cask Ale Festival coming this October (get your tickets, not many will go on sale) and didn’t have my office/car keys.  Did I tell you that the staff was at Alivia’s?  So I called Angela, but then thought of the landlord.  Three trips back and forth from their office to mine before one of their keys unlocked the office.  I called Angela to tell her not to come, but she’d set out to let me in the office and left her phone at Alivia’s.

I am getting to a point, patient reader.

I drove home and pulled the correctly threaded nut off of my own tapped cask of Top of the Hill Saison, which later leaked all over the refer and the shop, and triumphantly delivered it to Alivia’s, The Boys From Triangle and the gang from All About Beer Magazine and the World Beer Festival.

Within moments we all had pints of Triangle’s cask IPA.  Then I looked around the gathering and realized, ah ha, one of my favorite moments — beer community! Here was the local brewery, owner and manager of one of our better beer bars, and the crew from the world’s best beer magazine and four spectacular beer festivals, all conspiring together to get a pint of brilliant cask ale on a beautiful Thursday afternoon.

It was a great toast from all of us.

Okay, this is weird.

I’m sitting down to watch an old movie with a bomber of Foothills Baltic Porter.  Pop the cap and pour a nice tulip glass full of the dark liquid.  I put the bottle on the coffee table and pick up the glass.  Then I look at the open bottle.  I put the cap back on it, but it’s now crimped and doesn’t sit well.

Then the “ah ha” experience.  I head into the kitchen, rummage around the crap drawer (you know you have at least one of those) and find this old holiday present of a pair of wine stoppers.  These really, really heavy three dimensional dart shaped things with rubber ribbed sides.

I drop one in the Foothills Baltic Porter and get a pretty good seal.  Hmmm.  Knowing I had a couple more bottles I took that half empty bottle with the cork dork seal on it and stuck it in the fridge.  Let’s see what tomorrow brings.

The next evening, it poured a pretty good head.  I couldn’t taste any oxidation, but one day, in a fridge, with a big beer, I didn’t expect that.  Still, a pretty good head.

I guess there are some good things coming out of the wine world after all.

A night at the bar

Some evenings can’t get much better. I’m such a sop for gatherings in the bar. This one tops the list however.

After a bit late stay at work, I stopped in at a wonderful source of draft Fullers London Porter, Bull McCabe’s. Laura called and I invited her to join the musings at a bar. Before she arrived, good friend Barry dropped in to catch the Twins game. The three of us chatted over a pint, while I awaited the arrival of dinner – veggie burger and salad. It’s true; I am trying to drop a few inches off the waist. When the cook, a good friend and consummate master burger maker delivered the plate to the bar, I took some abuse, much to my friends’ amusement.

Then the evening got very special. John, the cook, asked if I wanted to try some home made prosciutto. Are you kidding? After a veggie burger, hell yes. And it was very, good.  Amazingly soft for prosciutto. I hope you have enough imagination to sense what went on between the prosciutto and the Fuller’s Porter. A perfect match. I almost started whimpering. I excused myself from Laura and Barry, and headed to the kitchen in the most ingratiating fashion I could summon.

There was John with a grin on his face. “I knew you couldn’t hold out.” With all the grace I could muster, having been caught on the dark side, I asked for “more.” John laughed and said he’d fix up a plate with some slices of cheese and, bonus move, some corned beef he’d also made.

So here I am, after a fantastic, but long day at work, with a modern version of a Ploughman’s Plate and a classic English porter, and great company, sitting at a wooden bar. Now if that isn’t pure romance.

Oregon Homebrewing Activities Illegal? Probably not for long.

A recent ruling by the Oregon Liquor Control Commission (OLCC) has put a stop to any homebrew competition or homebrew gathering. They interpret the law, which refers to “home consumption,” to mean just that: consumption in a home, which means you make it in your home and you drink it in your home. They now consider carrying a six-pack to a party, holding a competition, or any other way of consuming homebrew to violate the state’s law.

Before you fire off the vitriolic letter or email, filled with rude and abusive things, consider a few points. Oregon is ground zero for the craft beer revolution. They have a thriving craft beer industry. All three tiers—supplier, wholesaler and retailer—have strong, supportive relationships, based on recognizing the value of craft beer to the beer industry and the state community. And to a person, I’m betting they understand the role homebrewing plays in developing this idyllic beer world.

All of this is why I can say, “probably not for long.” If the powers that be interpret the OLCC’s ruling as a need for clarification and sit down with the appropriate industry and elected officials, and work on revising the legal language, I’m pretty convinced this will go away. Ten or twenty years ago, this could have been a dogfight, but not today. The beer revolution is here to stay and all sectors of the industry and the government know it.

Cool heads need to prevail and reasonable discussions are the call of the day. Clarifying language, not storming the halls, will probably solve this conundrum and we can all get back to continuing to build a better beer world.

Hidden Jems!

What’s particularly cool about the craft beer industry are its hidden gems (like this post I just found hidden in the drafts folder!)  that are rare and distinctive, those unique experiences which are so far removed from the tried and true comfortable local or  favorite beer. This job allows me the opportunity to chase down some of these crazy ideas, like the Big Beers, Belgians & Barley Wine Fest in Vail, Colorado.

Weeks later I’m still remembering and thinking about this event. Celebrating its 10th year, the Big Beers has a lot of serious upside to it. First, it is in Vail and the snow was perfect. Having hung up the boards a few decades ago, self-preservation was the rationale, I looked on with envy as brewer and attendee hit the slopes for a few runs. Beyond the skiing, wandering through the frozen, streetlight painted Vail village after a raucous dinner with brewers and enthusiasts just can’t be replicated in many places around the country.

However, the second feature transforms the event. The Colorado Front Range throws it’s full support behind Big Beers. Virtually the whole Brewers Association, the trade organization for craft brewers, attended this gathering as spectators, enjoying the bounty without the stress of running it.  (They do put on the Craft Brewers Conference, the Great American Beer Festival, Savor, not to mention all their publications.)  John Carlson, the head of the Colorado Guild was there, as were virtually every brewer in the state. For a serious beer lover, this was rubbing elbows with the greats of one of the leading beer scenes in the country.

This precipitated a nostaglic moment for me.  I had a wonderful opportunity to judge at the homebrew competition with a couple of serious homebrewers. Funny thing was, looking around the room, I knew more people in that room than I had at any of the Southeast judgings I’d been in on lately. Nearly twenty years after leaving, I still miss the Colorado beer scene.

Back to the Big Beers, what Bill and Laura Lodge, of High Point Brewery, have put together is a complete beer experience for those who are serious about their beer.  A couple of beer dinners, some seminars featuring major brewing talent from the States and Europe, a Cicerone seminar and test hosted by Ray Daniels, the already mentioned homebrew competition, and then the beer festival itself where a couple dozen breweries showcased their spectacular big beers.

I attended one of the two beer dinners where Adam Avery, Avery Brewing, and Sam Caligione, Dogfishhead Brewing paired off with Chef Adam Votow acting as the ringleader.  Imagine double pairing two beers with one dish.  The show stopper was the Dugana IPA from Avery and the Chicory Stout from Dogfish Head paired with a rubbed pork loin, an exciting triangulation.

The Lupulin Reunuless at the Brickskeller

Round three or four of the brewery young guns slam fest got seriously toned down this year.  From previous years’ mash-ups, with heavy doses of bathroom humor, this beer maven summit transformed itself into an historical, sociological, political, aesthetic feast of rare talent gathered on one platform.  Of course, it took the legendary Dave Alexander, Brickskeller and RFD proprietor; to bring everyone together into a room packed with beer geeks and beer scribes.

Here’s young Dave on the cover of our first redesigned issue:

Picture this – Ken Grossman (Sierra Nevada Brewing Co), Sam Calagione (Dogfish Head Brewery), Kim Jordan (New Belgium Brewery), Rob Tod (Allagash Brewing Co), Greg Koch (Stone Brewing Co.), Bill Madden (Mad Fox Brewery), and Bob Pease (Brewers Association) – all jammed together on the podium to present on fifteen different beers.

With this level of fire power it’s easy to see how the conversation rambled throughout the new brewing landscape.  Two dominant threads were industry education and history.  Between the brewers and Bob from the association, the audience got a short course on the economics of running a small brewery and the valued work of the trade association, particularly the latest initiative to reduce the excise tax burden.

Ken talked about the early days and how few of those pioneers were still around (besides Sierra Nevada, would you believe only 1!) and the many crossroads he’s faced in the intervening years.  His early benchmarks, and the origins of his equipment, were eye opening given his stature today.  One of his progeny, Brian, was in the audience indicating a long future for the company.

Kim Jordan, perhaps a leader of the next generation of craft brewers, noted the cost to fund growth rates.  Going from today’s numbers, which exceeds 10% in many markets including Washington DC, would require such a massive infusion of capital to build the equipment infrastructure to create, distribute and market that next few percentage points of growth.  Bob Pease joined in with a discussion of the trade association’s efforts to get the excise tax reduced for small brewers in the interest of funding this expansion.  As with Ken, Kim had a brewing offspring in the audience with Zak Danielson sitting amidst the New Belgium gang.

Often associated together along with goombah Adam Avery of Avery Brewing, Greg, Sam and Rob talked about getting their companies going some during the implosion of the late 1990s.  With an industry established, these “pioneers” moved in rather unique ways to fulfill their personal mission.  Greg’s aggressive defiance, Rob’s quiet almost monkish aesthetics, Sam’s raucous flavor explorations have all lead to legendary profiles that have rocked the foundation of craft beer expanding the tent in exciting dimensions.

And then Bill reminded everyone of the roots or our industry as he talked about opening his new brewery in two weeks.  Although a long standing brewing stalwart of the DC brewer community, Bill is launching his own place reminding all of us that the pioneering passion continues generation after generation.

A few notes from the 15 beers presented:

Vintage 50 Wee Heavy – Not from the unopened Mad Fox, but from Bill’s private stash.  The last keg in existence of one of his legendary creations, which takes six hours to mash.  This was the ultimate statement of a wee heavy.

Oaked Arrogant Bastard – Greg says this is not barrel aged, but aged on oak chips which rounds out the hops taking the edge of the well respected in-your-face beer.

30^th Anniversary Imperial Helles – Ken made this to honor the pioneer homebrewers picking a lager to honor Fred Eckhardt’s Treatise on Lager Beer and using a lager yeast from Charlie Papazian.

Eric’s Ale – New Belgium blended a dry sour beer, aged in oak with a more sweet, alcoholic beer, with a secondary fermentation using peaches.  smooth and characterful

Bourbon Barrel Belgian Style Stout – not a real style, but Rob liked combining Belgian funk, with mocha from Jim Beam barrels and linking them with the stout bitterness.

Namaste – the only time served outside of the Dogfish Head tasting room. Started with a Tois Fountain sort of beer and added stuff chosen by Mariah, Sam’s wife, including lemon grass and actual oranges.

Life & Limb – celebrating the brewing renaissance and the family that goes into a good brewery, Ken and Sam blended Ken’s own barley and Sam’s own maple syrup.  This too was the last cask and almost got dumped before someone figure out what it was.

There were numerous other beers and hours of conversations worthy of a short book, not a too long blog.  Watch for round four or five same bat-time, same bat-channel.

What’s with Homebrewers?

I had the pleasure of once again addressing the James River Homebrew Club at one of their meetings at Legends Brewery, Richmond, VA. These are the guys who will be handling the beer for the upcoming World Beer Festival – Richmond, and a perfect bunch for the job without a doubt.

So, how could I tell, on walking into the room, that this was a bunch of homebrewers?

On a recent flight from Atlanta to Phoenix I noticed a particular tone to about half of the passengers. A lot of black clothes, flat billed hats, diverse facial hair, dead-eyed stare; clearly all members of the same tribe. A few questions to my seat mate and I learned all about the motocross event the night before and even met the 5th place winner.

Homebrewers aren’t quite that easy to pick out. Sure, they have a similar appearance, but not that distinctive. The middle girth could be wider than norm, but not universally. Just a little rough around the edges, possibly. Maybe. Definitely no drama or ostentatiousness.

But it’s more in the attitude. The room buzzed with bonhomie. Everyone had a grin on their face, a conspiratorial grin. And they could talk, almost exclusively about beer. A sample glass was in each person’s hand and they were all tasting from a wide range of homebrews brought in by club members.

Now think about that. This is a crack bunch of amateur brewers, medal winners, certified judges, and serious beer dudes. And you bring in your own beer and offer it up?

There in lies the defining characteristic of a homebrewer. Their amazing self-confidence. Frankly, often completely justified. I had some painfully beautiful beers that night that were a wonder to enjoy.

As I recently wrote about my experiences with SweetWater’s Brewer Your Cask Off, homebrewers are supremely assured and knowledgeable about what works and doesn’t work in homebrewing. Whether they are correct or not is a whole other question. To paraphrase an old saw: you can put three homebrewers in a room and have four different opinions about any and everything.

The James River Homebrew Club is no different. They are passionate about brewing. They enjoy a heated discussion, no feathers get ruffled. And they make drop-dead gorgeous beers. They have no qualms about sharing their beer because they know it is the best that they are making and they are going to make even better soon.

So, readers, if you don’t know any homebrewers I suggest you go make some friends. For the price of a bit of tendentious beer geek talk, you’ll experience some wonderful beer and wonderful company.

Let me hear from you readers; what is it with homebrewers?