The Washed Rind

Summer, Glorious Summer

2010-06-18T04:29:00.003-04:00

This update finds me admittedly worn, wilted, and just plain beat, but I've got plenty of worthwhile news and further movements. (Last night was the first night I caved into sleeping at a hostel. No sleep. Wrenched my back this morning. Place reeks of exhaled alcohol and cigarettes. Yum.) I'm on the last leg of the journey here in London, rounding the bend, perhaps hitting the wall and transitioning to anaerobic respiration. I've spent the last few days under the wing of Phil Lowry, the man behind BeerMerchants.com, one of the UK's most respected importers/distributors. In addition to knowing every single thing about beer, Phil also has the dream gig for a homebrewer: he gets to "home" brew on a 5bbl brewpub kit in the bustling Borough Market of downtown London at a spot called BrewWharf. Though he derives no profit from the sale of his beer at the pub (under the Saints and Sinners brand), his ingredients are paid for (as well as his meals) and he gets to bask in the glory of his ultimate homebrewing status. The other day I cleaned out the copper and helped transfer the wort to the fermenter for his latest beer, a Blind Pig clone with buckets of American hops and an aroma that gets my nostalgia glands salivating. In my spare time, when I'm not losing sleep at hostels, I've been exploring the sights and soaking in the rare English sun (it just keeps coming). Neal's Yard Dairy, right around the corner from BrewWharf, has provided me with several hunks of cheese for my nourishment needs and the market offers all sorts of luxury in food form, from meaty mushrooms to gooey brownies to giant woks of simmering seafood curries. The cheeses I've tried deserve a mention, as they've made up most of my diet here in London: there was the rounded and tangy Spenwood (hard sheep's), the curdy and pineapply Cardo (washed rind goat's), the leathery and pungent Durrus (washed rind cow's), and, of course, Stinking Bishop. I'll be back for some blues today. Oh, and I almost forgot: I didn't think I'd have the time (or, frankly, the interest) but the World Cup has sucked me in. BrewWharf has a massive screen and I've nearly had the whole thing to myself during the day. Brings me back to good old Oh-Six, biking around Ireland with Tim and Brooke, crashing the local pubs (turning several heads upon our entrance) for an hour or two of the world's greatest game.

I bused down to London after a most pleasant final week with Cat and Kelly, working for Thornbridge. Pleasant for me, I have to admit, but Kelly was in rough shape. That's what a snapped Achilles tendon will do to ya. His surgery was the day before I left, so I saw him off in the hospital with Cat (the doctors there use "Western" medicine, but I thought all he needed was a footbath in St. Petersburg). Before the bout of pick-up rugby crippled the brewing legend, we'd enjoyed some more fine days of BBQing Kiwi-style, oddly-shaped pigskin tossing, badminton thwopping, and Rock Band jamming. Cat and I created the most dee-lish lamb curry using a mixture of prepared spices and our own secret blend to create a slow-cooked leg of lamb fit for a starving king. In the brewhouse, a new arrival to the Thornbridge team eased the days of racking, cask-washing, cleaning, and brewing supervision. Nigel, the only other Englishman (well, he lived in Australia for a while) besides Matt, joined me in the learning process at the Riverside brewery. It was perfect timing - the newbie replaced the exit of the old newbie. The oldbie. On my final (working) day, I was lucky enough to witness the joy of brewing at the Hall brewery. The sun was spreading its vast warmth and the clouds were mere wisps of decorative fluff in the sky as Andrea brewed a batch of Wild Swan destined to be aged on coconut shavings. I held a bag for the sake of the camera as Andrea shoveled out spent grain.

It was a glorious last weekend, especially for one last not insignificant crumb of news. I'll be joining the ranks of the employed when I return to the States in July. After hearing from Jeppe Jarnit-Bjergsø and Ryan Witter-Merithew of a young, energetic, ambitious brewer from up the road in Vermont, I immediately searched out his blog and found a shared appreciation for great beer and great environment. Shaun E. Hill, formerly a brewer for Nørrebro Bryghus in Copenhagen and founder of the Danish Grassroots Brewing, has hired me as an assistant at the new Hill Farmstead Brewery in North Greensboro. Winning two gold medals (SEVEN Russian Imperial Stout aged in a port barrel and Port Barrel Barleywine) and one silver (Viking Oud Bruin) with Nørrebro at the most recent World Beer Cup, Shaun aims high and will be focusing his efforts on sculpting his own vision for a brewery in elegant New England. We'll be creating beers with refined hop characters, saisons of different sorts, barrel-aged beauties, and other specialties that will not cease to impress, I'm sure. I'm way too excited, been losing a lot of crucial sleep over it, but once the initial buzz stabilizes I'll be ready to get to WORK!

Keep checking for more slices of the latest. I'll be back in Belgium with Urbain and Struise soon before finally leaving for the green fields and forests of New England in the summer, so expect at least one more newsletter and pretty pictures too...

The Yeasts That Run My Life: Thornbridge Brewery, Rail Ale, and Spontaneous Fermentation

2010-05-31T14:23:00.012-04:00

The Thornbridge (Riverside) Brewery, clockwise from 11 o'clock: lauter tun, mash tun, kettle, HOPNIK!

I've officially made the jump: the Marblers have seen me off as I continue this whirlwind of a trip down south to Derbyshire. I'm now in the hands of one of the UK's most successful breweries, Thornbridge, where tradition and innovation bind to inspire clean, hoppy, rich, yummyful beers. Thornbridge's original 10-barrel (UK) brewery was inaugurated just five years ago at the Thornbridge estate in Ashford-in-the-Water but now most of the brewing takes place in Bakewell, where a blindingly beautiful, spotless stainless steel brewery (30 UK bbls - that's barrels, not bubbles) has recently been constructed. I've lucked out yet again for housing, with a roomy loft in the apartment of a pair of lively and utterly charming Kiwis above the award-winning Coach and Horses pub. Kelly manages Thornbridge's production, occasionally brews more experimental beers at the small brewery, and acts as the main marketing man for special events. Cat runs the Coach, inside and out, and has dragged me outside a couple times to help with some landscaping tasks here and there. I have to say, the petunias and geraniums I planted by the pub sign look very festive. I really ought to come back a master chef; Cat and Kelly are effortless in the kitchen. By effortless I mean the opposite of inactive. During a spate of uncharacteristically warm and sunny weather, we had a barbecue binge and grilled a plethora of lamb and sausage, balancing the meat with mounds of fresh salad mixed with herbs and rocket from the garden. Kelly's keen on finding wild edibles, too. So far he's prepared grilled puffballs, wild garlic (with spelt pasta and deep-fried sage leaves), and he's even cooked up a few mouth-watering morsels of a poor wood pigeon that met its maker by flying into some netting outside the house. I've had my first taste of smoked wild boar as well, though I'm not sure if Kelly rassled that down himself or if it was farmed. Cat has a special talent for whipping up quick and tasty salads. I'm going to keep my eye on her in the kitchen and try to convert myself to a regular salad-eater.

View from a Derbyshire hike

The two breweries are lovely, lovely places. The Hall brewery, located at the private estate, was installed in an old stonemasonry/joinery shed in 2004 and sits adjacent to the greenhouse with a view overlooking the Hall's rooftop. I haven't witnessed a brew (that's next week) but I've tagged along for some quick gravity checks and also helped prepare a conditioning tank for the transfer of Kelly's new coffee milk stout. JK, another Kiwi brewer (born in England, though), and I dissolved a few kilos of lactose in hot water, tossed this and some locally-roasted whole coffee beans into the conditioning tank, and transferred the fermented beer into the tank to condition for a while. The Hall brewery is where the brewers come to play. It's small, a bit cramped with several people, but a nice example of how to keep a small brewery clean and efficient. The timberframe shed gives it that rustic appeal I'm always a sucker for.

Nigel the Curious and Sefano the Bashful

On the other hand, the 30-bbl brewery at the Riverside industrial park in Bakewell is eye candy for the hypochondriac in us all. The dayglo green floors highlight the beautiful blue-silver stainless steel tanks and pipework that snakes around the spacious whitewashed walls. Cleanliness and quality are the buzz words here and that effort comes out in the beer. The ridiculously international team consists of Matthew and newcomer Nigel (Englishmen), Kelly and JK (Kiwis), Stefano and Andrea (Italians), and some clueless American temp worker. This is the first brewery I've worked at that uses a lauter tun. The lauter tun has a mixer within to give a good mix to the mash, after which it's pumped to the mash tun to create a filter bed for run-off and sparging. Riverside is also one of only a few breweries in the world that use a certain device to provide hop aromas to the finished wort. Called a Hopnik, it's a hipster form of hopback that continuously circulates all or a portion of the hot wort through a oxygen-free chamber of hops to maximize contact time and area. Instead of adding hops to the wort, wort is added to the hops. After this cycle the wort is sent through the heat exchanger and into a fermenter. The computer-intense tasks are left to the guys who actually know what they're doing (brewing, for instance, is predominantly computer-controlled) but I'm honing my skills as a perceptive shadow, hovering over shoulders and asking too many questions. Most of the labor I've contributed is in the form of cask washing and racking - and there's plenty of that to do. I get to use a vacuum-powered cask lifter to stack the racked casks on pallets, but I think I still prefer lifting them for the exercise. Gotta get those quads to bulge.

Living above a pub has its perks. Living above a Thornbridge-owned pub has even more. I've jumped on the Jaipur bus and have found that the light biscuity background and grapefruity hops are a perfect accent to the strong flavors of a barbecue. Its cousin, Kipling, edges towards a softer, more tropical fruit-like character from New Zealand hops for a great quaff on its own. Always a sucker for the bigger beers, I've quickly developed a liking for the bottled versions of the robust, chicory-ish St. Petersburg imperial stout and the Halcyon fresh-hopped imperial IPA.

Rails and real ales

I can't sign off just yet. I have a couple more items I should share, given that they've contributed to both my extreme fatigue as of late, and thus my dearth of entries, and to the enrichment of my ever-developing palate. To put it well-windedly. First, a couple weekends ago, I said my goodbyes to Dom and the Marble crew by volunteering at the Rail Ale beer festival. Held in an old and fascinating roundhouse for trains - y'know, the equivalent of that piece that turns in a circle from those wooden train toy kits we all used to play with as snot-noses - it had over 150 cask beers on tap with live music and a selection of fine English grub. Pork scratchings. If you've never encountered pork scratchings, be thankful. They might have them in the American south, but in England they like them textured. Present at the festival was Malcolm Downie, a sympathetic and sturdy man from the ol' Broch and a brewer for Fyne Ales in Scotland. The connections between us are circumferentially entwining; we were doomed to meet, I think. I first heard of him as a fellow lifter at the Broch Iron Gym (acronymically appropriate) in Fraserburgh, which is where he grew up. He eventually moved and found a job at Fyne Ales on Loch Fyne, where Kelly from Thornbridge first spent his time in the UK to gain more brewing experience. Dom from Marble befriended Malcolm through the brewing trade and eventually introduced me to him (he walked into the Marble brewery as I was finishing my first comfortable independent brew, Beer 57, for which I'm forever thankful to the Marble crew). Incidentally, and to add to the ties that bind, Martin from BrewDog - and the Broch - was an original brewer for Thornbridge before moving back home to brew his own.

Civilized lambic tasters

Not to be out-fested, Belgium beckoned me with its own offering. Just this past weekend I was lucky enough to be invited by Phil Lowry of BeerMerchants.com and Saints and Sinners Brewing, Mark Dredge of Pencil and Spoon, and Pete Brissenden of Hopdaemon Brewery to the Weekend of Spontaneous Fermentation. This festival of lambic, gueuze, kriek, and a handful of other spontaneously-fermented beers drew a buzzing but not hectic crowd of dedicated lambic lovers to a remote spot outside of Brussels, in Payottenland. I boarded a bus to London where I met Phil in Greenwich, popped into the pretty Meantime Brewing pub (home to some of Michael Jackson's beer collection), had a bite to eat at Brew Wharf where Phil brews, and headed to Kent for the night before heading off. Phil's main job is at BeerMerchants but has the dream hobby gig; he gets to brew at Brew Wharf on their 5-bbl system. And brew he does. I tried the creamy and spicy Caufield's Rye and the nose-singeing, wonderfully aromatic Hopster to both calm and cut through the crisp fish and chips that made my dinner. I'll be moving in with Phil in two weeks' time to see the sales side of the biz and perhaps to brew a guest beer. Miller's Super Duper Genuine Draft.

Two Fonteinens

Talk about nostalgia. Belgium greeted us with pleasantly mild weather and my good friend Urbain greeted us with a few beers at Struise, our first stop. We had a massive tasting, as is Struise custom, of the new range of beers including Sint Amatus, Mocha Bomb and Black Mes. All were just phenomenal - rich, chewy, balanced, and each with its own unique set of aromas and complexities, from smooth dried fruits to earthy coffee and peat, to keep us sipping. As a chaser, we sampled a fresh Westvleteren 12 and, to be perfectly honest, it couldn't hold a candle to the Struise lineup. It was grainy, thin, and without the robustness I've enjoyed just a few months ago. I dunno what's up. But Urbs was in top form, at least, and we had a nice visit with him and Carlo. I told them to prepare for my imminent return. Next up was Drie Fonteinen where we met Armand and sampled some of the last of the lambic he brewed himself. The cellar was filled with barrels of his blends and smelled of must, mildew, wood, and wonderful spicy, fruity scents emanating from the bung of each barrel. In the corner sat a few shelves of ripening cheese made with lambic, big hunks of shiny golden goodness. As we sipped our smooth and inviting copper treats, Armand gave us an impassioned speech about the lost art of lambic blending. Lambic brewers and blenders are generally impassioned people; any career that involves producing a finicky, unpredictable product that won't be available for sale for at least three years is bound to attract people with more than a sliver of passion. Another one exists in the form of Jean Van Roy, whom we met and talked with at his brewery, Cantillon. This was my second time visiting but this time Jean busted out a specialty - not for sale anywhere, Ratebeerians - and treated us each to a taste. It was a lambic aged in cognac barrels, and it was perhaps one of the best beers I've had: notes of caramel, pears and crab apples, vanilla, and decayed leaves came through in the aroma and taste to give the smooth tart lactic acid character a perfect bedfellow. Anywho, the lambic festival itself came and went without incident. But I tried quite a number of classic lambics and vintages as well, one of the more notable being Boon Gueuze Mariage Parfait. Why, you ask? Honestly, I don't remember. But I remember thinking, "A stemmed glass of this with a Spanish omelet for dinner would be spectacular." The remainder of our trip, though dominated by car time, was quite pleasant, given the state of my stomach lining.

Everything Jean pours turns to gold

I'm back now, at the Coach, and laboring contentedly at Thornbridge. Lots of casks need washing and racking, but I hear a beer needs brewing at the Thornbridge Hall brewery next week. I'll start polishing my wellies.

My Carhartts Are Crusted With Wort and Yeast

2010-05-20T03:19:00.003-04:00

It's not often that I drink and write. You might be surprised by this, given that it's a much more reasonable and enjoyable combination than the alternative. It's just that I'm often, um, wittiest, I guess, in the morning so I generally choose to write then, when I'm still slurping the milk from my cereal. But now I'm enjoying a bottled E from The White Shield Brewery in Burton-Upon-Trent. It's supposed to taste like the original Bass before they sold out. It's crisp, malty, slightly chewy, and has a floral/herbal hop zip in the finish. Not bad. More on how this got in my hands later.

I must pay homage to the relentlessly accepting and generous crew at Marble. In just two days' time I'll be off their hands and on my own again (for a day), but, as with all of my brewery stints, time has been too short. Four and a half weeks came and went like the sequel to that car movie with Vin Diesel. In that short time I've gained a mother in the form of Jan, owner and operator of the Marble pubs and breweries, who provided me with some of the most comfortable living I've probably ever enjoyed as a guest. She came just short of brushing my teeth for me in the evenings. I've been brought jigging and karaoking by the bar staff and have been force-fed incredibly pungent, beautiful cheeses (Epoisse, Stinking Bishop, Blue Stilton) by the chefs. And, last but by no means of measure the least, I've developed some mad man-crushes on my heroes in the brewery: Dom, Colin, and James. Perhaps I was ready, perhaps not, but they've allowed me an incredible amount of freedom in the brewery (always under a watchful eye, of course) to develop my abilities as a brewer. I know I can make Dom and Colin red in the face with questions, and James just blatantly irritated, but their patience with me and transfer of knowledge of small-scale, taste-centric brewing has not gone unappreciated.

Soaking and aerating the barley at the Carling Maltings

(Editor's note: it's now the next morning and I'm no longer drinking a beer.) Today I'll brew Ginger Marble at the Arch brewery. I'm having a hearty breakfast now of oatmeal and Nutella, with coffee on the side. Then I'll bike half an hour to the brewery, let the sweat evaporate, and start warming up the mash tun. It's my second-to-last day and I'd like to make a smooth one. This weekend there's a beer festival, Barrow Hill Beer Festival to be precise, at which I'll be serving beers (from whom, I'm not sure. Marble or Ashover, I hope) and after which I'll be spending my first night at the Coach and Horses, officially reporting to duty for Thornbridge. However, Marble won't see the last of me then. Two days ago a colony was propagated. A colony of yeasties, natives of Belgium, that will happily eat the sugars in the wort from a big, double Chocolate brew that will happen next week. I've been invited to come back for the day to witness this epic event. The result will be on tap at De Molen's beer festival in September (remember my post from Borefts last Halloween? Time flies!). Man oh man I wish I could go. Alas, Double Chocolate With Belgian Yeast will not wet these lips but maybe if I pluck a hair from my head and throw it into the copper something magical will happen.

Germinating barleycorns

Well, it's been great. And last weekend I took over official Dom social duties by attending an event called Twissup. We were all apparently supposed to get Twissed Up, but instead we had a lovely day of tours and (half) pints. Basically, it was a gathering of some of Britain's most dedicated, accomplished beer writers and reviewers with a smattering of brewers. The famous Andy Mogg, a grower of chilies and a hill walker to boot, helped introduce me to the crowd and I soon warmed up to Mark Dredge (Pencil and Spoon), Pete Brissenden (brewer at Hopdaemon) and his brother, and Chunk (great food and beer pieces), among over twenty others who trekked around the streets of Burton-Upon-Trent, that home of pale ale and hard water that some of us American beer lovers only get to read about in pretty books. We had a lengthy but informative (and, admittedly, wildly interesting to a biology major) tour of the Carling maltings, owned by Molson Coors. The massive plant contained two buildings for malting the barley, one of which was a curious tower that had germinating, drying, and kilning floors at various levels. The building was loud, moist, dark, and warm, but the barley corns were happy as clams, showing off their little rootlets of growth as well as a few acrospires here and there. The acrospires are generally discouraged as they contain more precursors for DMS, that cooked-corn flavor you might find in some badly brewed beer. But, at Carling (England's #1 lager, I believe), they strive for a touch of DMS; that's what the customers expect!

A Victorian tower brewery relic

After the maltings we visited a brewery museum, home of The White Shield Brewery, a functioning artifact in the brewing world. The building and most of the brewery was quite oold, not sure exactly how old, but it was a place where I would give a leg to brew. That might hard, though, since it is also one of the few remaining Victorian tower brewhouses that utilizes gravity to do a lot of the work. Rickety stairs and towering vats is the view from the bottom, but the marvelous brick building and copper-and-wood vessels stole my heart. E is brewed here, as well as some Worthington's White Shield and P2, a fruity, juicy, molassesy imperial stout that pairs with strawberries and clotted cream like natural bedfellows. After the tour and lunch, we enjoyed some beer at various pubs and had another quick brewery tour, this time at Burton Bridge Brewery. I had to sign off early to get back at a reasonable, midnight-ish time, but the whole day was great and I've met a new crowd of like-minded imbibers. In fact, there are rumors afloat that I might be tagging along with Mark, Pete, and Phil (remember Phil, from London?) to a major lambic and gueuze festival next weekend in BELGIUM. Dom and Janine will be there, too. More on that when I know more.

Copper copper at White Shield

That's all for now. I hope to have more news (well, I hope to find time to give you the news) soon. Until then, be well, do good work, and keep reading my blog.

Of Mancs and Men

2010-05-09T11:05:00.004-04:00

73 Rochdale Road, aka Marble Arch, aka The ThunderDome

Two and a half weeks into my Mancunian expedition and it feels like ages. In a good way, of course. (Have I reported any misadventures? I feel like I should be adding some brewhouse drama in the mix. But breweries aren't very dramatic places. Unless a tank implodes.) I'm feeling more and more comfortable in the brewery, though I'm still peppering the guys with more questions than you'd find in a philosophy class. The other day Dom took me through another brew session. (I've been on a rotation of assisting the brew, washing casks, racking casks, loading the van for deliveries, labeling, cleaning vessels, and eating my way through Jan's refrigerator) I hovered around him like a midge, took notes in my little black book with my prized gold-plated Cross (which Dom stole to melt down into a nipple ring) stirred some mash here and scooped out some hops there. The note-taking process was especially helpful to synthesize all the tiny but critical steps involved in brewing, the ones involving weaving pipework and rates of flow and everything, and it felt a bit like school again though more gratifying. Earlier this week James guided me through a brew of Pint at the larger brewery down the road. This new brewery was designed to reflect the processes up the road, but the scale change complicates a few subtle but important steps. Just takes some getting-used-to.

Tiny view of the new brewery: mash tun and copper

I've also been out on a delivery run with Richard, the fourth and final brewery drone whose main job is the daily cask and bottle run around the region. We zipped around the Greater Manchester Area in the silver dented Marble van, stopping at a dozen or so pubs, bars, restaurants, bottle shops, and even a couple country clubs, rolling out the casks and chucking them down cellars or through windows if they got in the way. All the accounts coughed up money or a check, apparently a rarity, and I like to think I acted as a good imitator, standing behind Rich with my arms crossed and lips pursed. Rich was probably plenty of intimidation just because he's massive - about 6' 6" and fully bearded. In all, I think I prefer brewing to deliveries, unless I had a stellar audiobook to get through. Back in the brewery I was allowed another morsel of responsibility and independence. On Friday Colin was off and James was in a meeting with Jan, so Dom was left with a hovering apprentice and enough work for four people. He decided to take charge of the brew down the road, at the new brewery, and send me up to the pub to transfer some beer from fermenter to condition tank. It was all very exciting for me, but instead of geeking out on all the details, like explaining how to sanitize a tank and minimize yeast transfer, I'll just say it went smoothly. No pumps were shredded and the beer sits happily in its new sealed tank, chilled and settling nicely before it must be racked into casks.

Mmm... beer.

In other news, I learned how to cook a chicken today. I've also found a barn-burner of an Irish session at a pub called the Jolly Angler. Each Saturday about ten musicians play to a packed pub crowd, standing room only, and the tunes roll on and on instead of being interrupted by Guinness breaks or apathy. When I asked a plump fiddler if she'd be back again the next week, same time, I was replied with, "Well, yes. ...Why, you goin' ta burgle my house?" I'm also very much looking forward to eating swimming pools of curry. There's a strip of town called Curry Mile that I'm afraid might become my second home. I might try street life on Curry Mile.

A bit more beer news: I've been meeting a lot of interesting beerful people and hearing about a lot of beerish buzz around the UK, but one particular potentially nifty event that Marble will take part in is an online beer tasting event organized by two familiar names in the beer world: Podge and Tim Webb. I'm still not sure how it'll work, but I'm guessing it'll be something like a mix between a conference call, a Skype session, and, well, people drinking beer by themselves at home. I believe it'll center around Belgian-inspired British beers and Marble's Decadence Kriek and/or Framboise will be sacrificed. Podge hosts tours of Belgium for beer lovers and Tim Webb writes about beer, including the Good Beer Guide: Belgium that I've toted around for the last eight months and dog-eared to death. Another excitement at Marble is the recent opening of a third location. The Marble empire consists of the original, historic brewpub, the cozy Beer House in Chorlton, and now the more central, hip location that the young crowd will flock to. Here the beards and sandals will be worn not by musty, pot-bellied CAMRA elders, but by 25-year-old pot-bellied hipsters. Ah, the cycle of life.

Mr. Official next to the kitchen and back dining area

I've just heard some exciting news. (I write these entries bit by bit. It takes me about a week of chipping away to finally muster strength to publish one.) This weekend I'll be joining a group of serious beer bloggers on a dream tour of Burton-Upon-Trent. Yep, that place with the weird water that makes a lovely pale ale. Dom worked his magic and pulled the ol' switcheroo to get me in his place as he's got a busy weekend. You can check out the agenda here; apparently we're visiting a maltings, a couple breweries, several pubs, and a museum. The good folks that are going are some of the most prolific, respected beer bloggers and enthusiasts in the UK. I'm really just a poser compared to them, a phony with the beer knowledge of a dollop of salmon paté. I will enjoy it wholeheartedly, though, and do my duty by blogging about it afterwards.

Just a sweet photo of Colin and Janine at Thornbridge

And, of course, another update would not be complete without a few words on the progress of my scheming. I'm now officially in the works for a few weeks at Thornbridge. I believe I'll be staying above the Coach and Horses pub (see last entry), biking it to work, and hopefully providing them with some worthwhile labor in return for their patience in putting up with me. If I grunt loud enough when I move casks it might convince them. I'll fake a hernia, that's what I'll do.

In the spirit of Garrison Keillor: Be well, do good work, and keep reading my blog.

Marbled Musings: The Photos

2010-05-02T13:44:00.005-04:00

The Marble Brewery (mash tun, copper, hot liquor tank)

The Marble Arch Inn - check out the vaulted ceiling!

Dom hovers over the mash

Colin and Kelly inspect the hop shoots. Dom wants nothing to do with it.

Vicky, Colin, Janine, and Shooter McGavin at Coach and Horses

Approaching Lairig Ghru

Our bothy early in the morn'

That's where we came from, out of the blizzard

Firefighter Dave in a real Scottish firetruck!

One last morning at BrewDog

Marbled Musings

2010-05-02T04:35:00.008-04:00

If only I was a blogger at heart. I could pump out oodles of creative nonsense daily, coffee at my side, fingers cocked back and ready to shoot off rounds of dangerously entertaining tidbits about my time here (which now happens to be Manchester, Lancashire, UK). But alas, alack. I'm only a binge-blogger, a semi-regularist caught between the desire to record every minute of my adventure for posterity and the pseudo-justification I repeat to myself, that I should just enjoy my time as it comes and stop trying to record every damn whiff of hops in my blog. It's the same conflict of feeling I get when my mom whips out a (usually disposable) camera right in the middle of everyone having a good time. Jesus, mom, you ruined the moment, but yeah, I'll probably want that photograph in twenty years.

So now I'm struggling with what to share with you in this entry. It could take me days of straight writing to fit everything in (a combination of the excitement of nearly every minute of my trip and the fact that I write slower than death). I think what I'll do is work backwards, starting with an homage to my current, loverly hosts at Marble Brewery in Manchester, moving on to the time I hiked through a blizzard in the mountains in the coldest part of Britain, and ending with the last days I spent with the hardcore, brew-dacious crew at BrewDog. Pictures will come next in a separate entry, so be prepared for a big wall o' text here.

Aaahhh.... Marble.... what a place, what a place. For a week and a half I've been tutored in the art of brewing some of the finest cask and bottled ales in Britain by some of Britain's finest human beings. These brewers are honest, patient, upright, just a tad smelly (or a third of them are, at least), but not in the least bit common. They wear their wellies with pride. They call rubber boots wellies. They have integrity. They treat timid American intruders with the utmost compassion. And they brew damn. Good. Beer.

At the Marble Arch Inn in Manchester, Dominic, Colin, and James have taken me on and put me to work at their two adjacent breweries surrounding the 19th-century historic pub. After meeting Dom at the Pre-ZBF festival in Belgium prior to my stint at BrewDog, I harnessed the power of Facebook and built up the courage to send him a message asking if they could use an extra hand at Marble. Apparently, Dom and Colin took the owner, Jan, out for drinks, buttered her up nicely with some pints of Ginger, Chocolate, Dobber, and Decadence, and convinced her to house me for several weeks while I puttered around in the two breweries. So here I am, living with the boss (she's Irish, too) in the hip neighborhood of Chorlton, pampered like a babe, spending my days at one of the hippest breweries in the UK. Can life get better? I submit that it cannot.

Dom and Colin are two young brewers who love beer. That helps them brew great beer. They've both been fantastic teachers; they're patient and they love what they do, which makes explaining it all an obvious joy as well. I've been trying to be the best sponge I can be, absorbing their output here and squeezing out what I've learned there, learning and laboring. The original Marble Brewery is located in the back of the gorgeous Marble Arch Inn, a cozy pub with a cozy brewery where brewing is basically homebrewing on a larger scale. With a small, single infusion mash tun, copper, and hot and cold liquor tanks upstairs and four open fermenters and two conditioning tanks downstairs, the size is perfect (4.5 UK barrels); one brewer could manage a brew day on his own, but help is always appreciated. Just down the road is the new brewery, about two and half times the size of the original. Both are utilized and the majority of the beer is racked into casks for local distribution. A selection of beers are bottled, including the decadent Decadence (an imperial stout-ish beer with a soft, smooth chocolatey finish), special Special (a piquant barleywine from 2009), Decadence Framboise (avec raspberries) and Decadence Kriek (with cherries). Marble is interesting in that they condition their beers, both cask and bottled, by krausening. Basically, krausening involves removing some active yeast from one fermenting beer and adding it to an almost-fully-fermented beer as it is put into casks or bottles. This active yeast completes the fermentation, adds carbonation, and continues to develop and meld the flavors of the beer until it is ready to drink. Most other breweries I've encountered use a simple sugar solution for conditioning. This is just one example in a bottomless box of examples of why Marble is successful. If you meet or have ever met Dom, with his soft, reassuring voice and rapier wit; Colin, with his boisterous laugh and heart of pure, unadulterated gold; or James, with his expansive knowledge, experience, and stock of saucy, sly humor, I think you'd understand why Marble is what it is. James is nearly impossible to understand, however, being from Birmingham.

I've barely had time to sit still for the past week. That's OK, 'cause I can't sit still for long, anyway. No, it's no the hemorrhoids. Dom has kept me from wasting away my time on the internet by inviting me on some weekend outings. Last weekend was spent visiting Ashover Brewery in the quaint, English countryside, movie-set town of Ashover. Janine, Dom's girlfriend, brews at Ashover with her father, who runs the brewery. It's small and gee-orgeous. My kind of place. We took a nice walk around the town, huffed and puffed up some hills, quickly called it quits and went hunting for beer. A tram-crawl took us around the pubs of Sheffield where we proceeded to taste a few pints (and half-pints) of this beer region's offerings. For some silly reason (perhaps involving beer) I missed my intended train back to Manchester which turned out OK because it gave us the opportunity to try more beer at the awesome Sheffield Tap, right at the station, until I caught the last train. (Actually, after feeling a cold coming on, I had transitioned from half-pints of bitters to pints of life's sweetest nectar: straight, cold tap water.)

As the week flew by, I coped with the Marble cold that was making the rounds, toiled in the brewery, bottled and labeled beers, threw some caustic solution around, and prepared for another trip to the countryside. Dom, Colin, Janine, Vicky (from behind the Marble bar) and I weaved through hill, dale, and moor to find ourselves at the gate of the Thornbridge Estate, home of Thornbridge Hall and, much more importantly, the original Thornbridge Brewery. If you want a trifecta of solid, established, innovative UK breweries, well, Thornbridge completes it. With a duo of breweries, Thornbridge squirts out a lot of lovely beer, both traditional and new-age, and touring both brewing facilities gave me goosebumps. The smaller, older, more traditional brewery on the estate is where the dirty brewing goes down and is where Kelly, one of three head brewers, met us first for a tour. I met Kelly at Pre-ZBF as well, and he and Dom both struck me with their interest and knowledge of brewing. Kelly, bless him, is a Kiwi. His brewmates are Italian and English and they know their shit. Kelly also has silvering hair, ladies, and will charm your socks off. He works at both breweries and can exercise his craftier side at the small one and his technical side at the large one. We weaved through the eight-ish barrel (UK) brewery, discussing this year's hop crop and other brewer babble, and made our way outside where Kelly showed us his hop vine-growing project as well as his little garden of herbs that find themselves in the beer here and there. We sampled some Bracia, fermented with chestnut honey, and an old ale collaboration with Dark Star, pulled straight from the conditioning tank where it has been laying dormant for 14 months. We then drove down the road to the new brewery, set in a relatively posh industrial park near Bakewell, another fantasy town (devoid of a good pub, though). This new Thornbridge brewery, on par with the size of BrewDog, is a wonder of brewing engineering. Spotless, sparkling, full of stainless steel, and confusing as hell, the brewery produces plenty of beer. I will continue to struggle with volumes, since hectoliters, UK barrels, and US barrels are not all one in the same, but it was big. Kelly talked us through the process, pointing to shiny things and buttons, though I did get the sense that, despite the industrial appearance, lab, and obvious emphasis on consistency and control, there's plenty of personality and craft that make it into each batch. Later that night we wined and dined, or beered and smeared, if you will, at The Coach and Horses, the local Thornbridge-owned pub. The cheer was ubiquitous and our crew was in full form to destroy some fine food and beer. I muscled down a soufflé, complete with the acute accent, and Dom whipped out some Russian River Consecration to aid our digestion. Colin presented some Oak Aged Podge from Alvinne and Kelly busted out a couple New Zealish beers, including one made with a special, citrusy, almost tropical in character fruit that tickled my tongue. Throughout the night we soaked up a number of tasty Thornbridge brews as well. Cat, Kelly's girlfriend and Coach manager, joined us for the meal and cheer.

That gives you a glimpse of my Mancunian experience, but, as per yooj, I've left out more than I should. So feel free to email me to get some behind-the-scenes reportage.

Before being welcomed to Manchester, though, I was able to do some proper legwork. Legsercises. My calves needed some toning, so I shaved 'em, rubbed some insta-tan on 'em, and took off for the one place in Scotland I knew I could achieve that chiseled butt-cheek look for my calf muscles: the Cairngorm Mountains. Jenia and Ali, two couchsurfing friends from Aberdeen, kindly invited me for a weekend of hiking along the Lairig Ghru, an old route through the mountains first utilized by shepherds and their poor, poor sheep. We got lost a couple times, brought way too much food (including a separate tub of mayonnaise to dip the pre-cooked hot dogs in), slept half a night in a pool of rainwater, and hiked for half a day through a blizzard in the UK's coldest region. But we had a blast and I'm inspired to return to the Highlands for more. The views were stunning in their diversity and humble beauty. Our first day was replete with rolling, heathery mountains before bloom and complexly rich muddy hues; the second day started off with a blizzard and brought us through a vast glen walled in by extreme cliffs caked with snow, down through a Scots pine forest smelling of the sweetest pitch and finally onto flat, marshy land. We forded a river at the very end and probably just avoided hypothermia.

All of this, of course, was preceeded by my final days at that powerhouse of an establishment, BrewDog. I'll miss those nuts, the whole crew, from Skinny (who gave me some Buckfast for the road... I have yet to crack it open) to the Aussies to Franzie to Dave to the legendary Polskis to the cheerful fishermen to the wonderful Kelly and Angela to Martin and James, the prodigies behind the beer. I think that I should give special props to Stewart "Bowman" Bowman. I couldn't have asked for a better brewhouse teacher and mentor in that situation; his patience and thoroughness were amazing and amazingly helpful and the guy is a hard working sonofabitch. I forgive him for his absolute hatred of anything resembling hip hop. So to finish off my time, I continued to put in my money's worth and even progressed to the point where Stewart sort of left me in charge of at least most of a brew, from mashing in through run-off through boiling and finally to casting the wort into a fermenter. Sparging was the most stressful step for me, as keeping the mash bed correctly buoyant is a skill not easily obtained. But I got through it without spilling a single hectoliter of beer. I had a day off in there somewhere during which my man Firefighter Dave turned off his volunteer firefighter beeper and invited me and some of his friends over for a barbecue. The sun was out, almost hot, and we slaked our thirst with a few Trashy Blonde underfills (rejects from the bottling line) and let our skin slowly toast from the sun and the heat of the barbie. On my last night in Fraserburgh, I wheeled Dave's Tesco grill a couple miles from his house to the brewery and treated the crew (still at work) to a come-and-get-it barbecue of sausage, burgers, and dogs, American-style. It was dark, a bit drizzly, and cold, but Jack, Red, Franz, Martin and I huddled around the coals, threw back a couple 77 Lagers, and enjoyed the simple pleasures of charred meat and company. Like I said, I'll miss those guys and that undeniably lonely town of Fraserburgh, but I'm hoping to take another final trip up to bonny Scotland and catch one last glimpse of BrewDog life.

April showers...

2010-03-31T11:47:00.004-04:00

Penguin In A Box

Fraserburgh's growing on me. The drab, grey stone buildings seem more handsome, almost stately. The vast, monotonous sea has brightened and welcomed me on its beach for a few refreshing runs on my days off. Time has handed me familiarity, leading to a certain comfort and ownership of the streets and shops. I have my favorite spots staked out: Farm Foods for four energy drinks and bunched bananas at the pound, Findlay's for the meatiest fish and chips and the cute girl behind the counter, BodyTec gym for the usual masochism and local gossip from the owner. All of this fondness is blossoming during the worst weather the region's had since winter seemed to be on its way out a month ago.

Tha brewhouse. The tall tanks are fermenters and that smaller one in the back is the kettle.

But my time is still concentrated in the caverns of the brewery that overlooks the white-capped waves and golden-green dunes. The daily schedule is regular enough: rise at 7:30 or so, chew a banana in the warmth of my bed, browse The (NY) Times for the latest surreal news from a now foreign land, chuckle at the obstinate dark puffs that have found a home under my eyes (I look a lot more tired than I feel), and meet Jack and Franz on the doorstep for a ride from Stewart. This past week I've gotten lucky as I've spent most of my time assisting Franz in brewing the necessary batches of beer. We've had Trashy Blonde, 77 Lager, and Alpha Dog marathons, back-to-back brews of each to fill their respective fermenters. It took four consecutive 50 hl brews to fill a 200 hl fermenting tank of Trashy, and right after that we did the same with Alpha. A new 200 hl tank was just installed on my days off, so now three massive tanks stand like sentries outside the brewery, guarding the inside from Nazis, fascists, and right-wing extremists and acting as our decorative seagull-shit-collectors. For each brew, Franzie and I will check out the brew sheet, assemble the necessary bags of malt and measure out the brewing salts, and begin to mash. Franz pours the pre-crushed grains into the auger and adjusts the simultaneous flow of water into the mash tun while I precariously straddle the elevated tun and use a plastic shovel to stir the rising tide of malt and water. After all the malt has been emptied into the auger, the water is shut off and the mash is allowed to sit for a healthy chunk of time. We measure the temperature and pH of the mash to make sure the enzymes will work properly. At this point, my pits are fully saturated, my face has gotten a steam treatment from poking it into the near-boiling mash tun, and my head, shoulders, and upper back are caked with a doughy film of barley malt flour from the humming auger that hangs above my head. I already could use a nice, sudsy shower, but I still need to clean out the mash tun and kettle, so I might as well save it 'til later. As the mash sits and the molecules do their job, Franz prepares for the filtration. Sometimes we have lunch at this point (by this time it can be around 2 or 3 in the afternoon). Sometimes I must stave off my hunger by drinking more instant coffee or knawing on the bits of dead skin on my hands. But usually lunch is agreed to be a good idea by the majority of us who don't have breakfast or who just have a banana in bed. So, Tesco it is. Tesco provides us with novel nourishment; Jack bought an assortment of eclairs and cream puffs which he was forced to eat in five minutes, accounting for 200% of his daily allotment for saturated fat. Stewart once bought what appeared to be half a pig. He added some limp salad greens to the side for health's sake. David got me hooked on trying all the different offerings of milkshakes; Chocolate YOP and Frij Fudge Brownie are tied for first. Franz has been creative with his inspiring run of canned haggis sandwiches (I'm still waiting to finish digesting the deep-fried haggis I had last week before I try his culinary creation). Anyway, lunch is fun, but it's soon back to the grindstone. By this time the sweet wort is being drained from and filtered by the bed of spent grain into the kettle, where it eventually comes to a boil. This is when I work my hop magic. I've had the job of weighing out the hops for the boil, and I relish every second of it. BrewDog uses hops in two forms: whole flowers (about the size of acorns, only soft) or pellets (looks like rabbit food). They're both vacuum-packed into 5 kg blocks and smell orgasmic when opened. They can be fruity, floral, herbal, minty, piney, resinous, even orange-creamy. Hops are like catnip for me, and the guys say they often find me curled into a ball behind the fermenters, scratching ferociously with my hind legs at a packet of hops. I don't remember any of these episodes. Regardless, the hops are added to the boiling wort and the next step is prepared. This next step is to 'cast' the boiled wort through a heat exchanger and into a fermenter, where yeast is added at a nice, cool and comfortable temperature to begin fermentation.

Tub o' frozen Sink the Bismarck with some inappropriate grafitti. Since water freezes before alcohol, this tub is drained to collect the concentrated beer, leaving mostly frozen water in the original vessel.

Of course, there's cleanup. Bill Dunn, brewmaster for Elm City, a local brewpub back home, told me once that to be a brewer is to be a "glorified janitor." He's right. And, for some reason, I'm embracing this with almost religious vigor. I used to hate, absolutely hate, doing chores at home, especially washing dishes. My mom can attest, after enduring years of post-meal whining. Now I volunteer to do dishes if I'm hosted for dinner, and I'm finding myself looking forward to cleaning the mash tun and kettle. It's therapeutic and relaxing and my attraction to it probably has some deep, weird psychological underpinnings, but I'll happily accept that. I enjoy it, too, because it's like taking a steambath. I actually have to remove my shirt when I clean out the piping hot mounds of spent grain, otherwise I would soak completely through it. It's my replacement for the sauna up the road at home.

Stewart digs in.

Speaking of cleaning, a few days ago I witnessed something extraordinary. It was completely destructive and almost harmless, so it was all the more glorious to witness in a safe, sheltered area, which is where I happened to be. This was April 1st - April Fool's Day for the jokers out there - late afternoon and all was well. I was digesting a pleasant tuna and cheese panini that I bought with Red, the tall Ewan McGregor-look-alike (and sound-alike, since they're both Australian). Red was digesting I think a chicken slamwich, but more importantly he was preparing about 20 kilos of hop pellets to add to a 60 hl (1,585 gallons) fermenter filled with fermenting Hardcore IPA, for that fruity dry-hop kick. To do this, someone else, not me, has to lift him up with a forklift to the top of the ceiling-high tank so he can dump the hops in the top. Well, what he and I and nearly everyone in the brewhouse didn't take into consideration was the effect 20 kilos of hop pellets would have on a beer with a hell of a lot of CO2 in solution. There are these things some academics call "nucleation points", and these are what that dissolved CO2 is looking to latch on to to come out of solution. When Red dumped in that load of hops, the beer went mental. Think Mentos in a bottle of Coke. The beer exploded, started to gush everywhere, out, up, and down. A waterfall of foamy Hardcore spewed down and around the tank, sounding much like a roaring Amazonian rainstorm, covering everyone below it in a sticky, lip-smackingly tasty blanket of beer. Meanwhile, Red was bracing the constant shower from the manway at the top, battling heroically with the pressure of the current to close the lid. After a good couple minutes of this Mentos effect of beer, Red managed to cage the beast and the last drops trickled down the tank to join the several inches that covered the brewhouse floor. Red was soaked from top to toe, Jack (who was operating the forklift) got a good shower, Stewart tried unsuccessfully to climb up the forklift in an instinctual effort to help Red, and David and I remained under cover and dry as driftwood. I think Red was actually pretty lucky he escaped with only a shower of beer and extreme stickiness; a fall from that height could have been fatal, and the CO2 up there was enough to make breathing noticeably heavier. In all, we estimate 15 or so hectoliters of 9.2% abv Hardcore was lost. It was a clever April Fool's joke that someone pulled on us, amazing and amusing to watch but expensive and labor-intensive to deal with.

The Day It Rained Beer. Red is standing on that box thing being hoisted by the forklift, somewhere in the midst of that yeasty mist.

That's it for this episode. I did take a night's trip to Aberdeen on a day off and found some nice pubs and nicer people. Ali and Jenia were my couchsurfing hosts, real sweet and good company. Ali used to be a cheesemonger, so he pointed me in the direction of a small specialty cheese shop where I bought a trifecta of UK cheeses, including a lovely washed rind that I enjoyed with a packet of crumbly oatcakes, though I got some funny looks and crinkled noses on the bus. Ali and Jenia have invited me to join them on a bit of hiking in the Cairngorms in mid-April; assuming the weather warms up a bit, that sounds like a jolly good transition from BrewDog to Marble in Manchester.

The kettle is just asking for a scrub-down.

One last pleasantry: Tim, my friend and future brewery owner from back home, tells me the Gilsum Village Store (in, er, Gilsum) now has Punk IPA! If you're not local, this means nothing to you, but I'm ecstatic that BrewDog distributes to such obscure places and that the Gilsum Store would stock such quality beers. Go beer!

Fraserburgh on a fine morning.

Some Pun Involving Dogs and Beer

2010-03-20T12:04:00.004-04:00

Last day in Belgium, washing crates, tired yet still cheery

Crates, tastes, and haste. That’s how I left Belgium. My final day with Urbain saw us joined by two well-malted Americans, Gene and GT, for a bit of crate-washing. Sixteen palettes, or 960 crates, took us an hour and a half, and we celebrated our quick work with a meal at Westvleteren Abbey’s café, In de Vrede. I had a couple sips of the 8, but my body was still trying to mend the microvilli damaged from the night before, my final night in Belgium. That final night inevitably brought on a medley of tastings, mostly Struise classics including Pannepot Reserva, much-missed and gaining my vote as the best version of Pannepot out there, and vintage Earthmonk, a more malty, buttery version that GT declared was his favorite beer. A Cantillon Organic Gueuze was de-corked as well, and the guys saw me off by cracking open two Mikkeller IPAs in the parking lot, part of a series of single-hopped IPAs; we tried the Amarillo and Tomahawk. Tomahawk was a bit brighter, more tropical, and Amarillo was more rounded with perhaps a touch of cedar-like character. Without a moment to spare, we hurried to the train, snapped a couple pictures of Urbain and I (a rarity) and were broken apart by the harsh whistle of the conductor. My time in Belgium had come to a close, and Scotland was a-waitin’.

GT, Urbs, and Gene at In de Vrede, posing for their next pop-rock album

I arrived in Edinburgh at 11 pm, dragging perhaps 35 kilos or more of luggage around, feeling like an ESPN Strong Man competitor doing that trapezius walk, releasing primitive grunts and breathing way too heavily to be in public. Calum, my couchsurfing host, greeted me excitedly and showed me the bed, which I hugged until it was morning. I couldn’t have spent a better first full day in Scotland. At noon I ate a breakfast/lunch of curried veggies at an invitingly crunchy establishment called the Forest Café, run by volunteers and catering to the vegetablists out there. I was happy to see something, anything, other than processed meat. (The next morning I exhibited culinary ambivalence and splurged on a Scottish breakfast of blood pudding, sausage, egg, ham, and buttered toast, with one-half of a roasted tomato plopped parenthetically on the plate.) At one o'clock I careened into a free walking tour of Edinburgh and was regaled with tales of body-snatching, witch-hanging, castle-building, and Stone of Destiny-stealing, after which I invited two other Americans for a drink at the Bow Bar where we partook in some of my first real ales. “Real” defines a beer as being cask-conditioned, or carbonated and matured in the cask it is served in. Yeast remains in the cask, settled at the bottom, so the beer is often considered “live.” Most of the real ales I’ve sampled in Edinburgh have been mild, malty, and sessionable. I probably destroyed my taste buds by starting this tour in Belgium, so I’ll have to go through a bit of an attenuation. A welcome attenuation.

Atop Arthur's Seat, smack in the middle of Edinburgh

After a couple half pints I had some quiche and headed over to Sandy Bell’s Bar, where the good times resonated from fiddles, guitars, flutes, and wavering Scottish voices. With a pint of Ossian and my iPod microphone at the ready, I nestled into a corner of the bar for a couple hours of traditional Scottish and Irish tunes and a few gorgeous songs. My heart filled to the brim with that melancholy satisfaction I get from those purest of melodies, and I knew my time in Scotland would not leave me wanting…

An Edwardian bar in Edinburgh, boasting some fine whiskies

The Bow Bar

… despite the isolation of my next stop, Fraserburgh! Yes, after another day in lively Edinburgh, perusing the Museum of Ancient Metal and Dirt (Nat’l Museum of Scotland – really cool) and getting schooled in the art of whisky tasting by my equally enthusiastic host Calum, I choo-choo’d my way up to a very northeast corner of Aberdeenshire county, home of the great fishing town of Fraserburgh and also home of the great yet still young BrewDog brewery, where I’ll be working another several weeks as a blunt brewing object. I’ve been here only one week and already my hands are raw and replete with dings, scrapes, blood blisters, yet medicated with a green sheen of hop resins. A lot of Nelson Sauvin and Amarillo!

I have to admit: it’s been tough here. The brewery runs 24 hours a day and production is continually increasing. BrewDog owes its success to hard work by everyone here in the brewery, its killer marketing strategies, and, most importantly, the high-quality range of beers it produces to back up its assertive, guerrilla, jungle-warfare marketing techniques. There’s a rotating staff for day and night shifts, each 12 hours long, and the work involves brewing, cleaning, kegging, bottling, packaging, and everything in between. When I first arrived and heard the schedule, I couldn’t imagine I’d be a very happy camper. I like to do other things than brew; I like reading and playing music and having time to take showers. I mean, what about useless internet time? Where was that? That, dear readers, is being replaced by a good, honest day’s work after which I can come home, have a beer that I really earned, and know that I’m learning a helluva lot about brewing damn good beer. Ideally, in a perfect, flowery world filled with unicorns and friendly leprechauns, I would be working in a smaller-scale, more aesthetic brewing environment (I’m really a sucker for environment), but I have no complaints about my time at BrewDog thus far. Bring on the brew, dogg.

So, what’s it all like? First of all, the sea breeze is amazing. The breeze is usually from the southwest, the mainland, but it intermingles with the crusty, salted, oily, burnt-rubber odors that emanate from the harbor and its boats to announce Fraserburgh’s proximity to the sea and dependence on fishing. The town is peppered with drab buildings and is unbearably gray, cut through like lard and relieved of its lipid oppression only by the occasional blinding blue sky and silver clouds of a bright day; the lime-green seaside grass atop rolling dunes makes for a nice view from the beachfront brewery as well. Each day I arise to the cries of the roosters of the coast, those prolific gulls, and head to work with a few other semi-temporary BrewDog employees from the unofficial BrewDog guesthouse. Along with James and Martin, the Emperor Penguins of the brewery; Nara, Angela, and Kelly, the callused computer-typers/office workers; Stew, Graeme, David, and Skinny, native Scots with full-time brewery responsibilities; a handful of weathered, part-time fishermen working in the packaging department; and another handful of Polish handymen (Fraserburgh has a curiously large Polish contingent), I’m joined by a few brewery mercenaries on a slightly similar track as mine. These guys are all about my age and are undergoing a three-month trial period at BrewDog, after which each party will decide whether further employment is appropriate. Jack and Red are from Down Under, presumably descendants of expelled moonshiners, and Franz is a pils-drinking Dusseldorfian and proof that Sink the Bismarck was all for a bit of a laugh. Speaking of Sink the Biz, we (or mostly Jack and Stew) just extracted, mega-dry-hopped, and bottled the latest batch, all of which I think is pre-sold. Sorry. It had more of a bite than I remember at Pré-ZBF, perhaps due to the punch released by those fresh hop oils. Zing!!! Other goings-on at the brewery have included kegging nearly 7,500 liters of Trashy Blonde for a beer festival hosted by a chain of Scottish pubs (I know, we shouldn't have), brewing batch after batch of beer including Zeitgeist and Punk IPA, and watching as Stew works his magic trying to fiddle with a fussy bottling machine. Stew, dubbed “Big Stewart” by the fishermen and sporting loud tattoos and a dominating “strawberry-blonde” goatee, does not, by any standard, look like a patient man. Yet, after six hectic and scrambling hours tinkering with a malfunctioning bottling machine, Stew finally admitted, “I’m starting to lose my patience with this thing.” I also hear he’s only once punched a dude.

Tomorrow I work a half-day and will take some pictures while I’m at it. I hope to see the newest Dog, Tom Cadden, who’s regional sales manager for the London area and a highly advanced (and, again, young) taster with over 6,000 beer reviews on Ratebeer. I’ll have much more to say about my time here, the lads, bruces, burghers, and two lassies that I work alongside, and my seemingly endless future plans (… Marble Brewery in Manchester and Saints and Sinners in London, for starters) after a few more busy, busy days.

A Nice, Smooth Finish (to Belgium)

2010-03-08T02:22:00.009-05:00

Less than two days is all I have left here in gentle Belgium, the country I've spent the most time in behind the majestic America. I'm not sure what I'm feeling now, if anything, as I reflect on my time here and accept my imminent departure. (I spent yesterday alone, packing for Scotland, eating a truly Belgian lunch of a hard-boiled egg surrounded by a meatball and a dinner of blood sausage, yet I'm not sure if I'll miss or celebrate leaving this unique gastronomy.) Emotions are stewing, though, and will undoubtedly bubble to the surface as soon as the familiarity of this place is lost to the rhythm of another. Years down the road I look forward to flashes of nostalgia and bursts of longing to come back as I whiff a Belgian scent (mustardy farm rot, perhaps), ingest a Flemish morsel (stoofvlees, or beef stew, maybe), or catch a note of the soft staccato of Dutch from an ex-pat in America. Mostly, I will miss the people that made this a most welcoming and enjoyable trip. When, not if, I return to Belgium to visit, I will retrace my steps and visit all the families and individuals that hosted or shared a few beers with me. Next time, though, I think I'll come during the summer.

The Elliot mash

Above all, I have to thank my two primary hosts, Daniel and Urbain. Despite what Urbain says, I feel enormously indebted to them. (I feel a little like Greece might about the EU, but I haven't yet approached Wall Street for help. Too soon? OK.) Thoughts of them will surely come to me even when I'm old and decrepit, after I've passed the reins of my empire of beer onto the next generation, and my mood will brighten. Their impact on my ambitions, aspirations, and motivation, both professionally and generally, is comparable only to my family, close friends, and a small handful of others. In fact (and of course), I consider them close friends now; with the help of modern communication developments, they'll stay that way for a long time to come.

Menno and Urbain talk Black Damnation logistics

Since last week and that flurry of auctions, we've been as busy as ever. It was a mad rush of blending beers, filling kegs, brewing beer, and transferring the zeitgeist of Struise to Lakebosschen Castle in Ruddervoorde in preparation for the Pré-ZBF beer festival. Urbain's chin-length locks were again a blur as we scrambled around the school brewery and Deca, dragging kegs around, looking for parts, and organizing the eternal clutter that typifies, well, everything. I just got my ears lowered, so my hair was stiff as close-cut Kentucky bluegrass. Otherwise, we might have gotten lost in our mess of hair. Thursday morning was brewing time for Elliot, a crazily-hopped double IPA named after Jeppe's son. It was formerly a Struise/Mikkeller collaboration but Urbain has adopted the recipe. Deca was filled with a spicy, fruity fog of American noble hops and pale ale malt as the brew was successfully mashed, filtered, and boiled. At noon, Menno from the Dutch Brouwerij De Molen rolled into the brewhouse with a tank full of something black, thick, and alcoholic; he said something about Hel and Verdoemenis. I think he had used some of it as fuel to drive to Belgium, but Urbain pumped the rest into a tank filled partway with that Black Albert we brewed the other week. Rootah, Vootah, Zoot! Black Damnation!

Carlo whips up sumpin' good

After the yeast was happily swimming in 32 hectoliters of beer, and with no time to lose, Urbain and I drove to the castle to set up for the big dance. Crap, what a place! By no means particularly medieval, this place was still so grandiose that I fell silent and felt a pang of envious wonder at the thought of living in such an other-worldly domicile. It's not a big castle, and its architecture is a bit mix-and-match with stone, wood, and metalwork intermingled, but it all basically worked and was plopped in the middle of a maze of woods, gardens, and water. A few white geese honked royally to announce our trespassing. Set-up was rushed but perfectly timed, as thirsty beer hunters wandered in just as the kegs were tapped. Struise had an epic line-up for the two festival nights: Struiselensis, Pipe Dream, Earthmonk, Pruned Monk, Dopple Strauss, Pannepot, Sint Amatus, and old-school Dirty Horse. There might've been more, but I was swept away, most coincidentally, to serve beers for another brewery that was missing its representative. That turned out to be BrewDog, the very place I'll be in a few short days.

After pouring a few 77 Lagers, everyone moved over to the main dining hall for a few drams of whisky, whisky-aged beer, and some bites of Glenn's beef stew made with Mano Negra and Mark's bread made with roasted malt and beer yeast. I stayed nearly dry that night but wolfed down that delicious sustenance as I was once again whisked away for work, this time dish duty (I was getting treated to a bed at a local B&B, beer samples, and food, so I kept my grumbling to myself and my dish partner, David). At the end of a late night, I relished the respite of my bed and hoped Friday would bring more socializing and less scrubbing.

Friday was, in fact, one of the best beer festival experiences I've had. The day started out well, as a spread of cheeses - bloomy, penicillined, and piquant alike - greeted us with full aromatic pomp. After breakfast I joined two guys from De Molen for a walk to the castle; the sun dissolved most of my sleep deprivation and gave me a kick of endorphins. To accommodate the surging influx of festival-goers, and because Friday evening was also the night of another beer festival elsewhere, the gates opened at 10 am. The four faces of Struise, Urbain, Carlo, Peter, and Phil, each had a hand on a tap and another in the hand of an idolatrous beer lover so I transferred my labor to the cozy BrewDog corner next to a crackling fireplace and was kept busy cracking open bottles with a guy I think I'll be spending much more time with soon; Martin, BrewDog's founder and brewer, arrived just in time to throw me a company shirt before the first tasters dribbled in.

The castle. One of three pictures I took during the whole festival. I'll put up a link to other photos as soon as other people put them up, unless they were all as busy as I was.

The first beer poured from the BrewDog stand, at 10:05 am, was Sink the Bismarck. Later in the day, I tried a sip myself; at 41% abv, the alcohol is unavoidably present, but the tasting experience isn't really comparable to taking a dram of whisky or a sip of rum. It's not quite flat, buoyed by a very fine, slight carbonation, and the taste creeps up exponentially in your mouth the way an intensely sour hard candy or fiery hot pepper gradually tickles your salivary glands. The flavor is sweet from both the alcohol and concentrated residual sugars, not overly bitter, yet so incredibly hoppy that some flavor notes were present that I never thought possible in a beer. Salty, piney, resinous, fishy, grapefruity - strange yet wonderful. I also tried the Tactical Nuclear Penguin, a 32% abv sixfold stout, and lavished that one mouthful that satisfied my sweet, bitter, and smoky "teeth" to the extreme. Until 8 pm, Martin and I sat behind the bar and served the happy customers samples of some of the UK's best beers. I think it was just loud enough, and my Yankee accent just twangy enough, for the Englishmen who passed through to not fully understand that I wasn't Scottish. At the end of the night, out of all the beers poured at the BrewDog bar, the one that kicked first was Nanny State, their nearly alcohol-free beer (0.5% abv) of surprising character and hoppy robustness. It's my new favorite, and I can't wait to get my hands on some for the muggy American summer that's approaching.

Pré-ZBF was a theatrical ending to my time here in Belgium. When all the characters in a play come back on stage for that song- and dance-filled finale, that's what it was like. Everyone was there: Glenn and Davy from Alvinne; Menno and the De Molen crew; the old festival volunteer crew of David, Mark, Stephan, and Youri; those intrepid beer journalists William, David, and Sofie; the English Geeks Mes, Sim, and Ian; Uli, that crazy German lambic-blending genious; those Italians Lorenzo Dabove, the Prince of the Payottenland, and Alex "Alora, Ciao" Liberati; Luc from Zythos; and some others I'm sure I missed. There were plenty of folks to meet, too; it ain't just, "Here's your beer, now scram, kid!" The Thornbridge brewers, Kelly and Matthew, were able to leave their stand for a visit, brewer Tom from Twickenham Fine Ales had a good spot next to fire and chatted with me for a while, Dominic from the Marble Brewery in Manchester enjoyed his time at the BrewDog nook, and I was able to meet a three-dimensional Ryan, known previously only through Facebook. I hope to see all of these kindred spirits in the future, perhaps for a beer or a brew, hopefully the latter.

I'm looking forward to Scotland. Martin was great company during the festival, and James was chipper and inviting on the phone. It'll be hard work up there, especially with the March winds whipping in from the sea, but I'll tack it up as more invaluable experience and perhaps have some good times with the Dogs to boot. My plans are still as open as a kilt, but I wouldn't mind seeing Scotland in the spring. Who knows, a summer back in Belgium might just have to happen, too...

Gettin' Some Auction

2010-03-01T04:36:00.004-05:00

I thought I'd punch in one more entry before the ball of this busy week gets rolling. This Thursday and Friday is the highly anticipated Pré-ZBF Festival, the event that long ago I declared as the climax to this Belgian brewing adventure. I've already bought a plane ticket to Scotland for next Tuesday, where I hope to maintain the buzz I've felt during my time with Struise. This coming week, however, will be packed tighter'n canned sardines marinated in soybean oil. We've got several beers to keg, including Earthmonk, Mokkabom (aka Black Damnation II: BD fermented on whole coffee beans), Black Mes (Black Damnation aged on Caol Isla Distiller's Edition '95 whisky), and Coffeeclub (Black Damnation II aged on Havana Club rum). These new BD beers are part of a developing collection of a dozen beers based on Black Damnation that will be released in the coming months. In addition, Struise will be serving Sint Amatus, a newly released oak-aged quad of sorts, some of the original batch of Black Albert from 2008, Pipedream, and a keg of the original Dirty Horse (this kriek-like beer is now 25 years old, brewed back in the 80s by a young, homebrewing Urbs). In between filling every available empty cavity with beer (not, um, any body cavities... yet) we have to brew some beer, too. I mean, we are a brewery. "Elliot", a double IPA named after Jeppe's son (see previous post), will be brewed on Wednesday, and it looks like the Witte will be brewed on Thursday morn'. With the first night of Pré-ZBF, Whisky Night, exploding on Thursday, it's going to be a marathon of a day. How do you train for such a marathon? That is my question.

Nine earthy liters; I spy an unawares photographer

But before we delve into the art of being busy in the brewhouse, some loose ends must be tied up here in the schoolhouse offices. Urbain has been conjuring up some magic on The Internets, pounding out some spells on the keyboard that are making die-hard beer geeks die even harder. He's been creating some auctions for bottles of special-release beers, the profits of which will go to saving the Vleteren region's school bus service. The announcement can be found on their website, and the auctions can be found through this link. Up for sale are a bottle of 2005 Pannepot Grand Reserva, four bottles of 1983 Dirty Horse, two bottles of 2008 Earthmonk infused with La Vieille Prune (barrel-aged distillate of prunes), aaaaaaand.... one 9-liter bottle of Earthmonk proper. Earthmonk is a dangerously smooth, fastidiously blended Flanders sour ale that will satisfy your desire for a full-bodied yet refreshingly tart fruity beer. Imagine how many people you could please with 9 liters of this stuff! More auctions, and thus more beers, are on the way.

Damn Dirty Horse

Might as well make one more thing public; no sense in keeping it a secret. I'm well into ruminating over the fact that I'll need a job when I return to the States. I've been contacting as many New England breweries as possible to see if an assistant brewer position is open anywhere. So, if any of you, Dear Readers, have any leads regarding brewery work (not just in New England), I would love to hear from you. Thanks!

Beer comes out of some random tanks strewn across the farm

One last note: Carlo was feeling celebratory on Saturday, so he decided to open a beer, an American one, for us to try. Trying these American beers (a lot of West Coast beers that are hard to find in the East) makes me excited to go home, wrap the silky stars 'n' stripes around my torso, and sip all the sweet nectars Uncle Sam has to offer. What we tried was 2008 Cuvee de Tomme, from Lost Abbey. Their website describes it as "a massive brown ale base that is made from four fermentable sugars including Malted Barley, Raisins, Candi Sugar and Sour Cherries, this beer is fully fermented before being placed in Bourbon barrels where the beer ages for one year with the Sour Cherries and the wild Brettanomyces yeast that we inoculate the barrels with." I have to say it was Capital, just Capital! A hearty yet delicately tart beer with just the right amount of carbonation and dark fruit character.

Early Morning Musings

2010-02-19T03:17:00.012-05:00

Read it and weep. DSB Wild Pannepot, all ret and seady for Italy.

It's a wonder what rising from bed at four in the morning can do to one's focus and productivity. I find I either stumble out of bed, quite literally, completely disoriented, with the interrupted dream still humming in my head with more clarity than the waking consciousness, or I clear the sleepy gunk from my eyes with calm deliberateness and pull on my boots just as content and rested as if it was four hours later, as normal. At least I have some early-rising experience, a residual benefit from my job at Orchard Hill Bakery in New Hampshire, where the toasty smell of fresh bread was my coffee on those humid summer morns. This morning was a morning of the latter type, despite it being the fifth 4 AM morning in the past eight days. I feel friggin' GREAT! Perhaps it's the double-strength coffee I made; I'm still getting used to the beans-to-water ratio. And I think I'm developing an ulcer.

Alex and Urbs do the SuperRoll Shuffle

Urbain and I have been brewing up a storm, though this morning was early to assist Nicolas during the mash for Deca Brouwerij's Antiek Blond. Yesterday was a Pannepeut brewing day for us, and all went well. Mashing seems to be one of the trickier aspects of brewing at Deca, given the 100-year-old mash tun and filtering system. The malted barley is "stewed" for a good amount of time (for acidification and protein and starch degradation) before the husks of the grain act as a natural filter to separate the sweet liquid, wort, from the mash solids before boiling begins. The filtration system at Deca consists of three valves that run off wort by gravity, and tweaking these valves to steadily and successfully leak out clear wort is an art form in itself. This skill has to be blended with the ability to hit the desired gravity (essentially, the amount of dissolved sugars) of the wort;this variable is tweaked by adding water to dilute the wort or, later, adding fermentable sugars during the boil to boost the gravity. Along with the seamless brew of yesterday, Urbain and I brewed three days in succession last week: Pannepot on Thursday and Black Albert on Friday and Saturday.

Those hand trolleys are about a century old

I'll soon be posting a photo album on glorious Facebook that follows the steps of brewing (a Struise beer) from start to finish. First, the order of malts must be unloaded. At Deca, this involves forklifting all ten or so palettes up a couple stories to be manually trolleyed or shouldered over to the grain hopper for easy access. To prepare for the brew, the malts are milled and subsequently stored in their original malt bags to be dumped into the mash tun. I think I figured out why I'm losing weight over here in beery, meaty Belgium: Urbain and I move 1000 kilos of malt for one brew five times, giving us each a back-cracking workout of lifting 2500 kilos. Per brew. That's Jean Claude Van Damage. It helps us warm up for the brisk, early-morning brewhouse chill - Deca is essentially an open-air brewery. Next up is mashing. Hot water is added to the malt in multiple steps to optimize acidification and starch/protein breakdown, which creates fermentable sugars and sculpts the body (and soul) of the beer. After the three-hour filtration to separate the liquid from the barley husks and unwanted solids, this wort is boiled in the big copper kettle to which hops and, if the recipe dictates, sugars or spices are added. Upstairs, where the boil kettle manway is located, clouds of thick, white, wet, pungent steam purl out and create a pore-clearing, beer-scented sauna. It's really damn therapeutic. I say we set up a parallel sauna business up there, charge for admission and let the hoards sweat it out and watch while we dump in the hops. Anyway, after the boil the wort is pumped through a heat exchanger and into the fermenting vessel, where yeast is added to the (now) cool wort and evolution can be observed in real time. The yeasties get their groove on and go buck-wild for a couple days before slowing and settling down. The beer is then pumped to a secondary fermenter to undergo another, last-call fermentation for a couple weeks. Bottling and conditioning is next, but I'll spare you (and myself) the details for at least another few weeks.

Nicolas hoses down that beauty of a fermenter

And that's it in a nutshell, as they say. It's nuts. Crazy stuff, but there's so much to it that's infinitely fascinating. Brewing satiates many of my intellectual, creative, physical, social, georgic, and gustatorial desires. I'd really like to divulge my philosophy on beer right now, but I think, given the fact that I feel like I'm about to crash from the early morning/too much caffeine combination, that I will save that for a more clear-headed, quiet, contemplative afternoon.

Don't fall in the boil kettle, Urbs, for God's sake

Since returning from my sojourn in the States, Urbain and the Struise Empire have seen some busy times. Alex Liberati, of Brasserie 4:20 fame, kept us busy with a request for a barrel of Wild Pannepot. Urbs and I cleaned out several old wine barrels and filled one (St.-Emilion Grand Cru from Chateau Tour Baladoz) with the funky Pannepot, bunged it up, and sealed it with devilishly aromatic pine tar. Alex will bring this big beauty back to Rome for what will undoubtedly be a fun, wild beer event. The same day Alex helped us roll the barrel into his van, the Zythos beer appreciation organization held a meeting at the old school; as hosts, we offered them some special draught beers: Struiselensis, a sour blond specialty; Doppel Strauss (a doppelbock); Pannepot; and Earthmonk, a Flemish oud bruin beer consisting of a third of oak-aged, sour beer and two-thirds young beer. Many familiar Belgian faces were present and will surely reappear, flushed and cheerful, at Pre-ZBF or ZBF in March.

Getting me some sweet Black Albert wort. Breakfast of champions.

My excitement for returning to the States and really kicking off this idea of professional brewing was renewed yesterday. Jeppe Jarnit-Bjergsø, co-owner of Ølbutikken, perhaps Denmark’s finest beer shop, and brother of Mikkel (brewer for, you guessed it, Mikkeller), visited the farm and Deca for part of our Pannepeut brewing day. He informed me of what seems to be a sizable contingent of American expats brewing in Denmark, including a fellow named Ryan Witter-Merithew (who brews for Fanø Bryghus) and another feller named Shaun Hill. Shaun is back in the States now, working towards opening his own Vermont farmhouse brewery (check out his blog here) and, though he doesn't know me yet, he has given me new inspiration and motivation. I look forward to meeting these young and enthusiastic brewers; Ryan says he'll be attending Pre-ZBF, and I think a drive across the Connecticut to visit Shaun will be in order upon my return.

Finally, I promised you a few more words on BrewDog, the next (do I dare say final?) stop on this snowballing brewing tour. I have to admit, most of my knowledge of this fledgling but exponentially growing brewery comes from gleaning news and information from The Inter-Nets; I've only tasted one of their beers, Punk IPA, which I thought was a solid, well-made beer. They do make noise, though, and recently regained the record for world's strongest beer. About half a year ago they brewed and cold-distilled Tactical Nuclear Penguin, a dark wallop of a beer that weighed in at 32% abv. Subsequently, a German brewery, Schorschbrau, passed this with a 40% beast of their own, only to be overtaken by BrewDog again, just about a week ago. The new strongest beer, Sink the Bismarck!, is a 41% hopped-up supertonic with true radioactive properties. Needless to say, BrewDog attracts a lot of attention, good and bad, due to their beers and their marketing techniques. I'm excited for this apprenticeship, perhaps a little wary, too, but I'm sure I'll have much to say from my first day in Scotland. Wish me luck.

At the end, when all has been done, at least the cows are happy

Empire/Bay/Granite State of Mind

2010-01-30T04:37:00.010-05:00

As I mentioned before, I've just returned from a week and a half back stateside. I said I felt all tingly, and it really was true. I suppose I've situated myself so comfortably here in Belgium that visiting home was really a vacation within a vacation. I'm spoiling myself, I really am. Back in "sprookjesland," (i.e. New York City, Massachusetts and New Hampshire - well, Vermont, too), I was generously hosted and kept thoroughly contented by my friend Sophie, my brother Will and his wife Carmen, and my parents, Kathy and Randy.

As the plane floated shakily down onto the New York runway the travelers were serenaded by contemporary piano melod(ramatic)ies; on any other flight I would've cringed at the cornball sentimentality, but damn if the cityscape didn't bring a wistful tear to my homesick eye. I was in New York, fa cryin' out loud, a wayworn wanderer returning to the cultural capital of his beloved motherland. As I stepped out of the airport I was surprised at how familiar everything remained. I remember how pleasantly shocking everything about everyday European culture was when I first arrived: the downsized cars and buildings, the abundance of leather shoes and clothes, the intense bursts of women's perfumes and men's colognes as people walked by. By the time I left for New York I'd become accustomed to all that, and I figured I'd have to get used to the American standard when I returned. But no. The SUVs and baseball caps and constant noise made me feel right at home.

Behind the bar at McSorley's, New York's oldest operating pub. Notice the ales come in twos.

My friend Sophie, a year ahead of me at my Alma Mater, Brown, was the world's best hostess for the week I spent with her in Queens. Her flatmate, Tala, was the epitome of sweetness as well, and tolerated this stranger's intrusion with the utmost compassion. I was there with an open schedule and a three-day, MLK weekend so we were able to spend plenty of time breathing that slightly acidic yet overpoweringly invigorating (to a tourist, at least) New York air. Our days were filled with walks, food, pub visits, and quiet retirement as the jet lag set in with a vengeance and seemed to exhibit contagiousness. Saturday was our Brooklyn day, so Sophie and I set off beneath blue skies to the iconic Brooklyn Bridge. It took a healthy twenty minutes to cross as we dodged bikers, runners, and photo-snappers alike and worked up an appetite for some authentically Brooklyn bagels and lox. After polishing off what seemed to be half a smoked salmon each, we found or way to the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens. It was really a forest of twigs - more an exhibit of postmodern art than a garden in winter. But it was still stunning, and we soaked up the sun in a calm crabapple orchard. On the way home, to fuel our trendy caffeine yearnings, we bought some beans at Gorilla Coffee. I really liked the stuff; it was aromatic and fruity (mangoes, anyone?) with a velvety finish. Didn't give me the guerrilla jitters, either. We took another walk along the High Line on Manhattan's West Side, a park-like path that once boasted train tracks. It's still under construction but the views are lovely, the landscaping is nifty, and the mix of wood, metal, and greenery are balanced to give it a sleek, well-blended feel. As a good beer enthusiast and semi-beer-blogger should, I'll also mention that you can see Chelsea Brewing Company from the High Line. Didn't get to try their beers but I will, I will...

Sophie creeps up behind the wild saison at d.b.a.

Speaking of beer, Sophie was patient and polite enough to humor my hunt for beer in the city. At home we explored some red-blooded American brews (including one I had carried from Rome to Belgium to New York). We thought Magic Hat's Howl (a black lager, or schwartzbier) was toastfully tasty and chocolatefully crispy, and we followed it later in the week with a more assertive dark beer, North Coast's Old Rasputin Russian Imperial Stout. It was my first time trying this classic American craft beer, and I found it cunning and lip-smackingly good. It's incredibly more tasty near room temperature, so make note of this. The bottle from Rome was Port Brewing's High Tide Fresh Hop IPA, a real grapefruit of a beer. Juicy, pungently hoppy, and clean. On the streets I peeked into The Ginger Man and Sophie and I graced McSorley's Old Ale House and d.b.a. with our presence. The Ginger Man is a classy place where good beer runs free and men in business suits chat loudly about such clichés as baseball and golf. It was a relaxed place, and the bartender was knowledgable; I tried Sixpoint's Brownstone, an American brown ale with a nice hoppy zip and thick malty backbone. Sophie brought me to d.b.a., a beer bar she'd visited and fondly remembered. As it was just a hair past noon we shared a beer, Saison Dupont, the immortal Belgian farmhouse ale. We also peeked into McSorley's to take in the gravity of the place. I returned a subsequent afternoon because of the wonder of the establishment; founded in 1854 by an Irish immigrant, McSorley's is steeped to a bite in history (I highly recommend perusing their website) and retains original everything, worn to the wood. Ancient articles pepper the walls and sawdust covers the floors as patrons sit contemplatively and sip their beers next to a wood stove. They serve two beers: a light and a dark. Not being one to fall for such warming but nostalgic gimmicks I enquired by whom were they brewed. The barman mumbled an inaudible answer, so I was left to search the 'net. I thought he said "Latrobe," the company that brews Rolling Rock, but the 'net has told me it's Lion Brewery, owned by Pabst, that does the work. Either way, neither the light nor the dark were very memorable, but they contented me fully while I read my book by the fire. The experience was memorable.

Some Ginger fans at The Ginger Man

While I'm talking about stuff you put in your stomach, Sophie and I enjoyed some real culinary treats as well. I wasn't taking a tally or anything, but we enjoyed several of the city's best cupcakes, a number of the city's best hot chocolates (including one from Jacques Torres with a titillating touch of pepper), some home-cooked vegetable delights (Sophie's crispy roots roast and my friend Wim's recipe for pumpkin soup), and two other amazing, amazing revelations: dim sum and Bare Burgers. Sophie, Tala, Tala's friend Jonah, and I waited for many drooling minutes for Sunday morning dim sum in Chinatown. Check it out. If you're a dim sum virgin it'll blow your mind (and spare your wallet). At Bare Burger, Sophie and I shared an elk burger and an ostrich burger, two juicy firsts for me. What I didn't get to try that Sophie said she "enjoyed" at her father's friend's lodge was a mountain lion steak. That is an American meal, for real.

The Berkshires in Williamstown

I was having too good of a time, so I cut myself short and took a magical Peter Pan bus up to Williamstown, Mass., for a couple days respite with my brother and his wife. It was a nice breather, and we spent a lot of our time just relaxing, enjoying the majestic Berkshire mountainscape. The tops of the mountains looked like rolling waves of earth dusted with powdered sugar; Will told me this wasn't snow but rather frozen fog that had collected on the limbs of bare trees. The sweet white Berkshires served as our backdrop to a couple afternoons of book reading and Scrabble jousting. Will and Carmen were both fairly busy with work, though, so I took the liberty of visiting the Clark Art Institute just a stone's throw from Buxton, the high school where they worked and lived. I padded around the permanent exhibits, floorboards groaning under my boots, and admired the American landscapes, all the beautiful women in portraits, and the delicate, creamy hard paste, soft paste, and bone china. On Thursday evening my ever-lovin', green-eyed bro took me to a double dose of sensory excitement. First, we stopped at Pittsfield Brew Works for dinner and a drink. I muscled down some fine gnocchi with sausage and mushrooms whilst sharing a sampler of all the beers available. They ranged from quite nice (the lively Extra Special Bitter) to unfortunate (the much-too-hazelnutty Hazelnut Brown) but all was good as we walked to the next stop: a 3D viewing of Avatar. Ju-HEE-sus, what a show! I mean, I'm no friend of science fiction, but when it's so thoroughly and carefully thought out and represented it really brings you to another world. And that other world that's portrayed in the movie is stunning; it's total eye candy, especially for a biologist, because of the attention paid to detail. There are elements about the story that can make for some interesting discussions, too, but I didn't think any were really explored in great enough detail. Maybe I just need to see it again and forget the jaw-dropping visuals, focus on the story.

At The Clark: Winslow Homer's The Bridle Path, White Mountains

Anywho, my next stop was home. But before I hit home I had some fine Mexican/Mayan food with my grandmother at Three Stones in Brattleboro, VT. It was a good feeling, filling my tummy with empanadas and tamales and having a visit with the wonderful woman who's nearly singlehandedly allowed this trip to happen for me. At home in New Hampshire, where the moose run free, my parents provided all the creature comforts and made the journey back to Belgium just a tad difficult. I was able to get in a visit with Tim Roettiger, a new friend and fellow homebrewer, who has plans to start a microbrewery in my hometown, East Alstead. It's incredible for me to witness this, given my recent interest in brewing and the scarcity of people in my town (pop. less than 2,000); I'm excited for Tim and wish him all the best (check out his blog here). I tried his Hemlock Ale, New England Cream Lager, and, later, his German Pale. All were brewed with character and were rich in body and taste for their alcohol level - my taste buds are still trained to those ten-percenters! That same evening my family convened at a pub in Saxtons River, VT, where my dad played a night of tunes with his band of musical buddies, Jake, Roger, and Ross. While savoring Ommegang's tantalizingly malty, raisiny, cherry tart-tastic Three Philosophers quadrupel, I sat amidst the buzzing crowd, played a board game with Will, and let the fiddle and flute relax me into a content inertia.

Ross, Jake, my dad (Randy), and Roger rock Vermont

One last bit o' news: I've landed my next apprenticeship! It'll be at BrewDog in Scotland, after the Pre-ZBF festival here in Belgium in early March. More on the development and the brewery in my next post - just had to get it out there...

Now, Where Was I?

2010-01-22T10:02:00.006-05:00

This is bizarre. I'm not sure how exactly it happened, but right now I'm sitting in my brother's kitchen in the stunningly serene Berkshire Mountains of Western Massachusetts, watching tufted titmice (is that the correct plural? It's probably not "titsmouse") have a mid-morning snack from the feeder outside the window, listening to the confident crooning of Ludacris. It's a tingly kind of feeling to be more of a tourist back in my home country, and perhaps I should start to feel you in on how I came to be enjoying American soil (or permafrost) at this moment. I won't be back home for long, mind you, just for another couple days, then it's back to Belgium for the month of February (leading up to the Pre-ZBF beer fest) and hopefully on to Scotland for a month or so.

Brasserie 4:20 (see below)

Anyway, perhaps I'd better start from where I left off last. I believe I was in Amsterdam for Christmas. After that expensive but invigorating visit I moved south to a little village called Trooz, just outside of Liège, in the French-speaking region of Belgium. There I reveled with a couchsurfing contingent from the Liège area, enjoying escargot and champignons, a few watery Jupiler beers and boules et frites, a Liège specialty that is really just a couple big-ass meatballs and fries. My days in Trooz were relaxed, filled with lounging, some engaging and rather racy conversations by the fire, and some nice therapeutic runs among the wooded hills of the near-Ardennes. I put on my tourist face (it's rather squinty) for Liège and Aachen, Germany's westernmost city. Liège captured me with stunning lookouts, a barrage of (medieval?) steps, and rosy-cheeked holiday merry-makers at the center market. Aachen offered sulfurous egg salad water, Charlemagne's lasting impression, historic and grandiose buildings (i.e. the Town Hall and Cathedral), tooth-chipping cookies, and wafts and wisps of that beautifully brusque language that is German.

As soon as I felt like I was settling in to this tucked-away corner of Europe I moved again, this time north-west to the Belgian coast. You might remember my friend and former couchsurfing host, Wim. He and two of his friends invited me for a few days of New Year board game debauchery. We rented a house in Nieuwpoort, a stone's throw from the coast and also Urbain's place of birth, and warmed up amidst the falling snow by cooking, walking (well-bundled) on dunes, and engaging in epic battles of the mind. Chess and Settlers of Catan were most popular, and we spent hours upon hours eating soup, sipping champagne, and sinking into our little fantasy world of colonies and sheep where someone always comes out a victor. I can't do justice to the fun I had on these trips and with all of these semi- or full-on strangers, and I'm afraid of writing a book here (I'm a terribly slow and wordy writer), but one project I must do upon my return to the States is document all the people that were important in making this trip as enriching as it has been. Then I might be able to give them the written credit they deserve.

New Year's Eve came and went. I returned, always happily, to Urbain's pad in Lo-Reninge for a couple days of construction work. The upstairs office is almost all in place (frankly, I thought the flatscreen TV should've been the first thing installed) and it looks professional. Underneath the office we drilled up some shelves and a packing area for the Struise Web Shop Wizard, Peter Braem, who will be sending out all the cybernetic orders from this little nook. Next door is the warm room, where crates of freshly bottled beer will be kept to develop their carbonation. Owen's Bubble Cubby, I call it. Speaking of the world wide web shop, I was honored to be asked to take a few photos to entice potential web-surfing thirsties. It was a very involved process, and Urbain helped to set up the "studio" and get the lighting just right. I got to compose the shot, pour the beers, take the picture, take a couple sips of the beer, and repeat the process for something like a dozen beers. It was a fascinating vertical Struise tasting for me, and I'm surprised the pictures came out so well, especially towards the end there. Luckily, I remained vertical myself.

Peter plays with something in the web shop corner. Bubble Cubby to the right, office upstairs.

(By the way, I'm now back in Belgium. I told you I'm a slow writer.) As work on the web shop progressed, we found it time to take a little break. Urbain, Carlo, and I RyanAir'ed it down to Rome for a few beercentric days sponsored by Alex Liberati and his Brasserie 4:20, a specialty beer bar in the heart of the city. Signor Misfortune knocked seasonably, as the itch in my throat that emerged on the plane to Rome was a full-blown chest cold by the time the wheels touched ground. I chained myself to my hotel bed, drank (water) like a fish, and managed to piss out the timely cold. Within two days I was up and strolling around Trastevere, the Colosseum, the Pantheon, and, of course, the beer bar as I soaked in the Italian winter sun. I lived off fast-food (but Italian) pizza, blood orange juice, water, and a couple vitamin-rich beers brewed by Alex for his bar. Juniper berries were featured in one devilishly tasty pale ale, and his porter was a well-balanced and rich (but not too strong) quaff of a drink. Alex treated his visitors like, well, what they were: royal beer ambassadors. Brewers, writers, bar owners, and apprentices alike gathered in Rome for four days at 4:20, where a collection of quality beers were introduced on the hour and tokens were sold for curious beer-loving patrons. The special attendees (us) were also treated to evening meals featuring seafood cooked with beer. I sat down with Carlo for one of these meals and, by the look on his face and by the appearance of each dish, it was perhaps one of the best meals I've ever had the pleasure to partake. Too bad I had a stuffy nose and couldn't taste a damn thing.

The bar's beer cellars

The Struise boys was there, of course, and we were joined by the crews from Mikkeller, De Molen, De Proef, as well as beer industry folk from all over the world. I met a beer writer from New York and an Athenian online homebrewing supplier, among others. On one particular afternoon we gathered at the location of the bar's beer cellars and miniscule brewery. A forty-minute drive lead us to some nameless farmland outside of Rome, the site of a former winery. The spacious, barn-like interior of the building trickled down to some true wine caves where old vats built into the wall had been converted to storage areas for beer; the dark, quiet, temperature-stable environment seems a perfect place for beer affinage. The beer ambassadors were treated to cured meats (one of which used to 'neigh') and a barbecue, as well as those beers produced by Revelation Cat, the brainchild brewery ("brainbrewery"?) of Alex. The brewery itself is also located at that same building where we barbecued; it's about the size of a 10-gallon homebrewing set-up. So, tiny. But he makes it work (the beers were very, very nice) and does a number of collaboration brews as well.

Alex (left) shows us some fermenting brewskies

Rome was other-worldly. I suppose it felt like that since I was in and out of consciousness, induced by the chest cold, for most of the trip, but here I was, in an historic European capital, walking around a city that is millenia old, eating fine cuisine, drinking world-class beers, surrounded by knowledgable beer enthusiasts from all over the world. I'm not sure it even happened, or if it was some bizarre feverish hallucination. I think I actually saw Marcus Aurelius trotting on horseback around the alleys of Rome once. Anyway, when I woke up in Belgium, I decided it was time to visit home. So I flew to New York City for a week and a half, and I'll tell you all about those adventures in a new post, soon to come (despite teasing you of this new development at the beginning of the post. Ah, that's how this blog works, I guess.)...

Central Park in January

Crazy, Delirious, Kulminated, Delayed, and Amsterdamned

2009-12-23T08:47:00.007-05:00

Oh, I’m falling behind again. Too much is happening. Right now I’m sitting in a florally-upholstered chair in the Eden Amsterdam American Hotel, patiently waiting for two good friends from Brown, Max and Zahra, with whom I’ll be celebrating the holidays this year. How did I end up in Amsterdam? It’s been a thrilling two weeks back at Struise, and they went so fast I’m not quite sure how I did end up here. I’ll try to bring it back…

The day after I returned from Esquelbecq, Urbain and I were once again joined by those British troopers I’ve dubbed “The Geeks.” Ian, Mes, Mes’ brother Nick, and Mes’ fiancée Sim sloshed through rain and mud, tunneled under the Channel, and crawled to our doorstep, tired and, of course, very thirsty. We had a full Sunday, though; why wouldn’t we? First we took a tour of an old, retired brewery and maltery called De Snoek, filled from cellar to roof with dusty iron and wood brewing devices of all functions. We all looked like kids in a candy shop, ogling at and drooling over the history and gravity of it all: this place could be completely functional, providing the most traditionally-brewed beers in the world, if only someone would spend the effort to put it to use! Of course, it would probably take two full days of hard work to complete one brew, but it could be done in shifts…

It was a chilly Sunday, too, and we’d had our fill of the old, cold historical brewery so we hopped over to Esen, hometown of De Dolle Brouwers, or The Mad Brewers. Next to a steadfast fire with pillowy warmth in the tasting room spotted with the brewer’s art, we sipped and slurped our De Dolle beers in the Sunday quiet. I tried Stille Nacht (Silent Night), their robust holiday brew. The brewery’s slogan is “strong and wet”, and this was certainly wet and quite strong, at around 12% abv; it was a stille afternoon for me. I think I would keep it cellared for another year to let it dry out and pick up some wildness for a little extra spice. We said hello to Kris Herteleer, the brewer and artist, on our way out and were treated to a special goodbye tasting. Kris brought us to a room in the brewery, unscrewed the top of a plastic jerrycan, and poured us a sample of some thick, slick, dark and chunky liquid. My curiosity piqued. A sip gave me notes of dark, tart cherries and bittersweet chocolate, soft alcohol, and a smooth acidity that coated my mouth and slid down my throat. Yum. This was Cosmos Porter, a reserve stock of their real old-fashioned British porter. The chunks were slightly stringy, and I thought they might’ve come from the strain of Lactobacillus that inoculated the wild brew and like to colonize the top surface of the wort. Sounds nauseating, I know, but it was good, trust me.

De Dolle's tasting room

The next day, without a chance to exhale, Urbain, Carlo, and I squeezed into the pine-green Berlingo and gassed off to Brussels. Along the way we stopped at CoEnCo, a Belgian brewery engineering consultancy company that is helping Urbain with a certain project that might get some press soon. Stay tuned, of course… The visit was coincidental, though, since I recognized the style of the minibars that CoEnCo constructs; the bright copper, stainless steel, and stylized writing were unmistakably similar to the minibar of my former host Gerolf. And, in fact, he was a customer of theirs, nine hours and one country to the south.

In Brussels the three of us parked by the gigantic pointy church (can't miss it if you go) and hurried to our final destination: Delirium Café. It was my second time, but this time it was business. Well, almost. Urbain and Carlo exchanged words and laughs with the owner, Claude, in a foreign tongue (French, Belgian-style) and reviewed which Struise beers should be ordered next. What was in the works at the brewery. We then worked our way past the bar and into the catacombs of Delirium’s beer cellars. The expanses were cavernous but cramped as well, stacked floor to arching ceiling with endless bottles of beer waiting to be enjoyed. The café has or had the world record for most number of bottled beers available – something like two thousand. As the grown-ups meandered the corridors and talked business, I snuck off with my camera and rifled through all the dusty bottles I thought might be something special. In fact, I didn’t even need to do my own searching. Claude must have been pleased to have an eager American beer lover in his cellars, since he nonchalantly handed me a small bottle, caked with dust and label-less, of perhaps one of the most sought-after beers in the world: Petit Orval. The low-alcohol, "session" beer is brewed for the monks at the abbey and is only available to the public at the on-site café. I plan on saving that one for my deathbed. After a full tour we made our way to the upstairs draft bar and sampled just a few of their huge selection. I tried a Speculoos beer from Het Anker, just for kicks. Blegh.

Backstage at Delirium

Well, exactly one week later Urbain and I popped our heads into another must-go beer bar, The Kulminator, in Antwerp. Urbain stayed close to home with his choice of beer: the killer Struise Mikkeller. I wanted something vintage, since Kulminator’s known for its array of well-kept old gems, and I told Urbain on the ride over that I wanted something “figgy”, so I chose a 1999 Rochefort 6. It was slightly oxidized, giving a bit of a cardboardy taste, but was robust, raisiny, slightly nutty, and perfectly figgy. While Urbain went to a dreaded business reunion, I hung out in the peaceful bar, enjoyed their Mozart and Bach playlist, and read my book.

In between these outings and my next adventure, the brewery was relatively quiet, but we were productively abuzz with activity in the boss’ apartment. I helped Urbain install insulation, a floor, and a closet corner after a trip (my first) to IKEA. They say ee-KAY-uh. I say eye-KEE-uh. I’m not sure either is right. Nobody knows. But it blew me away, and it took us the whole day to wander the store, pick out some furnishings (including a new bed) and pack it all in the car. Apart from the home projects, we also prepared several orders of beer for export. At one point, Urbain received three calls in a quarter of an hour, all orders for beer: one from Canada, one from Italy, and one from Japan. We once used packing tape to hold beer in the van. It didn’t quite work well enough, but it worked.

The farm under snow

Think it's gonna work?

As I previously said, I’m now enjoying Amsterdam with a couple friends. After a three-hour train ride turned into a nine-hour train fiasco, I finally found my way to my couchsurfing host. Belgium and The Netherlands have received more snow than most people can remember and, although this kind of snowfall happens weekly in New Hampshire, it has been wreaking havoc on just about everything here in the lowlands. The day I arranged my travel to Amsterdam the train system in all of Holland was out of commission. I was able to befriend a native who helped me jump from train to train to eventually snake our way to the city. But I’m here and will be spending certainly my oddest Christmas in the hustle and bustle, then I'll be moving to another couchsurfer’s welcoming abode in the Belgian Ardennes to hopefully find some cross-country skiing. After a few days of the Ardennes I’ll be scooching up to the Belgian coast to the town of Nieuwpoort (where Urbain grew up) to spend New Year’s Eve with Wim, my couchsurfing friend from Poperinge, and some of his friends for a few relaxing days of board games. Then it’s back to Struise! And there’s a lot more to do at Struise, so stay tuned!

Amsterdam, strung up

Flanders, French to Flemish

2009-12-06T04:05:00.005-05:00

It's been too long since my last post. It's a vicious cycle; a busy night gives me plenty to write about but no time to write it down, and busy nights have been a dime a dozen. I'll put all I've got out for you, but feel free to ask me more about what I've been up to, I will get back to you.

'T'ain't gonna be too long of a post, despite all the cultural stimulation I've been absorbing, but it'll be a start. SO, dear readers, I've just returned to Belgium, back at Struise beerquarters, after almost three weeks working for (and with) Daniel Thiriez and his Brasserie Thiriez. I can't say enough positive things about Daniel and Marielle and the ship they steer over there in Esquelbecq. It was quite a bit like home for me, a pretty little village with a handful of small but thriving businesses, with Daniel and Marielle's good company, scrumtrulescent cooking, and and rhythmic brewing schedule that I adapted to fairly quickly. I will miss my time at their place in the flatlands of French Flanders.

Marielle and Daniel kindly posed for a shot

Well, since I published my last post, I've seen, done, and ate things I never knew could provide so much pleasure. There was the 1920s 'horror' film screened alongside live music. The Unknown, starring Lon Chaney and directed by Tod Browning (Freaks also - never seen it but multiple generations of critics have raved), is the bizarrely tragic love story of a circus performer who feigns armlessness and falls in love with the beauty of the ring. You'll have to see it, but with a live, experimental orchestra resonating amorphous, really creepy music it was otherworldly. And now I've got Lon Chaney's craggy face forever ingrained in my brain. Oy...

After the film we stopped at a bar and soon after ordering a drink were bombarded with an explosion of some of France's most unfortunate music. It was jarringly loud. Just unbearable. The table next to us seemed slightly amused, though, even whilst cringing under the sonic weight. As we left the bar, the 'tender had a quick chat with Daniel, gesturing and speaking excitedly. I found out on our walk back to the car that the man at the table next to us (I remember he had quite a flowing mane of golden locks and looked a tad bronzed for the season) was the official (state-sanctioned?) impersonator of Claude François, one of France's most well-known, glam-heavy singers. Hence the wall of, dare I say less than pleasurable, music...

Reflective boudin noir

Then, Paris. Ahhh... Paris. I spent one whirlwind, tornadoic day with Daniel driving around and through the impossible alleys and intersections of the macrocosm that is Paris. Despite the speed, my eyes were glued to anything and everything. Yeah, perhaps I'd fallen prey to the tourist attractions, tread too hastily into the jaws of that bear trap, but I think we spent the better part of the day swerving around the backalleys, and that's what really drew me in. With a van-load of beer we cashed in at half a dozen small and aromatic restaurants and another half-dozen caves du vin, where beers from Thiriez were often the only beers sold. Our first stop was the original Pink Flamingo, one of a couple pizza shops around town claimed by Daniel to make Paris' best 'za (and featured in a travel article from The New York Times - I remember reading it this summer) and owned by another, former New Englander. For lunch we dined at a prospective client's restaurant, Le Vin au Vert. I had a creamy, bready boudin noir (blood sausage) with carrottes râpées (grated carrots), purée de pommes de terre (mashed 'taters), and a salad of roquettes. We washed 'er down with a dark ruby, slightly tannic, mildly fruity red wine from the Loire Valley region. I got a quick wine lesson from Patrick, a long-time friend of Daniel's who also acted as our guide/backseat driver around Paris. Patrick is a genial, expressive Parisian resident and history buff as well as aspiring wine shop owner, and his company was both enjoyed and necessary for our tour de Paris.

Drive-by Notre Dame-ing

Daniel and Patrick peruse La Cave à Bulles

An especially special treat for me was our stop at a specialty beer store tucked away along an ancient cobblestone vein branching out from the more main streets. It was specialtaculous. Called La Cave à Bulles ("the cellar with bubbles") and owned by a warm and welcoming certified beer geek, Simon, this "cave" had perhaps one of the best selections of French beer in the country. The atmosphere, the walls of beer, and the enthusiasm with which Simon spoke about beer gave me a nice, warm feeling inside. If I owned a beer store, it would be like the Bubble Cellar. I ended up purchasing a handful of French beers and the last two American beers he had in stock, a pair of Sierra Nevada Porters, for Daniel and Marielle to enjoy on one of these rainy, stormy winter days.

French beer haul (St. Rieul de Noël 8˚, La Delinquante from des Vignes, the Blonde from Brasserie de la Vallée de Chevreuse, and the Blonde from Bière de Brie)

And after Paris, I had to part with Daniel and Marielle and the romance of France. But, I'm happy to be back in Belgium, living at the Noordhoek ostrich farm and changing gears from the more regular, rhythmic schedule at Thiriez to the more whimsical improvisation at Struise. Not to say either is better; they're different worlds and they both get the job done with perfection. Yesterday, my first full day back with Struise, I met Urbain, Carlo, and Pieter at the school to see the incredible progress there. The new office floor is looking good as electricians were installing new outlets for that flatscreen TV that will be distracting the brewers from their work. We were then blessed with the company of more geeks, the Geeks, from England; Mes, Ian, Sim, and Mes' brother Nick showed up and joined us for lunch (I had scampi in garlic butter) and, of course, a bit of tasting. The new Black Albert and Black Damnation are maturing orgasmically, and Mes and Urbain are scheming with a new experiment... Black Mes. Think peaty, aromatic Black Albert. I will say no more, but stay tuned... And meanwhile, check out Ian's web project, pubsandbeer, for all you need to know about UK's real ale scene.

PS - If you are confused as all get-out whenever I lapse into brewing jargon (and if you have been for some time, I'm late in apologizing), a friend sent me a goofy little cartoon about beer. It's quite informative, especially the part about goat titty beer. Thanks, Sophie!

Stuff Your Turkey With This

2009-11-26T14:03:00.006-05:00

Happy tofurkey day to all Americans out there. I wish you the most successful cranberry sauces and mincemeat pies. I spent this European Thanksgiving working a long day and eating alone. Ah, c'est la vie.

But, I'm having a truly wonderful time here in France. It's been about a week and a half since I biked against a brutal wind over the border to the charming village of Esquelbecq and, despite the even more brutal wind and rain we've had here, I've been having a great time.

Tasting room at Brasserie Thiriez

The past week has been full to the brim. We brewed Blonde d'Esquelbecq and Rouge Flamande, did quite some bottling, labeling, and packing, and prepared for a little 'exposition' nearby, reminiscent of a sizable American crafts fair. I had my eye on a nice, handmade leather revolver holster. Just for looks.

I spend the days, mostly 8:30 to 5, in the brewery that sits in the backyard of Daniel and Marielle's handsome old farmhouse. The brewery is new, built around 2006, and orderly but not dull. It's all open and windows and a garage door allow in plenty of sunlight (when the sun decides to shine). There's an office with the computer's brewing program buzzing and blinking away; four massive fermenting tanks side by side, the mash tun and boiling kettle, a hot water tank, three small CIP vessels, and mazes of pipes and tubes and hoses. Each day in the brewery is a little different, but Daniel has the automation down to an art, if that's possible. I'm there to mill grain, hold hoses, weigh hops, label bottles, taste-test, and squeeze all the brewing trivia from Daniel. Today I got to climb atop all four fermenting tanks to spit-shine their stainless-steel domes. That's a good 30 feet up on slippery steel, but I survived. Brings me back to my climbing days, when I almost paralyzed my buddy Tim.

Round and around at Café des Orgues

Anyway, I'm learning a lot about working in and operating a small brewery. But that's not the only entertainment. Living with Daniel and Marielle has been splendid. The old house is scootched right into a nook by the center of town, so it's not too isolated, and the red-tiled roof, decorative interior, and flowerful yard make the living experience lovely. Daniel, Marielle, and I are having fun working on each others' languages over hearty, warming meals and great beer. It feels a bit like home. Of course, we don't stay cooped up every night. A few nights ago we tried our luck at a couple bars. On our way to a bar next to Brouwerij Van Eecke (kind of a disagreeable website...) in Watou, Belgium, we stopped by Café des Orgues. Words can't describe the bizarre yet fascinating experience. It's a bar with an open dance floor and three giant, grandiose, automatic organs. Just YouTube it. Another night found us at a private pre-performance by a trio of talented Francophones. Clar Vox consisted of a pianist, clarinetist, and jaw-dropping soprano, and together gave me the shivers. The performance was held in a 17th-century gunpowder production room formed from white brick and complete with old gunslots in the walls.

The room gets ready for musical warfare

Tomorrow we'll be visiting a cinema and watching a silent film the way they used to: with a live soundtrack. More on that next time!

Scampi at La Table des Géants. Sucker didn't want to be eaten.

Thiri... eh?

2009-11-20T13:17:00.004-05:00

France beckoned me once again, so I gave her what she wanted. I’m back in France now for a couple weeks, living with and working for Daniel Thiriez of Brasserie Thiriez. Maker of a line of smooth, earthy French farmhouse ales (with a distinct Belgian accent), Daniel is widely regarded as one of France’s best brewers. Daniel’s wife, Marielle, greeted me after several hours of biking against the relentless wind, sometimes so strong I was slowed to a near halt. It was all good, though, when Marielle slid me a steaming bowl of spiced pumpkin soup and a buttered slice of homemade bread. Their house is adjoined by the brewery and is cozy, old, and decorative. As I type this, pleasant French folk music is lilting along downstairs… I think I hear bagpipes… or is it a hurdy-gurdy? I’m looking forward to spending time with this kind couple and having Daniel as a mentor. Tomorrow’s a brewing day, so stay tuned for some action!

View of the house through withered hop vines

…OK, didn’t get to publish that last paragraph until now, several days into this recent sojourn. Well, it’s been awesome. Brewed Ambrée d’Esquelbecq on Tuesday; dawdled around the brewery on Wednesday, waving hoses and bottles and labels around, hoping to make things clean and prepped for brewing, bottling, and shipping; bottled Blonde d’Esquelbecq and La Rouge Flamande today. Daniel’s brewery is something special; a visionary blend of small-scale production and efficient automation, it welcomes you with its homey comfort but eases the brewers’ burden with partial computerization and a CIP system (cleaning-in-place). It’s absolutely not industrial, despite this. And the beers that Daniel brews are full of character: fresh, balanced, quaffable, with a house yeast character that is at once cozily appetizing and zestily wild.

Daniel harvests the yeast

That’s a quick update for now. Tomorrow’s another brewing day with a musical treat in the evening that has nothing to do with brewing. I will serve you in due time, dear reader, with more about this picturesque brewery amidst the northern French countryside.

Dominique steam-cleans an old keg

... Another update: today is the day I just wrote about. Couldn't get to a computer. Well, today we brewed Blonde d'Esquelbecq and tonight we'll be going to the concert! Marielle served a scrumptious salmon, egg, and ham salad this afternoon tossed with her home-made dressing. Rochefort and aged Gouda topped off the meal as well as a taste of paté made with Daniel's Ambrée. Yum.

Windmill at Cassel

Intestinal Tranquility in the Fields of Flanders

2009-11-20T13:12:00.002-05:00

I can’t believe I’m writing about this. I told Urbain this story and he insisted I put it in the blog.

The other day I was out on my semi-daily run. It had been a long day at the school, building a second floor in one of the rooms for an office, and it was dark when we rolled back to the farm, but I still felt the urge to expend some energy. So, I suited up in my spandex cow-print skiing suit I use for running in chilly weather (didn’t return it to my high school ski team…), put some layers over it so I didn’t look like a complete jackass, and set off along the backroads of Lo (they’re all backroads). I knew something was up as soon as I left, though… I knew I shouldn’t have eaten all those peanuts at the school…

Well, it was going smooth enough, I had made it about halfway through the 14 km loop, my headlamp bobbing and spraying light ahead of me so I could see where I was. I knew something was up, though, as soon as those first rumblings deep within started. It was mild at first, but then came the crippling ones. You know, the kind that stop you dead in your tracks, make you clutch onto a handrail and raise your eyebrows for that “Oh, shit” look…

I had just turned off from a main road, passed a barking backyard dog, when the point of no return hit. There was no way I was making it home before something terrible happened. I scrambled into a narrow strip of trees and brush by the (luckily) quiet road, tore through brambles and thorns, and pinballed off trees to reach seclusion. Struggling with the damn cow suit was an epic battle; I couldn’t just ‘drop trou’ and let loose. No no no, I had to remove all those layers, zip down the middle of my torso, peel my arms out of the sleeves, and get free. Five layers in all. Well, with a fraction of a second to spare the duty was done. I was a free man. No sign of a struggle, no incriminating evidence. I had succeeded in the most harrowing of situations, against all odds, and at the same time revived a lost art once intimately entwined in human behavior. It was an epic forest-shit.

This has nothing to do with the story, but this is my (Phil's) barnyard drumset

Right or Ranke

2009-11-08T02:57:00.010-05:00

I just awoke from a massive slumber here at the farm after a week of real, solid work. Urbain had Roger and me busy packing boxes of Black Albert for the U.S. market (I switched the addresses - all 315 cases are being sent to Alstead, NH) and preparing the schoolhouse for its grand opening this Friday. I parted from life at Struise for two days, however, to join another giant in the Belgian and world beer scene for some brewing and bottling. Nino Bacelle and Guido Devos of Brouwerij/Brasserie De Ranke in Dottignies kindly allowed me into their brewery to wreak some hoppy havoc. It was two days of brewing and bottling on a new system designed after the familiar Deca brewery of which I have become so fond. My heart beats only for Deca... Nino and Guido had originally started just as Urbain had: renting out Deca to brew their own bubbly. After ten years of service to the Deca brewery gods they got the chance to build their own playground and designed the system after Deca to capitalize on its familiarity and tradition. De Ranke uses mostly whole hop flowers in the boil and in the lagering tanks; the beers produced right after the fall hop harvest are a trip, aromatically and nasally speaking.

Hops, in the nude

I shadowed Guido on Friday as he brewed XX Bitter, Belgium's first popular bitter beer and an incredibly crisp, zesty piece of work. It's got some great floral hop character in the nose and a special Belgian spiciness from the yeast. I got there at the ass-crack of dawn as the grain was being hoisted dustily into the mill; malt boogers don't make a complete breakfast. After the mash Guido ran the filter from several drains in the mash tun. The first runnings of the wort (the "malt tea," essentially) are usually cloudy due to suspended malt particles, but eventually the wort runs clear as it's filtered by the husks of the grain. We had a 20-minute delay when the wort coughed and started to run cloudy in the middle of the filter, but, as the Belgians say in their ebullient English accent, it was "no problem."

Guido at the mash tun

Saturday was a bit monotonous, wrapping paper around hundreds of stylish De Ranke bottles, but there was company and a retro stereo that played half Belgian pop and half American hits from two years ago. Some lucky Americans will be getting some XX Bitter wrapped by blue-blooded American hands. Noir De Dottignies, their dark, bitter stout-ish option, and Guldenberg, a solid strong blond named after local abbey ruins, were also wrapped and bound for USA. Meanwhile, Guido and Nino bottled their Christmas sipper Père Noël, spiced with just a tingling touch of licorice.

I was starstruck for a second, too. Well, it happens with all brewers, but this time it was an author. Yvan De Baets has authored some books about beer and I had just finished Farmhouse Ales about traditional French and Belgian agrarian refreshers, to which he contributed a chapter. He was there with Bernard Leboucq, and both are brewing their own beers at De Ranke under their Brasserie de la Senne label. Luckily I had been wasting my life away on youtube recently and had seen him exploring some German beer caves, otherwise he would've just been another mysterious brewer.

The polka-dotted Prince of the Payottenland

The bucolic Mediterranean crags and shores of Italy beckoned me on Friday night. Guido and Nino were kind enough to invite me along to an Italian beer tasting led by the country's finest beer ambassador, Lorenzo Dabove. 'The Prince of the Payottenland' gave the local beer club several samples of Italian beer whilst waxing poetic about each and expounding on their emerging craft beer scene. While I have to say I wasn't entirely impressed with all the beers (some were funky, some were flat), I applaud the creativity and spiritedness overall and the raw quality of some. Macca Meda, a new beer from Birrificio Barley (Sardinia), was fantastically hoppy, crisp and characterful, a cousin to American IPAs. Chocarrubica from Grado Plato (Turin) stole my heart, though; a moderately strong oatmeal stout with cocoa beans and carob? For a guy who actually enjoys - no, craves - carob? C'mon, it's an easy win. Thanks again to the De Ranke dudes for the insider weekend and beer tasting.

Gotta get this for my dad, he'd love it

The Ostrich Farm

2009-11-05T02:28:00.004-05:00

Farmyard animals

I just spent my fifth night on the Struise farm, though the first night only lasted about four hours, but I can already tell what an unbelievable time I will have here. Amidst the ostriches (which I, by the way, cannot do justice in writing to their bizarreness) and Scooby, the big slobbering Great Dane, sits a U-shape of buildings. To the left is Urbain's pad, where he and his daughter Lorence live and where I will sleep when the bed and breakfast is full. Straight ahead is the bed and breakfast, where I have a room when the place is empty. Well, even in my room there are several rooms. In fact, it's really a condo, complete with three beds, leather sofas and chairs, TV and VCR (in case I need to watch some movies from the 80s), a kitchen in case Urbain's cooking goes to hell (not likely), and a cupboard of beer glasses (no, not for the eyes; I can see well enough, thank you). Downstairs is the common room, where the only thing I needed to see was a small wood stove and a comfy armchair for those stormy winter nights.

The Geeks at Beer School

To the right of the B&B is Phil and Daisy's house. Daisy, Urbain's sister, runs the B&B and Phil helps Urbain at the brewery in addition to a job in a nearby restaurant and as a Citroën dealer. Both have been entirely friendly, especially in keeping Scooby from drooling on me. Phil and I instantly connected over music as well; turns out he's as big a fan of the drums as I am and even has an old dust-covered drumset in the barn in case I need to feel like a rockstar. I'm in the works to organize a brewhouse band; Lorence is a multi-talented musician and Urbain says Carlo is musically inclined as well. Bono says he won't sue if we call ourselves Brew2.

Just chillin'

Oh, and there's another living space on the farm. Urbain's Berlingo van is actually an officially recognized apartment, and this is where he performs most of his daily grooming and domestic tasks. Let's see, he's got several phones, a wardrobe of clothes (even new shirts and everything), an assortment of food in various stages of decomposition, footwarmers, mouthwash, his electric razor (which is his favorite device to use in the car – he shaves at least 3 times a day just for kicks), a shower, a plasma TV, and several cats. On the way back from De Molen I got to know not only the car but also Urbain quite well. Urbain's wit is razor-sharp, his philosophical ideas are contagious, and his knowledge of and interest in biology and evolution is reviving my love for the subject. And we like to apply it to our discussions of Belgian women.

Black Albert Batch 0

A few days ago was a lazy Sunday, but it was just what we needed after some tough days in the brewery and the busy, beery buzz that was the De Molen fest. We had a few visitors: three Brits, “The Geeks” as Urbain fondly calls them, and an American visited the schoolhouse brewery for an afternoon of shit-shooting (...that's an American expression... we didn't actually shoot any shit around...) and Struise sipping. The Geeks - Ian, Mes, and Ken - are real connosseurs. They're probably some of Britain's finest beer raters and proponents, and they're huge Struise-heads. We had a beautiful Black Albert vertical tasting with a few additional samplings as well. Starting with the freshly-bottled Black Albert and the newly-refined Black Damnation (2/4 Black Albert aged on 5kg Columbian aromatic coffee beans, 1/4 Black Albert aged in Jack Daniels barrels, 1/4 Hel & Verdoemenis), we moved on to a terribly tasty experiment that involved a special distiller's edition Caol Ila single malt Scotch whisky matured in Moscatel cask wood. Taking a row of Struise beers – the new Black Albert and Black Damnation, Cuvée Delphine, Black Albert Batch 0 (the first batch, from 2008, pulled from a near-empty keg), and Double Black (Black Albert that had been frozen to remove some water, making a 29% abv masterpiece) – Urbain swirled just a couple drops of the Caol Ila in each glass and mixed in each beer. Each blend gave an incredible result, the whisky contributing a touch of its vanilla and peat character and refined aroma. The Double Black, even without the whisky, was just mind-blowing, like a silky smooth chocolate/coffee/dried fruit liquer, only ten times better. The whisky experiment was making Urbain's brain visibly whir and his hair stand on end, so you can probably expect to see some Caol Ila oak-aged product on the market sometime soon. Lastly, we sampled a year-and-a-half old Dirty Horse. Dirty Horse is Urbain's first beer that captivated him and motivated his move into the beer world. It's a simple recipe, brewed with a portion of wheat, that's extensively open-fermented and inoculated with wild yeasts. Later matured on cherries, it resembles a kriek lambic but has such a complex Brettanomyces kick and dazzling finish that many consider it to be Struise's absolute best beer. It was the icing on the cake, and The Geeks finished their last drop and went on their merry way.

A Day in the Orange Land

2009-11-05T02:27:00.004-05:00

Almost immediately upon arriving to settle in with Urbain, after two days of backbreaking brewery work, I was whisked off to a whole other country. I think it was called “Holland,” or “The Nether-regions.” De Molen, a brewery and restaurant near a collection of cities called Gouda, Utrecht, and Amsterdam, did not hold a festival of cheese, treaties, and THC, but they did host a nice beer festival with one of the world’s greatest lineups of suds. OK, I lied, there were a few cheese platters. And perhaps some THC, who knows.

Yours truly behind the bar

This Borefts Beer Festival brought together Belgian, Dutch, Swedish, and Danish brewers; Struise and Alvinne represented Belgium. De Molen and Emelisse had home-court advantage, Närke Kulturbryggeri batted for Sweden, and Mikkeller carried Denmark’s flag. Glenn and Davy drove me in the Alvinne beerwagon and two additional helpers squeezed in as well; Stephan to my left and Mark to my right. Urbain took his mobile apartment separately.

Davy points to something. Höge's on your left.

Brewers started serving at noon, when only the real hop-heads showed up to pace themselves through the day. A good Dutch representation mingled around the booths, joined by a handful of Brits and a couple Americans. Everyone spoke English with a little cajoling. The atmosphere was relaxed, the day was clear, and De Molen had a food service in action, so folks were fat and happy. I asked for some cheese and they gave me enough to feed an army – and it was good, too! Cheese comes cheap in those parts.

The Mikkeller crew (Greg Gaughan's photo)

Urbain, Glenn and Davy worked their brewmastery on the floor for a while, but when I was relieved from my pouring duties I was able to mingle among the crowd and show off my American accent. Soon, though, I stumbled upon the Närke table. Höge (I think his name was) fit the perfect mold of what I thought a Scandinavian brewer should be. He was short, stocky, sported a wide gray beard and round glasses, and wore a leather cap and vest. All black clothes. His demeanor was far from intimidating, though, and I soon got into a discussion about our mutual disdain for all the heavy beers that are put into huge bottles. He’s pushing for small bottles for his dark, thick concoctions, so we can drink for the taste and not for the buzz! I was able to sample Tanngnjost & Tanngrisnir, a bock beer brewed with juniper clippings and smoked malts. It has quite a history, Höge said it was brewed in better times (before Christianity), and his interpretation was magnificent. Certainly spicy and a bit puckering, it possessed a great malty backbone that blended with the juniper superbly. It was named after Thor’s two goats, and I think the man would’ve been proud. Maybe he would’ve given Höge an honorary degree in godliness, knighted him with the hammer. Other highlights were Närke’s Kaggen Stormaktsporter (both 2007 and 2008), this year’s best beer in the world, Mikkeller’s 黑/Black (I’ve heard one sip in the morning is enough to keep you going until lunch, at least), and Struise’s Dirty Horse. Dirty Horse is a kriek-like beer that Urbain first brewed in 1983. He built a makeshift coolship out of timbers and a tarp and let the wild things do their work, later aging the brew on whole cherries. This particular batch had been aged for four years; it took six hours to disappear.

De Molen's brewroom

And that was about it. The Struise/Alvinne crew had a pleasant sleep at a bed and breakfast and drove the two hours back to the homeland.

Cantillon

2009-11-05T02:26:00.006-05:00

Just outside the center of Brussels, where hustle and bustle, business, and grandiosity reign is a rough diamond of Belgium that needs no shining. The Cantillon brewery, under ordered chaos, has been producing spontaneously-fermented lambics for around 100 years. Patience, creativity, and instinct are virtues for these brewers of highly traditional, complex Belgian beers. I visited Cantillon, tucked away along a quiet side street near Brussels’ south station, for a self-tour of the ‘lambic lab.’ I was greeted and lectured about the importance of preserving traditional lambic brewing practices by the sister of the brewer, Jean-Pierre Van Roy, who, along with her brother of course, descends from a long line of lambic brewers. As I listened to her recitation, my eyes wandered to a row of elegant green 75cl bottles. Unblended lambic, geueze, raspberry and cherry lambics… tart, juicy tonics… I drooled a bit onto my shirt and snapped back to reality, quickly thanking Ms. Van Roy and shuffling off to begin my tour. A couple samples awaited me at the end.

Copper coolship

I zigged and zagged around the corridors and stairs and attics of the dormant brewery. Cantillon does not brew very often and is limited even further by the fact that traditional lambics are only brewed during the winter months; summer can bring too many overactive, acidic wild yeasts and bacteria that turn the beer into vinegar. I asked Jean if he ever considered producing vinegar, and I got a slap in the face. First was the room housing the mash tun and the upper level where milled malt and raw wheat are fed into the tun below, along with aged hops that have lost their bitterness but retained their preservative qualities. Aged hops can smell a bit cheesy, and I had to bend over and sniff my boots a couple times to make sure the smell wasn’t me. Well, I contributed a bit. Another floor held a stock of unused barrels and bags of malt and wheat and a half-floor above boasted a sign announcing that the next room was the most important of the brewery. It housed a large, shallow, open copper vat flanked by rows of windows to the outside. The wind whipped and whistled and a brisk wind raised goosebumps on my arms. This copper vat was the coolship, where wort is pumped to cool overnight. Meanwhile, those sneaky bastard wild yeasts find their way into the sweet wort and begin their massive micro-organismic orgy. Over years, these horny cowboys will continually reproduce and eventually consume nearly all the sugars in the beer, from the shortest to the longest-chain. Different strains of yeast and bacteria act at different times but in the end the beer is extraordinarily dry – no residual sugars.

Barrels galore

All that talk was making me hot, so I moved downstairs to the maturing room. Barrel after endless barrel filled every nook and cranny; the fruity, funky smell of lambic cut through the air and singed my nostrils. Something in the dank, dark corner hissed and I clutched the Glock 9 in my back pocket, but it was just a barrel with over-eager fermenting lambic. Luckily, I haven’t had to use my piece in two years of brewery tour service.

The hissing barrel

Finally, I brushed past the cobwebs and sneezed through the dust to find the tasting room. A small wood stove emanated its tinglesome warmth and I cradled half a glass of Gueuze (almost pronounced "gooze," but keep your lips tight), a lively blend of old and new lambic. Next came the Kriek and then the Rosé de Gambrinus, two lambics refermented on cherries and raspberries, respectively. The extra sugars in the fruit get those yeasts in the mood again, and they go at it like dogs in heat. Well, after these samples I felt strength again to find my way back to my host's house. It was just the boost I needed to face Brussels' public transportation system...

Organic gueuze referments in the bottle

It burns!!!

2009-11-01T13:11:00.009-05:00

Urbain pulls a sample of "green" Black Albert

The first two days spent with Urbain were tougher than a Sudoku puzzle, master level. My deltoids and nose hairs burned the most, from loading endless bottles onto the bottling machine and climbing into tanks full of CO2 and ethanol, respectively. It's all in a day's work, though.

Last Wednesday and Thursday were two days of madness, even for that wild and crazy guy we call Urbain. He'd decided to brew and bottle in one day, something he'd never attempted. Pannepot was the beer to brew, and my first job was watchdog; the mash was finished and the filtering had begun, so I watched as gravity leached out the wort from the mash tun, turning on the pump when the reserve pit was full to transfer it to the boiling kettle. Urbain was in turbo mode, hair flopping around, phone ringing off the hook, limbs flying with pipes and hoses and cigarettes. I followed him around for the day, moving from the bottling line to the kettle to the conditioning area, back and forth. We weren't alone, though, a whole sturdy posse was around: I met Phil, Urbain's brother-in-law and partner-in-crime, if those are any different. Roger the codger was there, a nice older guy who owns a pigeon farm (didn't know those existed) and who uses the retired yeast as a supplement for his birds. Anyone for a Struise pigeon breast? Rich in vitamins!

For the birds

The usual Deca guys were at Deca (where Urbain brews) as well - the patriarch and former brewery consultant in the Congo, Joe, puffing on his slim Swiss cigars. The following day was very similar, albeit longer for me. Wednesday was something like 9 hours; Thursday was a full 5am to 5pm. I was on the bottling line for much of it, fumbling around with the bottles at first... hotverdomme, they're slippery! I got into a rhythm, though, battling those bottles, and I conquered them at the end of the day - drowned 'em in Black Albert and a special Black Damnation, suffocated them with caps, branded their bodies with labels, and stuffed them into crates bound for the beer geeks in America. Willie helped out on the line as well, and whenever we had a problem (so, every couple of minutes) he would use his handiness to keep the machine and the beer running smoothly.

Well, let me tell you a little bit about this new Black Damnation. Black Damnation originally began as a collaboration beer with De Molen brewery in Holland: Struise's Black Albert and De Molen's Hel and Verdoemenis (Hell and Damnation) blended into one damn dark dastardly concoction. For this new Black Damnation, Urbain, in his infinite wicked wisdom, aged a portion of the Black Albert beer on 5 kilos of fine, aromatic Colombian coffee beans. The result was blended with finished H&D and bottled by yours truly and the crew. It has already turned into an absolutely epic imperial coffee stout. It could be marketed and sold in pharmacies as a low-dosage all-purpose tonic. It will be put on the red carpet for the opening of Struise's new school building brewhouse and educational center. Can't wait! I've got a special place in my heart for that beer, too, 'cause I got in that tank and scooped out all those sloppy beans and yeast and got caked with yellow coffee muck. Nothing like a good day's work.

Get your scoop ready

Anyway, after two days of hard work and dried yeast still clinging to my clothes, I headed off with Struise, Alvinne and the Belgian brewing gang for a weekend at De Molen's first beer festival. Stay tuned...

I had to hold up the pallets of beer while Urbain had lunch

A Week As A Tourist, With Some Help

2009-11-01T12:16:00.007-05:00

View of Namur from the fortified village

Before I truly settled into Belgium, I decided to take some time to see a bit more of the country, branch out a bit. Y'know, I had been treating her well, taking her out to nice seafood dinners and all, but I needed a few one-night-stands. Not literally, of course... I was able to find some stellar couchsurfing hosts in Brussels first; Sarah and her family treated me like Bonnie Prince Owen as I roamed the streets of greater Brussels during the day and perched my cheeks on their couch in the evening.

My good friend Chris from Brown made an epic appearance in Brussels to visit me and the country for a few days, and we quickly turned Sarah's place into one big house of fun. Chris and I met at the Grand Place, of all grand places, making for a reunion of Hollywood caliber. Shortly after, we entered the subterranean level of the Grand Place's Brewer's House, where the brewer's guild of Belgium had its headquarters. It now houses a museum (informative but in need of some spice) and a little bar (cozy and friendly, and you never know what beer you will be served). We dedicated the rest of our stay in Brussels to walking on as much concrete as our feet would take while absorbing as much of the city with our eyes as possible. We even took a day trip to Namur, where Chris impressed with his French, we took an oddly bromantic stroll around the stunning fortified section of the city, and then returned to Brussels to cook Sarah's family a sneakily spicy Indian curry dish with potatoes and chickpeas. We could've fed a moose on the amount of food we prepared, but we managed to find all the ingredients (on a Sunday, no less) for under 8 €.

The next few days gave us more stories. Ghent was filled with a visit to the castle at Gravensteen, which was essentially a museum of torture as Chris pointed out. Highlights were a guillotine blade that had probably severed hundreds of unfortunate peasant heads, a torture device that had probably crushed thousands of agonizing tongue-holders, and several two-seaters that had probably been straddled by many hairy medieval bums, especially after all those Burgundian feasts.

I'll bet it sucks in winter

Elsewhere in Ghent were our entertaining couchsurfing hosts, Elke and Miro, and a famous genever bar where Chris choked down a genever infused with hot peppers and I savored one spiked with the essence of God's best creation, Speculoos. After Ghent, which was lovely, we had to move on to West Flanders. I once again requested a stay with Wim from Poperinge and he, due to his awesomeness, once again accepted. Chris and I biked to In de Vrede, the café at Sint Sixtus Abbey in Westvleteren, home to that elusive and delicious beer. And some monks, I think. I felt a surge of ambition, too much in fact, because I ordered the traditional Belgian meal of hennepot, not knowing what I was getting into, only thinking that tradition is synonymous with tastiness. What I received was certainly a treat, especially after a bike ride, but it was a treat insofar as chicken suspended in unflavored gelatin goes. Which is what hennepot is. The beers, though, were fantastic. The blond was on the bitter side for its contemporaries, which I thought was great, and the 8 was like a light, malty plum stew, though it could use another half-year to peak.

Those sugar beets ain't got nuthin' on me

When it was time to say goodbye to Chris, we agreed that our time was well spent. Chris took a flight back to Greece and I prepared to launch myself into my next adventure: life as an apprentice to one of the world's greatest brewers, Urbain Coutteau.

The eve of my first day really settled in West Flanders

... chestnuts roasting in a big oil drum...

2009-11-01T11:53:00.005-05:00

Chestnut festivities

My last few days in France were mild, comfortable, and relaxing. I was integrated into the farm, I could work in the garden with very little guidance, I'd made friends with each and every rabbit even after they saw me "eliminating" their friends, and Jacqueline and Gerolf had adopted me into their rhythms. So it was a bit tough to leave; I'm particularly attached to routine. But we had a bit of fun before I took my train north to Belgium.

Rotating the chestnut spit

On a particularly glorious autumn weekend Gerolf and I packed some beers into the van and drove a bit south to a pretty little village they call Villefranche-du-Perigord, where a chestnut festival was underway. Chestnuts found their way into everything, from Gerolf's beer to conserves to sausages, and especially into my mouth. Above two open fire pits swiveled mesh metal drums filled with roasting chestnuts. The next booth over was pressing fresh apples for cider. The night before the festival I spent the night some 12 miles out of town and decided I would run to the event in the morning. My knees and calves ached as I stumbled into Villefranche, but life was good as soon as I got my grubby hands on some sweet, steaming chestnuts and a big bottle of tart cider. I spent the rest of the day in a chestnut coma, watching the crowd ebb and flow while we all soaked up the warm sun on such a crisp day. Some hurdy-gurdy and accordian music, traditional French dancers in fluffy garb, and a good-hearted but competitive chestnut-spitting contest wrapped up the weekend. Oh, and of course there was the 6-foot cepe de Bordeaux omelette.

A woodworker turns a top on his lathe

It was time to say goodbye to the farm, though, so I drank one last Laubicherie beer, the one brewed with truffles, and headed up to Belgium, Brussels to be precise, for a week of sightseeing, reuniting, and couchsurfing.

Fresh cider!

Beer Blogger Gets Around

2009-10-28T01:54:00.005-04:00

Aaahhh... Sint Bernardus

"Raise your bows! The farmers are coming, and they're fuming!"

Hennepot and Westvleteren blond. Why not?

Chris and I above Ghent

Just the briefest of headlines: I’ve been traveling quite a bit these last two weeks, from my return to La Ferme de Laubicherie to a jaunt down south for a chestnut festival in Villefranche-du-Perigord to a high-speed train buzz back again to Belgium where my friend Chris Duffy visited for a few fun-stuffed festive days. We saw Brussels under the comfortable wing of our couchsurfing host, discovered Namur for a day, headed north again to Ghent where the genever runs freely and flavorfully, and biked around Westvleteren in West Flanders, where we parted and Chris returned to Greece (he’s teaching English for a year). I am now reunited with my good friend Wim, whom I met through couchsurfing, and will finally, finally, be moving in with Urbain for several months. This morning we’re going to be brewing Pannepot, my current favorite Struise beer. I will keep you updated (but on your eager toes, of course) these next few days, with more details about the past few weeks and more scrumptious tidbits about the future. The highly-hyped De Molen festival near Amsterdam is this weekend, so start drooling… now.

BLES Fest and an Epic Lambic Tasting

2009-10-14T16:38:00.003-04:00

The hop fields of Poperinge

Frothy open fermentation of Black Albert

Bottling line at Alvinne

Glenn fixes us a special lambic blend

Dear Readers,

I’m back in France now after what seemed to be a heavenly eternity in Belgium. My last few days were spent studying some more of the mundane tasks of brewing – bottling, packing, cleaning, racking, etc. – but perhaps “mundane” is too harsh a word. I’m still at the point where anything is interesting. A brewer’s work would be nothing without the reward, though. To conclude my trip I assisted Glenn and the Alvinne cause at the 16^th annual BLES beer festival in Zottegem (“crazy town”) and was an active witness to an incredible tasting of everyone’s favorite spontaneously-fermented malt beverage, lambic.

On Friday Glenn drove me to Zottegem to prepare the table for Alvinne. Afterwards we had a meal of some damn juicy skewered meats (Belgians make some tender meat, man), washed down with an Orval for each. That night I sawed many logs in the warmth of Glenn and his girlfriend’s home. I woke Saturday morning to a thunderous snore from beside me; Glenn’s friend Uli, from Germany, had arrived late in the night and would be helping us at the festival as well. Well, I’m more than glad I lost a little sleep for the guy. He brought with him a collection of some incredible lambic experiments. Lambic is, to the uninitiated, a most interesting wild-fermented beer that really takes time both to produce and to appreciate. Only a handful of traditional producers still exist in Belgium. Lambics require a moderate portion of raw wheat and historically use aged hops that have lost their aroma compounds. Hops in this case are used solely for their preservative properties, as the beer is set to age for several months or years. Wild yeasts inoculate the wort and fermentation takes off, producing an incredibly dry, slightly tart and acidic, citric, flat beer that is wildly complex. I’m new to lambics, so this kind of blew me away. Uli, Glenn and I tasted sips of several lambic experiments that Uli, a hobby blender, prepared. First was a lambic from the Lindemans brewery that Uli aged in calvados barrels donated by Glenn. It smelled slightly sweet with a touch of green apples and acetic acid. The taste was intense: a puckering citric wave followed by an illusion of sweetness. Oaky vanilla tagged along at the end. Next was Drie Fonteinen lambic on new American oak barrels. The shimmering gold color, contributed by the new oak, was more apparent than the calvados lambic. It was a more suppressed lambic in taste, though, with must and leafiness in the nose and on the tongue, but more rounded and fuller. Third was Lindemans set in the same new oak barrel, but this was the first batch they aged; Drie Fonteinen was second. The oak was much more apparent in the nose, and I thought it had a touch of smokiness. We also played around with them a bit: next was 1/3 calvados Lindemans and 2/3 Drie Fonteinen followed by half and half of each and succeeded by 1/3 of each of the original lambics. Why stop there? Uli then broke out a kitschy plastic mini-keg of three-year-old Hanssens lambic that we later blended with the 1/3-of-each mixture to get a well-rounded, thoughtful concoction. A semblance of this ratio of lambics will be used for a future Alvinne release, set to be ripe in 2011. The initial blend will have an additional… addition of young lambic, still containing some unfermented sugars. The sugars will provide the yeasts of the blend to start fermentation again to produce a wee bit of carbonation. Blending of old and new lambic allows the designation of “gueuze”, and if the sum of the age of the beers is greater than one year, “oude gueuze”.

So, then it was off for some more fun. The three of us packed up and headed for the BLES beer festival. BLES stands for something like Beer Lovers and Enjoyment Society, only in Dutch. It was crowded, with a lot of happy people, and the breweries of the east were represented well. Uli broke out some more lambic, like Drie Fonteinen dry-hopped on East Kent Goldings hops and a blend of all the traditionally-produced lambics of Belgium, and I even saw some celebrities. Jef Van den Steen, a prolific beer writer, was there with his mad-scientist beard, and Jean Blaute, of Belgium’s Canvas television channel was strolling around with a stylish scarf. Before the night was over, though, I had to catch my ride back to France. Luc Smekens, an organizer of the giant ZBF beer festival in March, and his wife kindly drove me to the airport to meet my host, Gerolf. A testament to the kind-heartedness of beer people, Luc even bought me a dripping dinner of frites and mystery meat. It was tasty, but I think it also gave me food poisoning.

So, I’m back en France, but not for long. The fig-pickin’, apple-peelin’, and weed-pullin’ will be no more next week when I return to Belgium for a lengthier stay. I will miss the refreshing farm labor and the picturesque pastures, but I’ll be closer to meddling with my passion. Stay tuned.

Another day, another bottle

2009-10-08T04:36:00.009-04:00

The pipes bleed with Black Albert

Hey folks, I think I'll keep posting my entries on this site, too, but don't forget to visit the blog at Struise's website: http://struise.noordhoek.com/eng/index.php?option=com_mojo&Itemid=138

Here's the latest:

It’s been just a week here in Belgium for me, but I’m afraid it’s got me hooked. It’s not just the beer, of course. Well, you could certainly design a Belgian vacation just around beer and I’m sure you’d have a hell of a time – that’s basically where I started – but the people are what make traveling worthwhile. Good beer can be damn good, but it’s also all about enjoying a good beer in great company, and perhaps that’s why Belgium has retained such a strong culture of beer; the Belgian people are some of the friendliest on this sphere of teeming life. They remind me a bit of what I imagine most Midwesterners are like. Any Chicagoans out there?

So, I’m having a good time with the beer, the buddies, and the bikes. Couchsurfing.com has been both a lifesaver and a friendbooster. Krist, my host in Kortrijk, took me on an 85-kilometer bike ride along part of the Ronde van Vlaanderen, Belgium’s world-famous bike “race” (it’s called something else, like “premier” or “tour” or something more official). The crisp, cool Belgian countryside was comforting in its agrarian stillness and beauty. My ass, however, was not comfortable despite the skin-tight, padded biking garb. In Poperinge I’ve stayed several nights with Wim, a soft-spoken, overly likeable young organic farmer. His hospitability is unbelievable, and his dinner portions are plenty to get me through the heavy days of biking in the rain. I wish I could stay at Wim’s for the whole winter.

I’ve got some more good news. Good news for me and good news for you readers out there, all five of you. The news means I’ll be posting more eye candy for several months to come, so get yourself hungry (or thirsty) for this sweet and spicy commentary. The news is that I’ve almost solidified my schedule until March, and there are some big shots in the mix. My plan is to develop a home base with Urbain, working for Struise on and off when his farmhouse is empty of visitors. When the farm inn is booked, I will jump from brewery to brewery. Glenn and Davy from Picobrouwerij Alvinne have been very welcoming, so I hope to spend more brewing and bottling days with them. I’ll be tagging along with Glenn this weekend to a festival in Zottegem and also at the end of this month near Amsterdam, at a festival De Molen brewery is hosting. In late February I’ll be staying at Glenn’s folks’ home to help Alvinne prepare for the pre-ZBF fizz-fest. Pre-ZBF is the smaller, gourmet, all-star beer festival right before the big ZBF fest in Belgium. Daniel Thiriez, of Brasserie Thiriez in Esquelbecq, France (right across the border), has agreed to host me for the second half of November. Daniel’s beers, so I’ve heard, are of his own brand; he brews them fresh and zippy, full of both French and Belgian farmhouse character. I’ve also met with Nino Bacelle of Brouwerij De Ranke in Dottignies, Belgium. I will be helping out on several occasions over the next few months, though since they only brew once or twice a week I won’t be resting my dome on their pillows. Perhaps couchsurfing will come to my rescue then. Perhaps there will be more breweries to visit: Dutch, Danish, Norwegian, or Swedish. English, Irish, Scottish, or German, too. “Networking” is the new buzzword these days, and the brewing industry is not immune to such trendy business concepts.

The week hasn’t just been an orgy of organizing (though I did lose a whole night of sleep just thinking about my plans). I joined Urbain at Deca again, this time for some cleaning and transferring. We (mostly he) cleaned two conditioning tanks where the Black Albert he brewed recently was pumped for further development. I spent a good ten minutes scrubbing the inside of one tank, all alone in the dark cavern with only my green scrubbie to give the surface a good rubbing. Urbain cleaned another and proceeded to fill both with Black Albert. One tank got a special treatment: five kilograms of the finest Colombian coffee beans was added as an experiment. I’ll keep you updated on that. Urbain’s method of sanitizing the tanks is certainly unique. He insists on using a lovely substance (that old-school science teachers know all too well) to rid the interior of the tanks of any lurking microbe. A pot of the stuff is set on a small propane burner, placed inside the tank, and lit. The door is closed and the substance evaporates, coating the inside and making it clean enough to eat an endive salad on. Or chocolate pudding, if you’re like me. This step is necessary to keep the beer free of infection. Urbain treated me to a delicious sandwich with some reddish mystery meat, accompanied by a solid, earthy Struise Pannepeut. The beer was a meal in itself.

My meeting with Nino of De Ranke was, as it is with many brewers, more than just a meeting. Nino, a stylish man with stylish tastes and stylish hospitality, brought me from his home to the brewery for a tour and tasting. I guess when I say stylish I mean classy but workmanlike. His beers perfectly reflect his character: clean and smooth, robust yet refined. We made our way through the aromatic Guldenburg, solidly hoppy and characterful XX Bitter, caramelly Noir de Dottignies, bitter Christmas brew Père Noel, and the Cuvée and Kriek De Ranke, two blended beers using a young De Ranke beer and a lambic from the Girardin brewery – the kriek is aged on whole cherries. After our rendezvous at the spotless and ingeniously designed brewery (it’s brand new but designed in a very traditional way), Nino brought me back to his home and bought us some real Belgian fries. We ate with his wife and had a nice visit, replete with mayonnaises and sauces in pastels of red, green, and yellow; I could’ve replicated a Monet on the kitchen wall, but for some reason I didn’t. Anyway, fries are treated differently over here.

Yesterday was another, shorter day at Alvinne. Davy and I worked the bottling line, filling bottle after bottle with their tripel and a “smoky bock” beer brewed specifically for the De Molen festival on Halloween. Davy fed the bottles and caps into the machine and I packed them into boxes and crates for all the happy customers. Tomorrow I’ll be back for another brew day and then Glenn and I are off to the Zottegem festival before I head back to France. But for now, I’m taking a day off, lounging in a sleeping bag and being thankful that I’m dry. Be back soon.
-Owen

Finally, a few photos!

At Alvinne: Davy, left, and Urbain, looking a bit blurry in the morning (or is that the photo?)

Deca Brewery, where Urbain conducts his magic. Ten points if you can find him.

Evidence of the mash at Alvinne. If you look closely, past the big face, you can see whole hops in the mash. This adds an even further hop presence to Pipedream.

A move to Belgium

2009-10-03T09:58:00.002-04:00

Well, followers, I've hit it big time. The blog is getting a new home. I'm blowin' up, as the young'ns say. I will now publish my new posts on the website of De Struise Brouwers of Belgium, under the tutorage of Urbain Coutteau, brewmaster at Struise. Check it out from now on at their website, under the Buckets to Barrels Blog page. That's www.struise.be, if you don't like automatic links.

I've been in Belgium only a couple days, but it has already been a wild ride. Keep on reading, 'cause it's only going to get better. Here's my first post on their website about my first impressions of Belgium...

"Friends, yeomen, countrymen, lend me your beers!

It’s quite an honor to be both nestled cozily under the Struise wing for a bit and to be taking the reigns from two other adventurous Americans, Devon and Beejay. Their initiative and writing ability made me want some of the same, so I picked up my bags, nearly fresh from university, bought a one-way ticket to Europe (with help from my ever-lovin’ Grandmum), and began a quest to learn the art, science, and gustatory delights of the world’s best beverage. Er, that would be beer.

I started in central France at a farm with a small hobby brewery (check out my previous blog for archives of my trip so far… this will take the place of that for a bit). The food was great, the sheep were cute, the roosters were noisy and boastful, and the figs were fresh and sweet. The month of September, my first month of this trip, was a picturesque beginning. But there was a problem: I hadn’t done any brewing. I felt the farm’s brewing schedule was a bit too far and few between, so what did I do? Headed on up to beer Mecca. That’s, well, Belgium.

My first day in Belgium was also my birthday. My second day in Belgium, and subsequently my third, were filled with more brewing and beer tasting than I could have wished for. I spent Wednesday in and around Kortrijk, Poperinge, and Watou in West Flanders. My first beer in Belgium was Gouden Carolus, and it hit the spot with its dark, rich, creamy texture and smooth finish. After some train travel I swiped a bike and pedaled from Poperinge to Watou where a friendly chap named Marco showed me around the Sint Bernardus Brewery. Its sizable (but still small) brewery holds a handsome copper kettle and mash tun amidst a labyrinth of stairs and rooms filled with towering fermenters and tanks of various sorts. It was a quick tour, but I was hungry so I hustled back to Poperinge, wolfed down a meal, and headed to my next stop: the Poperinge Hop Museum. Housed in an old hop-processing building, and with four floors of hops, iron tools, and rusty machines, it was hardly a disappointment. Neither was the pub next door, where I gulped down a Hommelbier (with Poperinge hops), a Rodenbach Grand Cru (very nice), and a Hopus (accompanied by a shot of yeast). The night was completed with another local fave, Sint Bernardus Abt 12. This was all well and good, but I had yet to brew (or, at least, watch someone brewing), and that was about to change.

I had contacted Urbain over the summer about the possibility of some similar apprenticeship experiment and had to steady my wobbling knees when he welcomed me for a portion of the winter. I couldn’t believe that one of, if not the, best brewers in the world would accept such an absurd offer from a complete stranger. The initial plan was for the winter, but I couldn’t resist calling up Urbain anyway for this first trip to Belgium. I also contacted several other breweries to increase my chances of joining some other brew days. One of the most welcoming responses was from Davy Spiessens at Picobrouwerij Alvinne in Heule, West Flanders. Little did I realize that Struise and Alvinne were so tight. Turns out Urbain would be brewing none other than the beer Devon and Beejay helped design, Pipedream, in Alvinne’s brewery the very day I was scheduled to visit Davy. Killed two birds with one stone.

That day, Thursday, was long, but it blurred by too fast. Urbain and Davy were up early and had started the mash. Glen, the other half of Alvinne, joined us later that morning. Alvinne is truly a “pico” brewery, brewing at capacity but experimenting with the beer at the other end of the production cycle. They’re aging in oak barrels that have held everything from Bourgogne to Calvados and seem to want to make their way down the alphabet. I highly encourage them to do so. In between shoveling out the spent grain and becoming very intimate with the hop schedule, I was forced to spend the day tasting some of the world’s best beers from this tiny two-man beer studio. I stopped taking pictures of the beers I tried after only the second, but I’m not sure I would have made it past the tenth anyway. It was more than I expected, and rather difficult to remember every beer I tried, but every single one was an exciting new journey for my taste buds. Of Alvinne’s own brews, I thought those with the most unique and compelling character were their oak-aged series. Alvinne’s Alvino is a Bourgogne barrel-aged belle of a beer, inoculated with some controlled wild yeasts that give it a sourness and vinous side. Melchior, their abbey-like beer, was aged in Bourbon, Bourgogne, and Calvados barrels to create three unique beers, each with a pleasant touch of vanilla and fallen autumn leaves from the oak and an extra kick in the butt from their respective liquid precursors. On the more roasty, darker side, Mano Negra is their masterful “true” Belgian Imperial Stout, while the classic Podge Imperial Stout was also aged in Bourgogne and Calvados barrels to amplify its sophistication. A special treat of Alvinne’s young kriekbier, Kerasus, was pulled directly from the plastic tubs in which it rests on whole cherries while finishing its funky fermentation by wild strains of yeast.

Urbain left Alvinne before noon, but he invited me to join his brewing of Black Albert, that devilishly dark export stout of his that has won many accolades, not only including the world’s best beer. On Friday morn’ Glen and I drove to the Deca Brewery, where Urbain stews his brews. Without his own brewery at this juncture, Urbain is renting out the Deca space and is now brewing more than Deca, though Struise is developing its own space in an old school building in Oostvleteren. I haven’t been to the third home base of Struise, but I hear that Urbain has a tiny pilot brewery at his farm in Lo as well. For now, though, Urbain is hustling around the very-much-100-year-old Deca brewery, fiddling with some large copper kettles and vats and juggling pipes on a mutli-level system with more grace and control than the creaky brewery was built for. Call him the ballerina of brewers. On that day, the Black Albert day, Glen and I watched and conversed with Urbain as he did his work. We got there as the sweet, sweet wort was seeping out of the mash tun and pumped into the boiling kettle; the malt tea with thick, oily, black, and smelling of my mom’s best chocolate cake. We discussed some Struise brewing methods, one of which illustrates the creativity and practicality of Urbain’s brewing; Urbain explained that the water at Deca is particularly alkaline, which isn’t great for brewing. A certain acidity aids enzyme activity and the extraction of sugars from the malt, so instead of treating the water with additions of acidifying agents, Urbain simply leaves his bags of crushed malt out in the open for a day. The humidity in the air is absorbed by the malt and naturally “sours” it to a more acidic pH. Bingo.

Brewing does involve some waiting. Patience is a virtue when heating water, filtering the mash, and boiling and cooling the wort, but tasting beer in between makes it go faster. Urbain brought Glen and I into the tasting room for some samples of a few special Pannepot-prefixed Struise beers. First was Pannepot, both fresh from the tank and more developed at half a year. As with the other big, bold, complex bottle-conditioned beers, the young beer is always less carbonated, sweeter, and brighter, while the old develops a smooth, creamy texture from the beautifully small bubbles and a mellow, well-balanced taste profile as the yeast continues to work on the sugars. Pannepot is subtly but perfectly spiced, caramelly and dark but richly fruity, with a robust but smartly-cloaked alcohol boost. Pannepot was also my first Struise beer, sipped at a beer bar in Portland, Maine. Following Pannepot was Pannepot Reserva, the same beer aged for 14 months in French oak barrels, then bottle-conditioned. We were then brought Pannepot Grand Reserva, aged for two years on oak, the last 10 months on Calvados barrels. This further aging gives a mutli-dimensional complexity to an already mind-blowing beer. Among the Panne- beers, we tried their special winter beer, Tjeeses, against its oak-aged counterpart, Tjeeses Reserva. The description of Tjeeses on the beery website ratebeer.com is priceless: “Deep to orange blond abbey triple winterbeer which has been lagered for 8 months on different stonefruits. Tsjeeses was born out of a 5 year brew experience regarding x-mas beer without being capable of finding a suitable name up to now. With the name came a face, a caricature actually, that was drawn on the day Urbain, our brew master and master brewer, drank too many Tsjeeses’s. Every time he drinks one, he says “Tsjeeses, what a beer”. Therefore the name is more an expression of stupefaction than a curse. We have had already many discussions around the pronounciation of ‘Tsjeeses’. Very close would be that you say ‘cheeses’ or cheese in plural.” In any case, I cannot do justice to these beers in writing; my advice is to seek them out at select places, perhaps on the east coast, or just bring your ass to Belgium.

Finally, the day was almost over. But not quite. Urbain and I spent the afternoon at the soon-to-be brewery in Oostvleteren. We had the good intentions of perhaps doing some bottling there, but we ended up opening quite a few instead. Carlo, a Struise co-conspirator, joined us for a bit more tasting. We compared three more related beers, the common thread of which was Struise’s Black Albert, perhaps the world’s best strong stout. Black Albert sat next to Black Damnation, a blend of Black Albert and Hell and Damnation, brewed by Dutch brewers De Molen. While Albert had a strong Belgian character of both dark chocolate, coffee, and heavily-pigmented fruits, Damnation also showed the character of De Molen’s beer, with more of an American influence of burnt coffee, toffee, and pipe tobacco. Next to Black Damnation sat Cuvée Delphine, Urbain and Carlo’s project of aging Black Albert on oak, Four Roses Bourbon barrels to be precise. I thought this beer, with a slight funkiness and pucker from some wild yeasts in the barrel, was deliciously innovative. Among a few other very special American beers, including Goose Island’s Bourbon County Stout and Lagunitas’ Hop Stoopid, Urbain heard that I hadn’t tried Westvleteren’s offerings yet, despite our proximity to the abbey. Well, that wouldn’t do. So we tried two: Westvleteren 12 at 6 months and a year. The year-old was very noticeably more developed and riper. Its carbonation was smoother, its body drier and more balanced, and its incredible aroma and flavor plump and well-rounded. I believe the hype about this beer; it was juicy and cake-like, with fig, prune, date, and rum-soaked raisin goodness, like a moist scoopful of molasses cake.

Well, it’s been a packed first few days in Belgium. My plans are still shifty, but I should be here and there in Belgium for several months, sharing my time with a few brewers. Urbain has already proven his hosting abilities, and as I plan to spend more time helping him in and out of the brewery I hope I can equal his hosting with my contributions. Glen and Davy have also been more than generous and have invited me back for a few days here and there at the brewery and also for a couple weeks in late February/early March to prepare for Pre-ZBF, a tiny beer fest with a muscular, Schwarzenegger-esque beer menu. I also might spend some time at Brasserie Thiriez in Esquelbecq, France, and possibly at De Ranke in Belgium, but I have yet to meet with them to see if I can charm my way into an apprenticeship. In any case, this blog will cover my adventures for a few months with ample, if sporadic, updates. I hope that beer geeks (excuse me, “enthusiasts”), family members, friends, and friendly strangers alike will enjoy it and perhaps be inspired to explore further the realm of world-class beer. Cheers,

Owen

PS - I will upload some pretty pictures very soon. My computer is five hard-working years old and it took me half a day to unsuccessfully upload four photos, so I will look for a faster computer..."

(Sort of) Brewing... Finally!

2009-09-27T08:55:00.007-04:00

Jenlain Ambrée (or Bière de Garde) in its shimmering copper garb

The original Budweiser (Budvar)

The grandeur of Bordeaux

Strange figures, weird figures in the mist of Bordeaux

I've spent some time in the brewery, and not a moment too soon. Gerolf allowed me into his concoction room last week for the brewing of what I assumed was his blonde. It was a bit like the day of the rabbits; I did a lot of observing and not too much participating, but it was helpful nonetheless.

When I awoke at the usual time, Gerolf had been up for a couple of hours heating the water and "mashing in" the malted barley. He heats the water to a specific degree, adds the grains, and lets them soak at various temperatures to extract the sugars and proteins from the barley. Gerolf's set-up is as follows: two vessels for heating the water (called kettles... I think both have 1000 liters in capacity), a smaller mash tun to soak the malt, four fermenting/conditioning tanks, a filtration system, and a bottling machine that can fill six bottles at once, plus a variety of hoses, tubes, and tools. I stepped into the steamy brewery as he was rinsing the bed of grains to get the last bit of extracted sugars from the malt. This sweet liquid was pumped back into one of the kettles that had heated up the water previously and was further heated to reach a boil. When it boiled, Gerolf added the hops and allowed this "wort" to boil for another 1.5-2 hours. Finally, he pumped this hot wort (it's not "beer" until it has fermented) through the filter and into one of the fermentation tanks, where the added yeast will gobble up all that delicious maltose, maltitriose, and whatever other sugars are yeast-friendly. Pretty much all of this was performed by Gerolf while I hovered over his shoulder, but he did allow me to mop up and clean the mess on the floor.

Yesterday I helped Gerolf clean his bottling machine, which I assume is in preparation for a bottling session. Looking forward to it. I think a total of 10 beers are made on a regular basis here, 6 of which I've tried. He makes a blonde and an ambrée, three fruit blondes (raspberry, blueberry, and peach), a chestnut blonde, a walnut ambrée, a truffle blonde, and a blonde and ambrée with cocoa beans. They are all quite lively with carbonation, fruity on the palate (some mellow tropical fruits), and just ever-so-slightly acidic, which makes them refreshing though I'm not sure if this is intentional. The blonde and ambrée thing is typical of this area, and of France and Belgium in general. It basically means the brewery's light and dark options. The concept of different "styles" of beer is largely an American phenomenon, where the cliché of a melting pot holds true in the brewing world. Without a lenghty brewing history, American brewers have looked to their roots to figure out what to brew, and with the adventurous craft brewing revolution in the 70s and 80s the idea was to provide more and better choices for beer drinkers, hence all the styles we have available. In France, you really just brew beer. It is what it is - it's the French "style".

Anyway, in other news, I took a trip to Bordeaux and spent most of the day on my feet, exploring the beautiful architecture and the riches that were (and still are) the wine trade. I walked up and down the city, entered a wine cave-turned-museum that was a bit over my head because wine is still very foreign to me, and found a lovely market with charcuteries, fromageries, boulangeries, and fruit and vegetable stands. I bought my very own chèvre, a loaf of bread, and an apple and enjoyed a very French picnic in a garden in front of the endless rows of wine merchant houses, facing the Garonne River. I have Erica to thank for the cheese! It was a lightly-aged, creamy, tangy cheese with just a hint of that goatiness that you either love or hate. I happen to enjoy it, and the mini-wheel kept me satiated for the 20 miles I think I walked that day.

This Tuesday, my birthday, is also the day I will be driving to Belgium with Gerolf. I know this won't be the last time I will be in Belgium, but it will certainly be the first and is shaping up to be a whirlwind, life-altering trip. I plan to take full advantage of the couchsurfing site. On the menu: a visit with Urbain Coutteau of De Struise, perhaps a little detour to Westvleteren Abbey, a night with a Belgian couchsurfer, a visit to Picobrouwerij Alvinne, an attempt to convince De Ranke Brouwers and/or Brasserie Thiriez to apprentice me, and puh-LENTY more in and around these destinations. I'm not planning on sleeping for a week.

Cloudy with a Chance of Beer

2009-09-16T15:08:00.007-04:00

Gerolf dresses the rabbit

Perigueux: this dead-end alley fooled me

Finally, I will be posting a few pictures. I've taken so many it's just made the task of choosing which ones to post so much more daunting, hence the stalling.

But first, what have I been doing for the past several days? Well, I've been doing a lot of the usual farmwork: harvesting green beans, planting lettuce and chard, picking apples, getting the knees dirty. I've also helped Gerolf with a couple of very odd property maintenance jobs, like spraying a fields-worth of ferns with some unknown smelly substance, and igniting patches of dead blackberry bushes, creating flames that licked the wispy grey stratus clouds. I've also enjoyed some entertainment. I visited nearby Perigueux, capital of the Dordogne region. It's a beautiful little city, replete with its own rich history that is reflected in some of the beautiful architecture. They even have a few ancient ruins. At the farm, I've been getting in a bunch of solid reading time. My books of choice: Great Beers of Belgium by Michael Jackson (betcha didn't know he was into beer, eh?) and Tim Webb's Good Beer Guide: Belgium.

I'm getting a renewed excitement about my future plans here in Europe. First of all, I should be helping Gerolf brew tomorrow. For a while I was a bit disappointed that he doesn't brew very often. I still would like to brew more, but I'm getting a second wind of enthusiasm for this journey as I plan for the coming months. Gerolf has been extremely helpful in making contacts with brewers and cheesemakers. A friend of his might be able to accommodate me on his sheep's cheese farm in the French Pyrenees, and Gerolf helped me get in contact with one of the owners of Brouwerij De Ranke in Belgium. I plan to meet the owner on a trip to Belgium later this month, and if he likes me (or if I learn French) I might be able to work out an apprenticeship with the brewery. Perhaps a more promising lead is with Brasserie Thiriez in Esquelbecq (northern France). During a visit to Allagash Brewing in Portland, ME, I met the head brewer, Jason Perkins, and heard from him about an American who did a similar trip at Thiriez. I emailed Daniel Thiriez, the owner and brewer, and got a potentially positive reply. Again, he requested that we meet in person, and, again, it would help if I spoke some French. Ah, c'est la vie, non? During this quick trip to Belgium later this month I will also be joining Picobrouwerij Alvinne and Brou werij Huyghe for their respective brewing days. Huyghe is world-renowned for their head-spinning Delirium Tremens beer. Check it out, it's got a picture of a pink elephant on the bottle. In fact, my head is spinning thinking about this whole experience. I've decided from now on to skirt the easy targets; I'm truly living what I see as the dream of every young brewer. I've been able to speak with and entertain the idea of an apprenticeship with handfuls of the world's absolute best brewers. I'm not even sure what an easy target is, either; nearly every one of these world-class brewers has at least responded to my emails, most of them positively. Of course, I haven't yet set foot into any of their breweries, but patience is a virtue and it's still early. I'm living the dream in theory.

And, speaking of beer, here's what I've been able to try, given that I'm in the middle of nowhere. First, before I stepped onto a plane to leave the country, I took a road trip up to Canada and on the way stopped at an awesome beer bar in Portland, Maine, called Novare Res. There I found it: a beer from De Struise Brouwers. My first from the glorious brewery I might be working at in January. It was a luscious, opaque, creamy black brew called Pannepot. Lightly spiced with a chewy mouthfeel, it made me think for an instant I was rolling tropical fruits (papaya), figs, licorice, and dark chocolate around in my mouth. At the strength of wine, it warmed the soul without being too offensively alcoholic in taste. Wow. What a beer! In France I've tried to sample some local beers. La Nonnette from Brasserie Du Canardou was a lighter (in alcohol) dark beer, with spelt and buckwheat. It reminded me of a robust porter and was very well balanced with pleasant roasty notes and some grainy, spicy flavors from the alternative cereals. Belzebuth from Brasserie Grain D'Orge was a whopper of a beer; its 13% alcohol by volume was certainly apparent - a little too harsh for my tastes. It glowed a deep honey brass and possessed a firm light malt backbone, but it was just too strong and too sweet. Oh, I enjoyed it, don't get me wrong, but I would have brewed it a little differently. If I could brew.

Pannepot, from Struise

With my Couchsurfing buddies

Watership Down

2009-09-08T07:49:00.002-04:00

Today (Tuesday) I received a quick, brutal introduction to the cycle of life on a farm. It was fascinating and absorbing at first, with a tinge of queasiness, but by the end of the morning I had already adapted to the process and the shock had worn off. This morning we slaughtered eight rabbits. Well, Gerolf slaughtered them. I took pictures, held open the trash bag for the skins and guts, and cleaned out the cages.

This post is certainly not for the faint of heart, for lovers of rabbits, or for vegans. So go read People Magazine, Pamela Anderson.

Soon after breakfast, my stomach still churning about a bolus of bread, Nutella, and coffee, Gerolf lead me to the rabbit cages and explained the process of slaughtering the rabbits. He said he used to hit them on the nose first, then the head with his hands; after years of this it became too difficult for him, I suspect both physically and emotionally. Today he used a wooden broomstick to knock the rabbit on the head several times. After the first hit the rabbit is stunned; the second probably kills it; the third is to be sure. Gerolf then grasped the feet and head firmly and pulled to separate the skull from the spine - this makes absolute certain the rabbit is dead and also makes cleaving the head from the body during butchering much easier and cleaner. It was tough to watch all this. The worst were the initial hits on the head, as the rabbits would pump their legs and twitch uncontrollably. Though this was undoubtedly an automatic response from the brain, it was certainly not pleasant to observe. What made me watch was an overpowering curiosity, both of the traditional method of preparing a home-raised meal and of the biological phenomenon of death and the construction of the body of a rabbit.

The next step was to skin and dress the body. Gerolf hung each rabbit by feeding rope through its heels and tying it to a tree limb. the fur and skin was cut at this point and peeled away, very cleanly, down the length of its body; I was told this process was easier when the body was warm. the skin was cut at the head and thrown away (he used to save the pelts and sell them for the price of a beer), along with the eyes. The stomach was then cut open to remove the innards, which were thrown away with the exception of the liver, pancreas, kidneys, lungs, and heart, which were saved for the production of paté. The hands and feet were then cut and the body was bare, pink, and ready for butchering.

In the kitchen Gerolf used a cleaver to separate the two sides of the abdominals (a specialty, he says), the two front legs (his favorite meat), the two hind legs, and the dorsal and ventral halves of the abdomen, or torso. I was on sink duty, using cold water to wash off excess blood and remove the few strands of fur left on the muscles.

And that was half my day. I have to say that, despite the morbidity of the whole thing, I was more fascinated and interested than anything. They are, unfortunately or not (depending on the situation), some very beautiful creatures with sleek, dark coats, long, soft ears, and gentile, handsome faces. The variety is native to the region, Aquitaine, in the department of Dordogne, also known as the Perigord region. The rabbit is known as lapin chèvre in French, "goat rabbit" in English.

I suppose that is life on the farm. It does make a good meal, especially when simmered in Laubicherie Ambrée beer.

First Day in Sarlande

2009-09-08T07:45:00.003-04:00

J’ai arrivé! I tumbled into Paris a few moons ago (counting time by nights and days is useless, given the time difference), and the trip was uneventful and full of packaged sandwiches and bad coffee. I will save you most of the details except for the flight from Dublin to Paris during which I met two young, pleasant Parisians who were patient with me as I practiced my French with them; they also suggested I visit downtown Paris (specifically, Luxembourg park) during my five hours of down-time at the airport. My first non-airport meal was a Big Mac. Isn’t it ironic. I had to use the bathroom but the French McDonald’s dude said I had to buy something first.

Anyway, fast-forward to my arrival to Limoges. I had a very good time surfing on a couch at Kris’ apartment in the city. As soon as I lugged my suitcase through the door I was greeted by Kris and two of his friends, who served me some food, too much wine, and a lovely cheese platter. I forgot to take a picture, but the Camembert and an abbey-style cheese were especially luxurious. The next morning I tossed around a football (the American type) with Kris and a friend, and they then drove me directly to La Ferme de Laubicherie. It really is in the middle of nowhere, and I’m not even sure if Kris found his way back. Somehow I doubt it.

Merde, did I eat well that night. The farm is also an inn of sorts, and a Belgian couple was staying for a night. Gerolf, who is Belgian himself, is the man in charge, my boss, and he is also the brewer (and I former cheesemaker, he tells me). His partner in business, Jacqueline, keeps us big boys in check and is a phenomenal (and humble) cook. That night we were served a zucchini pie, baked carrots, potatoes with bacon, chicken, the most tender and flavorful rabbit meat, a cheese plate with Tomme and Coulommiers, among others, apple cake for dessert, and some top-notch Bergerac wine from a wine-making friend of Gerolf’s. Of course, all the vegetables are from the garden here at the farm, which always makes a meal plus spécial. I polished off the night with a sample of one of Gerolf’s beers, one that I wouldn’t have thought would be my first of his selection. I tried the peach blonde ale, and it was quite full of character. Not my favorite type of beer, but certainly tasty nonetheless.

Today I helped Gerolf in the garden, cutting pumpkins, feeding the rabbits some tough zucchini, picking green beans, and clearing the retired patch of pumpkins for winter. We again hosted a (different) Belgian couple tonight and ate just as well: salad with a hard-boiled egg, scalloped potatoes, a tart zucchini dish (almost like ratatoullie), some mouth-watering lamb, another cheese platter, more Bergerac, and leftover apple cake. I love leftovers.

So, that’s what I’ve been up to. Some work and a lot of eating. I will post pictures and more details about the farm soon. Be well, do good work, and keep in touch. Like Garrison Keillor.

Vive La France

2009-09-06T04:22:00.002-04:00

As I write this, I’m gently swaying forward and back in a complimentary rocking chair at Logan airport with a bright, clear view of a Boston ‘burb. A cute little marina juts into a marshy mix of blue sea and green grass. When this is published, I will have reached Europe, since I’m writing this in Word because I’m too cheap to buy any internet time. I’m starting to feel the gravity of the situation now: that I’ll be in a strange land, listening to sounds I never thought humans could articulate with their mouths, drinking and eating concoctions my virgin palate couldn’t imagine in its dreams (if palates dream). I’m feeling good, probably because I’m pretty blazed off a giant energy drink I had to guzzle before passing through security. But I’m uncharacteristically relaxed about the trip, and that’s, paradoxically, a little unsettling. Ah well, I’m sure everything will go smoothly.

Most of you already know, but just to reiterate: I’m at the point of no return here on a trip to Europe to both explore a new continent and learn the art and science of brewing beer. I hope to spend some time on a cheese farm or two as well, hence the title of my blog (washed rind cheeses are often bathed in beer). I’ll be starting in France, at La Ferme de Laubicherie, and will possibly find a brewery or cheese farm in Italy or Denmark after that. In January I have a tentative plan to work with De Struise Brouwers in Belgium, a growing brewery with plenty of hype and the tastiest of beers to back it up. After this stay I’m hoping to jig on over to Scotland and Ireland for the spring and summer, where a couple brewery farms accept volunteers. Nearly all of this plan is tentative, and I’m expecting changes of plans. I’ll take what I can get but I’m shooting for the moon.

For my friends, I’m sorry if I didn’t get to see you, but I’ll be back soon enough. Last night I was lucky enough to get a fresh meal from my mom’s garden and some well-wishes from two of the most gorgeous girls around; my sister, Linnet, and my niece, Katya, gave me some Skype time and Katya made my jaw turn to rubber with her cuteness. I’m a lucky uncle. I tucked myself into bed under what seemed to be a full moon, white and glowing with its lunar confidence. Sleep was short but deep.

What Goes With Cheese?

2009-09-06T04:16:00.003-04:00

Here it is! The long-awaited Orchard Hill Breadworks blog entry!

This summer I worked three or four days a week at this bakery. It’s a half-minute drive from my house, which was luxurious in a sense because I had to wake up before dawn bent over to show us its crack. I would rise to the most jarring alarm at 3:45 AM on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, force-feed myself a banana or some cereal (to avoid eating too many cookies in the morning) and head up the hill to meet Noah Elbers, the baker. Noah comes from a line of the most hard-working people, a breed that loves its community as hard as it works. That’s why Noah was just finishing the bake as I arrived at 4 in the morning. He’s up all night, throwing loaves into his gloriously handsome, wood-fired Spanish oven (with rotating floor) and keeping himself company, which he seems to do quite well.

I never actually baked anything (many of you were wondering that), but my duties were just as essential to running the operation smoothly and giving Noah some much-needed rest. I packed the still soft and steaming bread into bags for deliveries (which make up most of his sales), packed cookies, lined the bread baskets with cloths, brought in wood, swept, and attended to several other odd jobs. Kurt and Dave were the other regular employees, and they helped with farmer’s market sales and preparing the dough for baking. Kurt is Beavis and Dave is Butthead, and that’s a heartfelt compliment. I’ll miss those guys.

I highly suggest you check out the bakery’s website, www.orchardhillbreadworks.com, to see pictures, read Noah’s history and philosophy, and buy bread! I think it can be ordered online, and, absolutelycompletelyutterly without any sort of bias at all whatsoever, it’s gotta be the best bread on earth. Sure, Noah’s always looking for ways to achieve greater consistency and quality, but he’s just setting the bar higher and higher, that’s all.

It was an awesome summer. I got to work with, and get to know better, a friend I’ve known since childhood; I got used to working at odd hours (a useful life skill – they don’t teach that in Life Skills class… which I skipped anyway); I became more familiar with how a small business works; and I got to eat all the fresh sourdough bread my stomach could absorb.

I’m hungry.

Slow and Sturdy Wins the Race

2009-08-25T21:23:00.003-04:00

I think I've found a goldmine. More like stumbled into a goldmine, actually. Last month I was researching breweries to stay at in Europe and I thought I'd try posting a forum topic on both beeradvocate.com and another site, ratebeer.com, to see what kind of input the online beer community could muster. They mustered fairly well, especially the ratebeer folks, so I found myself with a couple more places to contact. One such place, De Struise Brouwerij in Belgium, had apparently hosted two Americans the previous winter as an apprenticeship project that eventually lead to the establishment of a new American brewery, Pipeworks Brewing. I had heard of Struise (pronounced STROY-suh) beers through my late-night beer website binges but it wasn't until I perused the website and scrolled around ratebeer.com that I began to realize the scope of the brewery's influence. And so, after a month without a response to my email, I had virtually forgotten about my foolhardy attempt to stay at Struise.
A bit about this place: in 2008 De Struise was rated as the world's best brewery. Ratebeer.com compiled the data and crunched the numbers for this award, and the website expounds on the scope of the competition: "As it has been for the last 8 years, RateBeer Best was again the largest beer competition in the world -- over 1.97 million reviews of 91,000 beers from over 8700 brewers worldwide were tallied." This quote is from the 2009 competition, but I suspect the numbers are similar for both years. This year, De Struise dropped to the number 10 spot, but I suspect that the ratings are heavily influenced by the amount of 'buzz' a brewery gets, especially if it releases a special or buzzworthy beer that year. In addition to this overall rating, Struise boasts 5 beers in the world's top 100 (numbers 5, 11, 30, 46, and 91). And, to flog a dead horse, Struise produces the 3rd best stout; 4th best Belgian session beer; 3rd, 4th, and 5th best Belgian strong ale; and brews 10 of the best beers produced in Belgium.
OK, alright, alright. So you get the picture. Basically, I was certainly not expecting the email I got from Urbain Coutteau, owner and operator (brewer) of Struise, apologizing for the late reply and mentioning, in broken but deliciously understandable English, that he could use some help in the mid-winter months of January through March. I almost soiled my pants. To be clear, I made my first-ever call to Belgium and spoke directly to Urbain. His jovial, chipper voice rang clear through the phone: yes, you are welcome to stay at my place, I will provide you with a room and food if you will ease some of the heavy load of running my brewery. All of this is tentative, dependent on the (apparently good) chance that Urbain will not have guests at his B&B-type farm during the cold winter months.
I am eternally grateful for this potential opportunity. Though I haven't met him, nor even tasted any of his beers (their distribution is limited), Urbain appears to be a man of high quality. Our conversation, albeit brief, was friendly, engaging, and his voice resonated with a contagious gaiety. The two Americans that stayed with him kept a blog during their stay (which can be found on the Struise website), and it portrayed Urbain in the same light but illustrated more his work ethic and philosophy about beer. Urbain seems to truly embody both the artistic and scientific aspects of brewing, and experiments, creativity, and mistakes weave together to give De Struise Brouwerij its distinctive image and beers. If this opportunity works out, I'm excited to talk with Urbain about my own thoughts and attitudes about beer, and I can imagine that this will be a huge learning experience for me. Expect more than a few entries about De Struise and its beers in the future.
Struise, by the way, means 'sturdy'. It also has something to do with ostriches, but the exact relationship lost me. Urbain does, though, have an ostrich farm. I look forward to getting slapped with an ostrich foot.
Check out this short video segment produced for Belgian TV. It features Struise and is hosted by a couple of goofy European TV personalities. It's in Dutch, I believe, but most of the speaking is in English.

In other news, my brother and his wife just had their east coast wedding celebration last weekend. The party and people were great, and the beer was excellent. More on that later (hopefully). I will also post something about my summer at Orchard Hill Breadworks. Just gotta make some pictures look pretty. And I'll be leaving for France next Friday. Good lord, I can count the days on my fingers and toes. I'm getting thirsty for summathat truffle beer!

Sleeping With Skunks

2009-08-12T08:37:00.007-04:00

Dear Reader,

Snag yourself a comfy quilt you don't mind getting grassy, swindle a soothing iced coffee or soy latté, find respite under the shade of an aged and august maple or apple tree, huddle around the buzzing screen of your laptop, and prepare yourself for another episode of the blog show. We've got quite a bit to discuss, so I'll probably start with some long-winded updates, then once my patience dwindles I'll probably wrap it up quick. I wish I could tell you to expect a long entry, but it'll probably be normal-length.

So, how 'bout this weather, eh? Southern New Hampshire is finally seeing some stiflingly humid, hot days. So it feels like summer, now that all my shirts are soggy.

My brewing days are over for the summer. I just bottled the second beer for my brother's wedding celebration, the IPA. After fermentation the stuff is essentially beer, just non-carbonated and a little... 'sharp', I guess. When it's put into bottles with a bit of corn sugar it will carbonate and the residual yeast will metabolize some less desirable compounds in the beer, improving the overall flavor. That said, the non-carbonated IPA tasted exceptional. It had a great biscuity backbone but the hops gave it its true character; I could pick out some great fruity blasts of papaya, mango, and pineapple. The IPA was 'dry-hopped', meaning some hops were also added after the boil, tossed directly into the fermenter. The Belgian Dubbel was put into mini kegs a week ago, and that beer tickled the tongue just as much, though with a spicy Belgian tingle and alcoholic kick. E'erbody at the wedding gettin' tipsy. Yes, J-Kwon, off of homebrew.

Racking the IPA into the bottling bucket

On the travel front, things are looking good, and I'm getting very excited and anxious. I've started drinking more caffeine, so that may account for the anxiousness. I have my one-way ticket to Paris and I bought a train ticket from Paris to Limoges. First-class was only 5 Euros more, but I decided to start off on the right foot and choose the more frugal option. I've been struggling a bit with travel logistics (and would welcome any advice). I've been considering but avoiding applying for a credit card. Apparently, I can use my debit card abroad without any charges or fees, but having a back-up credit card could be useful and CapitalOne also doesn't charge for using their card abroad, or so I read. I'm holding off both because of laziness and a slight concern about missing a payment or just being hoodwinked by the credit card company... Just bought a new GSM phone and SIM card for Europe, so I'll let everyone know what my international number is soon, though I think I'll be using Skype for calls to home. Let me know if you'd like to Skype! The next step in my planning is to investigate insurance options. If only I had future-vision I could know not to feed the pigeons in Paris, which would save me both from reconstructive plastic surgery and the need for health insurance...

On the home front, I have to say the summer has been a blast. I've adjusted to the bakery work/gardening rhythm and have spent my free time twiddling with exploits I love. The Irish flute experiment is still in its infancy, but I have a firm grasp on - count 'em - two tunes, The Galtee Ranger (or Callaghan's) and Kitty Gone A-Milkin'. I've also been supplementing the flute tooting with some pennywhistle screeching. The pennywhistle comes in handy when I want to focus on fingering and forget about trying to get a nice tone out of the flute. Additionally, I'm getting a second wind on the drums. I've discovered funk and acid jazz and I'm becoming addicted to the grooves of Medeski, Martin & Wood, John Scofield, The RH Factor, and all that jazz. I'll be bringing some sticks and a drum pad to France and will keep my eye out for any spare sets to jump in on. When I'm not squeaking around on my drum throne I've been soaking in the wonderful community vibes at Pizza Night at the bakery. Every Tuesday night Noah, the baker at Orchard Hill Bakery, hosts heaps of hungry homo sapiens and provides dough for the eager eaters to punch out into crusts and load with an array of pot-lucked toppings. He bakes these personal pizzas in the outdoor clay oven built just for these special nights. They've been wildly successful, successful enough for someone to even start a fanpage on Facebook if they so desired.

Noah shoveling pizza out of the oven

And finally, we had a skunk in our house the other night. I thought we dealt with it with absolute finesse and imagination. It all started when I was bumming around on the 'net late-night and I heard some odd scratching noises coming from the pantry room. It didn't sound like our cat, Duder, and it wasn't because Duder was softly purring on the couch in the living room in all her Sphinx-like grace and indifference. I shined a flashlight on the pantry corner and there was the big, bushy, striped tail I was expecting. "Perhaps Duder could help," I thought, so I brought Duder over to the skunk's vicinity and both reacted in the least possible way imaginable. I don't think either noticed either. I thanked Duder for all her bravery and continued on with just the help of my mom, whom I had roused just when she had fallen asleep in the hopes that she could provide a human shield between me and the skunk. I racked my brain for a way to depose the skunk without setting it off, but it was deep in the bowels of that pantry. Luckily, the pantry room is connected to the outside by a door (which is undoubtedly how it got in), so I decided to let entropy solve the problem. I barricaded the doorway that leads to the rest of the house, left the outside door open a crack, and retired upstairs to a restful night's slumber. In the morning, there was no skunk to be found, only some missing crackers. They were stale, anyway.

Grey Fox 2K9

2009-07-23T18:34:00.011-04:00

The Northeast's premier bluegrass festival, Grey Fox, recently transpired among the rolling Catskills of New York state, and I and my brother were fortunate patrons (or volunteers, rather) of this fine festival that just finished its 32nd year. This was my fourth time going, third time volunteering, and 47th time taking time off of work this summer to do something fun at the expense of saving money for my trip to Europe. Ah, well. I got to work on my tan, and that's all that really matters.

Us staffers were up close

I realize that some of you, at least one of you, have not even heard of bluegrass music. I am appalled, but I'm too lazy here to give a scholarly background of the music, but I'll take a couple sentences to explain. Bluegrass, as a genre, essentially evolved from the old-time musical and vocal traditions of rural America in the early 20th century. Figures such as Bill Monroe, the Stanley Brothers, Flatt and Scruggs, and others are considered to be the most influential in founding and developing the music, which I like to think of as a cleaner, tighter, more modern version of old-time string band music. Today, bluegrass has taken some routes that have roots in country and jazz, the latter being improvisational solos and complex musical twists and turns that keep the music interesting for the players (but sometimes confusing and disagreeable for the listeners, in my opinion). I go for the real, hard-drivin' original stuff. Anyway, that's bluegrass, and you can imagine that a bluegrass festival attracts some characters. Can't say I'm not one of them, but folks just let it all out for these things. You see plenty of extravagant RVs (loud-as-hell generators included), tattoos, straw hats, beer koozies, facial hair, and yes, white people. Will and I at least made an effort to improve the melanin discrepancy by getting some sun but, alas, the honkies prevailed. Bluegrass, though, is certainly a more progressive music than most, especially its close counterpart country, and several artists including Peter Rowan and Tim O'Brien played political songs. There was even a group, The Maybelles, that boasted a gay female bass player who wrote and played a song with the title of something like "My Little Christian Girlfriend." Of course, on the other end of the spectrum, Ricky Skaggs spent a good amount of time preaching the gospel in the hopes of converting any weak-willed listeners right there at the festival.

Crooked Still

Will and I worked the morning shifts, preparing and serving breakfast to the crew and performers, which meant that we got the whole rest of the days to ourselves. We spent some time exploring the charm of Oak Hills, NY, riding bikes or going for a jog and ending our tours with a few refreshing swims in a nearby creek. Then we'd head back to the festival grounds, slather on some sunblock and prepare for a day of nonstop pickin'. There were too many great performers to list them all, but a few notable shows came from the Kruger Brothers, a Swiss duo who compose beautiful tunes and can play the classics at supersonic speeds (check out this video), Crooked Still, the funky, soulful group of young musicians from up around the Northeast, Mountain Heart, the almost pop superstars of the bluegrass world,

Mountain Heart (this banjo player has no fingers on his left hand)

Marty Stuart and his Fabulous Superlatives, a quirky and very showy group that is allowed to sport tight leather and frou-frou hairdos because they're f*cking great,

Marty Stuart

and Ricky Skaggs and Kentucky Thunder, great musicians who play the stuff as it really should be played, most of the time: straightforward and unbelievably crisp.

Old Man Skaggs

And to add icing to the acoustic cake, Will and I had the pleasure of meeting and giving a ride to the Albany train station to two lovely Danes. Sigrid Hasling and her daughter, Marie, were visiting the States for the first time and decided to hop from NYC to Grey Fox for a little vacation within a vacation. We drove them to the station after the festival and shared facts about our respective educational systems and demography; you know, the usual dialogue that's exchanged between Danish tourists and US citizens. Marie is a grad student in Copenhagen, and I'm looking forward to perhaps making a stop in the city if I can find a brewery farm somewhere in the green pastures of Denmark (which may be very likely, actually).

That's it for tonight, ladies and gents. Soon I'll be posting updates about my brewskies and other tantalizing tidbits, so keep your appetite well whetted. Oh, and to clarify about last post's title: I was going to explain it in that post, but I forgot. Must've been a head-scratcher for you all. I was just remarking to Noah, the baker I work for, about the monsoon that we're experiencing this summer, and he replied with, "Yeah, it might be the summer without...", after which I thought he would finish with "a summer" or something. Instead, he said "tomatoes". I didn't ask him why he said tomatoes, but I thought it sounded funny. Maybe tomatoes abhor rain? We will never know...

Hey, this blog isn't all hot air

The Summer Without Tomatoes

2009-07-14T08:17:00.003-04:00

Got some loose ends to tie up before I head off yet again to do more summery stuff and avoid responsibilities at home. The Grey Fox Bluegrass Festival is a-croonin' my name, so my brother Will and I will be driving the three hours to upstate New Yawhk for four days of some mandolin-chopping, banjo-busting, gospel-yowling goodness. I don't play bluegrass, and I'm not really sure how I got into it (I believe my dad went through a big bluegrass phase, influenced by his brother), but summer just feels empty without a hot few hot summer days of raw, live bluegrass. And sharing those days with crowds of tank-topped, straw-hatted, lobsterbacked sun soakers makes it known I'm not alone. Mmm... I can smell the bloomin' onions right now...

Lessee, last weekend was the 4th. I spent some quality "bro-time" then, too, when Will visited and helped me brew a Belgian Dubbel for his wedding celebration in August. He likes roastier, maltier dark beers like stouts and porters, but since I'm having a great time exploring Belgians I compromised with him and chose the darker-colored dubbel. They're typically heavier on the alcohol than most beers and have flavor profiles that include notes of raisins, figs, or other dark, dried fruits. I threw in an extra quarter-pound of chocolate wheat malt mostly for color, though I'm hoping it might add a touch of coffee to go with the fruitiness. On the eve of that national holiday we got quite a special show. At least three of our neighbors had their own private fireworks displays, which meant that we also had three private fireworks displays. One was right next door, another over Lake Warren, and another through some trees over yonder. It made me wonder... if I can see three fireworks shows with my feet planted in East Alstead, of all places, how many friggin' shows are there across the country? How much money do people spend on this stuff?? I'd blow a couple thou' on Louis Vuitton instead...

Speaking of designer products, I just opened my first Belgian golden ale and, boy, slap a Sean John label on that stuff! It's been conditioning for only a week, but I couldn't wait. It's certainly not carbonated enough (not sure if it ever will get the carbonation it needs; we skimped out on priming sugar since I thought the beer wasn't fermented enough when we bottled and I didn't want the bottles to explode), but it's the best tasting beer I've brewed. A couple more weeks in the bottle and some slight green-appley flavors should mellow out, the fizziness should improve, and I'm hoping a bit of the "hot", fusel alcohol bite will disappear. I'll be brewing the second commissioned wedding batch today. It'll be an India Pale Ale, but I think I'll call it a WePA in honor of the espousal.

Couple more things on the beer front. First, if you have even the slightest inkling to start homebrewing yourself (... er... not... I mean... don't jump into the brewpot) and are up in the New Hampshire region at all, you should check out the Kettle To Keg homebrew shop in Pembroke. Jason, the owner, is a real nice guy and has also offered to contact some brewers across the pond as possible stops during my trip. Also, last night I stopped by the public zoning and planning board meetings for East Alstead's future microbrewery. Tim Roettiger is the man with the plan, and the plan was approved with only a couple changes that need to be made to the design. He's planning on building a small shelter to house the equipment and will brew less than 500 barrels (15,500 gallons) per year and switch the operation to maple syrup production in the spring. Congratulations Tim, can't wait!

Mom's Wanderyear

2009-07-12T19:39:00.004-04:00

Life's been busy. Didn't mean to keep you hanging. This week I've got a morsel of leftovers to serve up, but it's a good 'un. Piping hot. Below is a reprint of a reflection my mom wrote on her travels to Scotland back in the day. She wrote the piece some 25 years ago or so and traveled to Scotland during college, where she worked for her lodging and spent most of her leisure studying the music and song of the area. The timing and era is different for the two of us, of course, but many of her sentiments and concerns mirror my own as I prepare for and daydream about my own post-graduation "wanderyear." I'm trying to make mine less of a stumbleyear and more of a looselyguidedstrollyear. I admire what I see as her maturity in confronting the realities of traveling and impressing oneself upon another culture; it's not always a smooth exchange between cultures and personalities but there's always some insight that can be gleaned from such an experience. And we tend to generally forget the knotty times and look back on our travels with fondness. Anyway, here's mom:

"I started having a dream of being out there in the world instead of being in college studying. My first two years had been years of exploration, and I was getting interested in music and in folk arts. I had a dream of seeing the folk world, of being in a place that still had a living folk tradition. But at that time I just wanted to take a year off, too, because I didn’t know what I wanted to study and I felt I was spending a lot of my parents’ money being in a sort of muddle. That was definitely part of the decision to go.
The reason I started out by going to the inner Hebrides Islands in Scotland was because of an opportunity that came up through friends of my grandmother’s. Every year my grandmother would get fascinating letters from a couple who lived on the island of Canna. The description of the place! It sounded exactly like my dreams. I also needed to find some way of earning money in order to travel for part of the year, and I knew these people always had two girls from New Zealand to help out with the cooking and housekeeping. There were always a lot of visitors staying at their home since there was no inn on the island. When I wrote them, the Campbells agreed that I could come. I ended up staying there several months, and I went on to the Outer Hebrides, too, and eventually I traveled around Europe.
It turned out that learning about the music wasn’t as simple as I thought. I arrived at the Campbells saying that I wanted to learn about the folk music, and I didn’t even know Gaelic. They were both authorities in folk music and Gaelic, and they told me that the genuine folk music is found in the old walking songs, or the songs that went with things like the shrinking of cloth. They’re in Gaelic, and there’s a certain pattern to them. The best way to learn them was to go to South Uist in the Outer Hebrides, where more of the old music had endured, and to try to learn a little Gaelic.
When I went to South Uist, I lived with a family farming and living on a croft, a piece of land that had come down through the generations. For the two months I was there my job was to help care for the father, who was nearly blind and had had a slight heart attack. He loved to sing, and had written songs, so when he got his strength back, he sang a lot of songs for me.
There were other singers I got to know on those islands, and I began to see how the songs themselves had been affected by the changes in the society there. Originally, when people were actually doing the work while they sang, they remembered more verses, and they were continually making up new verses. The songs were always sung with one person and a chorus. Now they are no longer used for work. They’re remembered only by a few old people in isolated places, so they’ve been slowed down and are sung in a more melodic and less rhythmic way.
I taped an old woman singing, and when I played it for the mother of the family I was staying with, she said, “Oh, we don’t want to hear that old cow mooing!” The woman who was saying that was a singer and had enjoyed songs all her life, but she was scornful of all these old ladies who sang old fashioned songs; they weren’t tuneful.
I went to the Hebrides with a lot of ideals. I was looking for a place where tradition was still alive and where a lot of the old customs were still going on. It was like heaven to me to be in a place where there were still thatched roofs, a place that was still so in touch with the earth and had beautiful songs. So it came as a real shock to see that people were turning away from the old things – they liked the acrylic stuff they could order out of catalogues instead of the old tweeds.
It seemed to me that the young people were unsure where they should give their loyalties, and that I was valuing the old ways much more than they were. Maybe that was why I found it so hard to get close to them. The very old people, though, really loved to talk to someone who was interested in the old ways. They wanted to tell about them, and they were lonely.
The ones in between, in my mother’s generation, have seen really hard times. They had to work too hard, and in their minds the old things went along with that. They wouldn’t touch a spinning wheel because when they were young, when they came home from school they had to spin and spin and spin; that’s all they could do, they couldn’t have fun. They had to card for their mothers, and they couldn’t go anywhere without the sock to knit. So they just didn’t even want to see any more of it, or else they were being sort of super modern about it. They’d gild the old spinning wheel and put it in the hall as a decoration, or put plants in it. In a way they were saying, “We don’t need to do this work anymore.”
You could understand all that when you got to know them. I learned a lot about the complexities of it, and that it wasn’t easy to say: this is good and that is bad. But I think I ran into a lot of difficulty because of my idealism. You might call it being naïve, but I got very wrapped up in those people. I would throw myself into something, and then be devastated when it didn’t work out. And yet, because of those extremes of emotion, I think I learned more. I fell in love with that place the way I couldn’t now. Now I might not let myself see it as deeply or feel it as deeply. I guess you learn to hold back a little so that you won’t get hurt. It was hard living right in the middle of the family on South Uist. There were clashes of culture, and I didn’t fit any mold that they could figure out.
That’s part of what happened that year: I was free of stereotypes about myself, and free of my own culture, while not being exactly in the other culture, either. I was very lonely because I couldn’t find any people my own age to help me figure out all the things I was experiencing. I was depressed at times, especially during the winter when there was so little day light; I could have used a little more support. I found that I would write to friends back in the United States and share my feelings with them, and that became very important to me.
But then, I had gone away for the experience of being in a different culture, and I think it was good to have that loneliness because it made me think through a lot of things on my own. I was able to get a freedom of thought by having that lonely period.
When I traveled on to other places, I discovered that I liked traveling alone. I enjoyed staying with friends in the Basque country of France, at a folk festival in Switzerland, in London, and in Italy, but I came to look forward to the feeling of adventure I had in between places when I was really on my own. My favorite picture is one of me standing on the top of Ben Nevis looking wonderfully independent.
I also discovered that I learn the most when I am traveling and come in contact with people who have a lot of skill or knowledge in their own fields, like the Campbells, the old folk singers, or the farmers on the farm where I worked for a month. They taught me how to drive a tractor one day, and on the next day I was pulling the trailer with tractor, carrying the silage and dumping it in the barn. I was pleased they had so much trust in me.
Sometimes now I have to laugh a bit at the way people reacted when I came back to school, as if I were a heroine because I had done such an adventurous thing. I knew that it wasn’t as amazing as they thought, but it did give me a status I hadn’t had before. I actually had accumulated expertise in the field of Scottish music, so that I had something to share with other people. This was an important way that that year changed my life. I now had the confidence to start calling contra dances, and as a result of my being more active and of my knowledge, I gained a reputation in my area of New England. I started to direct most of my energy outside of school to the people and events that had to do with folk music.
I graduated two years later with a concentration in environmental education and not in music. It was on the island of Canna that I came to terms with what I wanted to do in the music field. When I was there I felt that I wanted to prove to Mrs. Campbell that I was serious about my interest in Scottish folk music, but I know that I disappointed her in some respects because she had expected me to have more formal knowledge of music than I had, and to have a more scholarly disposition. I discovered that although I like to be with scholars and to learn, I am not the kind of person who is able to go into the depth required for true scholarship. I found that my own strengths lay more in the social context of music – music and people using it. I came out of that year with even more interest in traditional songs of all cultures, and with a stronger interest in singing.
It strengthened my desire to live close to the land, teaching and working with children, with music and folk lore and old people being an on-going part of my life."

Songs of Yore

2009-07-01T08:09:00.010-04:00

After last weekend's debauchery, I found it fitting to spend this past weekend at a mellow folk festival filled with fun-loving fifty-somethings. Friday, Saturday, and Sunday were spent at the Old Songs Festival in Voorheesville, NY, just a hop over the Green Mountains and through a couple of tired upstate New York towns. The festival is attended by a small but close-knit community of folk music lovers and features a variety of performers from all over the country (and world). My family and a handful of other southwestern NH friends have been going since my hair was peculiarly, youthfully blond (well, actually, before I even had hair). It's a great time: there are enough performers that anyone even remotely appreciative of traditional music (Irish, American, African, Indian, etc.) could find something of interest, and the atmosphere is relaxed, convivial, and usually humid.

I was particularly excited for Bua, a group of Midwesterners who play traditional Irish music. Their sound is rich, even, smooth, and joyous for the tunes; Brían O'hAírt's (Brian Hart) sean-nós singing is breathtakingly delicate and gorgeous. Sean-nós is the traditional, "old-style" of Irish singing, usually done in the Gaelic language, and Brian has mastered the language both for speech and song. I was able to attend a brief workshop on Irish flute playing with a couple members of Bua and though I contributed mostly toots and screeches I was inspired by their playing and encouragement. When I get a little better, I'll post a recording of a tune or two. Here's a blurry photo of the guys at a show during which the power went out, so they played acoustically:

Another highlight was the Saturday and Sunday morning Sacred Harp, or shape note, sings. Shape note is a style of singing popularized in the mid-1800s. I don't know too much about its history, but the lyrical matter is suffocatingly religious (albeit pleasingly poetic). That, however, is its only drawback. The name refers to the method of transcribing the notes in the music as shapes: triangle for fa, circle for sol, square for la, and diamond for mi. This system was developed to make music reading easier for those who, well, didn't know how to read music. I think it was developed in the South, probably in rural areas as a church and social activity, and thus it picked up a lot of emotion and southern punch. Many songs are hard-driving (for folk music) while others are beautifully subtle and full, but all are sung with a certain power that makes singing them infinitely gratifying and, sadly, much more interesting when you're singing than when you're listening as a by-stander. Most shape note sings these days involve large groups and conventions (maybe because of its scarcity as a form of singing), but this makes the experience quite powerful. Shape note is sung in four-part harmony and I belt out my shiny pearls of vibrations as a bass. Go men. Here's a snapshot of our morning sing, being lead by Peter Amidon:

Well, that about does 'er. Wraps 'er all up. Camping was, eh, fun I suppose. I still consider a warm, dry, soft bed as one of the greater things in life, and the weather was wholly uncooperative. Drizzle, downpour, drizzle, blistering sun, downpour, goosebumply wind. Cool clouds, though:

Tune in soon for a bit about the bakery I'm working at and a story from my mom's traveling experience that resonates with my own feelings and expectations.
Yours,
Owen

Festifull of Beer

2009-06-22T20:10:00.008-04:00

So this past weekend I volunteered at the American Craft Beer Festival put on by BeerAdvocate.com, a website and magazine dedicated to spreading the word about good beer. Well, they spread more than word. They spread beer, too, all over the floors of the Seaport World Trade Center in Boston. That's where I spent a couple of afternoons hauling ice, moving kegs, dumping buckets of "slop" (a harmless, slurpy mixture of beer and rinse water), and taking out the trash for several thousand festival attendees. I won't bore you with romanticized narrations of my volunteer duties, but needless to say it involved a lot of standing and smelling like stale beer.

If you've never been to a beer "festival", I suggest you attend one. Just one, though. One's enough. It's exactly as you'd picture it: this one had booths from 75 breweries (serving over 250 different beers) lined up in a giant open space packed with eager imbibers that roam the floor, line up for samples, and slowly (or quickly, depending on your size and/or drinking rate) become louder, less inhibited, and more likely to stumble and bump into each other. The fests I have experience with usually have multiple sessions, each around 3.5 hours long, and allow unlimited sampling in 2 oz. serving cups. It's a lot of fun, of course, as long as you pace yourself (eat a sizable meal beforehand) and appreciate many different styles of beer. And there's usually a lot of really, really tasty beer. You may even have a brewer pour you a beer.

As a volunteer, I was able to sample a surprising amount of the good stuff. Due to venue rules, we weren't allowed to drink on the floor, so periodically we'd grab a sample and have to sulk back behind the curtains for some secret drinking. I now can somewhat sympathize with smokers. Among some of the stellar brews I sampled were a few mind-blowing ones worth mentioning. Surly Brewing had a Russian Imperial Stout simply called "Darkness," which is thick and black as ink and tastes like alcoholic molasses. Foothills Brewing also had a RIS called "Sexual Chocolate" (brewed with cocoa), and the sample I tasted had been aged in oak bourbon barrels. Brooklyn Brewery offered a fruity, spicy Belgian-style beer called "Cuvee de Cardoz," brewed with a healthy amount of anise. All of the beers I tried stole the show from anything else I consumed during the fests, including peanut butter crackers, granola bars, slim jims, and bathroom water.

Oh, and people! I saw a number of familiar and famous faces. Erica Reisman and I enjoyed some lamb and chicken slamwiches at a place called Flour. Erica also attended one of the sessions and was looking like she was enjoying herself quite a bit. The legendary Colin Mahoney made a tall appearance, and I also got to see Alec Pinkham and Julie Cap-low! on the festival floor. My childhood (and current) friends Lyra and Larsson Burch and Jessie Beecher were spectacular in their hosting and Taboo abilities.

Present at the fest were some celebrities in the brewing world. You will probably have no idea nor any interest in these people, but I'll mention them for my own gratification. In the picture you can see me with Jason Alstrom, co-founder of the BeerAdvocate empire. Brewers and presidents from respectable establishments were also present, from Harpoon to Otter Creek/Wolaver's to Odell.

All in all, it was a rewarding experience. I wouldn't be telling the whole truth, though, if I didn't mention that, after observing (and participating in) a weekend of beer saturation, I felt more than a bit of both physical and mental fatigue. I enjoy beer, of course, and I enjoy trying different kinds of beer. But when perhaps a year's worth of sampling different kinds of beers is crammed into a weekend, the ritual loses its enjoyment. To me, a high-quality beer is meant to be enjoyed singularly and slowly. That is why I suggest attending just one or a few beer fests. Get the feel for them, try a few new or special brews, but realize that enjoying just one or a couple at a concert or with friends at a cookout is usually a more satisfying experience. Cheers, nonetheless!

LARBing: Live-Action Role Brewing

2009-06-14T20:13:00.009-04:00

Just finished my first brew session of the summer and the first in a different spot than the traditional 84 Hope Street in Providence (also the first solo brew, without my usual brewing partner, the incomparable Eric LoPresti). Yup, I spent an afternoon up here in balmy New Hampshire boiling a syrupy concoction that will hopefully be a tasty Belgian golden ale in about four weeks. The beer should taste like a crude, blue-collar version of Duvel, the renowned ale from Belgium that tastes like the nectar of the gods (or the Devil, since that's who it's named after). It looks a lot like god piss, too. I brewed this batch as a test-run in anticipation of my brother's wedding celebration in late August. He commissioned me to brew an IPA and a Belgian Dubbel, so I thought I'd do a little practicing. Wouldn't want a houseful of puking party-goers, now would we?

Here's how I brewed this particular beer with a bit about the general homebrewing process, not including fermentation, bottling, or conditioning (I'll get to those in time):

First, the ingredients. I used 3.3 lbs light malt extract, light candy sugar, .375 lbs pale grain malt, 1 lb dried wheat malt extract, 1 lb dried extra light malt extract, 1 lb dried light malt extract, 1 oz Czech Saaz hop pellets, 1 oz Northern Brewer hop pellets, 1 oz Styrian Golding hop pellets, and 1 packet Fermentis T-58 ale yeast. This makes no sense to most of you, I know. I'll explain.

To begin, I heated up some water and steeped the pale grain malt for about 20 minutes to make a sort of 'grain tea.' "Malt" is barley that is soaked in water and allowed to germinate slightly. At the right moment, germination is ceased by drying, or kilning, the barley on heated floors. Allowing the barley to germinate releases enzymes that help break down the barley's starches into simple sugars that feed the yeast during fermentation. Barley can be kilned lightly or heavily, giving beers more delicate or roastier flavors and lighter or darker colors.

I then added this malt tea to a bigger pot with near-boiling water. At this point I added all the malt extracts (in both syrup and powder form - they're essentially the same thing) and the ounce of Northern Brewer hop pellets, and I brought this stew to a boil. This made the kitchen smell like popcorn, according to other members of the household. Chris Duffy, if you're reading this, I guess you've been vindicated. Apparently, brewing beer can smell like popcorn, crescent rolls, or rice pilaf. I dunno. Anyway, boiling will help to further break down starches into sugars and denature proteins that should settle out of the boil or fermentation vessel. That statement may not be entirely accurate, but... just keep reading. Hops are added to impart their bitterness, which balances the malt's sweetness, flavor, which can range from piney to citrusy, and aroma. Bittering hops are added at the beginning of the boil; aroma hops are added near the end.

After half an hour of this bubbling, steaming boilfest I added the ounce of Saaz hops and boiled for another 10 minutes or so. Then it was time for the candy sugar! Candy sugar is basically rock candy, and it adds more sugars for the yeast to munch on as well as a slight residual sweetness and oomph to the texture, or "body", of the beer. It's usually reserved for Belgian beers. Back in the olden days, Belgium was the world's foremost producer of rock candy, as monks would fill monastery cathedrals with huge vats of sugar water, tie hemp twine across the top, and boil away. During WWII, Belgian troops received half a pound of rock candy as part of their rations.

Enough lies, back to the brew. After stirring in the candy sugar, I added the last ounce of hops and shut off the heat. When this liquid (called "wort", not beer yet) is cool enough, it can be poured into the fermentation bucket and yeast can be added. To get the wort cool quickly (to prevent bacterial infection), I used a copper coil that carries cold water through, but not in, the wort. My wort chiller is leaky, so I had quite the Rube Goldberg-esque contraption.

After the wort was chilled and poured into the fermentation bucket, I added the Belgian yeast and sealed the deal. I'll let those yeasties go to town for about a week, then bottle that shiznit. If any of you are around in four weeks and brave enough to drink a pint or two, stop on by! Blueberry pies accepted as donation.

Cheers,
Owen

The Hell Is Going On Here?

2009-06-09T20:27:00.006-04:00

Dear Friends and Family Members,

Hello and welcome to my old-fashioned, world-wide-web log, known to the youth of today as a "blog," which you can view instantly from your own personal computer-device. I never thought I'd be blogging, but here we go. This'll be an adventure.

Along with the adventure of blogging, I'll be posting here semi-regularly about my actual, non-digital adventures. If you haven't yet heard, I'll be perusing the hills and dales of Europe starting this fall and continuing indefinitely (most likely 3/4 of a year) with a specific goal in mind: job training. Through the WWOOF program (more on that later) I'll be working on farms in exchange for room and board. Not just your regular old, washed-up vegetable farm, though. (Blegh, who eats vegetables?) No. Cheese farms and farms with breweries. This will all be in anticipation of coming back to the States after some refreshment, invigoration, and inspiration to pursue further a career involving cheese, beer, or perhaps something else that involves fermentation or moldy shit. Kombucha? Sauerkraut? Unlikely, but only time will tell.

So, this blog is not entirely self-serving. I hope that it will entertain some, make others jealous perhaps, inspire a few more, but mostly allow folks to know what I'm up to and encourage them to respond in turn with their own life stories. This especially applies to those of you who just graduated from Brown with me. Keep in touch before we both fall off opposite faces of the Earth.

Also, I started the blog early both to get you on board and hooked and to let you know what I'm up to this summer (I'm working in a most wholesome bakery and will be going to music festivals and enjoying other tidbits and morsels of fun). More on that later this summer.

Before I lose you all, I'd like to announce my first farm! I'll be starting in south-central France (Dordogne Perigord, I guess) in early September at La Ferme de Laubicherie. The farm is run by a man named Gerolf Jacobs, a Belgian ex-pat who's had a dream of living on a farm in France since he was but a wee lad. Now he's running what looks to be a gorgeous farm and B&B, with everything from pigs to a clay oven to fields of golden barley. The highlight for me will surely be his microbrewery, where he makes some outlandish but truly satisfying-sounding beers with walnuts, chestnuts, and even truffles (the fungus, not the chocolate). Check out his website here: http://pagesperso-orange.fr/gerolfjacobs/welcome.html
I'll be at Laubicherie until mid-November, then I have to decide whether to hang around southern France at a cheese farm for the winter or head north to Belgium and spend the blustery months at a farm near the fairyland cities of Bruges and Ghent. I'm leaning towards Christmas in Bruges. You, dear reader, will find out soon enough. All the farms I'll be staying at will probably be found through the WWOOF program. WWOOF, or Willing Workers On Organic Farms, is an organization that has a database of thousands of farms, mostly organic, from all over the world. Workers, preferably willing, pay a nominal fee for each country to access the contact info for these farms. All we have to do is contact the farm, set up dates to work, and find out a way to get there. Grub and a place to rest your weary bones are provided in exchange for your work, so it's a fairly cheap way to see the world and learn a thing or two about the pastoral life.

So that's it so far. I hope you all can follow this pointless public diary for at least a post or two. And comment if something I said tickles you, or inspires you to break out in song, or annoys the crap out of you. Anyhow, enjoy!

Yours,
Owen

PS - About the title: There's a category of cheeses that are termed washed-rind. Generally orange in rind color and fairly pungent, they are so because they're periodically washed with or cured in a brine solution or a bath of beer, wine, or other alcoholic treat. Cheese and beer. Bingo.

About the blog picture: Beer by Abbaye Notre Dame de Scourmont (Chimay Grande Réserve), cheese by Lincet (Le Délice de Bourgogne), farm cottage by Wood, Body By Jake