Beer in the Bay Area

My wife, 11 week old daughter and I recently went on a trip to the bay area for a wedding. It was the first time I'd been in Northern California and I was excited to sample as many beers as possible. Sadly I wasn't able to get to the Anchor Steam Brewery, but I was able to go to several brewpubs and a couple bars and taste a ton of west coast beers that I can't get my hands on in the Midwest, but have always read about.

In San Francisco we went to two brewpubs. The first one was the 21st Amendment Brewery close to the SBC park, the Giants stadium. The name is clever, since this was the amendment that repealed prohibition. I only had time to try one beer, which I wasn't blown away by. Their award winning beer was a Watermelon wheat, which sounded intriguing, but ended up being unimpressive. I've thought in the past about watermelon in wheat beers and the problem seems to be that it's not a strong enough flavor to really come out. The beer tasted watery and lacked enough watermelon character, despite a slice of watermelon on the side of the glass. Instead of having a second beer, we decided to head to another brewpub.

The second place we went to was much better, and it's the picture above. The San Fransisco Brewing Company is a small, cool, old bar located in the North Beach area. My wife had the hefeweizen which was very good. I tried the San Francisco Pale Ale. This was a really great example of the Pale Ales I had on the west coast. Very hoppy and using mostly cascade hops. I also tried a sampler of the Albartross Lager, which was a nice smooth lager. Sorry, I'm not feeling like providing too many specific beer details. Overall, great beers and cool setting.



I also visited the Hopyard Ale House in Pleasanton, California. Here I tried several different beers that aren't available in Minneapolis. I tried Stone Brewing Company's Arrogant Bastard Ale. This is a beer that I've heard a lot about. The name says it all. This beer is big in all ways; super hoppy, super high alcohol and a plethora of flavors. It pours a dark redish color with a white head. Its hard to describe, but is an excellent beer! I had tried their Levitation Ale once, which was good, but Arrogant Bastard lives up to the hype.

The next beer I tried was Russian River's Pliny the Elder. This is an Imperial IPA, weighing in at 8% ABV. It pours a golden-orange-ish color that has a heavy hop presence in the aroma. It drank smooth and had a nice after taste.

I tried Bear Republic's Racer 5 IPA. It was good, a pretty standard IPA. Nothing stood out too much.

A beer I was really excited to try was a unique beer I had read about before. It's called Mateveza and it's an all organic beer brewed with Yerba Mate tea. Yerba Mate is a type of tea usually drank in Argentina. This beer is a really interesting concept and I was excited to see a 22oz bomber in a small grocery store near my hotel. This beer was a bit of a letdown for me.

The beer poured with a thin white head and a golden color. It had a smooth taste and didn't have much of a hop presence. The thing that disappointed me about the beer was the lack of mate tea present. I would drink this beer again, it's a good organic brew, but the tea was a draw for me. Without much of it evident, its just a pretty basic pale ale.

It was cool to be in a region where there were such a great deal of beers that I don't have access to here in the midwest. Hops are definitely the theme in the bay area. Overall, I tasted some great beers. The San Fransisco Brewing Company had to be the highlight of the beer experience, mostly because of the cool ambiance and great beers.

Upcoming beers

Tonight I'm brewing my Burning Beard Belgian Ale. The name comes from one of my favorite songs by the band Clutch. I've changed the recipe some, so I'm intrigued to find out how it turns out. This beer is a Belgian White beer, but I'm going to use some different ingredients this time around.
The last time I brewed it, I used mostly extract and it turned out well, but I wanted to try to do it using more flaked wheat. I also add orange marmalade, a trick I learned in Randy Mosher's Radical Brewing book. This book is like my bible for brewing, I find it much more helpful and interesting than any other brewing book.
The last time I made this beer, it was called "Bangy Tangy" named for a friend of mine. A couple of my friends continue to refer to the beer as such. After my friend Josh came up with the name, I tried to brew the beer with a some tangyness. I decided to add cranberries to it because I had some left over from another beer I had made. I brewed half a pound and then added half a pound to the secondary the last time I brewed it. This time I'm going to just add the cranberries in the secondary to give it more of a presence. I'm also hoping that the cranberries give it a bit more of a redish color.


The recipe is:
.75 lbs of Belgian Pils
.75 lbs of Belgian Pale Malt
1.5 lbs of Flaked Wheat
.36 lbs of Flaked oats
3 lbs of Dry Bavarian Wheat Extract (I'll add this the last 15 min)
.5 lbs of Light DME (I'll add this at the start of the boil).

1 ounce of Hallertau hops
2 tablespoons of Orange Marmalade
1 lb of frozen cranberries
Belgian Witbier yeast.

It should be interesting. I found a recipe for a Hoegarden Clone that used 3 lbs of Flaked Wheat and 1 lb of Belgian Pale, then Wheat Extract. I was intrigued by this. I use Beer Tools and came up with this recipe to use that much flaked wheat. I've only used it in small amounts in my Inky's White. I'll be interested in the end result. I'm hoping for a slightly redish tint because of the cranberries, and a light, crisp body. I'm not adding Paradise seeds (something I did the last time) simply because they are expensive and I think they'll be lost in the flavor profile because of the marmalade and cranberries.


Tonight, I'm also going to be bottling another beer of mine, my "house beer" Bearded Fury Pale Ale. This will be the fourth time I've made this beer and I haven't made it in awhile. It tasted good when I transfered it to the secondary and I've sinced added another ounce of Fuggle hops. It'll have been in the secondary fermenter for about 2 weeks.

As for other upcoming beers, this is what I have planned for the months of October and November:
Northwoods Ale: Last year I brewed a beer using wild rice. Per usual I didn't give it enough time to mature before I drank most of it. The last half of the batch was really good as the wild rice had mellowed into the flavors. I've changed the recipe some, and the beer is basically a standard British Bitter, pretty basic. But I'm going to first boil wild rice, then put that into the mash tun. Then to mellow out the flavors, I'm going to add maple syrup at the end of the boil. It should be a good nutty balanced ale for the winter. I'm going to give it plenty of time to mature this time.

Yinzer Ale- My in-laws are from Pittsburgh, home of Yuengling Lager. This is a beer that I love everytime I get a chance to drink it. If we drive out to P-town we bring some back with us. Well I can't lager because I don't have the access to a fridge that I could control the temps and use for brewing. Plus I don't enjoy enough lagers to make buying one a priority. I would love to be able to make bocks, but I'll make due for now. Anyway, my brother-in-law has been asking for a Yuengling clone for some time. I made a light cream ale this summer using rice solid extract that was a pretty close representative to a standard american lager like Bud or Miller Light (It was a gift, not my choice!). Using the success of that, I'm going to try to make a Pittsburgh Style Ale, using rice, and some carmel malt and the California Common yeast to get a beer that is crisp and dry. It'll hopefully be somewhere between a Iron City and Yuengling. I'm making a 3 gallon batch first so that if it sucks...well then it was experimental.

California Pale Ale- After visiting California recently (see my next post) I was inspired to brew a super hoppy beer. I'm not a hop head really, and my friends enjoy Belgians or brown ales more than hoppy beers. But this summer I brewed a California Common that was heavily hopped with Cascade hops and it turned out great. It was darker than a pale ale, and I'm bascially trying to achieve the same thing. I was in the Bay Area and out east of Oakland in a hop growing region. All the beer I was drinking was heavily hopped, so I'm going to brew a pale ale and use several ounces of Cascade and Chinhook hops.

El Muerto (version 3.0)- I've made El Muerto several times and I'm changing the recipe yet again. I've been annoyed by what seems to be too sweet of a character in some of my beers and I think it might be a result of using Amber Malt Extract. So I'm going to brew El Muerto again, but this time not use any Amber LME, and instead increase the crystal malt for coloring. I'm hoping that will give it more of the malty, carmely flavor I'm looking for. I'm also going to increase the hops. I've been bored by what is one of my more popular beers, so I want to make it a bit more ...just more malty, more hoppy. I'm also going with a different yeast. I've brewed it with 1056 American Ale, Rogue Yeast, and now I'm going to use the California Common yeast to hopefully bring out more of the malty and hoppy flavors. We'll see how it turns out. I know I shouldn't mess with a good thing, but I want it to be one of my "flagship beers" and since it started off as a clone of Dead Guy, I just want to keep tweaking it until its a unique beer.

Whitefish Cranberry Wheat- This is going to be my Christmas beer. My parents have a home in Stone Lake Wisconsin, home of a Cranberry fest, cranberry bogs, and basically everything cranberry. After harvest time (late September) cranberries are extremely cheap to buy. Last year I made this beer and it turned out great. A nice subtle cranberry taste in a refreshing wheat beer. Its brewed with 2lbs of cranberries. I'm looking forward to brewing this beer again.

Thats all for now.
The Bearded Brewer

Hola

This is my first time as a blogger. I'm a homebrewer that has a "basement brewery." This basically means that I brew beer, create labels and have names for the beers I create. I am a teacher, and while I've dreamt of bigger things with my beer hobby, I really just want to have fun with it. I've gotten more serious about brewing, but haven't entered competions or anything and mostly try to brew good beer for my friends and myself. I've been homebrewing for about 3 or 4 years. I started my hobby after buying a kit for my dad. I lived a few blocks away from Northern Brewer in St. Paul, a very well known homebrew supply shop. I started with a Kolsch kit and fell in love ever since.

My brewing became more of an obsession once my wife and I bought a house with a basement complete with a 50s style canning kitchen. This proved to be the impetus for a lot of brewing. The hobby took off as friends liked my beer and I became more passionate about brewing and creating labels. I've always been artistic, but this was a format to really be creative. A lot of homebrewers get into making labels and naming their beers, and after seeing some of the labels that have won competions, I'm inspired to get good at labels as well.

I spent one summer brewing quite a few kits and decided to try to write my own recipe. I made my first "from scratch" beer, Bearded Fury Pale Ale, and it turned out really well. So after that I slowly weaned myself off kits and creating my own recipes. I've tried a number of different styles and have made several beers multiple times. My next major move was to go from Extract brewing to partial mashing. This meant more time, but allowed me to have more control. I read a great brewing book that really broke it down to an easy format.

My most popular beers are:

Bearded Fury Pale Ale - A standard Pale Ale, that is dry hopped with Fuggle Hops. Not as hoppy as an American Pale Ale, and many non-hopheads really enjoy it.

Inky's White Ale- a beer I created for my wife. At the First Annual Bearded Brewfest, this was the most popular choice. A pretty standard Belgian White.

El Muerto- This started off as a clone of Dead Guy Ale by Rogue Brewery, but has since changed and continues to change. I love the label as do a lot of people and I keep having a change of heart in terms of what I want this beer to be. It's going to change again the next time I make it. Basically its a malty, hoppy amber ale.

Burning Beard Belgian Ale- This is another white beer, but this one (orginally named Bangy Tangy Belgian Ale) is made with orange marmalade and a pound of cranberries. It's a tart, tangy belgian beer.

Whitefish Cranberry Wheat- I make this wheat beer from 2 pounds of cranberries. I've made it once and it was awsome. I'm looking forward to making it again. This is my "christmas beer."

I've made a lot of other beers and they will eventually find their way onto this blog, along with pics of my labels.

I'll update more, and include recipes and other things as I get more into this blogging thing.

Peace.

The Bearded Brewer