Stone Porter and Alaskan Brewing Co.

During Thanksgiving, I went down to Tuscon, Arizona to visit my parents. I was able to try some beers that aren't available in the midwest, and was excited about a couple.

First off, I can add another porter to my porter review....Stone Smoked Porter from Stone Brewing Company. Yet another impressive beer from the makers of Arrogant Bastard, this was an amazing porter. It poured a dark brown, almost black color with a medium tan head. It was very roasty with very little chocolatey aftertaste. Little to no hop character, this beer was all about the smokey, roasty flavor. It was smooth and very tasty. I wish I could find it locally.

The other impressive beers I had on this trip were two beers from Alaskan Brewing Company and 2 Below from New Belgium Brewing Company. The Alaskan Amber, which was actually an altbier was excellent. Malty and flavorful. The other Alaskan we bought was their Winter Ale, which is brewed with spruce tips. This beer was also great, the spruce tips add and an interesting piney flavor that blends well with the sweet maltiness. Very smooth and not at all heavy for a winter ale. Finally, 2 below was a good beer from New Belgium. I actually thought it tasted a lot like Fat Tire, a bit more smooth since it's lagered, but still had a similar taste. It was a very clear copper color with a white head. Some citrusy hopiness, and a caramel/maltiness. Very good and I hope it eventually becomes part of the New Belgium line offered in the Twin Cities.

That's all for now- The Bearded Brewer

Porter Review

Lately as its gotten colder I've had a love affair with porters. I had never had one before a tour of the Summit Brewery last spring. There in the tasting room I had a fresh, cold porter that was amazing and changed my opinion of the dark beer. I'm not a stout fan, but I've found the porters I've had to be a nice mix of smoothness, hoppiness and a great blend of roasted flavors. Well I recently tried two I haven't tried before, Sierra Nevada Porter and Anchor Porter.

Sierra Nevada Porter: Sierra Nevada Brewing Company - Chico, CA

I liked this porter, it had a mild hoppiness and a definite roasty-coffee-cocoa flavor. It poured a very dark brown with some ruby red and a thin off-white head. It was smooth and creamy, but definitely had a nice balance of flavors including some graininess. I would drink this porter again.

Anchor Porter: Anchor Brewing Company,

San Francico, CA

This porter was recommended to me by a friend and I found it in a local store, but paid $9.29 for the six pack!! I enjoy Anchor Liberty Ale a lot as well as Anchor Steam, so I expected this to be good. It pours a dark mahogany-chocolaty color with a thick tan head. There is a heavy floral aroma from the hops used. It lacks some of the malitness and roastiness of other porters I've tried. The presence is there, but not really strong. It is smooth and easy to drink, but I was expecting more. I like it, but I'd probably spend the $6.99 for Summit Great Northern Porter or the $7.99 for Sierra Nevada first. I think its a good beer, but lacks some of what I was looking for in a porter. I think that use of some citrusy west coast hops, like Cascade maybe, gives it a unique flavor and aroma.

I didn't get a chance to buy a six pack of Summit's Great Northern Porter for this review, but that will be coming soon. Also, I recently had a bottle of St. Paul's Flat Earth Brewing company's first bottle release, their Belgian Pale Ale. I'll comment on that soon as well.

-The Bearded Brewer

Beer weekend and bad beer

With a new baby, time in the brewery gets harder to find. This weekend I was excited to be able to get three things done in the brewery...
Friday night I bottled my Northwoods Ale. It turned out to be a much lighter beer than I had originally intended, but I think that the maple syrup and the wild rice will make it interesting. When I tasted it while bottling, I was happy to notice a maple syrup presence and the wild rice gave it a dry crispness. This should be interesting as it matures.
Saturday I bought the ingredients to make my next two beers: Whitefish Cranberry Wheat and La Libertad. La Libertad is a west coast ale inspired by my trip to San Francisco and in particular Anchor's Liberty Ale.
Sunday I brewed the Whitefish and transferred my Morris Park Porter. I decided against adding the coffee this time around, mostly because I've never made a porter before. And secondly this tasted awesome when I transferred it and I don't want to mess with it. And with the results of the latest batch of Burning Beard (read below) I decided I'd just leave the Porter alone this time.

Bad Beer:
For the first time in my brewing history, I had to sadly pour out a batch. The Burning Beard Belgian Ale was terrible. I don't know what went wrong, but its awful. Kristen thought it tasted like olives. Not exactly a beer flavor I'm going for. It doesn't taste like it was contaminated. I think I used way too much flaked wheat. It has a terrible dry finish that really fights with the cranberry tartness. Whatever the case, its really bad. I've poured out most of the batch so far, and the nice thing was that I had plenty of bottles for the Northwoods. Bottom line: I need to stop messing with my good recipes.

Organic and Socially Responsible

I wanted to take a minute to explain a few things about those two aspects of my brewing beliefs.
First of all, organic: This is getting easier to do because Northern Brewer is selling more organic brewing ingredients and even has several organic kits. I use organic malts and grains most of the time when I brew. I also try to use organic ingredients as well, for example my upcoming Northwoods Ale was brewed with organic wild rice and organic maple syrup. Hops are a bit harder to come by, but I try to use organic hops as much as possible. The USDA actually considers organic to be 95% of the materials used, so I can get by using non-organic hops if need be.

The socially responsible is a little harder to achieve from a homebrew setting. But there are ways....first of all I think all homebrewers are great about reusing materials like bottles and limiting waste. I reuse my bottles and my friends have been good about saving the bottles I give them to return once they drink the beer. Water is a big part of brewing, and I'm trying to find ways to recycle water that I use. Other than that, its about an attitude I think. I support local breweries, I buy craft beers, and I use as many organic and fair trade ingredients as possible. My upcoming Morris Park Mocha Porter is 100% organic, including the priming sugar, and is going to include 4 oz of fair-trade organic Peace Coffee.
So...just some thoughts...
Drink responsibly...by that I mean support your local craft brewers and other craft breweries, its worth the extra money. Buy organic beer as much as possible, the higher the demand, the more options for organic brews we will have.
-The Bearded Brewer

Patience

It's been awhile since I wrote on this blog. Partly because there hasn't been any recent developments in the Bearded Brewing world and also because I attacked the blog with such gusto at first that my friends and family made fun of me for the lengthy blogs. So...I decided to take a break from my beer ramblings... but I'm back.

I titled this patience because this is an important virtue in brewing and something that I still don't have after all the batches I've made over the last three years. My recent example came from two Belgian beers I made this summer. I brewed two 3 gallon batches of beers I had never made before and was a little nervous about how they would turn out. The first one was a Belgian Abbey Ale made in honor of my friend Josh Broten, called Brother Brotino, and the other was a Saison, called Iron Lion Saison. Even though I knew the longer I left them the better they would be, I still drank them too soon. Now, with about 3 bottles left of each, I think they are tasting really good. Of course! The Brother Brotino turned out to be a sweet, darker abbey ale, in the tradition of Chimay. In comparison to other commercial abbey ales, I think it lacks the complexity, but maybe that will come with time. But its good, and I took a bottle to Chicago, so that the namesake could try it. As a drinker of exclusively Belgian beers, he was very pleased with the outcome.

The Saison was a bit of stretch for me because I'd never had one. I had read descriptions of saisons and thought they sounded interesting. I wrote the recipe based on some I had found, but didn't really know what to expect. It turned out to be a light yellow with a huge white foamy head. I dry-hopped it, so there is definately a hop presence, but also a sour yet crisp aftertaste. It's mellowed out real nicely and the flavors are really balanced.

Now, if I can only have patience to wait on the Burning Beard belgian ale, and the Northwoods Ale I currently have in the carboy (more on that in the next blog entry.)

Here are the labels for the Brother Brotino and Iron Lion Saison: