w o r d s

… and the Maibock is in the house! Satisfaction got a keg of Foothills brewery’s newest masterpiece - the Gruffmeister Maibock. It’s a heady eight-percenter with a solid nose and a nice punchline. It won’t keep a head, but who cares?! This is a very drinkable beer - a lot less hoppy than the IPAs from Foothills. First it sneaks up on you, then it grabs you by the throat with its nice firm body, kisses you gently … and then kicks you in the ass. What a beer!

And so … what have you been up to on Mayday?

Lots of stuff is brewing. I started a Mr Brew keg - 2 gallons of Märzen - I am very curious how that’s going to turn out. I also have 50 gallons of biodiesel settling in the basement. I am running low on methanol - need to make a run to the Roxboro Dragway for some “racing alky.”

Today, I went to the Piedmont board meeting. Lots going on there, too. Among many other things., we’re getting ready for the annual membership meeting in April. We’re planning to move the Bull City Biodiesel tank - the juicebox - to a new location on Angier Ave.

The Africa trip we had planned for June won’t happen. The person who was coordinating the Ghana stuff for Laura’s store is seriously ill and in the hospital. So Laura had to cancel the trip. So now we’re trying to figure out whether we should go by ourselves in the fall.

Friday, I got a growler of the latest brew from Foothills - the Sexual Chocolate Stout. It’s a seasonal brew, and they don’t even list it on their website. But this is a truly amazing beer. It is malty and thick and pitch-black, and it coats the glass when you pour it. I find the flavor to be more mocha and cocoa, not so much chocolate-sweet (like Youngs Double Chocolate Stout). And boy, is it intense! You can taste the almost 10 percent alcohol a bit, but only enough to serve as a discreet warning. What a brew!

This weekend, I finally tried out my Mr Beer homebrew. I patiently waited 4 weeks for this stuff, and I was rewarded with a rather tasty brew. I let it sit in the barrel a week longer than prescribed, because it had not yet begun to clear up a the end of the first week. After another week, it was so clear that I could see the yeast gunk at the bottom of the little barrel. I bottled the beer in 1-liter pop-top bottles for aging and carbonation. After another two weeks, I popped one open, and behold: the beer poured a lovely clear yellow with lively carbonation and a reasonably firm head. It’s a light-bodied beer with a bit of citrus and a good bit of yeast (stronger from the bottom of the barrel). Nothing fancy, but not bad for a first go at it.

Now, clearly its a “kit beer” and not made from scratch. Basically, the wort comes in a can, and you just warm it up, add sugar and yeast and bubble, bubble … you have beer. Yet, for a first shot at homebrewing, this is not a bad idea. It’s real easy, and it gives the novice a sense of the process, and a sense of accomplishment when it works. After a couple of kit batches, I think I’ll try my hand at making beer from scratch.

Prosit!

Last week I undertook a trip to Charlotte, NC, which turned out to be completely for naught. Yet, on my way back to Durham, I took a detour via Winston Salem to have lunch at the Foothills brewery. This little brewery puts out some remarkable brews, and I was quite curious to visit the brewpub to see for myself the place where they produce these fabulous beverages.

Located on Fourth Street in downtown Winston Salem, the brewpub is nice, with a large bar and modern, open spaces. Nothing fancy, but appealing and straight-forward. The menu is also straight-forward and quite beer-oriented. I had “fish and chips” - and it was really good - and a couple pints of their stout. Very tasty, indeed.

Part of my mission was to refill several growlers for a couple of friends. As I am typing this, I am enjoying a glass of Foothill’s Seeing Double IPA - which is my favorite. It’s a very hoppy strong beer - a prime example of a ridiculously overhopped American ale :) with serious kick at 9.5 percent Alcohol. Somehow they manage to make this into an immensely drinkable beer, with a really smooth mouthfeel and pronounced citrus notes.

The thing about Foothills is that they don’t bottle their beers. So you can only get it on tap at some bars around the state. If you want to enjoy the beers at home, you have to get a growler, which is a half-gallon (2 Liter) bottle that is filled at the tap. The growlers are not pressureized, so you cannot keep them for more than a few days. Once you open one, you better finish it up, or the stuff goes flat. So far, that has not caused me any particular problems.

So when I left the brewery with my five growlers, and headed back to Durham, I felt again at peace with the world, despite the futility of my trip to Charlotte.

… but doesn’t want to. A tale from the Black Forest in Germany.

Once upon a time, in 1791, to be exact, some Benedictine monks in the Black Forest decided to wean the folks in the nearby village off their beloved Schnapps (brandy). Folks were just drinking too much, and often things got out of hand. They were good people, hardworking mountain folk, who lived a short, harsh life logging, farming and making charcoal, deep in the Black Forest. So the Schnapps they made, their moonshine, was the only distraction, the one thing that made life seem a little less harsh. Yet, they drank too much, and the Schnapps also contributed to the shortness of many a man’s life.

So the monks decided that their best chance of cutting down the consuption of Schnapps, was to offer a more nutritious beverage: beer. Monks had been brewing in Germany for as long as any one remembered, and it was a natural thing to suggest for these Benidictine brothers. And so they started the brewery “Am Roten Haus” (The Red House) in Grafenhausen. At roughly 1000 Meters (3000 feet) altitude, it is today the highest brewery in Germany. In 1806 , the brewery became the property of the Grand-Dukes of Baden, and after WWI, the brewery was state-owned.

When I started drinking beer, the Rothaus brews were always a taste of country, and they reminded me of visiting my grandparents. We lived in Stuttgart, and you could not get any Rothaus there (a couple hours’ drive from the Black Forest). Especially in the South, beer is a very regional thing. Every area has its brew. If you’re lost, and you see a Bar, or a Gasthaus, and you see which beer they sell, you can figure out where you are, down to the ZIP code, in some areas.

So Rothaus was the mountain beer, and it had (and has) a very provincial image. They have not changed the label design in 30 years! So when I read in the Spiegel Online that Rothaus has become somewhat of a “cult beer,” I almost dropped my laptop. Apparently, about 100 bars in Berlin sell Rothaus beers and it’s the second most popular beer in Cologne. They just cannot brew enough to satisfy demand. And yet, they don’t even advertise aggressively. I mean it’s great beer. The Tannezäpfle is one of the best Pilsener beers in Germany. But it’s not a hip, sexy beer. Its image is downright boring and provincial.

So are the folks at the brewery excited about all this attention? Do they have plans to expand to fill the demand? Come up with a clever marketing strategy? No. They are quite dubious about this. Their little brewery is just fine the way it is - thank you very much.

Actually, the reasoning is more like this: if they expanded they’d have to buld a new brewery in the valley and they would loose the connection with the community of Grafenhausen. They also might loose the image of the little country brewery, which is a big part of the brand appeal to city folk. And the seven springs where they draw the water can only produce so much water - yet the quality of the water is a huge aspect of quality of the final product.

So what to do? Well, it’s really not that big a deal: brew a decent beer, take care of the local market (90 percent of the beer is still consumed within the state of Baden Württemberg), and see if there is some left over for the city slickers up north.

Nome net huodla, gell! Gsundheit!

Right after Christmas, Laura saw a Mr Beer homebrewing kit on super-duper sale and bought it. So this afternoon, we brewed up a batch of “California Pale Ale” in the Mr Beer. It’s really easy, and I am very curious how this stuff is going to turn out. It’ll have to sit in the barrel for a week now, then I’ll fill it into bottles (I’ve been collecting the very nice 1-liter, pop-top bottles the Highland brewery uses for it’s Cold Mountain Winter Ale - one of my favorites).

After it sits in the bottles for another couple of weeks my homebrew should be ready. This should be interesting!

In December, right before Christmas, I went to Sam’s Quick Mart in Durham to pick up some of my favorite beers for the holidays. I came across the Olde School Barleywine from Dogfish Head in Vermont. I have had some barleywine from other breweries in the past, and did not get too excited about what I tried.

On Christmas Day, we had some friends and family over, and Laura cooked this wonderful goose, which was accompanied by a very hearty, yummy Zinfandel. after the meal, I opened a bottle of the Olde School, but then it was also time for desert. So I ended up with a glass of barleywine and a slice of peppermint pie (Julia’s request for desert). I was quite amazed that the Olde School barleywine and the peppermint pie actually went together just fine.

The Olde School is one hell of a beer! It’s more like a nice, old port, and it demands attention. At 15 percent Alc. Vol., this is not a beer you chug from the bottle at a party. Pour it into a tulip glass, (I had it in a red wine glass) and let it warm a bit. It quite sweet, but it has a lot more character than any barleywine I have had. It’s intense, but the alcohol is not overpowering. Clearly, this is not everyone’s thing, but I think this makes a fine desert drink.

Prost!

Can microbrewing save the world? In a recent article on Alternet, Chris O’Brien looks at the global and historical perspective of microbrewing: revolutionary America and the colonies’ dependence on porter from England; the rich variety of local brews of Africa and South America being replaced by imported mass-produced beer, and the rich brewing tradition in Germany due to the Reinheitsgebot (purity law) of 1516.

O’Brien puts forth the popular “buy locally” anti-globalization argument, that equates globalization=big beer=bad beer. I do like his “beerodiversity” point. I am all for supporting local brewing diversity. But I also do appreciate a globalized selection in the local(ly-owned) beer store. Most of the beer I drink is made in North Carolina. This state has some fine brews, like Highland and Foothills, and there are some very good local micro-brews as well.

But I also like having a large selection of imported and US beers available. I like my Weihenstephan weizenbier, or a Celebrator, or even just a Guinness. The latter in particular, is a great example of “big beer” not necessarily being “bad beer.”

To me, beer and life is all about diversity. Diversity grows locally, but it can also spread globally. So yes, microbrewing can safe important aspects of the world, like local tradition and flavor. So let’s save the world - one pint at a time.

Prosit!

This spring I developed the habit of Saturday Lowes trips - mostly to see what’s on the closeout sale table (which they set up only on Saturdays). The other day I scored a nice $80 Kitchen Aid ice cream maker for only $30. Now, every weekend Laura makes a half-gallon (2 Liter) batch of ice cream. Today she made Chocolate Jasmin flavor ice cream.

WOW.

I like chocolate. A lot. I really like Ben & Jerry’s New York Super Fudge Chunk. But the simple, sensuous elegance of jasmine and chocolate flavored ice cream blew me away. If I didn’t care whether I died an untimely death as an obese blob, that’s all I’d eat for the rest of my life. And I’d wash it down with my favorite Baker’s Burbon.

We got the recipe from one of my favorite books: The New Taste of Chocolate: A Cultural and Natural History of Cacao with Recipes by Maricel Presilla. If you care at all about cocoa or chocolate - this is the definitive book on the subject. Here is the recipe from the book …

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I have always liked Guinness, especially on tap. A nice, cool pint of Guinness slows things down a bit, as you watch it slowly settle to its characteristic dark stillness, with this creamy, meditative - but confident - head.

Recently, Beer Advocate published an interview with Fergal Murray, one of the company’s head brewmasters, and he gave the Alström Bros. the inside scoop about Guinness:

Murray explained that the recipe for Guinness has undergone only minor adjustments over the years. Every keg of Guinness Draught imported to the US comes from St. James’s Gate in Dublin (though Guinness Extra Stout is made in Canada). It contains water, malt, roasted barley, hops and yeast - and that’s it. Like many major labels, Guinness relies on “high-gravity brewing,” which involves large batches of wort (unfermented beer) high in fermentable sugars (note to beer geeks: the goal is a final gravity of 1072). Eventually these are watered down to attain a 4.2 percent ABV (alcohol by volume). The brewers also blend batches to aid in consistency, and the beer is pasteurized.
Mysteries of Guinness Revealed, Beer Advocate, by the Alström Bros, 04-11-2006

Guinness is a remarkable product - produced in enormous quantities by an international conglomerate. Every day, 10 million pints of Guinness are poured in 150 countries. Yet they manage a remarkable consistency and quality for such a mass-market product.

One of the interesting bits of information to me was the relative purity of the product, with no weird chemicals added to the beer, and the comparison of the caloric value: Guinness has only 125 kCal per 12 ounce serving - less than a Budweiser (ugh). Heck - a 12-ounce can of regular Coke has 144 kCal and may contain the carcinogen benzene. And then there are the Coca Cola deathsquads in Columbia. I have not heard of any Guinness death squads.

Forget soda - pour me another Guinness.

A toast to the efforts of Sean Wilson and Julie Bradford and all supporters of the Pop the Cap effort here in North Carolina. This weekend the NC Governor Mike Easley signed House Bill 392 into law. It is now on the books as S.L. 2005-277 and it raises the cap on alcohol content for beer from a measly 6 percent to 15 percent alcohol by volume. This change makes hundreds of fine brews available to beer connoisseurs in North Carolina.

Congratulations to North Carolina on another step into the 21st Century. It didn’t hurt, did it? Keep on going, and maybe this great state, too, will one day have both feet solidly this side of the turn of the century.