Goose Island - Clybourn

At lunch today we got a quick tour of the Goose Island Brewpub on Clybourn. Being a quick tour wasn't a problem because what you can see from the restaurant is pretty much the entire thing. I think I say this about every brewery I have blogged about, but once again it was really cool. Not cool in the same sense as many of the other new breweries that I have been to recently, but cool because of how old (relatively) the equipment and facility are. They are still making beer on the original 10 bbl system put in 21 years ago at Goose Island, with slight modification and jury-rigging of course. Right now they produce about 700 bbls a year, which is very small compared to the over 100,000 bbls at the Goose Island production brewery. We are taking a tour of that facility at some point, so more details about that later. Most of the 700 bbls are consumed on the premises, while some is taken up north to Goose Island Wrigleyville (they also brew up there as well). The facility could really use some updating, some remodel is going to happen since they resigned their lease for another 5 years, but not necessarily to the extent I am sure the brewer would like. Although the brewery is a testament to being able to make great beer without the most state of the art equipment. Here are two pictures I snapped today, quality is kind of crap, oh well...

2o bbl fermenters

Mash/lauter and Brew kettle

For those who looks at these brewery pictures and think that they all look about the same, you are right, but I am fascinated by them and will continue to post them. Think of it like a car enthusiast who turns their head to stare at a Bentley Continental GT as it drives by, even though they have seen Bentley's before. It is sort of the same. On that subject, did you know a new Continental GT and a 15 bbl brewing system cost about the same amount of money. Which would you choose? I say, give a man a beer he will be wasted for a day, teach a man to brew he will be wasted for life...hmmm, maybe that isn't the best saying.

I may have said it was a short tour, but that wont stop me from writing a lot. Like I said, this is the original Goose Island Brewery, so they used to produce more beer here. Up until recently, they still had some cask accounts, but due to joining the Craft Brewers Alliance they can no longer distribute out of the Clybourn brewery. Redhook (one CBA member) had a distribution deal with Anheuser-Busch and part of the CBA deal involved using the AB distribution, so all of the distributed beer comes from the main brewery. The brewpub doesn't actually make the year round beers (Honkers, 312) at the pub, those get sent in from the other brewery as well. They always have 14 beers on tap, so they do make plenty of beers. Every Thursday they release a new beer in the pub, for those scoring at home that means they make at least 52 different beers a year. That would be a lot of fun to be able to experiment with that many beers.

Another cool thing they often do while making a "big" beer, is follow that with a "small" beer using the same grains. Without going into too much detail, when you make really strong beers, a lot of grains are used. Usually you don't get all of the fermentables out of those grains, so by running another mash/lauter on those, you can get another "small" beer from the grains. Then of course they change it up from then on so it isn't just a weak version of the "big" beer. Cool way to experiment with other hops, yeasts etc while keeping costs down.

That's three posts in three days, probably wont get anything new up until the weekend.

Blogging Cause I Can

I figured that I would throw up a post today because its Monday, it isn't very busy as far as studying goes and my mind has been racing with ideas for a few weeks that I haven't gotten down on paper. I am going to make a conscious effort not to ramble on like the last post, but no promises.

So I sit all day and learn about making beer (awesome), but I keep thinking about the beers I want to make and wont be able to for another month (not cool). In an effort to focus those thoughts, I am going to open up some dialogue about PBC's flagship beer, even if I am talking to myself. I might have brought up this subject when I wrote about the Payette beer line up (too far into writing this to want to check), but I am going to cover it again even if I did. A brewery's flagship beer is their #1 seller and essentially their image, sounds easy enough. The key is going to be finding/making that beer from the start. For example, New Belgium thought that their main beer would be their 1554, not Fat Tire. Ask anyone to name a beer by New Belgium, easy money says Fat Tire is the response. I also think having a beer like Fat Tire is a love/hate thing for the brewer (necessary evil maybe a better phrase); it makes them a ton of money that allows them to make other beers, but it is probably the worst beer that New Belgium puts out (that is just my opinion and New Belgium does make some great beers).

Now that I have cleverly inserted my opinion about Fat Tire, on to actually trying to make a point. I think there are three things that go into designing a great flagship beer; two have to do with the style chosen and the other is dumb luck. Not much I can do about the latter, but I am often dumb enough to make things play in my favor. When it comes to style choice a huge factor involved with making a good beer is water composition. The mineral content of the water used in beer is huge, there is a reason that the Czech Rep. is renowned for Pilsners and England for Pale Ales (hint: it isn't the brewers). That being said, I took a look at the Boise water report and it is most ideal for Light Lagers and Mild's, both of which fall well into what I am going to mention next. Water composition doesn't mean you can't make a good beer of another style, there are things that can be done about that, but don't worry about it. Second point about choosing a style; make one that people will buy (move over John Madden...I can say obvious shit too) This fact is pretty simple, lighter beer sell a lot better than dark beer. Stouts/Porters almost entirely dominate the list of lowest sales, while things like Amber Ale, Golden Ales, and Light Lagers are all over the highest selling. What I am really taking from all of this is that I think I have been working on a beer I want to force on the customers as oppose to working on one that is a natural fit. Experimenting with my Pale Ale and IPA has been really good for learning about brewing, but maybe not what will be best for Payette Brewing in a year or so. I will see where my head is at when I get back to Seattle, but I would not expect the next PBC sample to be a Payette Pale Ale and certainly not Cowboy Coffee Stout (coming next winter).

Two Brother's Brewing

By virtue of pure laziness, meaning not posting about my visit to Two Brothers Brewery right away, I am going to be able to combine two different events into what will probably turn into a sweet, but lengthy post. Both are Two Brothers related, so it is almost like I planned it.

Two Brothers Brewery Visit ~

I had a good pace of brewery visits going (three in one week) and have since trailed off, probably because there aren't too many more breweries that are close. This post is about the biggest brewery I have visited to date, Two Brothers Brewing in Warrenville.

The brewery tour at Two Bros was easily the best small brewery tour that I have ever been on (I can't compare this to Guinness or Heineken because those two tours will knock your socks off). The guide had a well prepared, fun presentation for the group of about 25 people. It is tough to call it a tour, because we really just stood in two different spots and listened to him talk, but good none the less. He covered all of the basics while going into enough depth that I was probably one of the only people who really understood everything he was talking about. I'm not trying to brag, but he did say somethings that I had just learned last week and I am in a brewing school. I have some pictures below and the captions will talk a little more about what is going on at Two Bros.

Bottling machine in the foreground (140 bottles per minute), Fermenters/Bright Tanks in the background

100 bbl fermenters

Now I have a little video clip I took while in the brewery, it is the new high tech gadgetry that was suppose to blow you away, but I can't figure out how to do any video editing on my computer. Hopefully a future clip will have some text pointing things out, maybe some music or me doing a little voice over. Technology has gotten the best of me this time, so I will do a quick narration before the clip. The first tanks are up close on the fermenters, then I pan over to the 50 bbl, three vessel brewing system (mash, lauter and brew kettle) with a brief cameo from Tom, Gloria and Brendon (Thanks for taking me out there). The door in the corner leads to the mill. Then it pans back over the fermenters and the rest of the brewery space (tons of kegs).

Not going to win an Oscar for cinematography for that one, I will work on it in the future. A few things that I want to touch on more, the mill and the brewing system. They have some cool things going on with the mill that you can't see on the video. Their grain silo for the base malt is located outside at the other end of the building. Instead of weighing out the malt and carrying it into the mill, they can input the amount of malt they need and it will be pumped into the mill on a screw conveyor. Note: a base malt is one that makes up the majority of the grain bill for any beer the brewery, it is generally a two-row barley and will be used as the base for all (there are exceptions) of the beers made at the brewery. The malt is then milled along with the specialty grains and pumped (another screw conveyor) up to the grain hopper above the mash. From there it is dropped into the mash when necessary. I really like the concept of the automated screw conveyor to bring in the base malt, but they still need to work on a method for the specialty malts which are hand measured and carried into the mill. I have been thinking about grain use and storage in a brewery for a while and have a similar concept in mind, but could end up using the idea for the base malt because of the volume that needs to be move and stored. Since specialty malts are used in relatively small quantities, my thoughts are to have them stored in hoppers above the mill room with a feed system into the mill. That is a short explanation of my vision, but the idea is point-of-use for all of the malts. Should also help with inventory control and involves a lot less moving of the 50 lb malt bags. I guess the imaginary...I mean industrial engineer in me will never die, probably not a bad thing though.

Leads me to my next topic, the brewing system. I mentioned that they have a three vessel system, comparatively Metropolitan and Emmett's used a two vessel and large breweries will have six vessels. The name of the game with brewery vessel quantity is capacity, the more vessels you have the more beer you can make because you have dedicated vessels for different operations. There is little reason for a small brewer to have anything more than a two vessel system. I don't really agree with Two Brothers needing a three vessel system, but they are getting to be a pretty big brewery and could need the capacity down the line (I also don't have the financial analysis that should have been associated with that decision). What really caught my attention with the three vessel system is that they are mash, lauter, brew kettle/whirlpool, where other brewers that I have talked to said that the brew kettle/whirlpool is generally the bottleneck (I know I haven't talked about the whirlpool portion of the process, but trust me it is important). There are plenty of ways to increase capacity (or think you are), but unless you are focused at the bottleneck then you are really just wasting money. It is very early to worry about any of this because even with a two vessel system you can make a lot of beer and still not have to brew everyday. I guess my point is that making a great beer is important for a brewery to be successful, but if you want to make a profit there are a lot more things to think about. I am not trying to knock Two Brothers, because they are obviously a successful brewery and make great beer, but there is always ways to be better.

I am getting to be very long winded...but wait there is more

Two Brothers Beer Tasting ~

Between the brewery tour, drinking at home and a beer sampling at Brasseri Jo I have been able to sample a good portion of the Two Brothers beer portfolio. Here are some of my thoughts on the various beers I tried:

After the tour, we got to choose 3 different beers to sample. I kept it hoppy and sampled their Heavy Handed IPA, Cane and Ebel Hopped Up Red-Rye and Cask-Conditioned Bitter End (I will go into cask-conditioning another time). I enjoyed the Heavy Handed and Bitter End, but just couldn't really get into the Cane and Ebel. If you haven't had a rye beer before, they are an acquired taste (one that I am yet to acquire). The Cane and Ebel is one of their more popular beers, so I will have to give it a second chance sometime.

On Monday, when I actually started writing this post, I was typing with the help of the Bonfire Dunkel Weiss. This is one of the beers from their Artisan Series, similar to what I mentioned in an earlier post as the Payette Brewing "Ales of No Return." So a small batch, one-off beer that is only available in bombers (22 oz bottles, bombers just sound way cooler). I thought this beer was more along the lines of an American Dark Wheat than a traditional German Dunkel Weiss, but still tasty.

Thanks to a heads up from Cindy via Greg, Matt and I went to Brasseri Jo on Tuesday for a Two Brothers beer tasting. As the name might suggest, it was a pretty swanky french restaurant. Since I am such a nice guy, I went ahead and treated Matt to the tasting. Could have been the best dollar I have ever spent; we got to sample four beers, got appetizers, heard from Jason Ebel (Owner/Brewer) and at the end had the chance to pick the brains of Jason and a guy who runs Windy City Distribution. A lot of the information and ideas that came from those conversations will come in a subsequent post about distribution. The first beer we had was their flagship Domaine Dupage, a french country ale. I could see why it is their most popular beer because it had a lot of flavor but was very drinkable. We also had their Northwind Imperial stout and two more beers from their Artisan collection, Red Eye Coffee Porter and Bare Tree Weiss Wine. Red Eye was a solid coffee beer that Matt really enjoyed. We also got to try their 2008 Weiss Wine right out of the bright tank, it wont be released for a few more weeks which was really cool. We also picked up a 2001 Weiss Wine to drink alongside the 2008 when it comes out, so look for that post in a few weeks.

All in all I think that Two Brothers makes great beer and has a great facility. If you made it through this post, congratulations, I think I already forgot what I wrote about at the start. Funny to think how getting me to write a paper is school was like pulling teeth, let me write about beer and you can't shut me up.

Emmett's Ale House

I had written what I thought was a pretty funny intro to this post dealing with NASCAR, in the end I decided that NASCAR really has no place in this blog (no matter how cool I think it is), so I deleted what I had started. NASCAR will make a cameo in a post though (besides this one), so be prepared.

As mentioned in the above post (which as I write this hasn't even been created, weird huh), I visited two different breweries in the suburbs this weekend. Today I ate lunch at Emmett's Ale House in Downers Grove. It was your standard brewpub, good food, good beer, good atmosphere. If it matters (I think it does), I had a delicious buffalo burger with blue cheese and bacon, that is a tough combination to beat. If you haven't had a buffalo burger try one, I think they dominate traditional beef burgers (sorry dad, its true). Sorry for the digression...beer. They had a decent line up of I believe six beers at the time, of which I was able to sample five on their beer paddle (yes, it was actually a paddle with five beer samples on it). I was a fan of the Red Ale they had and it paired with my meal nicely.

The area they had their brewing equipment was very small, especially for having a two vessel brewing system and 3 fermenters. For the second time in a week I found a brewery who had a fermenter that was bigger than their mash/lauter/boil capacity. It was a 15 bbl system and one of their fermenters was a 45 bbl fermenter, so they have to brew three times to fill that fermenter (If you just wondered if I used a calculator to do that math, no, I am able to that sort of math even after a few pops). Maybe I mentioned this in the last post about Metropolitan, but that is a very interesting concept that I had never heard before. It will be something worthwhile to look at as I start to price different equipment and the overall business plan. Once again I got a few pics that are below. I didn't actually talk to the brewer or get to go inside the room, so these pictures are both from the windows in the pub.

2-Vessel Mash/Lauter Tun and Brew Kettle, 15 bbls

Fermenters, one on the left is 45 bbls, others are 15 bbls. Rail on the lower left is the steps to the brew kettle, very small brewery

If you think having pictures in the blog is high tech, just wait until the next post, you could be blown away.

Metropolitan Brewing

After class today I took a trip to check out the facility at Metropolitan Brewing in Chicago. First impressions - very cool brewery. Metropolitan is a newer brewery, they have only been in their facility for about 6 months, brewing there for the last 2. They run a two vessel 15 bbl mash/lauter tun and brew kettle with four 30 bbl fermenters, so they have to do 2 brews in a row to fill a fermenter. Doug and Tracy the owner/operators of Metropolitan Brewery were really cool and had no problem showing me around, answering my questions and of course getting me some beer samples. The brewery is in an awesome old building and they have enough space to easily expand their capacity with some more fermenters. Here are a few pictures I took:

Mash/Lauter Tun and Brew Kettle

Fermenters

If you notice the white sheet in both pictures and the weird looking metal thing above the Mash/Lauter Tun (it is a bull), those are there because a theater group in the area has been putting on a production called "BEER" in the brewery. The area in front of the fermenters is the stage and there is seating off to the right of the picture. I might try to make it up to a show and will be sure to give a review of it if I do.

You cant really see it in the picture of the fermenters, but each one had a name on it. Doug said the names are all characters from the original Star Trek or something like that, which got me thinking, it I were to name fermenters, what would I do. I think I would have to name them after the members of the Wu Tang Clan. Just think about rolling into a brewery and seeing "Ghostface Killah" "RZA" and "Inspectah Deck" on the tanks, awesome. If Wu Tang with the likes of "O.D.B" or "Masta Killa" is too much, then I would resort to Seinfeld characters. I think "Art Vandelay" "Cosmo Kramer - The Ass Man" and "Hennigans" have nice rings to them as well. Hennigans also would be a great name for a Scotch Ale for that matter. Enough of that...

Some brief information on how they started things up: They spent last summer brewing batches multiple times a week on their 6 gallon home brewing system. This test beer was taken to beer festivals over the summer to get their name out and get feedback on their beer. Once they got their financing in place, they got a new 15 bbl system out of China. They already had their recipes dialed in from the summer and have been cranking out beer for the last few months.

I am very interested in the direction they took with the brewery though, starting with lagers. Not a lot of craft brewers make lagers, but I think if you can make a solid lager there is a bigger market for them than ales. The big problem with making lagers is they generally take twice as long as ales to go from brew day to kegging. So you need more fermenters to put the same amount of product through the door, that leads to more wip, money tied up in inventory...I'll stop now, you get the point. This is something I need to learn a little more about, but I really want to work on making a great lager. It is a whole different topic, but I did find out that the water in Boise is very suitable for making light lagers, I'll see what I can do.

Anyway, Metropolitan Brewing makes some solid lagers and have a really cool facility, so those in the Chicago area should be on the lookout for their stuff (only draft right now, they said bottles are coming soon).

Briess Malting

For class today, we drove up to Chilton, Wisconsin to get a tour of the Briess malting facility. Unfortunately they would not allow us to take any pictures during the tour, so this post will be short because it is difficult to describe everything without some pictures. The tour was really cool, especially since the building is over 100 years old and they still use a lot of old equipment. Which does make me wonder about the whole "no pictures" thing, I understand protecting your businesses proprietary information, but there wasn't any new earth-shattering technology being used. I mean, some of the grain bins were made out of a bunch of stacked 2 x 6's. Since I have no pictures, you can just trust me that it was pretty sweet. At one point in the day I felt like a cow or something because I had eaten so much barley. Strange as this may sound, some of the specialty malted barley is actually pretty tasty. Besides that, the thing that stuck out most in my mind, keystone light for 35 cents in the break room vending machine, no joke.

Early Thoughts

I am two days into brewing school and I wanted to write down my initial impressions. First, there is no doubt in my mind that coming to the Siebel Institute was the right thing to do. I mean how could it not, look at the lunchroom:

Yes, there are kegs attached to those taps.

Don't get the wrong idea though, there is a lot more that goes on than drinking (the beers are free though). Besides, we can only drink at lunch and after class. I also must mention, that free beer with lunch seems like a great idea until about 30 minutes into the afternoon session. If you don't know, there are 4 hours of instruction in the afternoon, I drank more coffee to stay awake during the afternoon than I did the morning.

Like I mentioned earlier, this isn't just about drinking beer. There is a good 7 hours of instruction a day and it isn't all easy stuff. For example, we went over the bio-chemistry of the malting process of barley today. Lets just say, there is a reason you wouldn't find me in a bio-chem class at UW. The course is definitely going into the detail that I expected, which again reaffirms my decision to come here.

I will try to post as many things as I can throughout the next 6 weeks, I just want to be sure not to get distracted from real studying (yes, I have already spent time studying outside of class). If a post is either funny or makes little sense, that is probably a result of blogging while "researching"