Post-Earth Day IPA

The third of this round of IPA piloting is concluding today.  I was going to make this yesterday and do a whole Earth Day thing, but then I realized that brewing is inherently not green.  There are plenty of measures that a brewer can take to cut down on their environmental impact and I fully embrace those.  I just have a hard time listening to some breweries advertise their "green" practices when I know many of the facts about byproducts during the brewing process.  I don't want to come off as knocking green practices, I am not.  I do think it is very important to watch and cut back on an environmental impact, it is just tough for me to listen to some of the green posturing when there are some unavoidable facts about brewing. 

Anyway, on to the brew.  I made some off the cuff changes to this batch while I was picking up my materials, basically I wanted to change up the hop profile quite a bit over the last two since they were very similar.  Here's what I got:

Post Earth Day IPA

Style: American-Style IPA
Malts: American 2-Row, Crystal, Honey Malt, Munich
Hops: Bullion, Cascade, Centennial, Galena
ABV: ~ 6.5%

So I have a building now, which is exciting and overwhelming.  Much of my time today and the next few days is wrapping my head around what to do next.  Seems easy, but I have spent the last 6 months in Boise getting ready to lease a space and now that it is no longer a dream, its like...now what?

Gotta Hop

111 W 33rd Street

After months of never really saying anything, today I have actual, useful and exciting news, I have a building.  I signed a lease last week and just got the keys today, so Payette Brewing Company has a home that isn't an actual home.  If it is of any use to you, here is a link to a Google map of where the building is.  The building is technically in Garden City, but the address is Boise.  All of the permitting stuff for Garden City goes through Boise and the mailing address is Boise, so to be honest, I don't know what Garden City actually does.  I'm not trying to dog on Garden City, I just don't get it, maybe it is just my practical side talking out loud.

I put up an photo album on the PBC Facebook page with the "day 1" shots.  There is a lot of work to be done to get the brewery up and running, so use your imagination with the pictures.  I will probably also start using a Picasa or Flickr photo album since it can be linked up with the blog much better than Facebook, anyone use or like either of these?  I have to be careful with too many online things, I don't want to feel the wrath of you guys if I start to fall behind on updating everything.

The good thing for everyone in Boise is that now that there is a space, I will start to have tastings at the brewery as things get going.  Need to make sure the City(s) are okay with that first.  No more reading about the beer, time to start drinking it!

Feel free to stop by and check it out sometime.  **Disclaimer** I have no schedule of when I will be there, so stopping by is a total crapshoot at this point.

Gotta Hop

Signing Day IPA

I'm stretching a little for post titles, you'll understand shortly.  Today is the first day of the regular signing period for college basketball, but that is a total coincidence with my signing day.  The big news is that I am signing a lease today!  Yes, after months of post with no real information or new, today I have some real news.  To keep with the overall theme of secrecy and not giving any real information, most of the details about the future location will be reserved for a following post.  I will reveal that I take possession of the building on May 1st, so the fun is really about to begin.  Now on to today's brew:

Signing Day IPA

Style: American-Style IPA 
Malt: American 2-Row, Crystal, Honey Malt, Munich
Hops: Amarillo, Centennial, Columbus
ABV: ~ 6.5%

This is the second of a series of IPA's for a tasting to be held at the brewery location.  Similar to the last, but different.  Still working on names for the different beers, mostly because I am torn on which direction to go with the overall branding of Payette Brewing.  Originally I was planning on focusing on the mountains, rivers and outdoor sports.  Now I have this  fascination with doing some sort of Idaho Cowboy theme, the tough part is doing it in a classy way and not coming across as "hick."  Once I get some initial concepts, I will share them to get your opinions.

Gotta Hop

CBC Days 3 & 4

I just realized that these posts may not be super interesting, so decided on wrapping up the whole Craft Brewers Conference thing in one last post.  If you really want to know more, then I will be happy to tell you all about it over some pints.

The early seminars were sparsely attended to say the least (I didn't miss anything, so the under won), free beer can do that to people.  Like the first day, seminars were hit or miss, but looking back I was able to take something from everything I sat in. 

Spent a good amount of time wandering the trade show talking with many of the various vendors.  I was able to meet a lot of good people and have a few things going now in terms of equipment and raw material suppliers.  Not that I have been to a trade show before, but this is probably the best one around.  Why you ask? Beer, plain and simple.  There was at least one "beer station" in every aisle of the show.  It made perfect sense, like right next to the Cask Systems booth (canning lines) they were serving a variety of craft beers that come in cans.  Even if you didn't want a beer, you were constantly asked if you wanted one.  Rough life I know.

That night there was a rare beer tour around the city, which proved to be a total Charlie Foxtrot.  It resulted in some great beer samples, but was a horribly managed event.  At the first bar, I was really hoping to get to try the Tactical Nuclear Penguin (32% ABV beer), but had to settle for Brew Dog's Tokyo and a few other offerings.  That beer was fantastic.  I did get to talk with the guy who started Brew Dog, and got some great advice about getting started.  Another highlight of that night was trying all the 2005 vintages of Dogfish Head's beers, the 120 min is tasty after 5 years of aging.

Day 4 was really uneventful as I did not attend the World Beer Cup Gala and Dinner.  That day was just seminars and then the conference was over for me.  All in all, if I can make it work I will attend the CBC every year and hopefully have some beers entered in the WBC.

Back to work, but never back to reality

CBC Day 2

This is the first legit conference I have ever been to and it is awesome, no better way to put it. After getting over the “star-struck” feeling early on of seeing all of the people I idolize in the industry, I got down to business and feel good about the state of PBC and what is in store. The seminars are hit or miss; the sales one was hands down the most valuable today. I went to one about starting a production brewery, which unfortunately was a bit of a waste of my time. The last one was not what I expected; it was on drinkability (not like the bud-light ads, but that was the second slide). I did get some good ideas, but have never had a more fun lecture. Especially when the lecturer took shots at the entire crowd for the “big” beers that are all the rage in the industry. Very entertaining and his argument towards making more session beers, especially lagers, had very valid points. On the other hand, if you every see Vinny from Russian River, make sure you tell him he makes the most drinkable beer in the market (a world without RR would be a boring place).

As for the nighttime activities, I'm going to go ahead and piss off all the beer geeks, sorry (well not really). Goose Island opened up their production brewery to the conference for beers and food samples from some excellent Chicago establishments.

If you can't read that, it is a sign for their rare barrel-aged Bourbon County Stout.  In addition to those, they had 10 other versions of the BCS, like a vanilla, coffee, raspberry and others.  Although they were good, really they just reminded me how good the original BCS is (except the Rare, those were so good).  Here's another look at the event:

After Goose, Rock Bottom had their upstairs open for the CBC attendees.  The highlight of the night there was when the cracked the Heartwood Symposium Ale made for the conference.  If you check out the link, the beer sounds like a total Charlie Foxtrot of a beer, but in fact was a great beer.

CBC Day 1 Part II

You may have seen the tweet, but I didn't have any wireless and lacked the time and motivation to seek it out, so I typed up some posts and will publish them throughout the week.  

I have been to my fair share of beer festivals and the opening reception for the CBC was hands down the best I’ve ever been to.  Although it wasn’t dubbed a beer festival, the reception had all the makings of a festival.  Most (all?) of the breweries in the Illinois Brewer’s Guild had their jockey-boxes set up serving a bunch of their beers.  A bunch of different food booths were set up with a huge variety of food.  Really what made it awesome was the venue; it was at the Chicago Field Museum.  I can’t really do it justice with words and didn’t take any good pictures, but it was cool.  I mean, there were breweries set up all around the T-Rex skeleton.

The conference is sort of an overwhelming event and experience as a whole.  I felt sort of like an imposter walking around as I have only been in the industry a little over a year.  I did start to feel better about it as I started seeing people I knew and realized that yes, I am a part of the industry and I know a lot more people than I give myself credit for.

CBC Day 1 Part 1

Not sure if part 2 will ever manifest itself, but I'm at least leaving the door open.  I have no idea what sort of time I will have on my hands so will write when I get the chance.

First point that needs to be discussed: Rush (the band).  No real correlation to the CBC, but I want to point out that they rule!  If you disagree, then first, listen to their greatest hits, then second, listen again.  If you still disagree, then your taste in music is not as awesome as mine, end of story.

As for some more relevant information, well today's disc golfing tour was everything it was cracked up to be and more.  The group was rather small, but had people from all over the country and from different aspects of the industry.  Wil Turner from Goose Island, who I met when I was a Siebel, headed up the group and Matt Van Wyk from Oakshire (who I met at Flossmoor last year) was on the trip.  We played on course, went to Gordon Biersch, then went to another course.  It was sloppy, rainy and all around crappy weather for disc golf or any other outdoor sport.

Hoping the rain stops on the 1st tee

Weather aside, it was an awesome event to start out the conference and I already met some really cool people.
 
As for some of the over/unders, well I have already sampled 5 different beers and I haven't even been to an official CBC event yet, so the over is looking good.  I should have set an o/u on the number of business cards I get, based on today, I am going with an o/u 50.  Obviously I have very few readers because I got no takers on any of the o/u bets, oh well, I will take pride in making my personal predictions come true.

Craft Brewers Conference Preview

The title sounds more like my football blog than this one, but I did make up some Over/Unders for the conference.

As I mentioned, I am off to the Craft Brewers Conference and thanks to the magic of computers this got posted while I am in the air.  The way I see it, my 10 readers will fall into one of three groups when they read about the conference:

1. The Business Minded:  You are thinking: Great, Mike is going to a conference and will get to learn a lot of useful stuff, network with a lot of industry folks, set up things with suppliers.  The timing couldn't be better for the brewery's schedule and Payette Brewing is really going to benefit from this.
2. The Jealous Beer Guys/Gals:  You are thinking: Man, I wish I could do all that stuff, look at all the people to meet, special beers to sample and places to see/visit.  Mike is just rubbing in all of it, what a #$^@.
3. The Party Minded: You are thinking: Fun, it sounds like there are more night time drinking events than there are seminars during the day.  How is Mike going to learn a thing when the beer is flowing like water until 2 and seminars start at 9...this is going to be a disaster.

Here is my response to all of you: Game On!

In all seriousness, I really am going to learn and know it will be a valuable experience for me and Payette Brewing.  My excitement for all the beers that I am going to be able to sample is off the charts, no denying that, but I am going to focus on the most useful piece of advice I got at Siebel "As a brewer, you should always have a beer in your hand, but never drunk"

In my posts, I will be sure to write something that addresses all three points of view, any other views I missed?

Over/Unders:

Readers who are thinking #3  right now (assuming 10 readers): 7.5 o/u
- Didn't want to set it too high, but this one is easy, I'm taking the over

Different beers Mike samples: 40.5 o/u 
- Tough one, 4 days/nights of events but only 1 liver, taking the under because I am...responsible? Note: a sample does not constitute an entire beer, many samples will be 4 oz.

Number of sessions Mike misses: 0.5 o/u
- Some might see this as being low based on the amount of potential drinking.  I'm taking the under, because my one rule in college was, if you are paying a lot to learn something, get your ass to class!

Runs Mike goes on (Robie is the Saturday after the conference): 2.5 o/u
- My training schedule calls for 4 runs, but beer has a direct effect on the desire to run.  Against my better judgment, taking the over

The Simmons podcasts really make me think about gambling on everything...it is a vice I really should avoid, but setting fictional gambling odds is so much fun to do.

Stay tuned this week for more posts

Gotta Hop!

Opening Day!

I've got my Ryno jersey on, brewing an IPA and the Cubs are starting the season this afternoon on ESPN...Life is good!

I start this season with the same optimism as every year and the Cubs are still in first.  Their team is getting on the old side, so they better try to get something done this year.  I am making some beer today and realized once I got brewing that I was planning to make a "It's Gonna Happen" Saison that would turn into a "Wait 'Till Next" Saison as soon as the Cubs were eliminated from contention.  Well, I already had the IPA series planned out, so I will make the Saison soon.  Wait till next year...then it will be the opening day beer (spring seasonal?). 

Opening Day IPA

Style: American IPA
Malt: American 2-Row, Crystal, Honey Malt, Munich
Hops: Amarillo, Centennial, Chinook, Columbus
ABV: ~ 6.5%
Playlist: Go Cubs Go and Hey, Hey, Holy Mackerel on repeat

Off to the CBC tomorrow in Chicago, I have a preview post going up tomorrow and hope to post stuff daily.  If nothing is up, that means that I don't have the time and will get some good stuff up the following week.