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"

Let's Do This

I am sitting here unemployed, drinking a Mountain Man Barleywine and loving every minute of it. I figured since today was my last day working for Boeing and my first day working towards my dream, I should post something. I am not sure what I am trying to accomplish in this post, but the most important piece of information is at the end (and it is mostly for me, but is good advice for anyone).

Leaving work today was the greatest feeling in the world, I was smiling ear to ear almost all the way home and probably have a similar grin on my face right now. The whole thing hasn't really set in yet, but I am sure at some point on that plane ride this weekend it will. So walking to my car today (the 15 minute walk from the factory that I wont soon miss) there were a few things that I couldn't stop thinking. I was thinking: "no regrets" (that and everybody Wang Chung tonight). Don't think that will be a problem. I can probably count on one hand the number of times in the past 2.5 years that I woke up and though "I am so excited to go to work at Boeing today." When I found myself getting out of the car every morning telling myself, "another day another dollar" I knew it was time to try something else.

I am starting to get a buzz and feel like I am rambling/preaching/not making much sense. So I am going to get to my point (which I stole from one of the greatest movies of our time, Jerry Maguire):

"That's how you become great, man. Hang your balls out there!"

Payette Pale Ale

Info on the Payette Pale Ale sample:
Malts: American 2-Row, Crystal, Biscuit
Hops: Amarillo, Cascade, Simcoe
5.4% abv

My Review: Excellent hop flavors but might be a little hoppy for a pale but not enough for an IPA. Good citrus and grapefruit flavor and aroma with slight pine notes. Bottle conditioning is a little light on the carbonation. Color is maybe a little on the dark side, but still a pale amber/gold color. Overall I am very happy with this version of the Payette Pale Ale, but there is always room for improvement.

Note on the carbonation: I have noticed different amounts of carbonation in different bottles of the Pale Ale. I generally put my beer in kegs and force carbonate using a CO2 regulator, so I can maintain proper levels. As far as natural carbonation like this beer, well I am extremely inconsistent and am going to try out some different methods so that it isn't the crapshoot that it currently is.

I hope those that got a sample beer liked it, feel free to add your comments/thoughts about it.

Hop Sampler (Hops 101)

A huge part of a craft brewery is educating people on the beer they are drinking. As you know more about what you are drinking and can identify more of the ingredients/tastes, you start to experiment more and have more fun with actually drinking beer (drinking itself usually takes care of having fun in the social aspect of beer). As with wine, there is more to drinking beer than just getting drunk. The biggest eye opener I had when I started making beer was hops, after handling them, making different styles and knowing exactly what was in what I was drinking, I really started to enjoy them much more. Hops is a very good starting point for educating and expanding knowledge of beer, that is where the hop sampler idea comes in.

With all the variety of hops in the world, it really is hard to pin down one specific hop taste that encompasses all varieties. Flavors from hops range from fruity and citrus to grassy and pine. My current pale ale recipe uses 3 different hops, Amarillo (spicy) Cascade (citrus) and Simcoe (grapefruit). When you drink this, these flavors are there individually, but also blend together to make up the hop profile of the beer. The "hop sampler" idea is to make a different pale ale with each of these hops individually then one with all of them and sample them at the same time. I would make a barrel each of the different beers and have some sort of event for people to try them. The beers would be the same in every step of the brewing, except each one made exclusively with one hop variety. This would be a really cool way for people to taste the flavors individually then combined. It wouldn't have to be limited to just those hops, there could be ten, fifteen different beers made to further increase the hop knowledge. How often do people grab a beer in the store, read the label, and truly think "I really like the flavors of Brewer's Gold and Hallertauer hops?" There are people that do it, but most people read that and don't actually know what that means. After doing something like this you could.

This same technique can also be used for different yeast strains, malt bills and other variables in the brewing process. This is also the basic way that recipes are developed and perfected, change one thing and see if it improves the beer. I do think providing a side by side hop sample like this is pretty unique and can work really well