Inspired by Lew Bryson’s appearance in Episode 9 of the podcast, we decided if we were going to talk session beers and promote the idea of session beers, then maybe we oughta give you some recipes. So we reached out to a bunch of folks, both known and not so known, and asked “hey, give us your favorite Session Beer recipe!” Remember the rules of this particular game – a session beer is anything under 4.5% ABV and we got some traditional takes and not so traditional takes on the idea waiting for you here. And don’t forget – if you’re reading this as we publish, there’s no reason you can’t be pouring one of these fine beverages for your celebration of Session Beer Day – April 7th! (Every year in celebration of the return of low alcohol beer following the “interesting” times of American Prohibition). Heck, if it’s April 1st, you can probably pull it off too! Don’t believe me – read this article. Reading after Session Beer Day? Well, what’s stopping you from enjoying a session beer anytime? So what say you brewers? Are you going to embrace the Session Beer? Have you already embraced the session beer? What’s your favorite session beer or session beer recipe? Comment below! Oh and there are still a few contributors who may come trickling in, so we plan to update the article with new recipes as they arrive!

Drew Beechum

You knew there was going to have to be a recipe from me here in the mix! For this article, I chose my Pale Oat Mild. Does such a creature exist historically? Not a clue, but this is a tasty beer full of toasty British malt goodness and a rich body courtesy of the oats. It’s like the best oatmeal cookie you never knew you needed. In fact, an addition of spices wouldn’t be amiss – I’ve done a variation of this with curry (Curried Oat Mild in Experimental Homebrewing.) and goosed up version with raisins, rum and spices. What’s the AK mean? Well, a lot of things apparently. In the past some have said “ahh, that was a pale mild”, others have insisted no such thing existed… well, if it didn’t, now it has. And it’s good! Additionally, because I’m a Saison guy and people seem to get confused if I don’t mention the style, I’ve included my Table Saison in the mix as a beautifully quick session beer with some character! This is also really handy to make to grow up your yeast for bigger Saison projects. You’ll also notice that the malt bill is decidedly more complex than normal, but that’s because I’m trying to build something to hang that final hop character and yeast boldness off of without adding gravity and thus alcohol.

Ok, not an actual pic of the Oat Malt Mild, but this is a session ale from MacLeod Ale Company that is an appearance ringer

Oat Malt Mild

For 5.5 gallons at 1.038 OG, 9 IBUs, 6.7 SRM, 3.9% ABV 68% efficiency

Malt Bill

6.0 lbs Maris Otter 2.0 lbs Thomas Fawcett Malted Oats 0.6 lbs Simpsons Medium Crystal

Mash Schedule

Rest at 152-154F for 60 minutes

Hops

0.125 oz Target 11%AA 60 minutes 0.25 oz Challenger 6.5%AA 30 minutes

Yeast

WY1275 Thames Valley or WLP022 Essex Ale

This is actually the infamous Clam Chowdah Saison, but the appearance is very close

Saison de Table

For 5.5 gallons at 1.037 OG, 1.005 FG, 23 IBUs, 4.4SRM, 4.2%ABV, 70% efficiency, 90 minute boil

Malt

5.50 lbs German Pilsner 1.00 lbs Weyermann Munich 0.75 lbs Flaked Oats 0.50 lbs Caravienne Malt

Mash Schedule

Single Infusion Rest – 150F for 60 minutes

Hops

0.5 oz Magnum 11.4%AA for 60 minutes 0.5 oz Saaz 4.0%AA for 0 minutes (whirlpool and substitute your favorite hop here)

Yeast

Your favorite Saison strain. Wyeast 3711 will give additional body, Wyeast 3724 / White Labs 565 will give you classic Saison flavors. Read more here

Chris Colby

Chris Colby is one of the minds behind BeerAndWineJournal.com. He and James Spencer (later in this piece) drop regular updates about the important things about beer and wine making. Chris is the former editor of Brew Your Own and the author of the soon to be published Home Brew Recipe Bible. This is his take on Murphy’s Stout, a classic stout.

“This is a dry stout reminiscent of Murphy’s Pub Draught. This is a great session beer, or good beer to make if you are counting Calories. In my opinion, it tastes better when carbonated with CO2, as opposed to pushed with beer gas. But it’s up to you whether to carbonate or nitrogenate it. “

See, now I feel inadequate because he even has it in the right glass!

The Cure from Cork

For 5 gallons at 1.038 OG, 1.007 FG, 34 IBUs, 32 SRM, 4.1% ABV, 70% Efficiency, 90 minute boil

Malt Bill

5.25 lbs English pale ale malt 0.75 lbs cane sugar 2.0 oz dark crystal malt (90 °L) 3.0 oz. chocolate malt 10 oz. roasted barley (500 °L)

Water Profile

100 ppm calcium (Ca+2) 20 ppm magnesium (Mg+2) 240 ppm carbonate (HCO3–)

Mash Schedule

Rest 150F for 60 minutes Mashout at 168F

Hops

0.9 oz. Target 10%AA 60 minutes

Yeast

White Labs WLP007 (Dry English Ale) yeast

Extras

0.50 tsp. gypsum (boil. optional) 0.50 tsp. calcium chloride (boil. optional) 0.25 tsp. yeast nutrients 4 oz. corn sugar (to prime bottles for 2.0 volumes of CO2)

Procedure

Make yeast starter 2 days before brewing. Crush the dark grains separately from pale malt., but combine them all in the mash. (You will likely need to tighten the mill gap a bit for the smaller dark grains.) Mash grains at 150 °F in 7.8 quarts of brewing liquor for 60 minutes. Mash out to 168 °F. Recirculate wort, then begin running off. Sparge until the specific gravity of the runnings drop below 1.008 (or the pH rises above 5.8) or until runnings taste exceedingly astringent. This will most likely be around the 4.0-gallon mark. Add water to make a pre-boil volume of 6.5 gallons. Bring wort to a boil and add half a teaspoon of gypsum and half a teaspoon of calcium chloride. (This assumes your original calcium level was 100 ppm or lower.) Boil wort hard for 90 minutes, adding hops for the final 60 minutes. Stir in sugar and yeast nutrients for final 15 minutes of the boil. Cool wort and rack to fermenter. Aerate well, pitch yeast, and ferment at 70 °F. Keg or bottle condition. [You can keg this and push with nitrogen if you like, but I think it tastes better with “normal” (CO2) bubbles.]

Denny Conn

As rare and unknowable as American Mild, it’s Dennyfoot (“photo” courtesy of Ken Harvey-AKA Wort-H.O.G on the AHA Forum

This is Denny’s American Mild – a work in progress he says. Let’s see where it goes and yes, that 165F mash rest is for real. I double checked. Denny says he achieved the same attenuation as when he mashed in at 152F! Next variant will apparently include some oats.

American Mild v3

For 5.5 gallons at 1.035 OG, 36.4 IBUs, 11.3 SRM, 3.5% ABV, 60 minute boil, 73% Efficiency,

Malt Bill

4.0 lbs Great Western Munich Malt

2.0 lbs Domestic 2 Row

1.0 lbs Crystal 60L (American)

1.0 lbs Cara-Pils

Mash Schedule

Single Infusion – 165F 60 minutes

Hops (Pellets)

0.25 oz Magnum 12.4%AA 60 minutes

0.50 oz Cascade 8.4%AA 10 minutes

0.50 oz Chinook 12.1%AA 10 minutes

0.50 oz Columbus 17.5%AA 5 minutes

1.00 oz Cascade 8.4%AA 0 minutes

1.00 oz Simcoe 15.4%AA 0 minutes

Yeast

Wyeast 1450 Denny’s Favorite

Water Profile

Amber Balanced Profile

76 Calcium (ppm)

7 Magnesium (ppm)

11 Sodium (ppm)

76 Sulfate (ppm)

63 Chloride (ppm)

90 Bicarbonate (ppm)

Dana Cordes

Dana loves homebrewing so much that despite being a busy family man and highfalutin technical type that he’s a member of two homebrew clubs – The Maltose Falcons (go team me!) and TOaked Homebrewers. He’s even the co-webmaster for the Falcons and chief web dude and co-education officer for TOaked. With all that work, you know you need a good quaffable beer to keep going. Here’s Dana’s spin on a slightly stronger Dark English Mild called “Proper 1420“. It was inspired by Ward Walkup’s winning mild from the 2016 Doug King Memorial Competition. Oh and just to prove that even for the hard working, the world isn’t perfect a report from Dana:

Brew day disaster! Lost about a gallon cause my whirlpool valve was open.

Do you know how hard it is to take a selfie while mashing in by yourself?

Proper 1420

For 11 gallons at 1.050 OG (12.3P), 17.2 IBUs, 23.5 SRM, 4.2% ABV, 60 minute boil, 77% efficiency

Malt Bill

14.25 lb Maris Otter

1.5 lb Brown Malt (British)

1.5 lb Simpsons Pale Chocolate

1.25 lb Crystal 50L (British)

0.75 lb Special B (Belgian)

Mash Schedule

Single Infusion – 158F for 60 minutes

Hops

3.0 oz East Kent Goldings Pellets 5.0%AA First Wort Hop

Yeast

Wyeast 1968 London ESB

Extras

1 tablet Whirlfloc, 15 minutes in boil

Greg Etzel

One of the hosts of the “Come and Brew It” Podcast out of Texas Brewing Inc. in Fort Worth, TX. Greg is also the President of the Cap and Hare Homebrew Club and is providing us with his Session IPA which they also sell as a kit at the shop. And because everything is bigger in Texas, Greg provided us with a second recipe for a classic English inspired Session Ale called Johnnie’s English.

Ok, not everything is bigger in Texas, but it’s still big in flavor! (High Noon)

High Noon Session IPA

For 5 gallons at 1.047OG, 1.012FG, 25 IBUs, 4.6% ABV

Malt Bill

8 lbs. Avangard Pale Ale

1 lb. Flaked Wheat

6 oz. Briess Caramel 10L

6 oz. Briess Caramel 40L

6 oz. Avangard Light Munich

Mash Schedule

Single Infusion Mash at 152°F for 60 minutes.

Hops (Pellets)

0.5 oz. Mosaic 60 minutes

0.5 oz. Mosaic 10 minutes

1 oz. Mosaic 5 minutes

1 oz. Mosaic Dry Hop for 3 days

Yeast

Wyeast 1056/Safale US-05

Johnnie’s English Ale

For 5 gallons at 1.044 OG, 1.010 FG, 24 IBUs, 4.5% ABV

Malt Bill

7.2 lbs. Muntons Pale Ale

4 oz. Briess Caramel 120L

Mash Schedule

Single Infusion Mash 152°F for 60 minutes.

Hops

1 oz. UK Challenger 60 minutes

1 oz. East Kent Golding 0 minutes

Yeast

Wyeast 1028 / S-04

Brandon Jones

Brandon is the chief wrangler of one of the great sour beer sites out there, EmbraceTheFunk.com. He’s also the overseer of Yazoo Brewing’s sour beer program to keep things funky in Nashville. Brandon is also one of our featured All-Stars in the forthcoming Homebrew All-Stars. Celebrate the book by brewing this great spin on a Berliner. (Kettle souring will produce it super quick, if less complex) Mmm… funkyPhoto appears courtesy of Quarto Books aka the publisher of Homebrew All-Stars

The Funky Path Berliner Weiss

“There are two options for brewing this recipe: natural sour development in the fermenter or kettle sour/boil. I would recommend the natural sour method of pitching your bacteria and yeast into the fermenter to constantly develop. Kettle souring is a slightly more advanced technique where a brewer will keep the wort in the boil kettle at 95 to 100°F overnight with a pitch of Lacto. When the desired sourness is achieved—usually within 24 hours—the wort is brought back up to a boil for 15 minutes to kill off the Lacto. This allows the brewer to use his or her normal equipment including the ‘soft equipment’ I mentioned earlier without the risk of clean side contamination. Again, I recommend the natural sour development method”

For 5.5 Gallons at 1.030 OG, 0 IBU, 3.1% ABV, 0–15 minute boil

Malt Bill

4.0 lbs Pilsner Malt

2.5 lbs White Wheat Malt

Mash Schedule

Single Infusion Rest @ 150F for 60 minutes

Hops

None

Yeast

Lactobacillus: WY5335 Lactobacillus / WLP67 Lactobacillus delbrueckii

Yeast: WY1007 German Ale / WLP036 Dusseldorf Alt / Fermentis Safale US-05

Brettanomyces: WY5526 Brettanomyces lambicus / WLP653 Brettanomyces lambicus

Notes

Do not oxygenate the wort. I would advise against putting 95°F wort into a glass carboy; a bucket or “PET style” carboy is safer. Pitch the Lacto culture ONLY into the wort, and let the bacteria work overnight. If you have a pH meter or strips, try to target 3.5 pH before moving on to the next step. Once the wort has soured, cool to 70°F using an ice bath and pitch the ale yeast. When the high krausen begins to fall, you can optionally pitch the Brettanomyces. Let the beer ferment in primary for one month, then carbonate to three volumes.

Variants

Add tropical aroma hops, such as Citra, to dry hop. Add tart cherry juice and lime peel. Try using orange liqueur-soaked oak chips.

John Palmer

So we got this scrub, virtual unknown by the name of John Palmer asking if he could contribute to the Session Beer Day list. Ok, really, you know who John is. Author of the modern homebrew tome – How to Brew. (Or try out the free version.) He’s also the co-host of Brew Strong on the Brewing Network. Like many of our experienced brew masters, John has a good longing for a simple lager and so he gives us his born in east LA version of a lager.

Born in East LA, if by East LA, you mean the foothills of the La Crescenta area. Also, sweet glass

East LA Lager

For 5 gallons at 1.042 OG, 1.010 FG, 30 IBUs, 13 SRM, 4.1%ABV, 75% efficiency

Malt Bill

6.50 lbs Briess Gold Pils Vienna malt

1.00 lbs Wheat Malt

0.25 lbs Acidulated Malt

0.50 lbs Victory Malt

0.50 lbs Crystal 40L Malt

0.50 lbs Aromatic Malt

Mash Schedule

Single temp infusion at 149F (65C) for 1 hour.

Hops

0.5 oz Amarillo at 60 minutes

0.5 oz Amarillo at 15 minutes

0.5 oz Amarillo at knockout

Yeast

White Labs Mexican Lager Pitch at 50-52F (10-11C), Diacetyl rest on day 4 at 57-59F (14-15C).

Water Profile

Using 10 gallons distilled water, add 5g Gypsum, 5g Calcium Chloride, 2g Epsom Salt, 2g Baking Soda. Gives: 82 Ca, 5 Mg, 31 Alk, 80 SO4, 102 Cl, 14 Na, -31 RA.

Ron Pattinson

If you haven’t read Ron’s blog – Shut Up About Barclay Perkins – you’re missing out on a treasure trove of great information about historical brewing. Also, you’re missing out on the reason why I have to preface every story I tell about beer as precisely that – “a story”. Ron is one of a handful of beer writers doing the hard work of hitting the libraries and brewer’s archives to dig out truth from beery legend. Ron gave us a historical table beer recipe that is historically accurate. You can find more recipes like this in Ron’s The Home Brewer’s Guide to Vintage Beer: Rediscovered Recipes for Classic Brews Dating from 1800 to 1965 and his several self-published books covering Mild, Bitter and more (avaialble at his site). To give you an idea of Ron’s thoughts on the whole session beer thing:

A proper session beer recipe, as it’s under 4% ABV.

Ron always finds these great images of beer mats, so it’d be a shame not to include one!

1851 William Younger T Table Beer

For 5.0 gallons at 1.037 OG, 1.013 FG, 55 IBUs, 4 SRM, 3.18% ABV, 90 minute boil, 65% efficiency

Malt

8.5 lbs Pale Malt (Maris Otter)

Hops

1.5 oz Goldings 75 minutes

1.0 oz Goldings 50 minutes

1.0 oz Goldings 20 minutes

Mash Schedule

Mash at 153º F Sparge at 184º F

Yeast

Wyeast WLP028 Edinburgh Ale

Notes

pitching temp 58º F

Marshall Schott

Our comrade in beer “citizen science” over at Brulosophy.com and the guy who keeps us honest in the stats. Since everything’s an experiment to Marshall, it should be no surprise that even his favorite “session” beer has a learning component built in! (And for the record it’s a no sparge recipe – read Marshall’s full writeup for more details)

Marshall’s Testing Grounds

Hop Test Bitter

For 5.0 gallons at 1.044 OG, 25-40 IBUs, 11.6 SRM, 4.2%ABV, 60 minute boil

Malt

7.0 lbs Maris Otter

1.0 lbs Crystal 60L

8.0 oz Victory Malt

4.0 oz Crystal 120L

Mash Schedule

Single Infusion 152F for 60 minutes

Hops

~8 IBU HOP OF CHOICE – First Wort Hop (FWH)

15.00 g Willamette – Boil 20.0 min

15.00 g HOP OF CHOICE – Boil 10.0 min

21.00 g HOP OF CHOICE – Boil 5.0 min

21.00 g HOP OF CHOICE – Flameout w/ 10 min steep

Yeast

WLP002 – English Ale Yeast

Notes

– No sparge batch

– mash with all your water.

– Chill to 64°F prior to pitching yeast starter

– Ferment at 66°F for 3-4 days then allow to free rise up to 72° over the next week

– Cold crash for 24+ hours after FG is stable (10-14 days)

James Spencer

James is one of the co-hosts of Basic Brewing, which is a long running, super informative radio and video series. He also works with Chris Colby on Beer and Wine Journal. James went Belgian with his choice and went for a seemingly impossible malt schedule with 60% malted wheat and 40% malted rye – a lauter nightmare! But take it from the man below what happens when you make a rye wit like this:

“Here is a very low gravity, but tasty, recipe that pretty much requires Brew in a Bag because of the grain bill. It only uses malted wheat and malted rye. The rye gives the beer substantial mouthfeel, even though it’s low in alcohol.”

Rye Wit – Photo from http://beerandwinejournal.com/

Rye Wit

For 5.0 gallons at 1.028 OG, 1.008 FG, 2.6% ABV

Malt

3 lbs Malted Wheat

2 lbs Malted Rye

Mash Schedule

Single infusion mash 150F for 60 minutes

Hops

0.5 oz East Kent Goldings 5.7%AA for 60 min.

2.0 oz Nelson Sauvin (11.7% AA) – Flameout (Or your favorite flavor and/or aroma hop)

Yeast

Safale US 05

Notes

Dry hop in keg if desired.

Michael Tonsmiere

What can you say about Mike aka OldSock aka the Mad Fermentationist aka the author of American Sour Beers except that’s a man who like to play on the funky side. But yet, what ho is this? When asked for a session beer did he give us something with weird and wild critters – nope, it’s a session IPA with a malt bill leaning heavily on toasty Vienna malt and a no sparge mash schedule for more body. All the better for dealing with the bulk of late hop additions! Read Mike’s writeup on the recipe for more details and his thoughts about session beers in general. All I can think is how dangerously close that is to being a spilled beer

Session Vienna “IPA”

For 5.25 gallons at 1.038 OG, 1.010 FG, 37.5 IBUs, 5.6 SRM, 3.8% ABV, 60 minute boil, 54% Efficiency

Malt

7.25 lbs German Vienna Malt

2.25 lbs American Pale Malt

0.50 lbs. CaraVienna

Mash Schedule

Single Infusion Mash 153F for 40 minutes

Water Profile

Profile: Washington DC cut 50% with distilled, plus 2 g CaCl and 1 g gypsum

Hops

0.50 oz Simcoe 11.00%AA 15 minutes

0.25 oz Columbus 11.00%AA 15 minutes

0.75 oz Amarillo 10.00%AA 10 minutes

0.75 oz Simcoe 11.00%AA 5 minutes

1.00 oz Amarillo 10.00%AA Hop Stand for 25 minutes

1.00 oz Columbus 11.00%AA Hop Stand for 25 minutes

1.00 oz Simcoe 11.00%AA Hop Stand for 25 minutes

0.50 oz. Amarillo 10.00%AA Start of Chill

0.50 oz. Columbus 11.00%AA Start of Chill

0.50 oz. Simcoe 11.00%AA Start of Chill

1.25 oz. Amarillo (Whole), 11.00% AA Dry Hop 1

.25 oz. Columbus (Whole), 11.00%AA Dry Hop

1.25 oz. Simcoe (Whole) 14.00%AA Dry Hop

Additions

0.5 Whirlfloc Tablet 12 minutes boil

0.4 tsp Yeast Nutrient 12 minutes boil

Yeast

White Labs WLP037 Yorkshire Square Ale

Notes

No Sparge. Chilled to 68 F, strained, and pitched the .75L stir-plate starter. Left at 64 F ambient to ferment. Dry hopped in the keg.

Mark Van Ditta

Mark is a man of deep and mysterious knowledge who’s been dropping little nuggets of sciencey wisdom here for a little while. We’re always learning some new things from the man and it’s doing a lot to inform our experiments! This is his American take on an English Bitter with a classic old school American hop profile. Incidentally, go read some of Ron’s work (see above) to learn just how extensively American hops were used in the British brewing industry back in the day! Some people go to the beach for vacations, Mark goes to Siebel Also note Mark specifies his BUGU ratio (basically IBUs divided by OG) to pinpoint a level of bitterness that he uses when he scales the basic recipe up or down .

Anglo-American Bitter

For 5.5 gallons at 1.044OG, 1.011FG, 30.3 IBUs, 4.3% ABV, 0.69 BU:GU

Malt Bill (assumes an extraction rate of 30 points per pound per gallon):

7.5 lbs Thomas Fawcett Pearl

8.0 oz Briess Torrified Wheat

1.5 oz Thomas Fawcett Pale Chocolate

Mash Schedule

Single Infusion Mash at 154F

Hops

1.0 oz Whole Cone Cluster 7.3% AA (60 minute boil)

0.5 oz Whole Cone Cascade 5.6% AA (last 10 minutes of the boil)

1.5 oz Whole Cone Cascade 5.6% AA (20 minute hop stand at 160F)

Yeast

Whitbread “B” (a.k.a. Wyeast 1098, White Labs WLP007, or Fermentis S-04)

Notes

– An extraction rate of 30 points per pound per gallon translates to a brewhouse efficiency of approximately 83%.

– A grist that is composed of approximately 92% British pale, 7% torrified wheat, and 1% pale chocolate that is scaled to one’s brewhouse efficiency will effectively reproduce the extract portion of this recipe.

– I have brewed this recipe at 1.044 and 1.052 while maintaining the grist percentages and BU:GU ratio. It scales very well with respect to gravity.

It's Episode 9 – last call for questions before the big Q&A episode! (Send your questions to questions@experimentalbrew.com) We run off to the pub and discuss feedback abut the potential canning crisis, the unbearable BS of science, the now sold out Pacific Northwest Homebrewers Conference and Hops in Drew's hometown. And then to the lab where the guys launch the next experiment. Is there a detectable difference between adding Olive Oil as an aeration replacement and just not adding any aeration/oxygen at all! We go into the history of the whole Olive Oil excitement and why they think everyone has it a little wrong. With the approach of Session Beer Day – April 7th – we get beer writer extraordinaire and Session Beer Project creator, Lew Bryson on the phone and go through the history of the project, the beer day and what Lew ultimately wants to achieve! We take a brief detour to provide everyone with some homebrew advice so you can have a session beer of your own on tap for Session Day! Denny drops another quick tip from our AHA Forum friends – this time all about the tool box Drew then leaves us with a musical clip for the ages! Episode Links:
Freedom Service Dogs – https://freedomservicedogs.org/
Pacific Northwest Homebrewers Conference – https://www.pnwhc.com/
The Unbearable Asymmetry of Bullshit – http://quillette.com/2016/02/15/the-unbearable-asymmetry-of-bullshit/
Florida Hops – http://news.ufl.edu/articles/2016/02/uf-to-hop-into-hops-varieties-for-m…
The Experiment – http://www.experimentalbrew.com/experiments/olive-oil-vs-no-aeration
The Session Beer Project – http://sessionbeerproject.blogspot.com/
Seen Through a Glass – http://lewbryson.blogspot.com/
Why the PLCB Should Be Abolished – http://noplcb.blogspot.com/
Andrews Sisters with the Supremes – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HgTsBsSngrc
Episode Contents: 00:00:00 Our Sponsors 00:02:13 Theme and Intro and Listener Feedback 00:07:50 Beer Life from the Experimental Brewing Pub – Can Shortage, THE BS of Science, Pacific Northwest Homebrewers Conference, Hops in Florida 00:24:30 Casa Verde Labs – Experiment: Olive Oil vs. No Aeration 00:33:18 Session Beer Project with Lew Bryson 01:12:45 Brew A Session Beer! 01:22:17 Quick Tip – The Tool Box 01:24:25 Something Other Than Beer – The Andrew's Sisters 01:27:06 Question of the Week, Wrap up and Coming Attractions
This episode is brought to you:

BrewCraft USA Craftmeister NikoBrew PicoBrew

Interested in helping Denny and Drew with the IGOR program (aka help us run experiments!) – contact them at igor@experimentalbrew.com. We want more Citizen Science! On our next episode we'll be giving our IGOR's their first brewing assignment! In the meanwhile, subscribe via your favorite podcasting service (iTunes, etc). Like our podcast, review it – talk it up! If you have comments, feedbacks, harassments, etc, feel free to drop us a line at podcast@experimentalbrew.com. Follow us on Facebook (ExperimentalHomebrewing) or Twitter (@ExpBrewing). If you have questions you'd like answered in our Q&A segment, send an email to questions@experimentalbrew.com! Don't forget you can support the podcast on Patreon by going to http://patreon.com/experimentalbrewing This episode can be downloaded directly at https://www.experimentalbrew.com/sites/d… Podcast RSS Url: http://www.experimentalbrew.com/podcast.rss

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In Episode 8 – Denny and Drew remind listeners about the upcoming Q&A episode. (Send your questions to questions@experimentalbrew.com) They run off to the pub and discuss a potential canning crisis, actual grown up science, the upcoming Pacific Northwest Homebrewers Conference and Denny's run for the Governing Committee. Then they visit a new location for the podcast – the brewery (who woulda guessed) to discuss the availability of the Idaho 7 hop (currently branded 007 The Golden Hop) and Weyermann's Barke Malt. And then to the lab where the guys are joined by Marshall “Brulosophy” Schott, to discuss the results of the Hop Whirlpool Temperature Test. Does it make a difference if you whirlpool your hops at 120F instead of 170F. (In theory, fewer hop oils get volatilized at the lower temp). What was the result? Listen! Once again, hoppy times are brought to you by NikoBrew.com! Back to the Bay Area – no not the San Francisco Bay Area – the Tampa Bay Area where Drew conducts an interview with Brian Fenstermacher at his homebrew store turned nanobrewery – Southern Brewing & Winemaking. Brian has a long history in the craft brewing industry and eventually ended up opening a great homebrew store. Unable to leave the beer world completely behind, he turned the homebrew store into a nano brew with an impressive 24 taps being brewed on a nano-scale. Listen to the interview to discover the incredibly intricate system he's created for his brewers to keep that variety running! Denny and Drew take your questions and lie about all of their answers. Denny drops another quick tip from our AHA Forum friends about creating a quick chilled carbonated sample of your beer to let you speedily evaluate your beer. Marshall then drops in with his love of music on our “Something Non-Beery” segment. Episode Links:
Freedom Service Dogs – https://freedomservicedogs.org/
Pacific Northwest Homebrewers Conference – https://www.pnwhc.com/
AHA Governing Committee Election – http://www.homebrewersassociation.org/membership/aha-governing-committee…
007 Golden Hop – http://www.yakimavalleyhops.com/007_TheGoldenHop16oz_p/hops0071-2015crop…
Weyermann Barke Pilsner Malt – https://bsgcraftbrewing.com/barke-line
The Experiment – http://www.experimentalbrew.com/experiments/hop-whirlpool-does-steeping-…
Southern Brewing and Winemaking – http://www.southernbrewingwinemaking.com/
Episode Contents:
00:00:00 Our Sponsors
00:02:25 Theme and Intro and Listener Feedback
00:05:57 Beer Life from the Experimental Brewing Pub – Can Shortage, Actual Science, Pacific Northwest Homebrewers Conference, AHA Governing Committee Election
00:18:15 The Brewery – 007 Golden Hop, Barke Malt
00:26:00 Casa Verde Labs – Experiment #2 Results – Whirlpool Hopping
00:51:33 Southern Brewing & Winemaking in Tampa
01:44:38 Uke Break!
01:45:09 Q&A with Denny & Drew
02:03:45 Quick Tip – Quick Carbonated Samples
02:05:11 Something Other Than Beer – Marshall's Music
02:07:12 Question of the Week, Wrap up and Coming Attractions This episode is brought to you:
BrewCraft USA Craftmeister NikoBrew PicoBrew
Interested in helping Denny and Drew with the IGOR program (aka help us run experiments!) – contact them at igor@experimentalbrew.com. We want more Citizen Science! On our next episode we'll be giving our IGOR's their first brewing assignment! In the meanwhile, subscribe via your favorite podcasting service (iTunes, etc). Like our podcast, review it – talk it up! If you have comments, feedbacks, harassments, etc, feel free to drop us a line at podcast@experimentalbrew.com. Follow us on Facebook (ExperimentalHomebrewing) or Twitter (@ExpBrewing). If you have questions you'd like answered in our Q&A segment, send an email to questions@experimentalbrew.com! Don't forget you can support the podcast on Patreon by going to http://patreon.com/experimentalbrewing
This episode can be downloaded directly at https://www.experimentalbrew.com/sites/d…
Podcast RSS Url: http://www.experimentalbrew.com/podcast.rss

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In Episode 7 – Denny and Drew take a spin through listener reactions to the first experiment results unleashed online and in the podcast. Then it's off to the pub where they discuss the rise of homebrewing around the globe (focused on an article about Indian homebrewers), Denny wields the eraser of correction about the beers he tried from Barrel of Monks and Drew talks up Lew Bryson's Session Beer Day project. And then to the lab where the guys launch the next experiment – all about the First Wort Hop. This time out the crew is set on re-creating Denny's classic experiment that yielded inconclusive results about FWH. Ignore the recipe content in the podcast because the IGORs asked for a recipe change and who are the guys to deny them that? Once again, hoppy times are brought to you by NikoBrew.com! Time to announce the podcast's first charity project – Freedom Service Dogs of America. They're dedicated to rescuing and training shelter dogs to serve as support animals for the disabled, including returning vets. Join the podcast as a Patreon supporter to help rescue some pups! Back to the Bay Area for one last time as the gang returns to Faction Brewing in Alameda and the wide ranging Rodger Davis. We clarify (maybe) Rodger's dry hopping procedure for his infinitely hoppy beers. The guys talk through a bunch of other things like the love/not love of fork lifts, his team – the genesis of the White Stout style (found the culprit!) and his experimental hop series. (WARNING – Rodger is also prolific with his utterances and we're still working out where the line is and whether or not we caught them all – so be careful in this segment with the kids if you don't want them learning some words!) Finally Denny and Drew take your questions. Quick announcement about questions – looks like every 10th episode, the show will become an all (mostly?) Q&A show – so get your questions in and see how long you can make D&D answer questions! Denny takes a tip from Jeff Gladish about blending and Drew recommends a few new choice selections for your reading library (of non-beery things) So, are you guys psyched to get your First Wort Hop on? Episode Links:
Experiment Writeup – http://www.experimentalbrew.com/experiments/writeups/writeup-yeast-compa…
Freedom Service Dogs – https://freedomservicedogs.org/
Indian Homebrewing Scene – http://www.thehindu.com/features/metroplus/giving-beer-an-indian-twist/a…
Barrel of Monks – http://www.barrelofmonks.com/
Lew Bryson Session Day – http://sessionbeerproject.blogspot.com/2016/01/session-beer-day-2016-is-…
Experiment #3 – FWH vs Bittering – http://www.experimentalbrew.com/experiments/comparing-first-wort-hopping…
Faction Brewing Co – http://factionbrewing.com/
Book Nook: Leviathan Wakes by James S.A. Corey (http://amzn.to/1STx0a8), The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker (http://amzn.to/1nzRg3m)
Episode Contents: 00:00:00 Our Sponsors
00:02:20 Theme and Intro and Listener Feedback
00:07:31 Beer Life from the Experimental Brewing Pub – Indian Homebrewing, Barrel of Monks Correction, Session Beer Project Day
00:19:59 Casa Verde Labs – Experiment #3 Announcement – FWH Hopping vs. Bittering
00:31:46 Rodger Davis at Faction Brewing, Pt 2!
01:07:02 Q&A with Denny & Drew
01:24:00 Quick Tip – Blending
01:25:02 Something Other Than Beer – Drew's Book Nook
01:29:47 Question of the Week, Wrap up and Coming Attractions
This episode is brought to you:
BrewCraft USA Craftmeister NikoBrew PicoBrew
Interested in helping Denny and Drew with the IGOR program (aka help us run experiments!) – contact them at igor@experimentalbrew.com. We want more Citizen Science! On our next episode we'll be giving our IGOR's their first brewing assignment! In the meanwhile, subscribe via your favorite podcasting service (iTunes, etc). Like our podcast, review it – talk it up! If you have comments, feedbacks, harassments, etc, feel free to drop us a line at podcast@experimentalbrew.com. Follow us on Facebook (ExperimentalHomebrewing) or Twitter (@ExpBrewing). If you have questions you'd like answered in our Q&A segment, send an email to questions@experimentalbrew.com! Don't forget you can support the podcast on Patreon by going to http://patreon.com/experimentalbrewing This episode can be downloaded directly at https://www.experimentalbrew.com/sites/d… Podcast RSS Url: http://www.experimentalbrew.com/podcast.rss

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In Episode 6 – Denny and Drew look to even more listener feedback. In the pub we promulgate a public service announcement near and dear to Denny's heart, investigate rumors of nefarious hop dealings and reminisce about Denny's time in the big snowy territory of Vail. And then we go to the lab where we discuss the first ever results delivered by our IGOR crew. Is there a discernable difference between Wyeast 1056 and WLP001? Marshall “Brulosopher” Schott of Brulosophy.com joins us to provide his view on the data provided by our IGORs and the vast swath of tasters. Back to the Bay Area we're onto Faction Brewing in Alameda and the ever voluble Rodger Davis. This is part one of two parts thanks to all the stories Rodger has at his disposal! Finally we take your questions, Drew talks about pressure and Denny remembers David Bowie and Alan Rickman. So, what do you guys think of our results? Do you agree? Disagree? Try brewing the test yourself and see what you find! Episode Links:
Dangers About Grapefruit – http://www.experimentalbrew.com/blogs/dennyanddrew/dangers-brewing-grape…
YCH Hops – http://ychhops.com/
Big Beers Festival – Vail – http://www.bigbeersfestival.com/
Experiment 1 – Wyeast 1056 vs WLP001 – http://www.experimentalbrew.com/experiments/yeast-comparison-same-strain…
Experiment 1 – Wyeast 1056 vs WLP001 – Writeup –
Brulosophy – http://brulosophy.com/
Faction Brewing Co – http://factionbrewing.com/
Pressure Racking with CO2 – http://www.maltosefalcons.com/tech/racking-co2
Episode Contents:
00:00:00 Our Sponsors
00:01:53 Theme and Intro and Listener Feedback
00:07:23 Beer Life from the Experimental Brewing Pub – Grapefruit, Hop Crisis, Vail
00:21:20 Casa Verde Labs – Experiment #1 Results with Marshall Schott
00:47:40 Rodger Davis at Faction Brewing
01:28:32 Ukulele Break!
01:29:02 Q&A with Denny & Drew
01:43:44 Quick Tip – Under Pressure
01:46:11 Something Other Than Beer – Bowie & Rickman
01:51:11 Queston of the Week, Wrap up and Coming Attractions
This episode is brought to you:

BrewCraft USA Craftmeister NikoBrew PicoBrew

Interested in helping Denny and Drew with the IGOR program (aka help us run experiments!) – contact them at igor@experimentalbrew.com. We want more Citizen Science! On our next episode we'll be giving our IGOR's their first brewing assignment! In the meanwhile, subscribe via your favorite podcasting service (iTunes, etc). Like our podcast, review it – talk it up! If you have comments, feedbacks, harassments, etc, feel free to drop us a line at podcast@experimentalbrew.com. Follow us on Facebook (ExperimentalHomebrewing) or Twitter (@ExpBrewing). If you have questions you'd like answered in our Q&A segment, send an email to questions@experimentalbrew.com! This episode can be downloaded directly at http://www.experimentalbrew.com/sites/default/files/ExperimentalBrewing_… Podcast RSS Url: http://www.experimentalbrew.com/podcast.rss

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In Episode 5 – Denny and Drew look back at the Brew Year's Resolutions where we've had a bunch of feedback from listeners. We talk in the pub about the latest in acquisitions with the sweet spicy addition of hypocrisy – throw in a little competition and Denny's soon to be appearance in Vail. After that we return to the lab to present our second experiment. This time we're exploring if throwing hops into a whirlpool steep at a lower temperature (120F) makes a qualitative difference in the beer over throwing them in at the “new” recommended temperature of 170F. In theory, 120F should preserve more of the volatile aromatic compounds we care about, but does it actually matter? Back to the Bay Area we go with a pint at Oakland's very lovely Trappist where we talk with Nick Impellitteri of the Yeast Bay about his unique take on a yeast company and what he truly enjoys in regards to the little critters. He's got some fun directions he's hoping to take things and who knows – they may be future cross collaborations to happen! Finally we take your questions, Denny provides a little lesson in French and Drew tells us about the latest gadget he's gotten in his ill advised attempts to explode his heart via caffeine consumption. How about it, our fellow scientists – Are you ready for some hopping?!? Episode Links:
Breckenridge Comments in the Denver Post – http://blogs.denverpost.com/beer/2015/02/15/colorado-craft-brewery-sell/…
Doug King Memorial Competition – http://competitions.maltosefalcons.com/
Big Beers Festival – Vail – http://www.bigbeersfestival.com/
Experiment 2 – Hop Whirlpool Steeping Temperatures – http://www.experimentalbrew.com/experiments/hop-whirlpool-does-steeping-…
The Yeast Bay – http://www.theyeastbay.com
The Trappist – http://www.thetrappist.com/
Toddy Brewing System – http://amzn.to/1OymlyK
Episode Contents:
00:00:00 Our Sponsors
00:01:16 Theme and Intro and Listener Feedback
00:06:27 Beer Life from the Experimental Brewing Pub – Lady Justice Brewing & BrewTube
00:19:35 Experiment #2 Whirlpools from the Casa Verde Labs
00:29:38 Ukulele Break!
00:30:00 The Yeast Bay with Nick Impellitteri at the Trappist
01:02:36 Q&A with Denny & Drew
01:18:41 Quick Tip – Mise en Place
01:21:09 Something Other Than Beer – The Toddy
01:24:59 Wrap up and Coming Attractions
This episode is brought to you:
BrewCraft USA Craftmeister NikoBrew PicoBrew
Interested in helping Denny and Drew with the IGOR program (aka help us run experiments!) – contact them at igor@experimentalbrew.com. We want more Citizen Science! On our next episode we'll be giving our IGOR's their first brewing assignment! In the meanwhile, subscribe via your favorite podcasting service (iTunes, etc). Like our podcast, review it – talk it up! If you have comments, feedbacks, harassments, etc, feel free to drop us a line at podcast@experimentalbrew.com. Follow us on Facebook (ExperimentalHomebrewing) or Twitter (@ExpBrewing). If you have questions you'd like answered in our Q&A segment, send an email to questions@experimentalbrew.com! This episode can be downloaded directly at http://www.experimentalbrew.com/sites/default/files/ExperimentalBrewing_… Podcast RSS Url: http://www.experimentalbrew.com/podcast.rss

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TLDR – BIG TAKEAWAY – A quick plea to brewers everywhere – for the love of all of everyone – label if your beer uses grapefruit in it. Turns out there’s a chance of it causing some nasty side effects. (Actually for that matter – be kind to everyone and label your beers with anything outside the core four.) Edited to add – Taking feedback from various parts of the community and adjusting language to be less hyperbolic Not that long ago, grapefruit was an American breakfast staple. If you wanted to lose weight there’s even an ancient still kicking fad diet centered around a ton of grapefruit and grapefruit juice with every meal. But, sadly sometimes even a good thing can be dangerous when combined with the wrong sorts of other good things. What does this have to do with beer? Some brewers, in an effort to boost those beloved American citrus hop characters, add grapefruit to their beers to create a “wow” aroma and flavor. See Ballast Point’s Grapefruit Sculpin as an example. It’s amazingly effective and fits seamlessly into the beer spectrum of flavors. But… Grapefruit has a nasty completely unexpected side effect of interfering with a series of liver and intestinal enzymes – chiefly Cytochrome P450 3A4 aka CYP3A4. So? Well, the job of the thing that sounds like a Star Wars droid is to oxidize and neutralize toxins, poisons and drugs. Really, those are the same thing – scary molecules that your body wants to remove from the system. (Remember Paracelsus maxim: “sola dosis facit venenum” or in a non-dead language “The dose makes the poison” Aka – anything, in large enough quantities can be poisonous.) The studies published show that it takes a bunch of grapefruit juice to have truly deleterious side effects, but many patients and doctors prefer to stay on the safe side when you’re dealing with things like heart meds. (Denny for instance) For most everything we ingest, this inhibition isn’t a big deal, but, for a certain fairly sizeable set of medications, it’s downright deadly. Many of these drugs are taken on a regular schedule that’s determined by a combination of factors including the time for the body to remove it from the system and reduce it below theraputic thresholds. Aka – your dose is based around the general timing that your body will flush enough of the drug within X hours to remove the effects you want from the drug. Start interfering with the liver’s ability to dispose of the chemicals and you throw the time table all out of whack. Suddenly where there should have been little of the medical compound left, you now might be adding another full dose in on top of a high continuing blood level. Since it’s the dose that makes the poison, well, you can see the problem. What causes the problem then? Grapefruit contains chemicals related to furanocoumarin. The nasty piece of business in there is the coumarin which is a liver toxin that is used sparingly in some medications and as a vanilla flavoring. Mexican vanilla extract was banned in the US for years out of adulteration concerns when manufacturers started using the much cheaper Tonka bean to boost the vanillin quantities in their extracts. The tonka bean being the source of the name for coumarin (from the French), turns out that it was dosing a fair amount of coumarin into the extract along with vanilla. So coumarin, which is mostly banned in the US as a food additive, enters your blood stream via your grapefruit addition in the beer and starts messing with all those enzymes. Keep taking your meds as a good patient should and suddenly you cross from theraputic into potential lethal blood levels of your meds and then you have issues on top of your issues. For those who are curious Wikipedia lists that there are 85 drugs currently understood to have interactions with grapefruit. Not all through the mechanism above, but mostly in similar fashion the coumarin interferes with enzymes that take up the drugs and cause an inadvertant overdose. NOTE: All of these drugs have listed interactions with grapefruit – doesn’t mean they’re going to kill you, but that it will mess with the presumed metabolism of the compound in your body. For some drugs that’s particularly dangerous (see many heart meds), but for some things like caffeine as long as you not being a he-man macho idiot, you’ll be fine. Heck, even with things like everyone’s favorite blue pill, you’re probably fine too unless you’ve got heart problems in the mix – but you already knew those drugs have potential consequences for those with heart conditions. What’s the Risk?: Presumably, low, but when it comes to some of these interactions people need to extra careful. Treat it like an allergy – annoying but with bad consequences. All we’re asking for – help keep Denny alive – label if you’re using grapefruit. He’s had scares and his heart can’t take it. (or something) Heck you should probably label things outside the “core 4” anyway to avoid allergies. Just like the whole thing with , it’s not a guaranteed doom and gloom scenario, but your care can help avoid any issues. Here’s some of the biggies.

• Acetaminophen (aka Tylenol – this one’s really dangerous because Acetaminophen is already sketchy with the amount of we use in over the counter meds and it mixes poorly with alcohol)
• Adderall
• Allegra
• Cialis
• Codeine
• Cymbalta
• Levitra
• Lipitor
• Prilosec
• Ritalin
• Valium
• Viagra
• Warfarin/Coumadin
• Xanax
• Zoloft

And many people’s favorite psychoactive substance – caffeine

In Episode 4 – Denny and Drew reflect on the feedback we received about our discussion of the decline of homebrewing before we head to the Pub to talk about socially conscious brewing projects like Lady Justice Brewing in Denver and we talk about the Brew Tube community and how they're coming together after a loss. After that we return to Casa Verde to make plans and let the universe laugh at us as we reveal what our Brew Years Resolutions are. Seriously, that's just asking for failure. We'll see in a year no matter how much Denny protests the topic! Back to the Bay Area we go with another round of San Francisco treats as we bring you our first listener tasting ever. Things get a little dicey and Drew has to run. Warning the audio does get a little hairy! Note to listeners – if you know we'll be somewhere, feel free to bring beer for us to taste. It's a mandate of our parole from the Gambrinus Asylum for the Brewingly Insane that we taste your beer and offer critiques. Be warned though – you may end up on the air! Tasting concluded, we head to San Leandro and Rancho El Sully aka the 21st Amendment's gobsmackingly awesome production brewery in a former Kellogg's factory. We spend quite a bit of time chatting up one of the friendliest people in the brewing world, Shaun O'Sullivan and he reveals what it's like to grow from a wee little brewpub to a gianormous beer factory. Back in the lab, we take your questions about batch sparging, homebrew ruts, terrifying beer concepts and Denny's hair care regimen. Before we leave you for the episode, Drew also talks a little beer chemistry you should all know! Episode Links:
Lady Justice Brewing – http://ladyjusticebrewing.com/
Homebrewing on Youtube – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_DYvrZif5zbybUsgQoo2Uw
The Time4Another1 Brew Tube Channel – https://www.youtube.com/user/Time4Another1
MoreBeer – http://www.morebeer.com/
The 21st Amendment – http://21st-amendment.com/
Spring Time in Amarillo – Drew's favorite “safe” beer to rebrew – http://www.stoutguy.com/beer/recipes/Springtime_in_Amarillo.html
Episode Contents:
00:00:00 Our Sponsors
00:01:16 Theme and Intro!
00:03:56 Listener Feedback
00:06:35 Beer Life from the Experimental Brewing Pub – Lady Justice Brewing & BrewTube
00:14:03 Experimental Catchup and Brew Year's Resolutions from Casa Verde
00:29:01 Ukulele Break!
00:29:30 Live Listener Beer Tasting & Troubleshooting
00:37:24 Interviewing Shaun O'Sullivan at the 21st Amendment Brewery
01:04:30 Q&A with Denny & Drew
01:16:49 Quick Tip – Destroying Beerstone
01:19:00 Wrap up
01:21:40 Boogie of the Bells (full version for your holiday dancing!)
This episode is brought to you:
BrewCraft USA Craftmeister NikoBrew PicoBrew

Interested in helping Denny and Drew with the IGOR program (aka help us run experiments!) – contact them at igor@experimentalbrew.com. We want more Citizen Science! On our next episode we'll be giving our IGOR's their first brewing assignment! In the meanwhile, subscribe via your favorite podcasting service (iTunes, etc). Like our podcast, review it – talk it up! If you have comments, feedbacks, harassments, etc, feel free to drop us a line at podcast@experimentalbrew.com. Follow us on Facebook (ExperimentalHomebrewing) or Twitter (@ExpBrewing). If you have questions you'd like answered in our Q&A segment, send an email to questions@experimentalbrew.com! This episode can be downloaded directly at http://www.experimentalbrew.com/sites/default/files/ExperimentalBrewing_… Podcast RSS Url: http://www.experimentalbrew.com/podcast.rss

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PROFANITY WARNING – There are a few unbleeped blue utterances in this podcast – if you're sensitive to blueness, please wear headphones! In Episode 3 – Denny and Drew start out in the Pub talking about a distressing topic – the possible decline of homebrewing, the causes and what all of us can do about it. Then we get into the real meat of our whole show as we head into the Experimental Brewing Labs in Casa Verde – it's experimentation time! Back in Episode 1 we walked you through a triangle test, now it's time to use it! In this episode, we'll describe the experiment and a few episodes down the line, we'll bring you the results of the IGORs testing and take your results as well! Then we're off to the Bay Area, where if you read our blog, you'll know we talked to a bunch of brewers – this week, we bring you our interview with Jay Goodwin of the Rare Barrel in Berkeley as he drops a bunch of sour beer knowledge on our puny little heads. We'll then take your questions and see if we can't start a fight between Denny & Drew before Denny gives you a little working knowledge about your pump head and then talks to you about his love for the world's favorite silly instrument – the ukulele! Episode Links:
Experiment Description – http://www.experimentalbrew.com/experiments/yeast-comparison-same-strain…
Recipe – http://www.experimentalbrew.com/recipes/magnum-blonde-no-aroma-variant
The Rare Barrel – https://www.therarebarrel.com/
Ohana Music (aka Denny's Ukulele's of choice) – http://www.ohana-music.com/
Survivor Girl Ukulele Band – Drew kept getting the name wrong, but check out one of the best uses for music – http://www.sgub.org/
Episode Contents: 00:00:00 Our Sponsors 00:01:40 Theme and Intro! 00:04:50 Beer Life from the Experimental Brewing Pub – The Decline of Homebrewing 00:16:59 Experiments – Our first experiment – WLP001 vs. Wyeast 1056 00:26:07 Live at the Rare Barrel with Jay Goodwin 01:03:03 Q&A with Denny & Drew 01:14:34 Quick Tip – Keeping Your Head Clear 01:16:04 Other Things We Recommend: Ukulele & The Ukulele Survivor Girl Project 01:18:58 Wrap up This episode is brought to you:
BrewCraft USA Craftmeister NikoBrew PicoBrew

Interested in helping Denny and Drew with the IGOR program (aka help us run experiments!) – contact them at igor@experimentalbrew.com. We want more Citizen Science! On our next episode we'll be giving our IGOR's their first brewing assignment! In the meanwhile, subscribe via your favorite podcasting service (iTunes, etc). Like our podcast, review it – talk it up! If you have comments, feedbacks, harassments, etc, feel free to drop us a line at podcast@experimentalbrew.com. Follow us on Facebook (ExperimentalHomebrewing) or Twitter (@ExpBrewing). If you have questions you'd like answered in our Q&A segment, send an email to questions@experimentalbrew.com! This episode can be downloaded directly at http://www.experimentalbrew.com/sites/default/files/ExperimentalBrewing_… Podcast RSS Url: http://www.experimentalbrew.com/podcast.rss

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This past weekend Denny and I were invited to roam around the Bay Area by one of our podcast sponsors, Craftmeister. Craftmeister was in town to demonstrate their cleaning line to customers and employees at the Bay Area More Beer retail locations and brought us along to autograph copies of B3’s latest catalog offering – Experimental Homebrewing! Anyway – Denny and I met up with Jonathan Ettlie in Oakland and proceeded to run around town. You see, we have this new thing – the podcast – and you know what’s hard? Making sure you have enough good and interesting content. After all, why listen if all you’ve got is two blowhards boringly bloviating even if the blather is about beer. (Stop me before I alliterate again!) So, the good news is we turned our madcap time in the Bay Area into a full field recording session for the podcast. Assuming the audio we captured worked out – we’ve got some great content coming up from Jay Goodwin of the Rare Barrel and the Sour Hour, Shaun “Sully” O’Sullivan of 21st Amendment, a listener tasting gone awry at MoreBeer, Nick Impellitteri of the Yeast Bay and the always voluble Rodger Davis of Faction Brewing

Day One

Rare Barrel

Our first stop was one of the most exciting breweries in America – The Rare Barrel in Berkeley. The basic story of the Barrel – Jay Goodwin worked on barrel aged projects for the Bruery before striking out on his own to produce nothing but sour ales We got to sit down with him and a tasty tasty glass of Map of the Sun. Even though we were there while the brewery was closed, the whole massive operation was rocking with brewery workers hard at the process of creating new sours. We had a fascinating talk about his philosophy and process of brewing – grabbed tips and tricks and hopefully if the audio survived – we’ll feature Jay in episode 3 on December 9th.

21st Amendment

A Wall of Bitter American Cans greets you – Eventually Sully wants to open a performance space up here in the front – until then – monkey’s on cans! So we left the airport and went north to get to Jay and then promptly turned around and went south of the airport to get to the place I’m calling “Rancho El Sully” aka Shaun O’Sullivan’s adult wonderland – the 21st Amendment Brewery in San Leandro. First order of business was grabbing a Toaster Pastry – the beer named for the former tenant of the massive facility – a manufacturer of breakfast cereals and toaster warmed pastries.

Zambo and Sully on the Sully Tour Our first greeting was with an old friend – David Zamborski aka Zambo. Zambo brewed years ago for BJ’s down in LA before floating around and eventually landing as the chief brewer at the original 21A brewery in San Francisco. He was out at the garguatuan brewery working on 21A’s first barrel project so that was unexpectedly awesome to thumb my nose in greeting at one of my favorite people. Barrels of deliciousness – these are the construction beer barrels. Filled while the brewery was still in progress and moved around constantly as construction continued around them. Sully was pleasantly surprised with how they’re tasting. Sully then showed up and took us around the brewery like a proud father, completely baffled how a little 12 barrel brewpub in San Francisco could eventually grow up into a monster brewery like this. As he took us around, the refrain kept repeating of “look at all these cool toys and how strange is this?” This is one of the most beautiful brew decks ever with computer controls and beautiful hop tanks. Hell, even the boilers look like the first super computers I worked on – only with chimney stacks. The underside of a very small mash tun These are the backside of the very fancy boilers that power the brewery. Room in here for at least one more should they need it Much like the smaller PicoBrew Zymatic systems – you add your hops to the boil kettle via these tanks down on the ground floor A fully automated brewery requires the use of computers to control the whole flow and that’s what we’ve got here. Cool touches existed everywhere including the brewery’s logos to demonstrate that the whole thing is custom When your fermenters are super tall, you need a better solution that cart barrels of hops to the tank top and dumping them in. In this case, you fill the small tank with hops and blow them into the fermenters with CO₂. The tank name – that’s the guy who suggested the trick to Sully! The tank farm – cause every brewery needs a whole pile of giant fermenters! We sat down in the brewer’s office, hidden by the tasting room and had a lovely chat with Shaun. Expect to hear his take on the brewing world and how you go from a little brewpub messing around with cans to an old lager brewery in the Midwest to a terrifying industrial complex of your own. I swear I’m not planning anything nefarious! A little Toaster Pastry!

Yeast Bay at the Trappist

One last stop of the evening took us back to Oakland and one of my favorite bars, The Trappist. There we met with Nick Impellitteri, owner, proprietor, chief rancher of the Yeast Bay. Sitting over a couple of beers, Denny and I chatted with Nick about why he started the Yeast Bay and what drives his particular take on a yeast company. We also got into the mix a bit on his favorite bacterias and strains and why he works with White Labs. We’re looking forward to playing with more of Nick’s products and getting to know his strains better!

Day Two

MoreBeer Los Altos

On Friday we started our world tour with a morning run to the heart of the Silicon Valley and the MoreBeer in Los Altos. On the way we waved hello to FaceBook and a bunch of other names we all recognize. The Los Altos store is super tiny, but fun to explore all the nooks and crannies. As we talked up the Craftmeister cleaners and signed books, I kept finding new things to try at home. (Mostly around the wine/cider side of the house). More reports on those later. A definite highlight of the visit was a mobile version of Troubleshooter’s Corner (a thing I do for the Maltose Falcons). A reader and listener, Alex, showed up with a bottle of his Kombucha beer, but things turned mildly explosive as we raced trhough the store, recorder in hand. I really hope the audio for this turns out because the image of me running and narrating is really awesome. Beer Tasting on the Fly

MoreBeer San Leandro

I grabbed exactly zero photos as we returned to the land of Sully, but what was really interesting to see was how MoreBeer is integrating purchased properties like this store, which was BrewMaster and moving the wholesale/retail operations under one new roof away from the traditional home of Concord. Also, you know what’s really nice? Showing up at a place after the Briess folks have been there is always a treat because they usually leave Malted Milk Balls. These things are so fantastic it’s unfair. Seriously, you want these balls in your face hole.

St. George’s

While we were really tempted to go hit El Sully again, we had another date to make for our podcast tour. Jonathan bravely tackled the Friday night traffic to take us from San Leandro to Alameda island. If you’re not familiar with the Bay Area – Alameda is one of many islands in the Bay that’s been used over the years by the US Military. I think every big island in the Bay has been a military base at same point – Alameda, Alcatraz, Angel, Treasure, Yerba Buena, etc. Anyway – as the military reconfigures its domestic base profile, facilities are left fallow and ripe for adaptive reuse. Given the expense of real estate in the bay, it really shouldn’t be surprising that the former military bases are ripe for re-use. Out on Alameda, a series of massive helicopter hangers are all in use by the beverage industry – Hangar One Vodka, my favorite American gin maker – St George’s and naturally what we’re really here to see – The Billion Dollar View – From Faction’s parking lot looking over to the city. When we first arrived, I knew that St. George’s was next door to the brewery, so I figured we’d have to stop in and say “hi”. Sure enough, I ran over and found out that the tasting room closes well before we’d be done with Rodger, so I cajoled Denny and Jonathan into joining me for a tasting. I’m super good at that. (My superpower – convince people to do the things they want to do but keep telling themselves they shouldn’t!) Between Jonathan and I we ordered pretty much all of the St. George lineup available that day. The All Purpose Vodka was what it said on the tin – all purpose, clean, neutral. Jonathan really liked the Green Chile with it’s punchy peppery nose while I appreciated the bright blast of the Citrus Vodka. Then of course there’s the gin – the thing they’re really known for. I still view an ice cold Terroir Martini with it’s strong sage and piney notes as the perfect post work week antidote, but hey any of them work well! But the real surprise and mic drop came with the fruit and other liqueurs. They had a pretty rad Absinthe and Chicory Coffee liqueur, but the stars were a Pear Brandy in the Eau de Vie fashion that was also used to create a Spiced Pear Liqueur that’s pure awesomeness.

Faction Brewing – A Man, A Bear and A Beer

After our brief journey into the land of spirits, we walked across the parking lot to find and say hello to the crew at Faction. Basically that’s Rodger’s operation in a converted marine helo hanger with all the requisite doors that he closes with his favorite toy – the forklift. (When we first arrived, Rodger was running around cleaning up the brewery for the weekend. He was busy driving around, picking up stacks of kegs and barrels. He even swung the forklift around to say hello to us. He also insists that the forklift is not one of his favorite things. I would disagree, but he might get mad at me) Brewery Mural Above the Racks of Barrels I love old pieces of hardware – that’s a seriously crunchy auto door return. My new favorite beer name – Hipster Conformant Beer Equipment Gets Recycled From Brewery to Brewery In the interview,Rodger revealed that he had possible the longest grain augur that runs from the back of ther brewery warehouse all the way to the brew house towards the front. (Follow the white pipe.) Why? A small endangered species lives on the far side of the runway necessitating height restrictions that forced the silo to the back of the hangar. Rodger has an unironic love of Hamm’s. Sascha (the real bear’s name). The bear keeps a watch from the commander’s office over the brewery floor Such a thing with brewers Rodger is known for being a voluble subject with plenty of attitude and opinions on beers and brewing. He played great host with an unending supply of beer samples including his long series of 2 Hop Pales with a main bittering hop (Delta while we were there) and a different finishing hop. As we sat up in the commander offices were talked for a long time and covered endless subjects, so let’s just say that Denny has his work cut out for him! After a long time of sampling and talking we finally retired for one last day of adventuring.

Day Three

MoreBeer Concord

Jonathan, Denny and Drew at the MoreBeer Concord Mothership Our final day started at the mothership of MoreBeer. Formerly the home to MoreBeer’s warehouse activities, the showroom has plenty of room to grow and is in the process of being re-worked. While Jonathan proffered samples and talked to everyone about the cleaners and their experiences. Denny and I spent our time talking with customers, signing books and answering questions. We hung out and generally had a grand time. Jonathan gave away a ton of cleaner and we signed a whole bunch of books and meeting podcast listeners. (It’s really great to know that people are listening!) Denny making friends After MoreBeer, we took a slight side trip…

Hop Grenade

After all was said and done, we were in Concord with time to kill before our flights the next morning. So naturally we went to the Hop Grenade, home of the Brewing Network. While there, and enjoying beers with various folks – Denny and I invaded the Brewing Network’s proper studio. Denny got to play audio engineer and looked around all the equipment and commenting on the qualities of the various mikes and compressors. One of these days maybe we’ll have real gear like those boys! Requisite studio invasion photo Denny’s a Natural We did make one last stop – Cellarmaker, but by that point I was done with cameras and audio. Beer was good though!

Day Four – Goodbyes!

So long San Francisco! Until next time – keep your pints frosty for me!

In Episode 2 – Denny and Drew talk about the rise of the brewing robots and what they mean for us homebrewers. Are our “jobs” about to be farmed out to a microchip that can make better beer than we can before we've have our morning coffee? Is it really still brewing if a computer is doing all the watching? Also, what does it mean to be Craft Beer?
Table of Contents:
00:00:00 – Our sponsors
00:01:16 – Theme and Intro!
00:02:30 – Our Sponsorship Pledge and Patreon
00:05:00 – The Beer Life (from the Experimental Brewing Pub)
00:05:55 – The IGOR Program
00:07:40 – Everything is Craft Beer
00:18:00 – The Rise of the Robots
00:33:35 – Q&A with Denny & Drew
00:44:20 – Quick Tip of the Week (with a bonus quick tip as well!)
00:48:55 – Other Things We Recommend
00:50:50 – Our Question of the Week – Are automated brewing gadgets really brewing? – let us know at questions@experimentalbrew.com
00:51:20 – The Wrapup
This week's episode is brought to you:
PicoBrew – http://www.picobrew.com/
Craftmeister – http://www.craftmeister.com/
BrewCraft USA – http://www.brewcraftusa.com/
NikoBrew – http://nikobrew.com/
Interested in helping Denny and Drew with the IGOR program (aka help us run experiments!) – contact them at igor@experimentalbrew.com. We want more Citizen Science! On our next episode we'll be giving our IGOR's their first brewing assignment! In the meanwhile, subscribe via your favorite podcasting service (iTunes, etc). Like our podcast, review it – talk it up! If you have comments, feedbacks, harassments, etc, feel free to drop us a line at podcast@experimentalbrew.com. Follow us on Facebook (ExperimentalHomebrewing) or Twitter (@ExpBrewing). If you have questions you'd like answered in our Q&A segment, send an email to questions@experimentalbrew.com!
This episode can be downloaded directly at http://www.experimentalbrew.com/sites/default/files/ExperimentalBrewing_…
Podcast RSS Url: http://www.experimentalbrew.com/podcast.rss

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In Between Episode Travel Announcement! (Next episode on 11/23)
Denny and Drew will be in San Francisco (ok, the East Bay Area – mostly) this Friday and Saturday at the MoreBeer Los Altos, MoreBeer San Leandro and MoreBeer Concord. Come on out and meet us! We'll have books for sale and we'll take your abuse or questions!
Details on the site! – http://www.experimentalbrew.com/content/meet-denny-and-drew-bay-area-112…
Interested in helping Denny and Drew with the IGOR program (aka help us run experiments!) – contact them at igor@experimentalbrew.com. We want more Citizen Science!
In the meanwhile, subscribe via your favorite podcasting service (iTunes, etc). Like our podcast, review it – talk it up!
If you have comments, feedbacks, harassments, etc, feel free to drop us a line at podcast@experimentalbrew.com. Follow us on Facebook (ExperimentalHomebrewing) or Twitter (@ExpBrewing).
If you have questions you'd like answered in our Q&A segment, send an email to questions@experimentalbrew.com!
Podcast RSS Url: http://www.experimentalbrew.com/podcast.rss

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Holy Schnikes Batman – it's the first ever episode of Experimental Brewing with Denny and Drew. In this episode, you'll hear Drew actually be right (according to Denny) about the recent spate of craft beer mergers, the absolutely fundamental bedrock technique of triangle testing, Guinness, statistics and math (wait did that survive the edit? if not, expect an article – cause Drew loves the story!) and lastly, Drew tries to convince us that Pumpkin isn't a terrible waste of time, even if it usually is! (See Recipe below mentioned in the episode.) Interested in helping Denny and Drew with the IGOR program (aka help us run experiments!) – contact them at igor@experimentalbrew.com. We want more Citizen Science! Many thanks to our sponsors for this fine show – Craft Meister – Makers of Akaline Brewery Wash, BrewCraft USA – Top Quality Supplier to Top Homebrew Shops and Imperial Yeast – America's First Canned and Organic Yeast. Visit our sponsors and give them a shoutout! Pumpkin Saison Potiron Recipe For 6 gallons at 1.078, 18 IBUs, 13 SRM, 9.5%ABV Malt/Grain/Sugar 13.75 lbs Maris Otter Malt 1.0 lbs Dark English Brown Sugar 1 can (1.8lbs) Pumpkin Puree (dehydrate in the oven for extra oomph) 0.5 lbs Biscuit Malt 0.38 lbs Crystal 75L (Bairds) 0.38 lbs German Wheat Malt Mash at 152F for 50 minutes Hops 1.0 oz Styrian Goldings 5.4%AA for 60 minutes 0.5 oz Czech Saaz 3.0%AA for 20 minutes Yeast WLP 565 Belgian Saison I Pitch cold – 63-65F, let rise – no spices! In the meanwhile, subscribe via your favorite podcasting service (iTunes, etc). Like our podcast, review it – talk it up! If you have comments, feedbacks, harassments, etc, feel free to drop us a line at podcast@experimentalbrew.com. Follow us on Facebook (ExperimentalHomebrewing) or Twitter (@ExpBrewing). If you have questions you'd like answered in our Q&A segment, send an email to questions@experimentalbrew.com! Podcast RSS Url: http://www.experimentalbrew.com/podcast.rss

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Listen to the dulcet tones of one Mr. Denny Conn as he explains to you what Experimental Brewing with Denny and Drew will be all about! That’s right two of your “favorite” authors – Drew Beechum and Denny Conn are bringing you a new show about the wackiness of beer science and the science of beer wackiness!
Where’s Drew? Why isn’t he in the trailer? Has he turned to the Dark Side of the Force? You’ll just have to wait and see for when the podcast drops on November 11th (or the 18th – things are a bit wishy washy in the world of the Internet)!
In the meanwhile, subscribe via your favorite podcasting service (iTunes, etc). Like our podcast, review it – talk it up!
If you have comments, feedbacks, harassments, etc, feel free to drop us a line at podcast@experimentalbrew.com. Follow us on Facebook (ExperimentalHomebrewing) or Twitter (@ExpBrewing).
If you have questions you’d like answered in our Q&A segment, send an email to questions@experimentalbrew.com!
Podcast RSS Url: http://www.experimentalbrew.com/podcast.rss

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The Sower in Question

Key Takeaways

• Homebrewers are awesome folk
• Nebraska is not quite the middle of nowhere
• The Lincoln Lagers put on a great competition
• Very smooth from a judge’s point of view – never had to wonder what I was doing or wait around too long to do it
• Lots of stimulation and activities for the judges
• Useful swag
• Immediate feedback to the entrants on site
• Banquet and party to celebrate everyone’s efforts
• Multiple education opportunities as enticement and enrichment
• A very supportive brewery partner in Ploughshare makes things a lot easier

Last week I got to knock another couple of states off my list of “never been there” when I visited Lincoln, Nebraska for the 2nd Annual Sower’s Cup Competition put on by the Lincoln Lagers. This competition had 338 entries in the field and covered all the categories in the 2008 BJCP guidelines with some compaction as dictated by the entry counts. How do you get enough judges to deal with that many entries? I live in Los Angeles, a city with a massive population of beer judges and my club has issues getting enough judges to come out and handle our competitions in a timely fashion. Our problem is our judging location is usually located in the heart of the San Fernando Valley, separated from LA proper by the mind altering and treacherous Santa Monica Mountains. That’s difficult to travel – mentally at least. Nebraska has it worse – it’s 150 times the size (77,354 sq miles) of LA City (503 sq miles) and has 1.88 million people to LA City’s 3.9 million. That doesn’t even include the whole “LA Metro” area which is 13.1 million people in roughly 4,850 sq miles (Nebraska could fit a mere 16 LA Metros in it’s borders). So what do the Lagers do? For starters, they have a different judging climate – judges will actually travel from out of state to judge. They also turn their big competitions into basically big events and parties with beer, food and education. That last is where I kinda come in. I was the Saturday morning education. Poor brewers!

Here’s my trip in a nutshell –

Thursday October 1st

5:00 AM – Leave my house – drive to my office near LAX

5:50 AM – Uber from the office to LAX

6:10 AM – Get in line at security, pass through security and get to my gate to await the dreaded first leg to Dallas Fort Worth

12:10 PM – Land in DFW. Think “hey, nice terminal. Oh gotta walk to the next terminal over.” Walk to next terminal and land in the decript depressing 1980’s airport terminal. Regret my life’s choices over a pretty limp Chicken salad from an airport concession of national recognition. Contemplate having a beer. Look at my choices of “better beer” and realize that choosing from a pool of zero is an easy task.

1:43 PM – On the next plane bound for Omaha! Damn these little planes are ridiculously tiny.

3:00 PM – At the Omaha airport, picked up by Mitch from Ploughshare Brewing and on my way through Iowa and Omaha proper to Lincoln an hour away.

4:00 PM – Ok, this is tiring and boring now – I made it to Lincoln, got my hotel room and together Mitch and I rolled over to Ploughshare Brewing, our home for the next few days. Time for some good beer and vittles. Thursday evening, I got to hang out with Matt Stinchfield, owner and head bottle washer, chef and brewmaster at Ploughshare. Everything about the joint reflects Matt’s focus on building a local tradition and his love and respect for classical European brewing traditions. The building was an old bus garage that they took over and split into a couple of parts. Rooms include a tap room and loft built with wood reclaimed from a century old barn along with a private meeting room with custom hop twine wallpaper. The other half of the building is devoted to a gorgeous German inspired, decoction capable brew deck and all the attendant gee-gaws. Matt, being the Brewer’s Association Safety Ambassador, also has built the brewery to demonstrate safety with all appropriate precautions being taken – including separating the boiler into it’s own explosion resistant bunker room. This move was inspired by at least one brewery death in Belgium attributed to a boiler explosion. Ploughshare Tap Room (Photo from the Lincoln Journal Website cause I forgot to snap one) The Ploughshare Brew Deck. It’s pretty up here (photo courtesy of Brendan McGinn) The Ploughshare Brew Valve Panel – I defy anyone to look at this and claim you can glean what valve does what without a lot of education! But with this collection of valves, they’re able to send water and wort in almost any direction. His beers run to the less hoppy side of the fence, focusing on the more traditional European interplay of hops and malt. Turns out that’s more than fitting for his audience in Nebraska. That’s not to say the beers are boring! Ploughshare has a cream ale that demonstrates a rich malt and corn character while still being dry and n American Red that plays right into the Cornhusker devotion to all things rouge. Two saisons (naturally my favorites), including a Fantome inspired Dandelion saison (Bouton d’Or) with a giant heaping dose of freshly picked Dandelions from a nearby farm. It was spicy, wild with just a bare note of the green plant matter under the spicy flavors. Nothing like a beer made with trash bags full of spices being picked as the brew is starting. And of course, there was beer to be enjoyed and of course I’m on my phone, but this was pre-beer – waiting on my flight! (Photo stolen from Chris Evan’s Facebook feed) Speaking of farms – oh man, the product coming out of the kitchen. I almost always hate tomatoes on a sandwich. Hate. They’re usually just wet gooshy piles of squidgy foam that make me regret even more life choices. But the tomatoes Matt’s using? They taste like I walked outside and picked a fresh one off the vine. The beef we had later in the week? Grass fed actually pastured cows that tasted like cow and not liver. The menu is simple and it’s excellent. You should eat it all. Thursday Night – Lagers Meeting Lincoln Lagers Meeting Getting Started First evening in a new town and why not have a homebrew club meeting? The Lagers meet in the brew house at Ploughshare and lay out a few tables and chairs. Members show up, drop their beers off with labels on the table and then everyone dives in as things show up. There’s a mix of homebrew and craftbrew and lots of chaos and variety. A couple of folks stand up and help conduct whatever business needs conducting while members tend to ignore the business and focus on the beer, moving in little pockets of conversation. A little lottery, a little raffle and even more beer to drink – and there’s your homebrew meeting. This is the second so organized meeting I’ve been to in the last few years. I always appreciate catching what others are doing. Friday Day – Brewing and Beer Visits The next morning when I could finally pry myself out of bed – look I’m terrible at mornings on the road after changing timezones – I walked the 0.6 miles from hotel to brewery and enjoyed the revitalizing efforts of the city in the area between the capitol and the university. (Ploughshare sits right at the edge of the current efforts. More city attention is coming to their area shortly). Mark Beatty, one of the authors of the morning’s brew standing next to Matt’s “pilot” brew rig It’s an oldie, but a goodie! The order of the morning – brewing up an American twist on a lost Polish classic – Grodziskie. This was an experimental pilot batch done on Matt’s old B3 homebrew rig. The hickory smoked, Chipotle syrup infused wheat beer with steeping addition of ancho’s was concocted by Matt and Mark Beatty of the Lagers. I just showed up and nodded approvingly of the effort. The recipe and the history of the beer will be in Issue 106 of BeerAdvocate the Magazine (aka next month’s). What no recipe? Yeah, I know – welcome to contracts. Viewing Matt through the Brew Fog – oh the drama! Drew receiving a Brewer’s Steam Facial (image stolen from Ploughshare’s Facebook feed here Checking the Gravity Notes are Important Anchos getting ready for their soak today and tomorrow’s trip to the breakfast salsa It was fun brewing with Matt’s old B3 brew rig with all of the old manual controls and workarounds. However, he disavows any knowledge of his head brewer’s old pump wiring, etc. But seriously, how much fun can you have hanging around, trying a few beverages and talking homebrewing with folks. Additionally, Ploughshare had recently hosted a brewday with homebrewers taking away wort from their Cream Ale to do with as they pleased. The winner of the associated judging was actually there that day kegging up a second run of his Cream Ale Braggot. This batch accidentally turned out stronger than it should have been. It was a 12% smooth liver kicker of a beer. We very smartly limited ourselves to tiny samples for fear of unsafety in the brew house. An old homebrew pump wired in a fashion that causes safety officers cringe! Remember Matt is the Safety Ambassador for the Brewer’s Association In California, this amount of chiller leakage would be a felony As the day wrapped up and the chiller required additional wrench surgery to stop leaking everywhere, the session strengh beer went into the carboys and I decided I wanted to try one of Lincoln’s other breweries – Zipline Brewing. Located 3 miles away, I had no car to get there or back and couldn’t walk there and back in time for the judging. Being an Angeleno, I naturally thought “huh, well, Uber would get me there”, but most of the guys in the brewery thought Uber was still blocked from operating in Lincoln. On the off chance, I pulled up the app and what do you know – Uber is in Lincoln! So I Uber’d to Zipline and walked into their tasting room only to be greeted by one of the bar staff with “Hey, don’t you have to judge soon? What are you trying to do ruin your tastebuds?” Turns out the shockingly psychic bartender with an attitude was actually Marcus Powers, co-owner of Zipline and my judging partner in the evening’s flight of Saisons. I sat down, grabbed a flight of Ziplines beers focusing on their recent GABF winning Copper Alt, their new FestBier, American Tripel, Rye IPA and of course, a Gin Barrel aged Hibiscus infused Saison. Altbier and I go way back – in fact – altbier would be the reason I’m a beer fanatic. When I first got into craft beer, I was in Boston and my three enlightenment beers were Harpoon IPA, Long Trail Amber Ale and Otter Creek Copper, Those last two are/were Alt’s. The Zipline Copper was toasty, chewy with a good malt heft and presence, but none of the usual sugary sweet thing brewers seem to come into when they try to make a malty beer. Marcus took me around the brewery – which is rapidly growing and just bringing on Captain Lawrence’s old packaging line amongst other projects like a giant new walk-in and barrel room. After a brief look through a local artist’s new show, a surprisingly tasty glass of Abita Bourbon Street Stout, Marcus ran us back to Ploughshare for our duties! (Gotta love the beer community – they’re awesome! Except you few – you know who you are – you’re no-goodniks.) Where the Zipline Magic Happens Busy Brewery Calendars Look A Lot Like This! A Different Sort of Emergency Plan. Mine Would Usually Involve Whimpering Like a Small Child The Captain’s Mark is Still On Zipline’s Packaging Line Friday Evening – Round 1! Arriving at the brewery we were greeted with an opportunity to sign in, fill out the usual requisite “I promise not to sue you” forms and then we were directed to grab our judging labels, a name tag and our swag – a pound canister of PBW and a free piece of Nebraska brewing swag. Also set out for everyone to look over was a long set of tables with two tiers of raffle items. Each set of items had a little paper bag out in front for you to drop tickets into if you were interested in a particular item. The lower, less expensive tier consisted of things like glassware and shirt sets, bags of grain, a couple of books by some dummy (who then proceeded to graffiti the heck out of them). The larger tier had some rad prizes like retro coolers, beefy regulators, umbrellas and a small SS Chronical. Very nifty! Judge’s gift because thanking your judges is awesome This is the raffle selection early in the process. After I took this shot, more and more items began to appear. It was great to see Lots of Signage is Good For Sponsors – Also Good for Your Volunteers to know where to go! In another example of the nutty popularity of Saisons and Belgian Specialities, the full category of Belgian & French ales would have been a sizable 30 entries. The organizers split it so that the Wit’s, Belgian Pales, Saison and Biere de Garde were one medalling class with 16E Belgian Specialities as another. On Friday, I helped tackle the 14 entries in the first subclasses. Sitting at the table, I noticed a few things that I really liked – sponsored water bottles, full judging kits with bottle openers, mechanical pencils, staplers and Beer Saver Silicone Caps to allow bottles to be recapped quickly at the table by the judges. Judge’s Kits That last bit is really handy to save the character of the one main round bottle to preserve for the mini-BOS. I’m not sure how effective they were for longer storage, but for the competition period they seemed to work perfectly well. Much easier than a capper and a bunch of caps. Also, more expensive. But convenience! Each leg had a steward dedicated to the panel with a box of entries at their feet and were on the spot about everything. If your beer was below the medalling range (30+), the remaining bottle was emptied and recycled to prevent entry confusion. The judges used the more modern queued judging system to move quickly through the entries and before you knew it we were done and a little party broke out in the tap room. (Because of course it did) My Favorite Part of Judging – the Mini-BOS Cover Sheets Instantly Tagged and Sorted As They Arrive to the Data Center In a rare pique of good sense, I actually bailed out on the party and went back “home” to finish writing my presentation. Saturday Morning – Breakfast, Talking and Judging The next morning, I woke up early and as is my thing these days, I took a nice early morning stroll around the city. It’s amazing how quiet downtown Lincoln is on a non-game day Saturday at 6:30 AM. My home is about 1/2 the population size of Lincoln and 1/4 of the size, but thanks to being connected to the LA Metroplex, it’s never quite that quiet. Or that cold in October. When I left home in the morning it was in 69F, this morning in Lincoln, it was around 40 and never got higher than 63F. So, the morning walk was brisk and recharging and now I feel like an old man for saying that. Pictures don’t quite convey the chilliness in the air. This is also the part where everyone from places with real “seasons” get to make fun of me Eventually I worked my way over to the brewery and was greeted by Matt and “garlic man” Claude, pulling pans of breakfast from the kitchen. We had meats, potatoes, eggs and cheese grits with two different sorts of salsa. One was made from the anchos that had steeped in yesterday’s brew for a sweet heat kick. The other was a terrifying multi-colored chile pepper concoction with a name somewhat like “Unicorn’s Ass”. I’m not going to lie – I decided to avoid that pre-judging. Something about tasting beer with more than one functional taste bud. Lofts are Made For Talking – This is above the tap room and is a nice presentation space built into the brewery With food in bellies and coffee on the brain, everyone adjourned to the loft where Matt introduced me by telling the story of the night in Belgium we spent very, very drunk at the Hotel Palace. Epic night where we stayed until the wee wee hours and finally Guy kicked us out of his bar. The next morning I rolled down to the hotel with about 5 minutes to spare and in a frantic mood because I couldn’t find my beer list – aka the list of everything I tried that night. So Matt and I sat down and recreated the list of 25 beers as best to our memories. In total, I think on that trip I sampled over 150 beers in the course of 8.5 days on the road. It was awesome… but regardless. Talk. I gave a 45 minute walking through a few of my design philosophies. Everyone seemed to enjoy it and as always my favorite dog was featured in the talk, because of course she was. Same Slide in a Different Context (This wall was in Brazil!) After that 8:30 talk, we all made our way into the brewery and sat down at our next tables. This is always the “fun” moment – just before giving a talk and looking out to see folks gathering and realize they’re all about to be paying attention to you – unless you’re boring, which is always a risk. The morning’s session was all about the Ciders & the Perrys. My usual rule of thumb is the more “up” in this country, the better the ciders are going to be. It’s just a function of availability of kick-ass juice to make a better cider. The favorites out of this flight all ended up being the flavored and fruited ciders mostly as a function of those were the liveliest. One cider was a textbook example of mousy, which is unfortunate. The winner ended up being a cranberry cider that used the tart and tannic qualities of the cranberry to make for a complete cider profile. Morning Judging Rows Lunch break was a sponsored box lunch of sandwiches and I got a chance to set out my shingle and autograph books and have a general blast talking to people. Seriously, it’s a bunch of homebrewers – you know we can talk and talk and talk. Wearing my Nebraskaflauge courtesy of JB Ellis of Mr. Dunderbaks – Tampa Saturday Afternoon – One, Ok, three more rounds of judging! With lunch business concluded, it was back to the salt mines, this time for the second half of the Belgian & French Ales – now they’re own category for this iteration of the competition. Once more we whittled at our flights coming up with a few samples for the mini-BOS. Our winner there was a beautiful Belgian Blonde Ale. After that, the judges all were invited to a Cookie and Beer Pairing where a local bakery produced these wonderful little cookies and several local breweries provided beers to pair with a particular cookie. Among the beers I saw was Zipline’s Hibiscus Saison that I’d had on Friday. Cookies included a savory cheesy cookie and a pistacho cookie and a double chocolate cookie, but my notes are spotty… I would have tried them all and reported back to you, but instead I had to go trudge back to the judging pits and put on my Best of Show hat for Meads and then Beer. Mead is always fun to do for BOS because it’s a really short flight – 3 entries. Short doesn’t mean quick and surfacey though. We (Amanda Burkemper, Michael Wilcox and me) took a good 20 minutes discussing each of the entries – merits, demerits, etc. Our final verdict went to a Dry Traditional Mead that was spectacularly executed. Best of Show Grid Then came the fun one – Beer BOS. 19 glasses filled with 19 beers. If you’ve never seen a BOS panel in action, it’s a whole other world. I tend to run my panels this way – all the cups go down in front of the judges and information on each style recorded. (In this case, the Lagers provided great printed grids big enough for a glass to lay out in front of the judges.) All the beers are poured out and then:

1. Each judge tastes the beers, makes notes and waits for everyone to be ready
2. In turn, each panelist picks a beer to discuss, usually the ones with the greatest flaws. If the panelists agree, out goes the beer
3. Round and round this goes until the debate starts to get too contentious – if there are no clear agreements, we move on to the next phase
4. Each remaining beer is discussed before anything else is removed.
5. Once all the beers have been ruminated on – then we start the discussion again and see what goes away
6. When the pool is whittled away to a few (4-6 usually), a ranked vote is taken to see if there are any clear patterns
7. Repeat, remove, etc until finally there’s a consensus

Usually this process takes 30-60 minutes depending on how great the flight is and the personalities and preferences of the panelists. In this flight, we all avoided talking about the eventual winner – the Belgian Blonde because we didn’t want it to get kicked. So with that as our clear consensus, we settled on an excellent Rhubarb and Peach beer along with a wonderfully executed Bohemian Pilsner. Thanks again to Michael Wilcox and Lash Chaffin for judging the round with me. The Reaction to An Almost Completed Event Saturday Night – Banquet and Awards Ceremony Bœuf – It’s what’s for dinner With all the goodies out of the way there was a whole half hour or so to relax before the next event – the evening banquet. Matt and the Ploughshare crew put together a hell of a meal with beer pairings galore and all the best sources of ingredients – including a pasture raised grass fed beef tenderloin that tasted like beef. See the pictures for dessert, which was a spicy sweet cake because of course that’s how you close out a beer dinner! Matt and Monica presiding over the dessert course (and the all important dessert beer – Bourbon Barrel Porter) Because dessert! From there it was onto the Awards where the raffle was handled speedily and efficiently, which given the number of prizes was amazing. I stood up and did my best Vanna/Charlie P with medals when it came time to hand them off. There were two other categories that I didn’t judge that were pretty great – one was a Rye beer competition (Sower in the Rye) and the other was a Pro-Am “No Cheating” Decoction with the winner destined for Ploughshare’s fancy system. Full results here Awards Ceremony Announcing the Awards – More chairs brought in to hold those who didn’t buy a banquet ticket By night’s end, all the prizes had been handed out – score sheets were already stuffed into envelopes and ready for distribution and the crowd began to break up after a long hard weekend of work. Me, after a few more beers, I went walking back out into the night to go find what’s a quiet Saturday in Lincoln like. After all this was a weekend where the stadium didn’t turn into the third largest city in Nebraska! Sunday – The Leaving The Sower of the Sower’s Cup is way, way the hell up there on top of the capitol building The City’s Namesake Guessing all this green will be squashed soon – oh well, it’s pretty while it’s there! And like all good things, this trip came to an end. I had a lovely breakfast and went for a very long walk, circling the capitol and the rest of the city and then hopped a ride with Matt to the airport in Omaha. Off in the distance in a lot that costs a third of the price of an LAX lot, the Omaha Airport It’s a tiny airport there in Omaha, but that means even when you get pulled out by the TSA for having a pound jar of PBW in your bag, you don’t have to worry so much about missing your flight! I flew through Denver on the way back and got to sit in the New Belgium Hub Pub for approximately 4 hours. I did get to engage in rooting against His Noodliness Peyton, but unfortunately he squeaked it out again. New Belgium’s Pub in Denver – Waiting for hours isn’t so bad with some decent beers! Landed back in LA and grabbed the car – made it home just prior to 9PM – all in all a wonderful time and I thank the Lincoln Lagers for hosting me and showing me such a great time in the heartland! If you’re in the Greater Nebraska region next year, give the competition a look. They’ve done a great job so far and it’s an interesting party!

​ Did you know there’s a North American Guild of Beer Writers? We didn’t either until last year when we saw the announcement of their 2014 National Awards presented at the Great American Beer Festival. The Guild is made up of people who blog, vlog, write, podcast and otherwise promulgate the good word of beer and brewing. If you read through the membership roll, you’ll see a number of names that you recognize including the co-chairs Don “Joe Sixpack” Russell and Jay Brooks. Lucy Saunders is the director of the org and then my BeerAdvocate editor, Ben Keene runs the online social stuff, amongst many others you know love and have read. Since we published Experimental Homebrewing – Mad Science in the Pursuit of Great Beer during this year’s award window, we decided, “what the heck?” Our what the heckedness was rewarded when on GABF Saturday we were awarded Second Place in the “BEST HISTORY/ TECHNICAL WRITING” category of the competition – one of 27 awards that day. Haven’t read it yet? *sigh* – Well, go over to Amazon and get a copy! (If you have read it and haven’t dropped a review – please take a moment – the reviews help!) At the same award ceremony, I also got another award for BEST SHORT FORM WRITING, (600 words or fewer) for one of my BeerAdvocate BYOB Columns called “The Belgian Highlands”. Normally, I don’t have access to the final proofed copies of my BYOB articles, but Ben decided to share out copies of both my article and Aleszu Bajak’s winning article “Unlocking the Secrets of Smell”. If you want to read those articles – Ben’s uploaded them to Google Drive – The Belgian Highlands and Unlocking the Secrets of Smell. If you want to read my column every month (along with an embarassing amount of really great content) – subscribe to BeerAdvocate the Magazine. It’s been going strong since 2006 and I promise, I’ve only repeated myself a few dozen times! (I would also be remiss to not recognize the contribution to the column of Ellen T Crenshaw, who’s been illustrating the column since 2010. Her artwork kicks ass and usually tosses another layer of silliness on top of my text – Check out her website and her Tumblr to catch her illustrations.)

And the lovely reviews keep pouring in – awesome!

Beervana (aka Jeff Alworth of All About Beer) review of Experimental Homebrewing

The AHA is definitely speeding up their turnaround times! Just a few weeks ago we were all chilling in San Diego – now we’re able to catch up on the things we missed! ​ All of the seminars and speeches are recorded by the AHA and offered as a member perk. That’s right, you have to be a member to access all the talks, but look, why aren’t you?

• The AHA publishes a great magazine that I occasionally sully with my verbiage.
• Heck, they have an archive going back to 2000 for the magazine – online – for free!
• They tackle homebrewing rights issues.
• The website contains a plethora of great content.
• The forum is one of the nicest places to hang out on the internet and learn some stuff.
• They have deals for members everywhere they can muster the support.
• They offerinsurance to homebrew clubs
• The put on rallies all across the nation, getting breweries to open up and offer fun events to AHA members
• Organize events like Big Brew, Mead Day and Learn How To Homebrew Day

And.. they also offer the National Homebrewer’s Conference every year with an embarassing wealth of information. Since 2012, they’ve recorded most of the talks and grabbed the slide decks from everyone. So, now, for your measly $43 per year, you can have access to all that great stuff and help support homebrewing across the nation! Join dangnabit! Now if you’d like to catch up with Denny and I – there are the links below. What else can you read/listen to? How about Randy Mosher giving a talk on how what you know about Beer History is Wrong (slides)? Mitch Steele on the wonderful world of IPA (slides)! Vinnie Cilurzo talking Brewing with Experimental Hops (slides). Gordon Strong on Modern Homebrew Recipes (slides). Mike Tonsmiere and company on Brewing with Coffee (slides)? Lots of knowledge, right there for the taking! The Seminars Page Introduction to Experimentation (aka our talk) (audio) (slides)

Need some more Denny and Drew in your life? Of course you do! We each just taped appearances on Brad Smith’s BeerSmith podcast. Denny before Brazil and Drew after

Denny talking evaluation Denny (BeerSmith’s Page with Full Summary and Video)

Drew talking Recipe Transformation Drew (Beersmith’s Page with full summary and video)

Feds seize $2 million of illegal Chinese honey – (source: Modern Farmer) Seems that the Feds are still on the trail of a metric crapton of illegal honey flowing into the country. See way back in 2001 the Chinese decided to start flooding the American market with cheap honey. The undercutting of American honey growers would lead to a real crisis in the States. Not only would we lose a domestic agricultural product, but we’d also lose a main source of income for the bee keepers who help pollinate an amazingly large percentage of American crops. It’s estimated that at some point most of the major American bee colonies end up in California to pollinate the majority (80%ish) of the world’s almonds! What’s the government to do? Slap a tariff on the Chinese imports to pull the price back up and over American honey. We do this all over the place sometimes good and sometimes bad (looking at you Big Sugar in Florida) Then of course there’s the other reason – Chinese food controls are terrible. Remember the dog food scares? The poisoned milk, etc. We know already that Chinese honey production uses antibiotics we don’t approve for consumption. There have been batches from both China and India with heavy metals found in them. Most nefariously is the proliferation of “honey sauces” (aka a blend of honey and high fructose corn syrup) sold as honey. So why am I, a brewer, rambling on about agricultural stuff? Because it’s not just honey that this sort of stuff is going to happen with. China is a huge beer market with a growing barley industry – how long before we start seeing Chinese barley? I cannot stress the importance of knowing the origin of your ingredients and buying from reputable sources.