The Beer Life of Brian

Its xmas time again (and a new seasonal beer!)

2008-12-12T06:12:00.004Z

Wow, apparently I've kept this blog up for more than three years now. Often times (like these last few months) its been very sparse in posts, but I think there is some good content over the years. In fact, I know there is some good content since I still get emails and comments from people for several of my posts over the years.

Anyway, I only have one bit of news I suppose. Last Friday I brewed the new seasonal beer at Alley Kat, which will be an English dark mild of about 3.5% abv. From the test batches, it should have lots of crystal & chocolate malt flavours with just enough hop bitterness to balance the sweetness. I love the mild style, and I think we should be drinking it more in North America. When I was in Scotland it was great to go to the pub and drink pints of real ale that was often below 4% abv. You could drink good tasting beer and not get trashed. Unless you drank a lot of it... but even then you were far less hungover in the morning.
In any case, I can't wait for the final product.

In other news... I've gone crazy buying safety equipment for my new car. I can't wait to get stuck in a remote wilderness location so I can use my fire-staring equipment and blankets. Or find a new car accident so I can use my first aid kit. Or pull up to someone on the side of the road who just happens to need a 1/16" nut driver... anyway, yeah I went a little crazy at Canadinan Tire. I love going there.

Cheers

Yep, a whole month.

2008-10-30T02:26:00.003Z

So its been an entire month since I've posted a blog entry. But that's the way it goes I suppose...

Being a head brewer has been a learning experience so far. I'm good at brewing and working on my own, I just have to get good at getting other people to do what I want them to. Also, going from sitting on my fattening ass being a student to going back directly to hard physical work for 8+ hours a day is very tiring.

Anyway, some cool beers coming up in the next few months, more notes on that later. The nice thing about being the head brewer is that I pretty much brew all the "interesting" stuff. The normal day-to-day stuff the other guys can do.

So thats the quick and boring update.

Cheers!

One more thing I love about Canada... the CBC.

2008-09-28T23:51:00.004+01:00

Frankly, I love the CBC. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Well, the radio at least. I was just thinking that I seem to listen to CBC radio almost all weekend (commercial free of course). Quirks & Quarks, Vinyl Cafe, Rex Murphy, Wiretap, Michael Enright, DNTO, C'est la vie, Dispatches, Search Engine... and more.

I love that we as Canadians can get this excellent content, and even more that most of it is available for free whenever you want to listen to it as a podcast. The CBC is part of my cultural identity... part of our cultural identity.

When I was (much) younger I used to think of the CBC as some annoying thing that my parents listened to; except for the Vinyl Cafe, I always loved that. And Quirks & Quarks. Oh, and several other shows... I'm not really sure what turned me off CBC when I was young. Maybe it was just that I wouldn't be caught dead listening to it in front of my friends. But I know I would listen to it when nobody else would be able to judge me. So maybe I've really always loved the CBC. Especially the Vinyl Cafe with Stuart McLean. I've always loved the Dave & Morly stories.

In any case, I now officially proclaim my love for the CBC. I think that we, as Canadians, should listen more. I think that we, as Canadians, should be proud that we have such privilege to have access to such content.

That is all.

Cheers,

Submitted!

2008-08-22T19:14:00.002+01:00

Well, I've submitted my dissertation. "Effects of dark specialty malts on the growth of common brewing bacteria". I'm tired... a couple of beers, then I think I'll go to sleep early. I'm drinking a Harviestoun Bitter & Twisted and eating Ritz crackers... the combination of the two leaves the taste of chineese food in my mouth. Weird!

Anyway, some good beer-drinking tomorrow night then on Monday morning bright and early I begin the trip back to Canada. As much as I like Scotland, I think being away makes me know why I love Canada.

See (some of you) soon!

Cheers!

What happened to my iTunes -> amarok script?

2008-08-12T02:30:00.004+01:00

Hm, I've got a couple of comments on a post about a script I made a couple of years ago that converts all of your iTunes data into the Linux amarok db format. Unfortunately I have no idea where it went. I must have accidentally deleted it at some point.

Oh well. I got several emails back in the day telling me people found it useful, but doing a quick google suggests that somebody else has made a much better solution than my quickly hacked together perl script did. Plus I'm sure both have changed their data formats slightly enough to break my script.

Ah, to be breifly fameous to 10 people.

Cheers!

Half Cycle Off

2008-08-11T20:37:00.003+01:00

I woke up at 8:00 today. Unfortunately it was the wrong 8:00 and the sun is just heading down. My sleep schedule has been so messed up lately. I lasted until noon today before I had to go to bed, maybe tomorrow I'll last until 2 or 3 pm and wake up even later. Its easy to mess up your sleep schedule when you don't have any place to be at any time.

Hatin' on 0844

2008-08-07T01:33:00.005+01:00

So, last month the university residence people here (Heriot-Watt) upgraded the phone system to a VOIP carrier with much cheaper rates. However, they neglected one thing: they didn't check to see if international incoming calls worked. I can't receive calls from Canada. Apparently, according to the tech support guy, and some information held on the second page of a googling, not all service providers in all countries allow calls to 0844 numbers in the UK. Carriers of particular to note: ones in Canada and Australia. Hm. Crap.

Now this may seem surprising at first, but this is more common that it seems. No UK service provider I have have had access to seems to allow me to call 1-800/866/etc numbers in North America. Presumably, this is because they can't collect their money for the collect calls. Apparently if I call the international operator I can do the 1-800 calls but at great expense to the receiver. If they accept the call. But what chance is there of that on the computer automated system on my bank. So I make due by paying the cost out of my own pocket the few times I've needed to call.

But back to the 0844 issue... what possible reason is there not to allow a call to such a number? And who's problem is it? Is it my new UK service provider (Freewire)? Or is it my girlfriend's calling-card company and my parents provider (Telus)? Or is it all Canadian carriers? Or is it the UK phone system? Or is it my university's residence manager who decided to change to the cheaper system without proper due diligence? From my perspective, even though my call rate is cheaper, the service provided to me is technically worse.

Every provider I've emailed has either not got back to me, or just said that the problem is with the provider in the other country. Can this seriously be a problem that hasn't been widely considered int he telephone-o-sphere?? Seriously?

Dissertating

2008-08-05T03:11:00.002+01:00

So this is what my floor looks like these days. I've started in again on writing my MSc dissertation again. Its going alright... we finally received a notice from the faculty about what they are expecting, and its not as much as I thought. Its important to be straightforward and concise about the research done and literature review. So the length isn't as important as the fact that you say what you did, give the results, and back it up with prior literature. I had written a lot of the literature review a few months back, and I think I was trying to write too much. Like I don't need to go over all the basics as they are... well, basic. I can assume, for example, that my audience actually knows what barley is; I don't need to tell them!

Anyway, in writing this I am actually procrastinating from writing again. But thats ok. I'm staying up alllll night long tonight and all day tomorrow as I'm trying to break my recent sleep schedule of going to bed at 5 am and waking up at 2 pm.

Cheers!

Slave to bacteria

2008-07-24T04:42:00.004+01:00

My MSc project deals with Lactobacilus brevis, a common beer spoilage bacteria. For some tests I'm doing, I need to sample every 6 hours (or less...) in order to get some decent results.

This doesn't bode well for my sleep... I've already done two (6pm and 12am) and I pretty much stayed awake all night to do the 6 am sampling... not that I intended to, but I think I drank too much strong coffee before going in for the 12 am sampling so I wasn't able to sleep.

Anyway... I'm not looking forward to this time tomorrow (5 am) as I may be going out of my skull by then. Unless I can force myself to sleep in the middle of the day for a couple of hours.

Damn bacteria.

Cheers!

Scheduling Software for a Small Brewery

2008-07-22T11:40:00.010+01:00

In the past few months I've been contemplating and working on a wee software solution to a problem that I've seen at many small craft breweries that I've visited:
Scheduling

A lot of breweries I've been to have scheduling methods that work for them just fine... but usually involve a pencil and some paper. Maybe and excel spreadsheet if they're lucky. Existing production management software can be too expensive for a small business, and there is no guarantee that the investment will pay itself off. These software packages are bloated with more features than are needed for a brewery, since they are for "any" production environment. As well, they often require the software be installed on a Windows computer... ONE Windows computer per license.

What I'm working on is a schedule helper for the small brewery. The schedule is to run off a webserver, with a database back end. This has the advantage in that no additional software needs to be installed by the client, and it doesn't matter weather the client is on Mac, Windows, Linux, etc. In theory, the software could be accessed from anywhere in the world (of course, significant security measures would have to be employed!)
This also means that schedule information can be viewed and modified on, say, an iPhone :).

I have broken it down into several separate modules:
1. Scheduler - Books batches of beer on resources (fermenters, conditioning tanks, humans, etc). Displays output in a graphical format, so that the schedule can be visualized for any conflicts or problems. An example schedule ought to look something like this (click for larger view):

The basic scheduler has no data for recipe, volumes, etc etc. I'd also like to have it possible to enter a matrix of dependencies, and provide an "auto schedule" algorithm. But thats way off in the future.

2. Recipe data - As a separate module that can be added in if needed. Basically, this module can handle what goes into each batch of beer, as well as record volumes throughout the process. I've designed it is such a way that the client can add almost an infinite number of ingredients.

3. Consumables management - of course, if you have ingredients, you ought to be able to manage them. This should be able to keep track of ingredients and help plan when to order more supply. This isn't limited to ingredients, this can include bottles... cleaning supplies... boxes... etc.

4. Quality control - This is very important to the brewer. This module can handle data from quality control checks, as defined by the client.

5. Sales & Customer Database - I've not programmed or planned anything around this section. However, it would definitely be useful if this software is ever to be a complete solution for the small brewer (for now its just a helper!).

Timeline: when do I see this being produced? Since I'm working a full time job, I'll be doing it on my own time, don't expect anything public for quite some time! In theory, I'll using it to help with my job at a small craft brewery (more on that news later)... it could be years before I feel comfortable releasing it.

Of course, for now I should be finishing my MSc thesis...

Cheers!

Leave your bag at the front counter, please.

2008-07-15T11:31:00.003+01:00

No.

On the surface, such a request seems innocent enough. But it also implies that I might be a criminal. I don't like being made to feel like a suspected criminal while I intend to buy something at your store. Besides, what if somebody steals my bag? Or the punk behind the counter rifles through it?

As such, I refuse to shop at any store that requires me to remove my bag.

Society these days seems willing to put up with an awful lot of little inconveniences for other people's security and peace of mind. Are we ok with being treated as guilty until proven innocent? I think most people would say no. But we allow it every day.

We put up with it at a much larger scale too. Apparently now there is over a million names on the US terror watch list. One million names. Added with secret criteria, and impossible to remove. If you are unlucky enough to have a similar name as somebody who may have possibly had a connection to something that might have maybe been a possible terrorist action, your flying days will become very difficult. You can't defend yourself against the accusations (since you don't know what they are) and you can't fight the label (unless you have a lot of money for some lawyers). Guilty until proven innocent... but you can't prove innocence.

Being a shoplifting suspect and being a terror suspect are certainly several orders of magnitude different. But they follow the same principle: give up your rights for the peace of mind of somebody else.

Are you willing to be treated like a shoplifting suspect for the peace of mind of the shop owner?
Are you willing to be treated like a terrorist suspect for the peace of mind of a country?

Cheers.

Back from Belgium

2008-07-07T18:05:00.003+01:00

Yes, I went to Belgium last week. Just 5 days for a quick vacation... and "research".

I managed to do some very good "research" mostly on the under-appreciated lambic (sour) beer style, as well as some of my old favorite Belgian Trappist and Abby beers. As well as an excellent visit to the Affligem brewery. I'll write more in due course, as I've just got back and have a heck of a lot of work to do in the next day or two.

Best part: Sitting in an off-the-tourist-path cafe terrace under trees in Graanmarkt in Burssels, sipping on beer, people watching, and reading all afternoon on Sunday.

Worst part: Spending too damn much... everything else was pretty good, really.

I love Belgium!

Cheers for now

No visit to Canada :(

2008-06-26T23:03:00.002+01:00

I can't come back to Canada in July for a visit. I just can't afford it.

This is due to the fact that I'm pretty much out of money and can't afford another return flight to Edinburgh (I already have a flight back to Calgary). In retrospect, it was a little naive of me to think that I could do it.

The bad side is, of course, that I won't be there for Brier's wedding, won't see my girlfriend, won't see friends who are only in town from abroad then, won't be able to have fun (drink) at Bruce's lake cabin, and won't be able to do the job interviews I had semi-planned.

But the good side is that I can therefore come home much earlier (I just moved my flight to August 25th). This is more than 3 weeks earlier than I had initially planned. Which means I'll be home before my girlfriend moves to our place in Edmonton. Then I spend a month visiting people, doing job interviews (in theory)... OH, and spending a lot of time doing the write up for my thesis before the 20th. Can't forget that last one...

Cheers!

The Short Loop Parade

2008-06-24T23:32:00.003+01:00

Hey.
Nothing beerish this time, just posting a wee mix I made. Its called "The Short Loop Parade", and the name suggests what it is. Its basically a mix of several short loops. Download it, perhaps even enjoy it. Let me know what you think... Download it here. Its only 28 minutes long, but has about 1.5 hours worth of music mixed together! Woo!

Here is the list of samples, in order of appearance:
Slyandro.mod - From the classic game Starcontrol II
Idioteque - Radiohead
Circles Blurring - Minus 8
Jah - The Playing Orchestra
American Life - Primus
Da Funk - Daft Punk
Looking down the barrel of a gun - Beastie Boys
The Battery - Boys Noize
White Rabbit - Jefferson Airplane
Blood Runs Cold - Jedi Mind Tricks
Summertime (UFO remix) - Sarah Vaughan
Kinetic - Radiohead
Noctuary - Bonobo
Difficult score - Marco Carola
Underwater - Elkysia
...then... - Black Era
Adn poubelle - David Aubrun
Turn Deaf - Modeselektor
Dead by Dawn - Future Forces
Thunder - Christian Smith & John Selway
Medusa's Path (cry on my console mix) - Prodigy
The Key - Tosca
Make me fly - Makingthenoise (Miximal)
Why do fools fall in love - Frankie Lymon & The Teenagers
Mango pickle down river - M.I.A.
Croissance dans le mur - David Aubrun
Synthetic Rhythms - Ghislain Poirier
Come as you are - Nirvana
Galang - M.I.A.
Sea Lion Woman - Fiest
Girl - The Beatles
Flim Flam (David Alvarado Remix) - Yellow Sox
Sly (underdog mix) - Nicolette
Fast Track - Radiohead
Credits - Amon Tobin
Marine Machines - Amon Tobin
Chocolate Elvis - Amon Tobin
There is a war going on for your mind - Flobots
Credits - Amon Tobin

Cheers!

Exploding Kegs and Bob McKenzie

2008-06-19T23:18:00.002+01:00

Sorry for the lack of posts of late, my brain has been occupied with researchy stuff.
All I feel like posting today is this link to a story on exploding beer kegs that stopped traffic. The most interesting part? The driver was a guy named Bob McKenzie.

On a more technical note, why did the kegs explode? The police said "carbon dioxide in the kegs"... well that doesn't help, all beer ought to have carbon dioxide in it. Kegs are rated to take more than 60 psig in pressure, but a filled keg really ought to not have more than 30 psig pressure, even in hot weather. Unless, of course, the temperature was very very hot. Or the beer was very over carbonated. Seems weird... the only time I've heard of kegs exploding are from drunken idiots throwing them on the fire or somebody hooking up an un-regulated beergas line to the gas-in (which would be like 2000-8000 psi instantly).

Anyway, that was a lame post. Cheers!

America not for sale anymore

2008-06-13T11:22:00.005+01:00

Just saw a funny quote in a story covering the possible InBev purchase of AB:
"Go home, InBev, and keep your money in your pocket. America isn't for sale any more."

America was for sale... not anymore though. Maybe its just funny to me.

The bigger point, I think, is that AB has the American market wound up so much with its marketing that they've made Budweiser synonymous with America.

Cheers

Fight the Candadian DMCA

2008-06-13T01:55:00.004+01:00

For years our poor American brethren to the South have been subject to a horrid beast, tearing the heads off of file-sharing youth and breathing fire on fair-use. This beast has been known as the DMCA, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. While the name sounds great, is misses the point. Big media realized that technology had changed such that they no longer had control over the media. So rather than change their business plan to take advantage of this new era of technology, they lobbied to create the DMCA.

And now, its coming to Canada. With more restrictions on consumers. Who is this law for? We're the citizens... why are corporate ties dictating what laws should be? This law is worse... FAR worse for the consumer than what we have now. It limits what you can do with what you own. It limits what you can try to do with things that you own but are supposed to be "locked" (like cellphones and out-of-region DVDs). This all benefits the media corporations.

Here is my point... why are we making laws that benefit corporate citizens? Mostly AMERICAN corporate citizens. We are the actual citizens of Canada... fuck them. We want to copy stuff. We want to be able to use our technology. We want a world without these restrictions imposed for the benefit of corporate profit. Big media needs to realize that technology has changed... the ability to create media is at the hands of almost all of us. They're not going to make as much money as they used to....

Who will? People who have figured it out. Like Jamendo.com, for example. Free music, from the artists. Pay a donation, or go see them live. The big media method of spending millions on marketing to get us to think that we actually like band X isn't going to work anymore. Big media requires so much money to pay for the marketing and the execs in the middle. When you pay for music by traditional methods you don't pay very much to the artist, after all.

Anyway, read this criticism on the bill, and contact your MP. Luckily we're in a minority government, so there is a chance that it won't pass.

Cheers

InBev to buy Anheuser-Busch?

2008-06-11T23:12:00.004+01:00

According to this press release that just fell into my inbox, InBev is offering to buy Anheuser-Busch.

This is interesting. InBev is the global supergiant. AB is also a supergiant, with about 45% of the American market last time I checked. If it goes through then most of the beer in the world will be produced by a ridiculously large company. Although to be fair, most of the world's beer already is produced by ridiculously large companies.

Will AB accept? If they do they won't be an "American" brewery anymore. In fact, none of the superbrewers will be American anymore... Coors became Molson-Coors (Molson being Canadian, of course). Miller became SAB-Miller (South African Breweries). AB played up a lot of marketing that they were the "only" real American brewer. Of course, that ignores the many many small American breweries.

So if AB takes the offer (it sounds like an easy retirement for the already wealthy board of AB), then the only way to get a true American beer will be to head to your local craft brewer. At least thats a good marketing angle for the craft brewers ;)

Cheers!

Black Malt Tea

2008-06-11T20:45:00.005+01:00

I've started looking into lab work for my thesis project (more on that some other time). Basically my work involves specialty brewing grains - those brewer's among you know that this includes crystal malt, black malt, chocolate malt, and roast barley. Depending on the grain, they are roasted in a coffee-like roasting drum at high temperatures. Some grains, like black malt and roast barley, are basically burnt.

So these special malts have a lot of flavour. I'll have to do 100% extracts of these (usually they are used in <15%>

Here is what I did:

Crushed two tablespoons of the grain (crystal, black, or roast barley)
Placed it in a small French coffee press.
Added about 200 mL of boiling water
let it sit for 10 min
pressed the plunger down, poured off the liquid

Drinking it was interesting...

Crystal (140 EBC) had exactly what you'd expect - a massive aroma of sweet malt. The flavour was very weak though, but still pretty sweet. It was dark pale in colour.
The black malt of course created a dead black liquid. The blackness had a red hue, though. Sweet aroma with some burnt notes. Didn't taste too bad actually... it was a little sweet with some astringency.
Roast barley was similar to the black malt, except the colour hue was much more yellow than red. As well, the flavour was much drier compared to the black malt.

I suggest people do this with any malt they purchase, you really need to taste the product in some water to get an idea of how what flavour it may add to your beer.

Cheers!

Beer Stories

2008-06-09T00:15:00.004+01:00

In the last few days I've added a Google Blogs search for "beer" RSS feed to my Google Reader aggregator. The search is actually quite good, and I get lots of interesting blog postings. Some from proclaimed beer bloggers, some from "normal people" who just happen to be writing about beer. The most interesting thing I've found is that there are very few beer reviews, or at least the beer review isn't the central point of the posting. I've found that most people tell a story, and somewhere in the story is something about beer, perhaps a beer review.

I like this because I've generally enjoyed the stories I've read. I honestly pass over most straight-up beer review postings quick scan for history or some interesting brewing fact. A story to a beer review makes it much more interesting, certainly.

Anyway, just a shout out to the blagosphere, keep up the good work.

Cheers

How I Judge Beer

2008-06-07T00:09:00.006+01:00

I've had this in the back of my head for awhile... I've given up on the 'traditional' beer-nerd style of judging a beer. I've also given up on judging a beer 'to style', but thats a different story.

I'm not good with the fluffy verbiage. I can pick out certain things, I know what they are in my head... I can name a lot of key flavours and aromas just from sheer repetition, but I just can't write more than a few sentences about any beer. People like Michael Jackson, Rodger Prost and Rob Millichamp are good at that. I don't like trying to name flavours, or write descriptions, honestly.

I have one overall judging parameter for beer I drink: quality. Quality is, basically, does it meet (or exceed) my expectations as a consumer? Getting into the details is a bit harder certainly as my expectations can chance based on my mood, what I've eaten, what I've drank, what music I'm listening to, etc. But all other things being equal... there are two things I look for in a beer:

Technical quality: Do I like it, and is there any "flaws"? This is very tricky... what is bad for one style of beer is perfection for another. This is where the expectation comes in... eg, if I order an English bitter and it tastes sour and acetic, it fails my expectations. Its technically flawed. Colour, clarity, taste, aroma, malt sweetness, bitterness, off-flavours, etc. But I also include in this category the ultimate question - do I like it? This last question is really the most important one. Usually, one spends the most time considering this category.
Uniqueness: This is the bane of most brewers, I think. A beer can be technically perfect... a great beer. I can like it. I can even love it. The problem with tasting so many beers is that you seem to taste a lot of the same thing. I'm always looking for something different. Its few and far between. It seems to me that a lot of brewers, even small craft brewers, don't often like to stray too far from the mainstream of their market. Of course, there is "good" unique and "bad" unique. Bad unique probably results from a significant technical flaw.

Of course, there is a balance between these two. I've had beers that are technically great beers that I really like but just aren't unique - these end up as good stand by beers. I've also had unique beers that were technically well done but I didn't really like. Of course, I've also had technically horrible beers that were unique -- the bad kind. Most beers I try I think about the technical quality, and make a note of any uniqueness.

So this concept isn't all that ground-breaking, but it is how my head works when I taste a beer. Its also why I've pretty much stopped reviewing beers on this blog. I only ever write a couple of sentences and thats just not interesting to the reader!

But, I did have a bottle of Bacchus Kriekenbier today as I mentioned on my last post. I can say it was technically quite well done - good balance of flavours between the acidity of the beer and the sweet/sour of the cherries. Quite refreshing and made me glad I'm heading to Belgium at the end of the month. I liked the beer, probably 7/10 if I had to quantify. Uniqueness? Hm, well I know I've tasted similar krieks, perhaps this had a bit more robustness to it, to put it difficultly. Overall, it met my quality expectations!

Damn that sounds boring... So I'll post a photo to reward you for reading to the end. Its from the Heriot-Watt beerfest which I never got around to blogging about:

Cheers!

I'm going to Belgium

2008-06-06T19:48:00.003+01:00

First, some of you with keen eyesight may notice that I've re-branded my blog. The Beer of Brian sounds slightly less lame than Brian's Beer Blog. I'm trying to think of a better name, but for now this is all I have.

Anyway, in regards to the title... yes, I am going to Belgium. My friend Mike is doing some traveling to Europe. So we'll spend a few days sampling the local product here in Edinburgh, then onward to Belgium July 1st-ish.

When I was in Lisbon I was very kindly offered a place to visit/stay in Ghent by some fellow tourists, so that ought to be on my list to see. Hopefully I can get access to some "inside tours" at some breweries. After all I'm a pro-brewer, and just finishing off my MSc in brewing, so hopefully that pulls some weight when contacting breweries. Its nice to talk to the actual brewers, after all. Maybe I'll get some hints on brewing methods ;). When I was working at the craft brewery I enjoyed other brewers coming by, after all. Perhaps somebody else will feel the same. Otherwise I'll have to settle for the usual touristy tours that explain all the basics. Bah.

So I'll update when I know more. In celebration, I drank Bacchus Kriekenbier which is from a family-owned brewery in Belgium. Not too sour, not too sweet. Good amount of cherry, certainly not overdone. I quite like it, I'd say its quite well rounded and I like the slight sour bite. Its been awhile since I've had a decent sour beer (other than at Mather's the other night, but that wasn't supposed to be sour...)

Cheers!

Something amiss at Mather's

2008-06-04T14:26:00.005+01:00

Last Monday was our last day of exams for our MSc Brewing course, and naturally we went out drinking. We stopped for a pint at Mather's Bar, a relatively famous pub in Edinburgh. Four of our group grabbed pints of Batemans XB Bitter... and we each independently and immediately thought "this is off". The beer was clearly acetic (acidic character often a sign of an older cask). So we sent them back and got something else. The bar staff was very grumpy about this, as they all claimed it was fine when they tasted it (as well by some bloke at the bar drinking Foster's... clearly a man of fine taste). It was clearly off... I don't mind acidic beers, but if I buy a bitter I expect a bitter not a lambic.

To make matters worse, I tasted somebody else's Theakston Old Peculiar as I heard them say "wow, this beer tastes like apples!"... since I know this beer well I knew that wasn't right. I judged it was full of acetaldehyde (green apple character) which can be a sign of infection too or bad brewing practice. I assumed the former. I didn't tell them to send it back as I think I was in enough trouble with the bar staff and my friend seemed to be enjoying his beer regardless.

To make matters even worse, a couple of months ago we had the former brewing students dinner and the pub crawl stopped there for a few pints. I met an older gentleman who was sending back his pint as he said it was acetic. Turns out he was a retired brewer of 30 years.

My point is that there is a pattern of unkempt beers at Mather's. The only bad pints I've had in Edinburgh were there. Cask ales are alive need attention and proper cellarmanship. Bar staff needs training on off flavours. But perhaps if they're tasting the off beer regularly, and nobody complains, then they'll think everything is fine.

Otherwise, Mather's is a great little traditional pub with great beer selection. Its a shame that I'll unlikely go back there.

Cheers

Expensive Scotch Drinking

2008-06-02T00:35:00.005+01:00

Last Friday the student Whisky Society here at Heriot-Watt got together for our 'expensive' drinking night. Well damn, it was good. Below is the four bottles we drank, which totaled almost 300 quid in value! I've added a brief tasting note for each of them, but very short.

Redbreast Irish Whiskey 12 yr 40% v/v- This was a good start to the night as it was a fairly clean, smooth, and easy drinking spirit with strong vanilla notes. Irish Whiskey are (usually) triple distilled to obtain this smoothness. This retailed for about £28.
Glenfarclas 21 yr 43% v/v- I very much liked this one. Very complex nose and flavour. A little burn on the mouth. Heavily sherried. Retails for approximately £50.
St. Magdelin 32 yr ?% v/v- This distillery has apparently been closed for quite some time, which of course makes the value skyrocket. 32 years is pretty damn old too. Not that 32 years automatically means its good, of course. It was smoother than the Glenfarclas, but with a distinct bite of some kind. I hadn't much to say about it. I liked the Glenfarclas much better personally. This just seemed a little odd to me... don't get me wrong it was a good scotch, but I've had spirits I liked a more that cost a lot less... this retails for approximately £110, apparently.
And finally, the big hit of the night... Ardbeg Lord of the Isles 25 yr 46% v/v - Well I have to admit this was a pretty damn good scotch, and it better be for the price. At the distillery it costs £200, but a shop in town here sells it for £170. Still pretty damned expensive for 0.7 l of fluid. Anyway, usually Ardbeg is a very peaty (smoky) scotch. This was peaty, but not too over the top. It was very well balanced between the harsher flavours and the smoother flavours. Brillant!

So, obviously a pretty damn good night. Followed by a few pints of fresh cask Deuchar's IPA down at the Riccarton Arms. Click here for photos from the night.

As for brewing school... I have one more exam left. Its today at 14:00... then all I have to do is research my thesis and try to have fun!

Cheers...

29th Birthday

2008-05-27T09:31:00.007+01:00

I actually had to be reminded this morning that I am 29 years of age today. Not the most exciting birthday... one more year and I'm no longer a twenty-something. In the past couple of years I've already began to notice some key indicators of an aging body & mind:

I don't care as much about what other people think anymore. That goes for what people think about me or what people think about in general. Its really a waste of time.
I can't drink as much in one sitting as I used to be able to. Or I just have no desire to... hard to say which. Not that getting drunk doesn't happen once and awhile. But more often than not I find after a couple of beers I don't feel like drinking anymore.
I've been reading a lot more in the last year. But that may be because I don't have a TV here in residence at school (although the internet is pretty bad for taking up my time). In any case, I think when I move back to Canada I'm going to get rid of the cable TV.
I can't stay up as late as I used to be able to. I've tried to pull a couple of all-nighters here at school, but I end up feeling absolutely horrible by about 5 am. Maybe I just need more practice.
I can't stand hangovers anymore. I used to be able to go out the night before work, get in at 3 am or something, get up and be at work at 8 am(ish). And I'd feel ok. Now the times I do get drunk it just kills my next day. Maybe thats another reason why I don't get drunk much anymore. Although "much" is a relative term.
I feel like cooking good food. Although that could be my girlfriend rubbing off on me.
I might be lazier than I used to be... not sure about this one. The brewing program here doesn't push me very hard, so I don't feel like I'm working hard. Maybe I still have hard work ability in me, but I just need a good reason to do it.

Anyway, thats my birthday thoughts for now. Unfortunately I have an exam at 9:30 tomorrow morning, so any celebration will be delayed until after that event. Speaking of which... I should probably be studying for that.

Cheers!

SAVOR Craft Beer & Food Experience Coverage

2008-05-21T16:57:00.005+01:00

I'd just like to point everybody to Craft Beer Radio's coverage of the Savor Craft Beer & Food Experience in Washington DC last week. I've listened to a few of the sessions, and they are very informative on the nuances of tasting good beer with good food. I highly recommend listening to the sessions given by some of the most knowledgeable people in the industry. If you haven't yet been converted to the fact that beer is better with food than wine yet, listening to these sessions will help.

I've vowed to start cooking with beer as well as pairing beer with food... I'm working on something right now, I'll post the results later tonight ;)

Cheers!

The Cyclic Nature of Beer CO2

2008-05-19T14:37:00.002+01:00

I was asked the other day why more breweries don't recover their CO2 from fermentation. After all, quite a bit of CO2 is produced in the process, and a lot of that gets vented to the atmosphere. So I thought I'd address this briefly.

First of all, CO2 recovery is not easy. You don't just attach a hose to the top of a fermenter and send it to a tank. You need compressors, scrubbers, distillation columns, and more compressors. It takes quite a bit of energy to recover and purify CO2 from brewing sources. So when you balance the CO2 'saved' from being emitted to the atmosphere you need to subtract the CO2 generated from power plant to make the energy to recover the CO2. That being said, it seems that this process usually works out positively for larger breweries who can afford the huge capital cost of a recovery system.

The main point I'd like to make though is this: beer production has a natural CO2 recovery system. Beer is made from malted barley. The sugars that the yeast break down into CO2 come from the barley grains. The barley grains produce their sugar with -- yep, CO2 from the atmosphere. There is a cycle there.

In theory, the barley needs to take in more CO2 than we are releasing to the atmosphere during fermentation, as not all the sugars are fermented completely. But perhaps thats an oversimplification. For 'carbon neutrality', we'd also need to consider the CO2 from transport, malting, energy needed for brewing, more transport, etc etc etc. So I'm in no way arguing that beer is carbon neurtal, but that there has been a natural recovery system already in place for many hundreds of years.

Cheers!

A Fine Scottish Walk

2008-05-18T21:00:00.003+01:00

I've been meaning to do more walking around the rural area near where I live on campus just South of Edinburgh. So I went for a decent 3 hour walk today, towards the Pentland hills. I brought along my iPod and caught up on podcasts from Quirks & Quarks, the science show from CBC back home.

So those are a few photos from the relatively short hike. I ate some food by a reservoir, it was rather peaceful, although it started to get pretty chilly. Sometime this week I think I'll try to hike right into the pentland hills, which could be an 6-8 hour round trip depending on how many photos I take...

(click on photos for a larger image)

Cheers

Brew Dog vs the Nanny State

2008-05-16T00:22:00.007+01:00

According to this article in todays Scotsman, Brew Dog Craft Brewery faces a threat of a boycott action by advertising watchdog the Portman group. I'm not going to re-write the article here, you can read the article yourself as its not very long. I just have three points I want to make about this issue:

1. I think that some people live in fear that other people will make bad decisions. Its a control issue for them. Its a beer label. Certainly, no label on any product should boast something that isn't true (eg, if you buy our beer women will want have sex with you). The debate gets into implied product effects in marketing, though. Luckily the nanny state is there to protect the most weak-minded of us, who would be convinced by aggressive marketing tactics. Personally, I find it an insult to my intelligence that the Portman group thinks Brew Dog's marketing slogans are too aggressive for my obviously weak mind.

2. Brew Dog makes some DAMN good beers... I'm a professional in the industry, and I've tasted a hell of a lot of 'average' beers. These guys aren't selling beer because of their marketing, they're selling it because they have an artistic talent that makes their beer far better than most beers. Big breweries rely heavily on their marketing, as associating their brand with different footy clubs seems to be the only way to tell the difference between the brands in the 'uninteresting yellow fizz' market.

3. That being said, the big guys and the little guys still ought to play by the same rules for marketing. Of course, the Portman group has only suggested that Brew Dogs marketing might violate their rules. And all they can do is initiate a boycott, apparently. But I think people would still buy the beer.

I say Brew Dog keeps marketing the same way they've always done, keep doing a damn fine job making their beers, and I'll keep drinking them (when I can find them, that is). If they get more pressure from this Portman group, thats some pretty good publicity and scores high with the 'stickin it to the man' type people.

Anyway, you ought to read Brew Dog's response on their website, its pretty funny and unprofessional. Its a nice change from the PR crap we're used to. These guys know how to sell beer to me... I'll seek out a pint tomorrow.

Cheers!

Low bit rave

2008-05-15T00:39:00.002+01:00

Ok I know I'm way behind in posts... I have a beer festival to review, and some metaphysics to comment on, but I just have to take this brief moment to post an album my friend Mike Verdone made called "Low Bit Rave" that is pretty cool. Just listening to the first few tracks myself... its my kind of music!

I demand you enjoy it.

Or at least download it.

Cheers!

The next step

2008-05-03T21:58:00.002+01:00

I've done a lot of reading of beer and beer related books over the last several years. One thing I've never really touched on, however, was beer and food. I know that there are some great beer-food pairings, and some great recipes, but I've never really read too much about the subject.

So I figure its time to rectify that. I just received "The Brewmaster's Table" by Brooklyn Brewery brewmaster Garrett Oliver, as well as "He said beer, she said wine" by Sam Calagione (of Dogfish head fame) and Marnie Old. Obviously I haven't read them yet, but I can say what I expect. The former is a lot thicker than I expected and its very in-depth on the beer styles, pairings, and history. The second is an interesting presentation of the debate between beer and wine for food pairings, with Sam defending beer and Marnie defending wine. So from that I ought to learn a little more about wine pairings, as well as some good talking points for debating wine snobs on the merits of beer with food.

In fact, I think I'll read some of these right now.

Cheers

Who is the next big beer writer?

2008-05-03T00:58:00.003+01:00

Michael Jackson is unfortunately dead. Roger Protz is getting on in years. Who is the next beer writer for the people?

My vote goes towards Robert Millichamp. Rob is a classmate of mine in my brewing program here at Heriot-Watt university, and he knows his beer reviewing. He is religious about taking notes on every single beer he tries. EVERY beer. I like to think that I rate beer, but he takes it to the next level.

Rob has his own blog of late, too, where you can read some of his comments on beer and brewing. I like to read what he has to say, I think he has an articulate nature that many people lack.

Rob published a post on the types of beer drinkers in the UK, read it here, its quite interesting in my humble opinion. Read his other posts from that link.

Where have I been?

2008-04-24T11:54:00.003+01:00

Perhaps you have noticed that I haven't updated this blog in a few weeks. Well there is a good explanation for that. I was away traveling for two weeks with my girlfriend in continental Europe. Then when I returned I had class and two papers due, whilst my girlfriend and parents were in town too. As such, I have had very little expendable time.

On a beer note we visited the Tennent's canning line in Glasgow yesterday. I brought my camera on the bus but then wussed out at the last second on bringing it in. Why? I have no idea, I just did. But the canning line is pretty cool. 2000 cans per minute, I can't believe how fast the machine can run. Unfortunately there were having all kinds of technical problems that day and the machines kept crashing. But it was cool to see anyway. Last week we saw a glass bottle factory (also pretty cool). Next week we head to Belhaven brewery. OH, and one day we get to go to a BOX FACTORY!!

I'll have more time for updating and such in a week or so, perhaps I'll even write something about beer for once...

Cheers

Quick to sell out?

2008-03-26T15:43:00.004Z

In a very recent post of mine, I bled my heart out about how I want to continue work in a small craft brewery after finishing my MSc in brewing, and that working at a large brewery would not suit me very well.

I just sent off a resume to a huge brewery (Labatt) and a regional brewery (Big Rock). So was that too quick to sell out? Ha. I did some thinking though that led to these actions...

First, when I get back I'm attempting to stay in Edmonton, Alberta to be with my girlfriend. I can't exactaly be picky with the job I want right out of brewing school now can I? Maybe after 5 years of experience I can be pickey.

Second, I need a job when I get back, as I'll have no money. If I can't get a brewing job then I'll have to suck it up and find something else. I ought to be starting somewhere Oct 1, as I won't be able to afford to wait around for the "perfect job" for too long.

Labatt's Edmonton brewery is the very definition of huge industrial brewery. If I did get a job there, however, I'm sure I would gain a lot of valuable knowledge on how big breweries work of course. I can always do homebrewing on my own time to satisfy my creative needs.

Big Rock's Calgary brewery is actually a good size. Its not too big, not too small. I think I would learn a great deal working at a place like this, and I do like Big Rock beers. Only problem is that its in Calgary... and my girlfriend will be in Edmonton. Its only a 3 hr drive to Edmonton... but still, I'd like to live with her.

Anyway, my priority goes 1) craft beer job in Edmonton, 2) industrial beer job in Edmonton, 3) craft/regional brew job in Calgary, 4) non-brewing job in Edmonton, 5) unemployed alcoholic bum.

Unless I can get some sort of craft brewery consultation thing going on where I can travel around out of Edmonton, that is.

Ok, well thats what going on with me these days. I'm also writing a big literature review. Fun.

Cheers!

Importance of a Full Wort Boil

2008-03-22T00:44:00.004Z

Wort boiling is a critical control point in brewing. In the past before taking this brewing course I wasn't fully aware of how important it really is. So much so, that I'll write an entire blog post about it. I’m concentrating on evaporation and protein removal for the most part, as I think these are the least understood part of the process.

First, what is a full boil? It seems to be accepted that a boil of at least 60 minutes is required for the following actions to sufficiently occur. I know some brewers only do 45 minute boils and I would recommend against this, as it can affect flavour in the final beer as I will describe in detail. As well, the wort must actually be fully boiling a "rolling boil" with two-phase nucleate boiling where steam bubbles pass through the wort.
A summary of the achievements of wort boiling:

Requirement: Dependant Conditions
Wort sterilization: Time & Temperature
Isomerisation of hops: Time & Temperature
Protein denaturation & enzyme inactivation: Time & Temperature
Protein coagulation: Turbulence, boil vigour & time
Formation of colour & flavour components: Time & Temperature
Removal of unwanted volatiles: Time, Temperature & Evaporation
Formation of reducing agents: Time & Temperature
Wort concentration by evaporation: Time, Temperature & Evaporation
Adapted from reference J. Andrews, Brewer Distiller Int. 2008 (ref 2)

Evaporation
A lot of brewers measure the amount of boil by the amount of evaporation that has occurred. This is a fairly easy metric, as one just needs to measure the volume of the kettle before and after the boil. However, evaporating water into steam is very energetically expensive. We cannot, however, drive off unwanted volatile components without a certain amount of evaporation. What we want to evaporate is volatile off-flavour components such as DMS and aldehydes.

Dimethyl sulphide (DMS), an off flavour component that forms during the boil from S-methylmethionine (SMM), is quite volatile at wort boiling temperatures. Given enough time, say 60 minutes of boiling, DMS should be formed and driven off enough to bring it below the detectable flavour threshold. During boiling we're basically distilling the DMS out, as it is more volatile than water. However, you must evaporate some water in order to do this. The amount of water needed to evaporate is dependent on the concentration of DMS that you need to get rid of. The more DMS in the wort, the more water you need to evaporate. There is a minimum amount of water that you need to get rid of certain concentration of DMS, regardless of what type of wort boiling system you are using [ref 1].

In the “perfect boiling system”, the boil would run at the optimal liquid-vapour equilibrium to have as little water evaporated possible for the maximal volatile removal. This would save energy. Boiling systems do not run at this optimal point, of course… but imagine the energy savings over a year if you could reduce your evaporation by a few percentage points? It would be very significant [see ref 2 for a good read on this].

Luckily, most malts stored properly and mashed with proper procedures don't create too much DMS to require extra boil lengths. The potential for DMS formation occurs in the malting process, and is generally higher for lager malts. Breweries these days are operating on evaporation rates of 4-8%, which should be enough to drive off 'normal' amounts of DMS. If you have problems with DMS in the brewery, you might need a slightly longer boil (careful, though - microbial infection can lead to DMS problems downstream too).

Wort concentration – what of this then? It would seem that if it were possible to boil wort with less evaporation, you could save a lot of money. You could re-calculate your mash recipe to have less-dilute wort being passed to the kettle. But don’t mistake what I’m saying here as an excuse to turn down your steam jacket and let the wort simmer. To get extremely low evaporation rates with good volatile removal plus hot break formation, you need a more expensive boiling system or even a wort stripping system. For your little kettle, you need as vigorous a boil as possible, and I’ll tell you why…

Hot-break Formation
One of the most important reactions that occurs in the wort boil is the formation of "hot break". Hot break is the coagulation of proteins, formation of protein-polyphenol complexes, and reaction with hop compounds to create larger particles that will sediment out in the whirlpool at the end of the boil. These reactions occur at higher rates at higher temperatures and more agitation. This is why your wort boil must be full and rolling... the more vigorous and turbulent the boil, the more of these compounds form over time. This process maximizes around two hours.

Protein/nitrogenous compounds are required for fermentation, but there must be a balance. Too few and the fermentation will become stuck, too many and several changes in flavour will be noted. In particular, in the presence of excessive protein content can lead to higher levels of esters and higher (fusel) alcohols. This occurs when the yeast metabolizes the excess amino acids to form higher alcohols (eg propanol, butanol), which then can be further converted to various esters (eg ethyl acetate, isoamyl acetate). Higher alcohols give the beer a slight warming feeling (and seem to give me a bit of a headache), and esters are known for their fruity/floral contributions to beer. This can be good if this is what you want in the beer style you are making, but if your Czech pilsner tastes like a fruity English ale you might want to check your boil vigour.

As well, removal of protein-polyphenol complexes is important for colloidal stability over time (known as chill haze). Improperly stabilized beer can find reduced shelf-life as it can go cloudy when stored cold due to these complexes. Most of this should happen while the beer is in cold conditioning. While some will form in hot-break, the key here is that we are removing lots of protein from the equation. Less protein means less possibility to complex with polyphenols in the chilled beer.

Stability, Colour, Flavour
In a full boil, any microbe interested in living in beer will be killed. Several organisms can actually survive the mashing process, so the wort must be sterilized before fermentation.

Usually when mashing the temperature is raised at the end of the mash to 75-78 C in order to make the wort less viscous and stop the amylase enzymes from working. However, some enzymes are not fully denatured until the boil. As well, the many chemical reactions that occur during the boil will lower the pH. Maillard reaction products form between the wort sugars and amino acids when heated in the boil. These reactions contribute to flavours as well as darken the wort slightly.

Hop Isomerisation
A lot of attention is given to the isomerisation of hop alpha-acids in wort, and you can find much better information than my little blurb here.

Alpha-acid oils in hops need to be heated to isomerise, which causes them to be soluble in wort and creates the bitter flavour we love in beer. In a ‘typical’ boil, one cannot expect to get much more than 35% by weight iso-alpha-acid extraction from even pellet hops over 90 minutes. Often, this can be less depending on wort concentration, pH, and wort boiling temperature (ambient air pressure can change wort boiling temp quite significantly, eg due to altitude).

You will note that this is a time/temperature reaction… there seems to me to be a prevailing idea in the homebrewing community that as soon as you stop the boil the hop isomerisation stops. Not so… these will continue as long as the wort is hot, however at a lower reaction rate depending on the resting temp.

Hops also contain a great deal of volatile flavour and aroma compounds. The longer the hops are boiled for, of course, the more of these components are boiled off. Thus, adding the hops at the end of the boil will result in more of these volatiles being present. Remember, of course, that just because the wort may not be currently boiling does not mean volatiles are not being driven off. If the wort is hot, the volatiles will still be vaporizing slowly.

---References & Further Reading---
[1] Sommer, K. & Hertel, M. Engineering fundamentals of the wort boiling process. 31st Congress of the EBC, Venice.

[2] Andrews, J. Evaporating the Myths. Brewer & Distiller International (vol 4, #3, March 2008)

Bamforth, C.W. Wort composition and beer quality. In: Brewing Yeast Fermentation Performance. Ed: K. Smart. Blackwell Science, 2003.

Barnes, Z.C. Brewing Process Control, In: Handbook of Brewing, 2nd Ed. Eds: FG Priest & GG Stewart. Taylor & Francis, 2006.

O’Rourke, T. The funcation of wort boiling. The Brewer International, Feb 2002.

Scotch fermented over peat, eh...

2008-03-19T16:02:00.004Z

One of the things that a geek of any discipline loves to sometimes do is get annoyed when they read something that is completely wrong, and then complain about the ignorance to fact on their low-readership blog to make themselves feel smart (or to waste time when they should be doing real work)...
All of that is true of this post I am writing. The geek topic? Distilling. The thing I read that caused me to divert my productivity? An articles that appeared in The Capital Times of Madison, Wisconsin entitled Heres what sets Irish Whiskeys apart.

In particular, this statement by local pub manager and whiskey expert David Drake, quoted from the article:

"Scotch whiskys are fermented over peat fires in open-top casks, which enables the peat smoke to permeate the liquid," says Drake. "Irish whiskeys, most of which are blends, are always distilled in closed containers. This keeps out the flavor of smoke, and a triple-distillation process adds greater smoothness and refinement to Irish whiskeys."

Its unclear weather maybe he was misquoted or if hes just misinformed, but the statement just doesn't make any sense. Lets review the distilling process to see why that is:

1) Malted barley is produced from barley (obviously). Traditionally, in Scotland anyway, the malted barley is dried by heating the air with fires of burning peat moss. The malt retains the highly flavour-active compounds from the burning peat, which will eventually carry through to the final spirit after distillation. In modern production, small amounts of malt are peated in this way, but a lot of malt is dried with gas furnaces.

2) The malted barley is ground up and mixed with hot water in whats called a mash. Just like in brewing, the purpose of the mash is to use the natural enzymatic power of the malt to break down starch to fermentable sugar for yeast to convert to alcohol.

3) Wort produced from the mash is cooled and yeast added, and the fermentation begins. Yeast convert the sugar to alcohol. This is done in large vats (and there are no fired burning under them).

4) After the fermentation, the 'wash' (as it is now called after fermentation) is distilled in pot or column stills depending on what type of product is being produced (malt Scotch is done in double pot stills).

Ok, now back to the problem with the statement. The first problem is that he claims during scotch fermentation peat fires burning under casks add the peaty flavours. That's just not true, you don't burn a fire under a fermentation, that's ridiculous. So, that means that perhaps the author wrote fermentation when he should have written distillation. So the claim in that case would then be that Scotch whisky is distilled using burning peat fires for heat. Unfortunately most distilleries use steam jackets/coils to heat their stills. So no smoke during distillation. Even if the heat was supplied by peat fires to the stills, there would be no permeation into the liquid, as all stills are in fact closed.

So perhaps I'm being a little picky, and I'm unsure if the expert is wrong or if the article author just wrote it wrong... but in any case the only thing I really want to point out is where the peat character comes from in peaty Scotches:
It comes from the malt production, which happens before fermentation, before distillation, and before aging in oak. Not in distillation, not in fermentation, and not in aging.

There were some other false statements in the article, but nothing I'm going to bother writing about... I should probably get back to work...

Cheers!

Why I want to work in the craft beer industry

2008-03-17T14:51:00.003Z

Theres always a little debate going on with me and my fellow classmates here in the MSc program here sometimes. On one side, I hear a lot of advice telling me that I should try to get a job with a large brewery like Labatt back home. On the other side, I hear a lot of advice telling me I should stick to my desires to work for a small craft brewery or in the small craft industry in some way. I think I have this worked out myself, and here are my thoughts:

Goliath
Working for a large brewery has some certain advantages. Mostly financial, as they would be able to afford to pay me a pretty good salary plus benefits. Second, they usually have pretty good training programs so I would learn a lot. Third, theres usually a bit of security and upward mobility possible. But this all comes at a cost... I wouldn't be able to take pride in the product I produce. Not just because I don't generally enjoy macro-style lagers, but also because I'd be playing such a small part in the overall production. In addition, I've worked for larger companies in the past and I was never really all that happy with how I felt working at such places -- not because they treated people badly at all, just because there was this impending air of everything being somebody else's job.

vs David
Working for the small craft brewery works for me, then, almost just because they are not big. If there is a problem I can talk directly to the boss. My boss wouldn't have a boss with a boss with another boss who reports to the CEO. I don't want to be a small cog in a big system. I want to take pride in the product I literally make myself. I don't just want to "do my job" then go home, collect my pay cheque, and wait for somebody else to make all the big decisions. I want to have the opportunity to makes things better. I want to be brewing one day, filtering the next, and helping sales another day. I don't want to look at a computer screen all day analysing extract efficiency.

Some pegs just don't fit...
I think it takes a certain personality to work for a small company in general. You have to be somebody who can work as a very flexible part of a team. Somebody who really believes in the product being produced. Somebody who believes that getting a decent pay cheque isn't enough to be satisfied with your job. Somebody who wants to feel special by being part of something unique. Somebody who likes the excitement of the risk involved. That kind of thing isn't for everybody, and that's fine. But I think its for me.

So, where am I going to work?
I've started browsing around for possible jobs. My only real problem is that I want to stay in Edmonton, Alberta to be with my girlfriend (plus I still own a condo there). That does tend to limit my possibilities quite a bit, but there are three craft breweries (one I used to work at), one defunct craft brewery with equipment getting dusty, and a brew pub. I'm not back until almost 6 months from now, which is a long time for a small brewery to wait for me. Hopefully somebody needs me around October though!

And if I don't get a job?
I've been considering other possible career options too... If I can sell myself as a brewery consultant to small breweries that would be great, as I could live in Edmonton but travel around to clients. There are lots of very small craft breweries and start ups that don't have the proper technical knowledge to efficiently produce and distribute beer (or even create decent tasting beer in some cases). There is a big difference from making beer on your stove at home and making it for profit even in a small brewery. While I only have a year and a half experience working at a craft brewery, my MSc in Brewing should go quite a long way in convincing people that I know what I'm talking about. This is an industry, however, that puts a lot of weight in solid experience it seems (and for good reason, honestly). So I'm a little cautious as I wouldn't want to over sell myself.

Opening a brewery?
So, if anybody just happens to be opening a brewery and needs an experienced, educated, technical brewer to help start it up, give me an email ;)
Hell, I might even be able to drum up some investment capital...

Cheers!

Comments on "Guinness Holiday"

2008-03-17T13:39:00.005Z

For the past few years now it seems Guinness has been trying to make St. Patty's Day a national holiday in the USA (and I remember it in Canada too). I've never really agreed with this idea. The main reason? Its just a well-crafted marketing campaign. They get to look like the heroes fighting for your right to party... and people buy more Guinness. Really, its in their best interest that the holiday doesn't pass, as then they can do the same campaign next year.

What if St. Patty's day was a US or Canadian holiday? Maybe it could be "Sponsored by Guinness", the first corporate sponsored holiday. There are costs to holidays, too... we have to pay government employees extra for coming into work, businesses may have to pay time +1/2 to their staff, plus all the time/money wasted debating the subject in the various governments.

The other thing to consider is what St. Patty's day has become in North America... it seems to me that its just a big drink-as-much-as-possible festival. Now I obviously like drinking my beer, but I don't agree with ridiculous over-consumption. A holiday on St. Patty's day, lets face it, would bring the worst out of people.

Cheers

Fighting the good fight

2008-03-12T18:05:00.003Z

I've just read a good story from the LA Times about the poor folks in Alabama fighting for change to horribly restrictive liquor laws surrounding beer. Basically, the fearful scripture-interpreting Southern Baptists have been able to keep liquor laws in that state quite restrictive -- no homebrew, no beers above 6% abv. Looks like things are changing slowly, however. Give it a read and be thankful that you live somewhere that allows freedom of choice (unless you live somewhere more restrictive, that is...)

Cheers

Official Beer?

2008-03-11T10:34:00.003Z

It seems, according to this article, that someone wants to make Budweiser the official beer of Missouri.

The reasoning? Well, "We've got a state dinosaur, a state frog, a state reptile, a state flower, a state nut, but no one has given a thought to a company that's been in Missouri for many, many years and is bringing prosperity to our state and manufacturing a product in our state that many people enjoy". The result would be, hopefully, that more people would be inclined to visit the state.

Ok... but why does anything need an "official" anything at all? What does officiality do? Well we see it at the olympics... companies pay dearly for the right to market themselves as the official whatever. But a state? Having an official animal (while I think is silly anyway) is different than having an official multi-billion dollar corporation's product. Does having an official state frog written on paper, voted into law, make people want to go to Missouri? "Honey, where should we go for vacation... hmm... OH look at this, Missouri has a state frog! Lets go see it!" I'd argue that it doesn't. So why should having an official beer do the same?

What about other businesses in the state that have been around for a long time and bring prosperity? Oh, and 77% of Missourians are Christian... perhaps that could be the official religion?

I think the idea is a good example of what 'lawmakers' do to try and make themselves look useful when they don't want to tackle bigger problems. Like when you're supposed to be studying for an exam and you find any menial task to avoid it... perhaps by writing a blog post on something that you wouldn't normally care about...
...on that note, I guess I have to get back to studying.

Cheers!

Lo.key's new album

2008-03-04T16:24:00.001Z

Leif has put out a new album. I haven't listened to it yet, but you ought to go here and download it and enjoy it.

Inside Scottish Distilling

2008-02-29T08:00:00.004Z

This term in "beer school" we're learning all about distilling. And since my university is in Scotland, most of what we learn is about Scotch whisky. I've knows a bit about whisky for some time now, but only what I've been told from other people. Some of it was right, some of it wrong. The amount I've learned in the last few weeks has been quite phenomenal. Most of it was what you'd expect... distilleries, oak casks, maturation, etc. Whisky is a product that has a long history and is surrounded by some romanticism... but certainly its an industry that has also had to grow and adapt to make a profitable business. So the unfortunate part about learning the depths of the distilling industry is you also have some of that romanticism shattered. I would say, however, that a lot in the Scotch industry is still done quite traditionally... more so than other industries.

Anyway, I digress, as the real point of this story is to tell you about some places we're recently visited on class trips. We've visited a couple of distilleries of course. But thats not what I want to talk about. Distilleries are interesting, but they are usually open to the public. I'm going to talk about some locations that few people get to see: a copper smiths where they make the stills, a cooperage where they make the oak barrels, and a huge warehouse where they age the whisky. All three are out near Alloa, NW of Edinburgh on the edge of the highlands.

First, a little background story. All three locations are owned by Diageo, a company that produces many premium alcoholic beverage brands. As far as Scotch goes, they own 28 distilleries in Scotland (about 1/3). Talisker, Carol Ila, Glenkinchie, Lagavulin, and many other single malts are all part of their family. Most Scotch, however, is blended into brands such as J&B and Johnnie Walker (which they also own).

Diageo is quite supportive of the brewing & distilling program here, and have been very kind to give us tours of many of their sites. Diageo is quite well vertically integrated, owning all three places we visited. The first place was a copper smiths where we were quite privileged to see just how copper stills are made.

Copper smiths: two new stills! (Click any photo for a larger version!)

A still is, basically, a big boil kettle that evaporates alcohol then condenses the alcohol-rich vapour. Most Scottish malt distilleries use two stills... the first to strip the wash (beer at about 7-8% abv) of its alcohol and flavour compounds. This creates the low wines (a liquid of about 25% abv), which is then distilled in the second still to approximately 70% abv. Most stills are made of copper, which reacts with sulphur to remove it from the product. The result of this is that the stills need to be replaced every 10 years or so. The Abercrombie Copper smiths do just this for all of Diageo's distilleries.

Putting together shell-and-tube condensers that will one day cool new spirit from vapour to liquid.

The construction of a still starts with the welding of copper plates together, followed sometimes by a machine hammering to get the basic shape. The final shape is all pounded in by hand, which is still the best way to do it as it turns out. Needless to say, the shop we visited was quite noisy! At the shop they were producing 14 new stills for a new distillery that will come online next year. Stills are designed to a very specific shape... a small change in design can change the final spirit character. They have to work to exacting specifications. It was very interesting to see where stills are born, it certainly looked like a lot of work.

Foreground: the bottom of a new still in production.

Oak barrels are another key to the whisky industry. By law, all Scotch has to be produced in Scotland and aged for at least three years in barrels less than 700 L in volume. Oak barrels come second-hand from two sources: the American whisky industry (bourbon), and Europe (wine/sherry/etc). A cooper is a highly skilled tradesman that can build these barrels, which consist of staves (thick wood strips) bent into shape and held together with metal rings. The nature of the wood and the compression between the staves results in a liquid-tight seal (although alcohol and water can evaporate through the cask over time).

1) Bunched staves as they arrive from overseas. 2) A cooper placing the staves back together to create the appropriate sized barrel.

The oak barrels are broken down into the staves, packed on a shipping skid, and shipped over to Scotland. The coopers here put them back together. In traditional cooperages this is all done by hand, but the location we visited was machine assisted (its still a really hard job though!). Casks are charred with a flame on the inside to release wood flavour compounds (and create a layer of carbon that will absorb undesirable compounds from the whisky).

1) The cooper tightens the staves with a machine to place the upper hoop on. 2) casks are steamed to expand the wood, and charred for flavouring.

Inside a charred barrel.

Once the barrels are put back together, newly charred ones are sent off for "sherrying". Now I'll tell you, this is where one of the romantic 'myths' about Scotch that I had heard was refuted right in front of my eyes. The story goes that oak cask with sherry from Spain are shipped to Scotland, where the sherry is removed and bottled for consumption, and the barrels are used for Scotch maturation. Not so. They have a big tank of sherry... they fill the newly charred casks with sherry... they let it age for three months... then they empty the sherry back into the sherry tank (through a filter). They can use the same sherry batch for about 8 or 9 years. Yes, that is what they do.
Unfortunately, they don't allow you to take photos in any area that has ethanol floating around in the air, so you'll have to take my word for it (and lets face it, it makes more sense than shipping these casks all over the place).

1) A machine to help place the lid in the cask. 2) A machine to push down the metal rings that keeps the wood tight together.

The purpose of adding the sherry to the cask is a little bit different that I had thought, too. The main purpose of the sherry is to remove some character from a newly charred cask. Otherwise, the character of the wood would overpower the distillery character of the whisky over the maturation time. Apparently it doesn't add colour, that comes from the char and the wood.

Finished casks!

Moving on, the third place we were privileged to see was the Blackgrange warehouse. Blackgrange houses about 3.5 million casks of whisky. In duty owed in taxes alone, its about 10 billion pounds sterling. Needless to say... its HUGE. They have very strict regulations too... you can't bring anything that could possibly contain liquid on site, you can't bring matches or lighters, nor cell phones, nor cameras. They are quite paranoid about any accident.

Anyway, there are three key parts to this operation. First, tanker trucks from carrying new make spirit from the distilleries arrive and their contents are pumped to vats. The new make spirit is diluted to usually 63% for aging to get the ideal flavour reactions with the oak wood. New make is horrid stuff, I wouldn't drink it. This is one reason you age for at least three years! The new make is then pumped into casks, sealed with a bung, and carted off to be placed in a massive warehouse. Every cask is bar coded... they know where every cask in that place is!

After aging, casks are brought out from storage and disgorged (emptied). This is done along a troph... simply take out the bung, stick an air tube in the hole (for faster emptying), and turn it upside down. This isn't a terribly sanitary operation, but nothing going to grow in a strong alcohol solution anyway! The whisky is pumped into a big tank, mixed with air for an hour or so, then pumped into tanker trucks. The trucks head off to the packaging facility, where the whisky is filtered, diluted to sales strength (usually 40-45% abv) and bottled!

I think I've rambled on about this enough for now; its hard to convey the enlightenment I've gained in the last few weeks into a small amount of space. If you want to see more photos you can check out my flickr set at http://www.flickr.com/photos/brianwestcott/sets/72157603996924944/

Cheers!

Why do all new records sound the same?

2008-02-27T23:22:00.003Z

I've been learning a lot about audio engineering this week, and was fascinated to discover that something I thought about modern music was essentially true: that a lot of it does, indeed, all sound the same.
This article can explain it a lot better than I can, and you should read it.

What it all comes down to is the 'loudness war', which is another interesting topic that you should read about. Basically, pretty much everything you're going to hear on the radio and on most popular CDs is as LOUD as possible. This leads to a reduced dynamic range (which is the difference between the loudest and quietest parts of a song) as well as distortion in the sound.

Anyway, read the links for yourself, as they are far more informative that I could ever be. And stop listening to the shitty loud commercial radio stations in your local city. But thats a different topic...

Coming soon: We've just visited a cooperage (place where they make oak barrels for the scotch whisky industry), a coppersmiths (where they make the stills) and the Blackgrange fucking huge whisky warehouse (where Diageo stores all the scotch for aging)... so expect a write up on all of that soon.
Cheers!

I music too

2008-02-21T23:30:00.004Z

So in addition to going to beer school, when I'm not studying (which is often, sadly) I sometimes make some mixes in Ableton Live.... here is one such mix. Its not really for 'dancing' or whatever, its really just stuff that I thought sounded good mixed together. Sofar the response has been quite positive. Here is the link to the mp3 (1 hr long):
Click here for the mix

And, if you're interested, here is the tracklist.

I also have another mix from a long time ago that is entirely made of Amon Tobin samples... click here for it.

Anyway, thats all for now.
Cheers

Three Sheets to the Wind

2008-02-19T23:17:00.003Z

When I was in Cambridge for the cask ale festival last month I took a day to wander the city (photos here). During that wander, I happened upon a book store. Within that book store, a colorful book with a pint of beer on the front caught my eye. The title was instantly interesting to me, "Three Sheets to the Wind: One man's quest for the meaning of beer". Wow, sounds like just the book for me, right? Who wrote this?! "Pete Brown", eh? ... that name sounds familiar... where have I heard it before... hmmm...

OH YEAH... he was of course the guy who wrote "A man walks into a pub: a sociable history of beer", a book which I enjoyed a little too much (perhaps because reading it made me want to drink beer more than usual, or perhaps because it solidified my beer-nerdedness foundation even more). So I'm sold on this new book for sure.

I'll spare you a "full" book review for now, since I'm only 15/19ths done, aside from a quick synopsis: Pete travels the world's beer-drinkingest countries to examine the socio-cultural aspects of beer (the word 'socio-cultural' implies something boring, but this is arguably the most interesting socio-cultural thing that has ever existed). Pete's writing style is relaxed and informal, just like he was telling you a story while at the pub. Lots of humor (sometimes subtle, my favorite kind) and some excellent interesting observations of drinking culture around the world. There is a general theme that I love, which was presented in his last book as well... further confirmation that there are people out there that think about beer the way I do, as more than just an alcohol delivery method. A beverage that can (and should) taste good, that can bring people together for a chat, that can help remove the walls we put up around ourselves, that can help celebrate the wins... and mourn the losses. This book shows how people around the world do just this.

So unless the last 4/19ths of the book are shite, I will be recommending this to beer nerds everywhere (although I think its quite applicable to anybody in the general population too -- I'm certain to force my girlfriend to read it to understand what I think beer.. ."is").
Oh, and it turns out Pete Brown has a blog here.

And just because I can, here is a recent photo for no reason whatsoever:

Cheers!

Pilot Brewery at Heriot-Watt University / ICBD

2008-02-11T23:54:00.000Z

So its about time I posted some photos of the pilot brewery here at school. Its basically a 200 L system custom made just for the school for training purposes. These photos and more can be viewed by clicking on them or as part of this set.

The brewhouse. In front is a mash filter, a common device in larger breweries. There is also a lauder tun, which is a bit more traditional. In the middle to the back is the mash mixer / boil kettle, and a cereal cooker beside it to the left.

Mash mixer / boil kettle. The boil kettle is fitter with an external calandria, which I think is pretty much the best available wort boiling method if you can afford it.

In the front are some cold conditioning tanks, flanked by the fermenters. Everything is glycol jacketed and the fermenters have heaters too.

Nice small plate heat exchanger.

A taken-apart sheet filter. The beer produced here isn't usually meant to be sterile. It doesn't have to last more than a few weeks usually, so nothing fancy is needed.

A wall of bottles from around the world, mostly from former brewing students I believe... can you spot the Alley Kat Barley Wine bottle? Thats the brewery I used to work at in Edmonton.

Fucking old bottles... the Bass bottle says it was brewed in 1869!!

There is also a pilot distillery. This is the spirit still, with a bubble cap distillation column attached to it.

Well, thats it for this update. Enjoy the photos.
Cheers

Ely Photos

2008-02-08T00:13:00.000Z

Just a link to my set of photos on flickr from Ely, near Cambridge, in England.

Here are a couple:

(Touchdown!!)

Vertical Stitch of cathedral.

Brewing to Style

2008-02-08T00:03:00.000Z

Just a short thought about brewing beer to a style (say, from the BJCP guide). Basically: don't bother with it once you're marginally proficient at creating recipes. Make "beer". Be creative and don't limit yourself to whatever guidelines exist from style guides, see what comes out.

Unless, of course, you are trying to re-create a beer you like... but why are you doing that? You can buy that beer... make a new one that is your own!

Perhaps I'm just feeling out of the box tonight with no real outlet for it... either way...
Cheers.

Dark Island & Cambridge Photos

2008-02-02T20:09:00.000Z

I was pleased to learn this week that the campus student pub will be serving bottles of Dark Island from Orkney. I'll actually be able to go there and have a decent beer now.

I've fallen quite ill in the last few days, which has limited my ability to post reasonable blog postings, finish my assignments, and generally be useful. So I'll be short today and just post some photos from my Cambridge trip:

More Ruralish Scotland Photos

2008-01-30T21:08:00.000Z

I'm pretty backed up with publishing photos, so I do a few per day these days. Sunday two weeks ago I want on a hike in the area around Heriot-Watt, here are a few more photos from that hike...

I've been playing around with de-saturating photos these days, I like the effect it creates I think. Its like a compromise between B&W and colour.

More about Cambridge tomorrow I hope!
Cheers

Cambrige Winter Cask Ale Festival

2008-01-30T01:19:00.000Z

It was a little daunting walking into the packed room, as there was almost no room to move between the crowd. I have to admit I'm not too fond of crowds, so I was getting a little ansy. But my resolve held, and I forced my way toward the bar. For I was here at my very first CAMRA cask ale festival in the UK, and nothing was going to stop me at this point. I waited about 5 minutes to be served, at which point I randomly selected a half of Bartram's Marld.
Long story short: I had a great time. However, I wasn't terribly impressed by most of the beers I had... Now before I get murdered, let me qualify the second claim, after which I will make the short story long.

I said that I wasn't impressed by most of the beers that I had. Thats not to mean that there were no good beers there, its just that bad luck and bad timing resulted in me not getting to drink them. We arrived around 16:45 on the very last day of the festival, and at this point a lot of casks were empty. I assume that word spread about the best beers and those ran out quickly. One point against me for timing.

Second point against me... while we had a beer menu, it really was like shooting for fish while ordering a half of beer. I'd hear about a good one, or read something on the menu that I liked, but by the time I got a chance to order it was already out. So I'd end up ordering whatever was still on. Sometimes that didn't work out so well. Not that I really had any BAD beers, I just didn't have anything that really stuck out as awesome.

I do recall later in the night having one that did stick out as quite nice, that being Rhymney Dark from Merthyr Tydfil, Mid Glamorgan. Like I said, it was later in the night. But I had just finished an unfortunate bout of a couple of halves of heavier beers, and this at 4% abv was quite a nice change. Not only that, it was a nice easy to drink dark beer (I stop short of saying it was a stout or a porter, it was just a nice dark beer). I wish I was able to try a full pint, but alas, when I went to buy the round they were out. I instead ordered a full pint of some 7% dark beer that I can't recall nor find on my beer menu, but it was acceptable, even if it did reduce my sobriety quite a bit.

The first beer of the night was pretty decent as well: Bartrams Marld from Ipswitch, Suffolk. While I didn't take specific notes on this beer either, I recall it being a solid English bitter. Quite a bit of hop flavour if I recall correctly... and I do know at the end I was a little put off actually by some flavour unfortunately. I had trouble placing it, it didn't last into the aftertaste (which gave my mouth that lovely hoppy taste I love). I really liked it at first, I don't know what happened at the end there.

Now I know I'm being quite a horrible beer reporter by not taking notes on each beer I drink. Fact is I was concentrating on socialization for the night, really. I was there to have fun, and like I said, nothing really stuck out as unique and better than any beer in recent memory (I'm sure I'll get a few comments to the effect of "what the bloody hell are you talking about, there was X and Y and Z you wanker!" but lets not forget that I didn't try (or have the chance to try) most of the beer there).

I had headed down from Edinburgh to Cambridge with my friend and co-brewing-student Simon, not only to drink beer, but to also visit my friends Melissa and Jon as well as see the beautiful city again. We arrived at the beer festival at quarter to five or so. After a couple of beers we mozied downstairs to see the sights. The fun of the evening really started up when my small female companion, Melissa, managed to squeeze her way into a small table. I came over and joined for awhile, happy to have a place to rest for awhile. Its at this point that we met Valerie, Mike, Bruce, and Kevin. Valerie was also from Canada visiting Mike but moving on soon. Mike was a postdoc doing... something I unfortunately forget. Bruce was a pig farmer and sausage maker from somewhere near wales. And Kevin was ... seemingly a decent bloke I never got much chance to talk to, other than try his good dry cider he had found. All around, a great fun crowd to add to ours.

The night carried on as nights do with new friends; the beer flowing, the conversation changing from the mundane slowly toward the ridiculous. The cameras come out and an outrageous amount of digital film is 'wasted'. I have many other cool photos beyond what I've publicly displayed on my flickr set, but I tend not to publish photos of people I know without their permission. The whole night really reminded me of how things worked when I backpacked around Europe in 2003... there are friends everywhere, you just need to meet them and drink a few beers. Beer as the great socializer.
Eventually my memories of the night become hazy, which makes it hard to relay the information of what happened...

I think we left the event around 8:30 pm or so, with most of the beer being gone by this point besides beers > 7.5%. As much as I'd like to try them, I don't think I could handle much more at that point.

My friend and I had a pint at a pub on the way back, after which I intended to write my girlfriend back in Canada a nice long love e-letter like I often do while in that state, but after laying down I realized that getting up was not an option.

In the end, it was a hell of a time. In the next installment: my 7 hr walk around Cambridge and the photos I took while doing that.

(Yep, thats me!)
In the end, I fell like ass the next day, but not too bad.

Cheers!

What if two clones fell in love?

2008-01-29T20:26:00.001Z

Wouldn't that take homosexuality to a new level?

Cambridge Travels 1

2008-01-28T21:45:00.000Z

So this weekend I took a wee jaunt down to Cambridge to visit with some friends, see the beautiful city (again) and hit up the CAMRA Winter Ales festival. I was disappointed by almost nothing... the weather was excellent both days, I didn't spend too much money, I took lots of photos (423 to be exact), and tried some interesting beers. Unfortunately we were there on the last day, and by about 8 pm pretty much all the beer was gone except the 8-11% stuff (and I really couldn't have too much more (don't worry though, mother, I was a good boy as always (yes, my mother reads my blog))).

I'll do a write-up on [what I remember of] the beer festival in a day or two, as I have about 30 min to get about an hour worth of chores done since I just got home. And why am I home so late you ask, interested as always for an answer? Well, let me regale you with a tale of woe I've only heard about in British rail system lore...

I took Monday off school to spend all day Sunday exploring Cambridge taking photos. I think I got some pretty good ones, by the way, which I shall eventually publish on flickr. So Monday morning I booked a set of trains leaving at 10:33, arriving in Edinburgh at 15:30 or so. First problem: in Peterbrough apparently there was something wrong with the reservation system, so all seat reservations were canceled. Luckily the train was only about 1/2 full so the annoyance was minor. I ended up sitting by an interesting gentleman traveling home from Melbourne to Edinburgh. I regret not catching his name before the events that occur soon.

Carrying on, just past Newcastle the train stops. Not uncommon, I suppose. I read my book (new book from Pete Brown, who writes about beer and I really like his style, I'll write a review one day... but I digress) for awhile and realized that about 20 minutes had passed while we were stopped and people were getting fussy. The conductor by this point announces that there are problems with the overhead wires up ahead, and they have no clue about what this will mean for our future overland transportation. 30 min... 40 min... after 45 minutes they announce that we are returning to Newcastle station... we'll be put on buses that will take us to a station further on, where we will catch a train to Edinburgh.

I forget the name of the town we took the bus to, but it was a bit of a zoo with a train of people getting onto buses. After a one hour bus ride, I ponder if I should just head into the local to get a pint and a bite to eat, since I believed this whole powerline outage was going to completely mess up the entire north-south train system and we might be there awhile. I was right, however I did not go to the pub. We stood at the station for about an hour (oh, its about 17:50 now, by the way)... a high speed northbound train passed through the station at some point... a little demoralizing, to say the least. Eventually a train comes, and we arrive in Edinburgh at around 6:30, almost 3 hours late. Well, at least rush hour is over...

In anycase, it turns out that if we were on the express train before us, it would have been fine. If we were on the express train after us, we would have been late (actually, as far as I can tell the train we boarded was the train after ours) but we wouldn't have had to get off and bus it. I figure they started busing us then the wire problem was fixed, so we just got caught in "emergency broken response".
To add insult to people traveling to Aberdeen, though, they canceled the service past Edinburgh. Ha.

Apparently there was a bloke trying to travel all the way to the Shetland islands today and certainly he missed his ferry. I hope the National Express put that guy up in a hotel!

Anyway... ok I wrote too much about the train, so now I should end this excerpt of my weekend travels. More tomorrow... in theory.

Cheers!

360 Panorama and Cambridge Beer Festival

2008-01-24T23:40:00.000Z

First, I'll post this... I just put together a huge 360 degree hilltop view from 115 photos. Its a little crude, but if you click on the photo below you can see what it was like at the top of that hill:

Second, tomorrow I'm heading down to a CAMRA winter cask ales festival in Cambridge, England. I've been to Cambridge before and it is quite beautiful. It shall be nice to go again... I have a friend who just moved there, and another guy in the brewing program here is from Cambridge so I'm sure the combination of good beer and friends will make for a merry weekend... hey, maybe you'll see me there!

Cheers!

Brian's Hiking Blog??

2008-01-21T20:48:00.000Z

"Brian" you say, "why has your so-called 'beer-blog' not had any updates about beer?"
Well, I suppose its simple... I'm in 'beer school' and by all accounts a professional brewer by trade. My classes all relate to beer, so there is a lot of beer going on in my head. But of course I need some hobbies that take my mind off of beer. It seems that I've turned to photography, hiking, and reading (btw, Ian Rankin writes some pretty good books set in Edinburgh). In a way, this beer blog was an escape from my old regular job too. I'll keep it up though, I'm thinking actually that it might be a good idea to start writing "articles" about topics I learn in school. It would be helpful certainly to learn the material after all...

For now, I'll leave you with 2 bits of information. First, I finally found a decent pub to go to with some cask ales within walking distance of where I live (on campus). You really can't get a pint of decent beer on campus, its all lagers. I suppose theres Guinness... but still. The Riccarton Arms has two cask ales on tap (Deuchar's and a guest beer), decent prices (£2.40) for a pint, not too busy, and its frequented by mostly locals. Its about a 25 minute walk from campus, and I've enjoyed going there to sit and read my Ian Rankin book(s). I suppose I could, in theory, also do homework there too... hm, maybe it'll happen.
Anyway, that makes me happy.

Second, I've taken to hiking of late, as I need to get in better shape. I jog too, but thats not as interesting. On Sunday (the 20th) I took off at 8:30 in the morning from the campus and headed west. About 7 hrs, 16 km, and 633 photos later I returned home. It was quite an interesting day. I enjoy relatively aimless wandering. I ended up hiking through a bog to get up a small hill. I took some good photos, but they'll take time to process. Here is a link to the photos I've processed so far, and some examples. Other than that... cheers!

Cruach Ardrain Hike

2008-01-19T18:20:00.000Z

Now I know what you're thinking... why haven't I been blogging lately? Not for lack of content nor time... like most people with an essentially pointless blog, sometimes I just don't get around to writing anything. Oh well. Anyway...

Last weekend I went on a hike up Cruach Ardrain. The weather was absolutely horrible. The wind gusts were enough to knock me over if I didn't hit the ground and dig into the snow. It rained the whole way up, with the rain coming in sideways. I had a rain cover for my bag, but it kept blowing off, leaving the interior to get soaked. The air temp was above 0 C, which was nice but also meant that the snow was melting, creating rivers of ice water under the snow that filled the inside of my boots again and again. I was ignorant to the weather that morning so the socks I wore were too light. My feet froze... not quite past the point of loosing feeling in them, but still quite uncomfortable. My entire body was soaked to the bone with either rain or sweat. I was grumpy before we hit the summit, but on the way down my morale improved greatly by sliding down the hills on my butt on the way down. Plus by that point the rain let up, and we were on the backside of the mountain so the wind died down a lot.

Basically I got my ass kicked by the mountain and the weather. I wasn't in great shape to begin with, and the weather really got to me. But I was determined to take it to the top (not that I could have turned around at all, it was white-out conditions by the time we got into the cloud cover, and I'd probably get lost on my own!). But I learned some key lessons for next time, although knowing my luck I'll pack all sorts of extra stuff and it'll be a sunny day. Oh well, better safe than sorry.

I'm glad I went, and I certainly learned to bring better stuff next time. Which should be a couple of weeks from now, up Ben Lawers.

My few photos from the trip can be found here (click the link). The camera I brought (Canon G7) got pretty wet, but still worked fine. I guess it can take a bit of moisture. Thats good to know!

Vist to Baird's Malt

2007-12-06T20:19:00.000Z

Last week our class took a trip to see a malt production facility. Malted barley comes from... well, barley, and the primary dry ingredient in beer. Baird's Malt, about 30 min outside of Edinburgh, processes quite a bit of malt for the distilling industry which is taking off right now (they have other plants elsewhere that make other malts). I took a few photos... here they are:

Revisionist Marketing - Schlitz Brewing Company

2007-11-14T19:07:00.000Z

I was just writing a paper and looking up some relevant examples for quality management. I was interested to find in a textbook the story of Schlitz Brewing Company. Turns out that in the 1970s the brilliant management of the company decided they could cut costs and make lots of money. So they added lots of corn syrup instead of malt, warmed up their fermentations, and basically decreased the brewing turn around time by 50%.

Great, right? They could make way higher returns on sales and assets than anybody else in the market. One problem: nobody except the hardcore alcoholics that wanted the cheapest beer possible regardless of flavour would buy the stuff. Sales fell 40% by 1980, the stock crashed from $69 to $5 and the 100 year old brewery was eventually sold off. You can find this and more info at this Wikipedia article.

You can still buy Schlitz beer from Pabst Brewing Company, presumably with a better brewing process. So I went to their site just to see what it said. I found this statement in the marketing-speak:

Schlitz is one of the undiscovered gems of American beer and today, young adult consumers are embracing the brew because it has stayed true to itself and hasn't "sold out".

Hm... if I read my history accurately back there, Schlitz is the ultimate definition of "selling out"; they tried to make money by not respecting their customers enough to think they would buy an inferior product.

Anyway, its not that important, it just reinforces my already strong belief that most marketing we get these days doesn't respect our intelligence. Plus I haven't posted in awhile...

Cheers

Specialty Malt as a Beer Stabilizer?

2007-10-29T23:20:00.000Z

I was doing some research last week and I came across one published paper from last year that was quite interesting, and I thought I'd share with you all. ("Influence of malt browing degree on lipoxygenase activity" Sovrano, S. Buiatti, S. Anese, M. 2006. Food Chemistry 99 711-717).

To start, there are a few science-y things I should mention. Lipids that naturally occur in malted barley can be broken down by several conditions during the mash and brewing process to form 2-trans-nonenal, a compound that creates a very cardboardy flavour in beer. One of the major pathways for this lipid breakdown is provided by the enzyme lipoxygenase (also naturally found in malt). Lipoxygenase oxidizes (attacks) the lipids to form the precursors that eventually create the dreaded 2-trans-nonenal.

The paper found, however, that specialty malts (crystal, carapils, roasted/black malt, etc) which are heated/kilned to cook the insides of the barley lack lipoxygenase activity. In addition, they found that mashes created with specialty malts also had a lower lipoxygenase activity than would be expected. Indeed, the specialty malts were actually inhibiting the action of lipoxygenase! Why? Well its rather complicated, so I'll let you nerdy types read the article yourselves and save the rest of you the boredom.

What does this mean to you? Well, possibly not much, as many all-grain homebrewers already use a bit of specialty malt in the grist, so there probably isn't much new for you. But if you're brewing a light-coloured beer (lager), consider the addition of a small amount of carapils or light crystal malt to the grist, it shouldn't alter the colour much and may help your homebrew shelf life.

Lokey rocks it again...

2007-10-20T23:30:00.000+01:00

Technically this isn't about beer, but senior mixologist lo.key has created another work of fine art... you can download his most recent set (7 parts) at his website, http://www.lokeymassive.net/. That is all...
cheers!

Beer Reviews

2007-10-19T14:35:00.000+01:00

So I suppose its time to write a bit about some beers I've had here. Now I haven't been that great on keeping notes on this but this is the few I've written:

Edinburgh "3" Scotch Ale (Cask, 4.3%)
Very malty, sweet but balanced with a dry finish. Appropriate "scotch ale" style for sure. Very drinkable, no offensive flavours. Very dark amber-red with moderate head.

Clipper IPA (Cask, 4.2%)
Not much on aroma or flavour from hops. Medium hop bitterness, pleasant finish. Not very malty. Dry finish. Quite nice, but also not "interesting". Very drinkable though.

Stewart 80 (Cask, abv?)
"Exactly what I think of when I think of a Scottish beer". Malty but not too sweet. Slightly fruity start, very nice dry finish, some roast notes. Quite excellent!

Timothy Taylor Landlord (Cask)
Very fruity/estery character, likely from yeast strain used. Again, a dry finish... "proper english pint". Honestly, I found it not that easy to drink, but it was "interesting".

"Moo Coo Brew" (Cask)...
unfortunately I remember little about this beer ;)

Where do I like to drink? So far I've found no place better than "The Blue Blazer" down on Bread st. I've been to the Guildford Arms too... but I found it a little pricey. "The Golden Rule" is also a pretty good place with lots of cask pumps.

Thats all for now..
Cheers!

A post about beer finally

2007-10-07T11:54:00.000+01:00

First, here is a stiched up wide angle photo of my dorm room. You can see I've started a small bottle collection up top there. So far I've had some bad and some good; really, a lot of the stuff seems to have a bit of an off flavour just from being stored in the bottle warm at the local Asda under fluorescent lights... but I at least can get an idea of the flavor. Some of my 'favorites' (of the bottle stuff) is the Well's John Bull Bitter, Greene King IPA, and Deuchars IPA. Now I know the first two come from big-ass breweries in England, but too bad, they were pretty good.

Now Deuchars IPA is a good story, as its rather local (from the Caledonian Brewery here in Edinburgh) and widely available as a real cask ale. Quite a good standard beer to have, its nice and hoppy but balanced... not over hopped like the American version of the style. I also love that the beer over here is lower in alcohol. Beer over 4.5% or so is considered "strong". Most beers I've had the pleasure of trying are on average 4% abv. Now I know most people are going to throw their hands up and say "well thats stupid, you have to spend more to get drunk!"... but the point of drinking good beer is to be able to enjoy it. Honestly, if I can find a good beer at 3.2-3.8% that has lots of flavour I'll get it, as I can drink lots of good stuff without getting as drunk.

Anyway, Friday was a good day. At around 1:30 in the afternoon we arrived at an excellent cask ale pub called the Blue Blazer where several fine cask beers were tried. Then back to the university for the Scotch Whisky Society's first tasting of the school year, which involved about 30 people drinking 6 bottles of scotch. There was Glenkinchie 12, Glenmorangie 10, as well as my favorite for the night Carol Ila 12. Then back to another good cask ale pub downtown for more of the same...

Luckily in my advancing years I decided at about quarter to midnight to take an escape route home with another fellow rather than going to the next pub. I'm sure by doing so I saved myself quite a bit of hangover... I was also trying to beat having to take the night bus home, which costs £2.50 rather than the regular £1! I've also become cheap now that I don't have a job.

Anyway, I feel bad for not writing down any reviews of the beers... next time. I know I enjoyed the "Three Sisters" which was a nice Scottish style beer, perhaps a 70 or 80 shilling beer but with more hop character than one would expect. Quite sweet, well balanced, and interesting enough to make a mark in my mind.

Cheers!

So, Hows Scotland You Ask?

2007-09-30T01:26:00.000+01:00

So now that I've been here at Heriot-Watt University on the outskirts of Edinburgh for a little over half a week, I bet the few readers I have to this blog want to know how its going. To sum it up...

Pretty good.
Of course I don't really know anybody yet, but I've met several nice people. I've moved into my residence room and have pasted it with photos and am slowly making it my own (ie, making it messy). I took some photos around the university yesterday.

Its a very nice campus, lots of green space. If you click here you can see more photos from the parks around the campus. The walk from my dorm to the place I'll be taking classes is about 10 min. Theres a little convenience store on campus, but for any real food selection I'll have to head out into town for a Tesco or ASDA. Not to worry though, the bus system is pretty awesome. When there isn't too much traffic its a 15-20 min ride to the city center.

I registered for my courses the other day too, its a pretty decent schedule. 9:15 start every day. Some days busy with classes, other days only one lecture. I'll just have to keep on top of my reading, as this is expensive and I haven't been in school for almost 5 years. But its brewing/distilling, and I've had a passion for that for awhile... plus my biochemistry background should help.

Apparently the university was built near a graveyard too.

There are several pubs on campus, but the ones run by the university seem closed on the weekend. I liked the Lecern Bar which seems like more of an "old man" bar. Better beer selection than at the student union pubs. Its too bad that due to marketing the most popular beers (and thus the ones sold on tap) are pretty much foreign lagers... not really my thing, I'm looking for a fine english bitter or scottish ale. They exist luckily, but not much variation available.

Today I took a hike around central Edinburgh today, its a very nice city. And easier to get around than you'd think. You can't really get lost since you can almost always see the castle or other landmarks.

The Castle
Oddly, I remembered my way around the city from the last time I was here in 2003. Which led me back to Bobby's Bar where I had a couple of pints of CASK ale (finally!) - first Caledonian 80 (4.?%), a Scottish style of beer thats supposed to be quite malty, but I think the cask was a bit off. Then a pint of Deuchar's IPA (I probably misspelt that), which was rather tasty and only 3.8%. I'd have another pint or three of that.

Taken whilst crossing North bridge.

I wandered around quite a bit and snapped lots of photos, the best of which can be found by clicking here. Of course I had to try for a good sunset shot, this was the best I could muster:

Theres something about the way the light reflects in the air in Scotland that I love... in the evening when the sun is getting low there is a ... colour... its hard to describe and I can't seem to capture its essence in a photo (always overexposed or the colour just doesn't come through)... but its peaceful and feels "old".
Its a beautiful country, I must make sure I leave time to see it.

Cheers!

Packed and ready...leaving on a jet plane

2007-09-24T01:43:00.000+01:00

Well, today I did the final pack and such... I fit everything I can think of into two bags with room and weight to spare:

All of my crap...

Cool vacuum bag that shrinks when you suck the air out...

Compressed bag... much smaller! As long as the airport guys don't want to search it...

Yep, everything in 2 bags. The duffel is 18 kg and the backpack is 16.

It really doesn't look like much does it?

Anyway, my flight is tomorrow at 18:40. I should be settled in my dorm room any everything hopefully by Tuesday evening, perhaps I can get internet again. Although by that point I may want to sleep... or socialize with what are hopefully some cool flatmates...
Hm, I just realized that I don't have a travel alarm clock... I should do something about that.

Anyway... cheerio!

Pizza Beer...

2007-09-23T00:37:00.000+01:00

Apparently there is a pizza beer now... I'd like to try it: http://www.topix.net/content/trb/2007/09/pizza-beer-coming-to-a-store-shelf-near-you

SWEET MERCIFUL CRAP, I'm leaving for Scotland in 9 days

2007-09-16T00:14:00.000+01:00

When you know you have a big life change coming its sometimes hard to actually think its going to happen when its far away. Then one day as the day of the change approaches you reach a sudden realization: "Holy fuck, its actually happening".

For me, that day was today.

As I've mentioned before, I am a brewer, and I've been accepted to do my MSc in Brewing & Distilling at Heriot-Watt university in Edinburgh, Scotland. It will be awesome. I am looking forward to the life change. But at the same time, it seemed like something in my head that was happening to someone else, like a movie. Today it really clicked that I only have 9 more days here.
9 days to get my finances in order.
9 days to figure out how to pay my tuition without a UK bank account.
9 days to get the lease of my condo in Edmonton in order.
9 days to pack my life in 2 checked bags under 23 kg and one carry on.
9 days to buy my luggage and perhaps a few new clothing items.
9 days to say a temporary goodbye to my friends here.
9 days process almost 300 photos from my travels in the last few weeks as I won't do them after I leave (its a serious hobby).
9 days to pre-read brewing manuals and biochemistry texts to refresh myself on the process and the biology.
9 days to short-list the brewing books I want to take with me, as they are heavy.
3 days to spend with my lovely girlfriend (she moves back to Manitoba on the 17th...).
6 days after that to be sad that I won't see her for about 3 months.
9 days to keep it together and not freak out too much.
9 days to post the beer reviews that I haven't posted yet.

Ok, well I'm going to get on some of these... cheers!

More travels

2007-09-11T03:09:00.000+01:00

Well, my travels and slackage continues, since my last post I've been to Canmore, Edmonton, Rural Alberta, Canmore again, and now I'm in sunny Kelowna, BC remembering that I like wine in addition to beer. So perhaps I'll just take some time in the next few days to catch up with beer reviews and travel stories.

One story I didn't tell is that when I was in NYC I bought a nice new lens for my camera. I picked up a Canon 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM lens, which I've been using almost exclusively since I bought it. Its fast focusing, and the image stabilizer is an awesome feature. And of course buying it in the states saved me about $200 CAN. My newest flickr photos which I may publish in the next couple of days should include a lot of photos with this lens, I've taken about 300! http://www.flickr.com/photos/brianwestcott/
It should be updated in the next few days.

Cheers!

Back from Travels

2007-08-22T02:24:00.000+01:00

Ok, so I did one blog post while I was gone for two weeks. Not so good. I drank lots of new beers and had a great time visiting friends & family along the way through Ontario and then down into New York.

Now that I'm back, I do intend to post my photos and update the blog with the beers I've tried. But I may have to wait a bit since I'm actually freaking out a bit on how much I need to get done in the next few days. See, I need to move out of my place in Edmonton, and get all my shit together for moving to Scotland at the end of September. Oh, and of course I need to spend lots of time with the girlfriend.
Oh and I need to do some upgrades to the condo before I rent it out.

In any case, I'll get around to it in a couple of days when things die down a little. You can probably check out some photos of my trip on Facebook or at my flickr site http://www.flickr.com/photos/brianwestcott/ (I haven't added them yet, but thats a project for the the next hour...)

Cheers!

Stratford, Ontario

2007-08-07T00:06:00.000+01:00

The first stop on my little trip here is in Stratford, Ontario, which for you not in the know is right about here. I have family here, so I've mostly been relaxing, eating good food, and doing some sailing. Quite a nice start really. Tomorrow I'm off to Toronto.

I've finally had a chance to try Creemore Springs Lager. Now, I'm aware that Creemore was bought by Molson a few years back, and that people were worried that it would suddenly drop in quality because they'd be forced to change or something. I don't know what it tasted like before, but I quite enjoyed the several I had. It has a nice hop-malt balance and some hop flavour, certainly more than the average lager. Its a good beer.

What else in beer... hm. I tried "Stratford Pilsner". I hadn't heard much good about it before I tried it, but I gave it a chance. Unfortunately I had to agree... it had a harsh grainy malt character. I also tried a blonde ale from a craft brewery in Windsor.. I can't remember the name though. Whitmore? Perhaps. It wasn't bad, but it also wasn't really special... nothing stood out as interesting to me. But that may just be because I've tried a lot of beer.

Anyway... cheers!

Going on Tour

2007-08-03T05:42:00.000+01:00

I'm just packing to leave for a 2 week stint around Eastern Canada and the States visiting friends and family. Stops at:
Stratford (Ontario)
Toronto (theres a beer festival here too!)
Ottawa
Montreal (maybe, if I feel like it)
New York City (Amon Tobin concert on a boat!)

I'll actually attempt to write about beers and breweries I find along the way, which should make my blog interesting again ;)

Cheers!

Best Lightning Ever

2007-07-29T18:55:00.000+01:00

Last night was one of the best lightning storms I've seen in awhile. Lightning was going off at least every 7-10 seconds. The power went out and my friend was stuck in the elevator. It was a good night! I took lots of photos, my favorites can be seen on my flickr profile at http://www.flickr.com/photos/brianwestcott/.

In other news, Friday was my very last day working for Alley Kat Brewing. As mentioned in previous postings, I'm heading off to Edinburgh Scotland for my MSc in brewing & distilling at Heriot-Watt University in October. I'm taking the next two months off to do some traveling to Ontario & New York, then moving out of my place in Edmonton, then maybe going up to Northern Manitoba again to see the girlfriend.

I will probably be visiting the Toronto Beer Festival on August 9th, but more on that later...

Cheers!

Canadian Bacon

2007-07-25T04:38:00.000+01:00

Oddly, in my 28+ years on earth I had yet to see the film Canadian Bacon... its funny, and quite prophetic really.

That is all.

Great Canadian Beer Festival?

2007-06-30T21:45:00.001+01:00

Anybody out there want to do a road trip to the Great Canadian Beer Festival with me in Victoria? Its being heald Sept 7-8 this year. I won't be working for Alley Kat any more at that time, so I'm free to do pretty much whatever I want (although hmm... I wonder if they would be in for paying me to be a rep? Free trips are fun :)

Anyway, this festival is apparently the best of all Canadian beer festivals as far as I've heard.

Let me know if you want to go!

In other news, I'm heading off to Northern Manitoba (Cranberry Portage, to be exact) for the next week with the girlfriend, and I'm quite excited for it.

Cheers, and happy Canada Day (tomorrow)!

New Camera

2007-06-28T06:10:00.000+01:00

Well, this last week I finally gave into this new 'ebay' craze and actually bought something I wanted off of it. I bought a Canon EOS 350D / Rebel XT Digital SLR. As you may know, SLRs have replaceable lenses and are generally 'better' that compact cameras. My brother had a bunch of lenses and other photography equipment so I figured it was about time I got a nice digital camera to use them with. This is my first digital SLR.

I used to be pretty into photography, but I fell out of it for awhile I guess. Mostly because I only had film equipment and it was way easier to just use my 3.2 mp digital point and shoot than to deal with rolls of film and the costs associated with them.

Of course, this purchase is just on the heels of my purchase of a Canon Powershot G7, and awesome camera in its own right. But yet, not SLR (its not even really that compact, but it has manual abilities, loads of good features, and can take a speedlite flash unit). Thus, my spending has been rather INSANE of late. The dSLR is great but bluky, so the G7 is still good when I don't want to haul all that SLR stuff around (camera plus 2 extra lenses, maybe an extra flash).

I've been biking a lot more lately, and I also just purched a Lowepro Slingshot 100 sling bag (over one shoulder) and its perfect. It doesn't slip around my back, is uber-comfortable, and holds everything I need it to.

Anyway... thats it. Oh beer? Hm, nothing new of late.

Silver Medal!

2007-06-19T14:04:00.001+01:00

Oh, and I forgot to mention in my last post that the rhubarb/berry beer a friend of mine and I made won a silver medal in the fruit beer category!

The recipe/method is outlined in this old post.

London Porter Showdown

2007-06-18T02:46:00.000+01:00

Yeah yeah, I know, I suck at posting these days. I have lots to post about, I just lack the time/energy.

Anyway, I tried Paddock Wood's London Porter side-by-side with Fuller's London Porter (which is considered the standard for the style). While Fuller's London Porter is a nice easy drinking good beer, I found the Paddock Wood version to have just a bit more of what I like - a moderate but not overpowering roast and slight coffee flavour. Quite tasty.

What else is new in beer? We (the Edmonton Homebrewer's Guild) had our annual homebrew competition last weekend, with much success. I judged beer for the first time, judging the Oktoberfest and Stout categories. The stouts were very competitive. There were 5 excellent samples of which I would have paid money to drink any of them. Unfortunately, only 3 can get medals. One person will be receiving a couple of score sheets with a 41 score (of 50, a VERY high score for a beer) but get no medal... sucks to be that guy/girl. The winners were decided amongst me and three other judges, so no it wasn't just me picking beers.

I have a lot of pictures from the competition, you can see them at my (new) flickr address: http://www.flickr.com/photos/brianwestcott/sets/72157600336465572/

Cheers!

I dare say, and excellent day

2007-06-04T23:24:00.000+01:00

So I had this Monday off, and what a day for it. Edmonton weather had a high temp of 30 C, and there wasn't a cloud in the sky until about 3 pm. I had to get my passport application into the passport office, so I took the morning to do that. I walked through the river valley and in about 40 min and a relaxing walk I was at the government building. I had heard the wait was insane these days for passports now that the paranoid American administration require every damn person to have a passport to enter their country. I was smart and did my passport application on-line before arriving at the office, which they reward by letting you skip line. I had to wait in the "pre-screen" line for about 50 minutes... after I was pre-screened I was given my number... I had barely sat down for 2 minutes when my number came up, way before people who had been waiting since before I even got there as far as I could tell. So, I was there for about an hour and 5 minutes.

I strolled back through downtown snapping a couple of photos that wern't very good and purched some ice cream, which made me quite happy. I was just thinking how great this day was going so far when I looked down and to my surprise... there was a five dollar bill sitting on the ground in the grass! This day just keeps getting better!

I decided to put my newly found five bucks to good use, and since I've been slacking on a scholarship application that I need to do for school starting in october, I went to my favorite local coffee shop and hacked out some ideas over coffees and beer. Quite a productive day for me, really.

The great day continues as I sit here on my balcony in the blazing sun tanning my ridiculously white skin (or, more likely, burning it) with my laptop typing this and sipping on some fine raspberry mead from our brewery.

All in all, I could do this every day, and I intend to for the most part in August-Sept before I leave for Scotland (which, btw, is only about 112 days away!)

Speaking of time off, I really want to learn how to sail. Anybody out there have time to teach me some weekend? I love watercraft. It must be the newfie in me.

Cheers,
Brian

Birthday & Imperial Stout

2007-05-26T21:14:00.000+01:00

Well, here in Alberta its slowly fighting its way toward summer with periods of crappy rainy-snowy coldness followed quickly by days like today. This photo is what I see in front of me right now, at my parents place. Nice eh?

So my calendar told me that tomorrow is my 28th birthday. Last year I did absolutely nothing for my 27th, so this year I decided to put a mild effort and have a small BBQ tonight. I'm serving up some rather nice homebrewed wit beer on tap, as well as some leftover Amber Brown Ale that our brewery makes. People like free beer, so hopefully that attracts a few people.

Speaking of homebrew, I've decided to brew what I hope is an interesting "imperial stout". I put the quotation marks around the style as I'm not realy too concerned with style in this case. Here is the planned recipe, with some discussion afterwards:
28th Birthday Imperial Stout

Size: 25 L
Efficiency: 86.0%
Attenuation: 73%

Original Gravity: 1.085
Terminal Gravity: 1.023
Color: 40.5
Alcohol: 8.19%
Bitterness: 47.2 (BU:GU = 0.56)

Ingredients:
3.4 kg Standard 2-Row (40%)
3 kg Maris Otter Pale (35%)
510 g Oats Flaked (6%)
650 g Roast Barley (7.7%)
595 g Black Malt (7%)
340 g Crystal Malt 120°L (4%)
37 g Centennial (9.5%) - added first wort, boiled 90 min
30 g East Kent Goldings (6.2%) - added during boil, boiled 15 min

Mash at 67 C for 1 hr, mashout 78 C.
--------------
Now some style purists might exclaim "but Brian, an Imperial Stout is supposed to have at least 50 IBU in it, preferably much much more!" but I care not. In fact, I was thinking of having even less hop bitterness. You see, 14.7% of the malt bill is very dark malts. My hope is that the bitterness from the 'burnt' roast barley and black malt actually balance the other malt sweetness in this beer. It will be nice to see if its over the top. I plan on aging it over a year while I'm gone in scotland too.
I might actually take out the EKG hop addition and make it all FWH centennial hopping, not sure yet.

Anyway... let me know your thoughts on the recipe/etc.
Cheers

New Books

2007-05-20T06:02:00.000+01:00

So I ordered some brewing books from amazon.ca a month or so ago, and the just arrived today. It was only because I ordered 4 books, and one of them (a book on cask ales) wasn't available yet, so they eventually just shipped what they could (at no extra cost I'll get the 4th later... not a bad deal).
Anyway, I ordered:

"Principles of Brewing Science, 2nd Ed" by George Fix
"Extreme Brewing" by Sam Calagione
and "Brewed in Canada" by Allen Winn Sneath

Principles of Brewing Science will be a great way for me to pre-study for my MSc program coming up in September. It really gets me back to my biochemistry knowledge and has the science behind brewing I really like (and need) to know.
Extreme Brewing is a little bit of a disappointment so far, but it does seem to have some good info about using weird spices/sugars/etc that is hard to find elsewhere. But it also as a lot of introductory info about the basics of homebrewing... I'd figure that anybody who is going to buy a book on extreme brewing should have started with brewing basics, but whatever.
Brewed in Canada is a history of the 350 year old Canadian brewing industry. I've only barely started to read it, but it shall be interesting for sure.

Cheers!

HOLY F'N CRAP

2007-05-18T05:57:00.000+01:00

Ok, so I haven't been the best blogger. In fact, I've been one of the worst in the last few months. If you want to blame something, I'd blame my super-awesome girlfriend. Those female creatures have a way of diverting you from important things like writing seldom-read articles about small-time brewing that a normally lonely and bored guy like me would write daily.

In any case, I'm sitting on my 10th floor balcony tonight drinking the 2007 barley wine that I had the extreme pleasure of brewing & filtering for Alley Kat (my most prized accomplishment, as far as I'm concerned), and damn that beer is good. I'm not one to toot my own horn... but BEEP BEEP. It wasn't my recipe, but I figure if the brewer sucked (who is me) it would have certainly not been as good. In any case, I'm quite proud of it and you should go get some.

In other beer news, the Edmonton Homebrewers' Guild participated in the 2007 Big Brew! It was a fun day that was hosted by our brewery. We (the other brewer, Sean, and I) produced what seems to be a lovely wheat beer (60% wheat malt, 35% barley maly, 5% munich). We produced 23 hL, which I think will be a contender for the top amount produced in North America by any club. Last year we were 3rd with 15 hL. Personally, made 5 batches using different yeasts:
(OG 1.050)
-Belgian Wit (has fermented down to 1.012, tastes ... tasty)
-Belgian Saison (has only fermented to 1.036!! I will give it more time)
-LALEGER (a mix of Alley Kat Ale & Lager yeasts fermented at 19C for 1 week then dropped to 3C and aged... has fermented to 1.012 and has a assy sulfur taste to it :(
-Rosselare Lambic strain... (so far fermented to 1.026, but seems to still be going and has a mild sour character to it... I'll let this one age for a couple of months)

I've also been having good luck with my other homebrew/test batches these days. I get excellent feedback from the homebrewer's guild (full of BJCP judges and people who will give an honest opinion). Recently, my blueberry-rhubarb wheat beer was presented to them and it was actually pretty nice. I couldn't drink a pint of it because of the sourness, but its really good for about 5 oz.

The EHG is having its yearly brewing competition soon, I advise anybody out there who homebrews to enter some beers to it, and even come by for the events. We're very welcoming and there are some awesome parties (with lots of beer... naturally :)

Cheers!

A new post...

2007-05-05T05:30:00.000+01:00

Ok, well I'm far too tired to create a real new post now, but I have lots of beer news. First, I brewed another English bitter... but then I lost my brewday logsheet and I did a lot of things different than my planned recipe. That sucks.

Next, our brewery is releasing a raspberry mead which is quite awesome if I don't say so myself, it should be out in a few weeks, even though we have it in bottles now, we just need labels. If you ask nicely I might let you have some early... ;)
In addition, I just filtered out kristalweizen today, and its rather tasty. It won't be available for a few weeks. Oh, and don't buy any Kiltlifter (our last seasonal) as I want to take it all home...

I'm currently listening to Amon Tobin's Live aux Docks de Lausanne set, and its pretty awesome. But then again, what of his isn't awesome? He is by a wide margin my favorite artist ever. If you haven't heard his stuff, get it and listen... because seriously he is brilliant.

Cheers

200th Post Extravaganza

2007-04-19T05:26:00.000+01:00

Ok, well since this post is my 200th post I have been avoiding actually writing it as I feel I should write something big and important...

But alas, faithful readers (all 6 of you), I have nothing exciting to report. My beers that I entered to Regina didn't win any medals, perhaps because I definitely over-sanitized the bottles with a too-strong sanitizer solution. The bottles I tried that were left here tasted sharp and 'bitey'. Either that or all my beers sucked. But at least the stuff I served on tap to my friends and to the Homebrewers' Guild were very well received, so thats all I really care about. In fact, in the last two weekends people have drank about 30 L of my homebrew... I need to make more homebrew now!

Speaking of making more homebrew... well, it seems like my time is lacking these days. I'd love to make an English IPA though.

Ok, so thats it for my lame 200th post... cheers.

General Post 199

2007-04-11T04:07:00.000+01:00

This is in fact my 199th post, so I guess I'll have to think of something awesome for my 200th post. I must apologize to my very few "regular" readers... it seems that I've met a female human who has managed to divert a large portion of my time :)
... So hopefully I brew some beer soon... otherwise I'll just dance around happy all day and want to pick flowers rather than work.... sigh..............

cheers!

Smiles All Round

2007-04-04T04:58:00.000+01:00

Hm, things seem to be going my way these days. I like that.

So just an update on some of the beers I brewed back on St. Patty's Day. Kegged off the IPA into two 18.9 L kegs. In one keg I put 18 g of centennial and in the other 18 g of cascade for dry hopping. The centenntial is much more forward than the cascade. I've actually renamed it "some kind of hoppy beer" now as its not quite to style for and IPA. In fact, I've had no less that 5 BJCP judges try it and suggest that its an ESB (although with American hops, but who cares). The brown ale I just kegged off and is on tap at my house now.

I served two of my creations on tap at the most recent Edmonton Homebrewers' Guild meeting, my Special Bitter and my "some kind of hoppy beer". As I said before, I had lots of great comments on my hoppy beer, which apparently is an ESB, and people really loved it. Luckily I have a keg and a half left! I also received some rave reviews for my special bitter (4.4% alc). It was really good to get this feedback from the members there, many of whom are certified BJCP judges and have many many MANY years of experience in brewing and tasting beer. Its great to know I'm on the right track!

Regina ALES Festival
I've shipped off 8 entries to the ALES homebrew competition. I entered my "hoppy beer" as three different styles: ESB, American Pale Ale, and IPA. From what I hear I probably won't do well for IPA, APA is a possibility, but depending on what else shows up for ESB I might do really well there. That is, unless my bottles are infected or the sanitizer I used was too strong (which it may have been... bah). I also entered my special bitter, my brown ale, and my two crappy belgians just for the hell of it... I'll let you know how it goes!

Cheers!

Double Brew for St. Pattys Day

2007-03-18T16:50:00.000Z

Rather than be a part of the demand side of beer this St. Pattys day, I contributed to the supply side by brewing two beers on Saturday.

The first, by style, was somewhere between and American IPA and and Imperial IPA. It should be 7% alc/vol and 64 IBUs. Here is the recipe:

Condescension IPA
Size: 46.36 L
Efficiency: 86.98%
Attenuation: 75.0%
Calories: 315.37 per 1 pt

Original Gravity: 1.071 (1.056 - 1.075)
Terminal Gravity: 1.018 (1.010 - 1.018)
Color: 15.0 (6.0 - 15.0)
Alcohol: 6.99% (5.5% - 7.5%)
Bitterness: 66.6 (40.0 - 60.0)

Ingredients:
5.9 kg Standard 2-Row
5.5 kg Maris Otter Pale
0.7 kg Toasted Pale Malt
0.5 kg Crystal 75
0.1 kg Chocolate Malt
73.1 g Centennial (9.5%) - added during boil, boiled 90 min
37.2 g Cascade (5.8%) - added during boil, boiled 30 min
36.5 g Centennial (9.5%) - added during boil, boiled 20 min
37.2 g Cascade (5.8%) - added during boil, boiled 10 min
20.7 g Centennial (9.5%) - steeped after boil
26.3 g Cascade (5.8%) - steeped after boil
26.3 g Fuggle (4.8%) - steeped after boil
500.0 mL Alley Kat ale yeast

Schedule:
Mash in at 60 C, raise temp to 68 C and hold for 1 hour.
Mash out at 78 C

Notes:
Toasted malt: soak malt in water for ~ 1 hr, then put in oven at 350 F for 1 hr

The second beer I made was a smaller batch of a brown ale I've been working on several times before, I just can't seem to get the flavour I want... I'm looking for a complex malty beer with a sweet and chocolatey start with a dry finish. I'm using the WYeast 1928 London ESB yeast for this which does have a distinct dry finish I noted on the last beer I made with it. I had some problems with the extract calculations on this one, so this recipe doesn't make sense on paper...

Brownrock Brown Ale I
Size: 32 L
Efficiency: 103.9% (obviously this is wrong)
Attenuation: 74.0%
Calories: 190.19 per 12.0 fl oz

Original Gravity: 1.057
Terminal Gravity: 1.015
Color: 22.4
Alcohol: 5.54%
Bitterness: 29.26

Ingredients:
5.0 kg Mild Ale (Dextrin Malt)
0.5 kg Victory® Malt
0.4 kg German Dark Munich
0.3 kg Crystal Malt 120°L
0.2 kg German CaraAroma
0.2 kg Chocolate Malt
0.07 kg Roasted Barley
30.4 g East Kent Goldings (5.5%) - added during boil, boiled 65 min
30.4 g East Kent Goldings (5.5%) - added during boil, boiled 30 min
10 g Fuggle (4.8%) - added during boil, boiled 5 min
10 g Cascade (5.5%) - added during boil, boiled 5 min
500 mL WYeast 1968 London ESB Ale from starter

Schedule:
Mash for 60 min at 67 C, mashout at 78.

Yep, thats it!
Cheers

2007 Old Deuteronomy

2007-03-15T00:49:00.000Z

Yes, thats right, we've released the 2007 Old Deuteronomy Barley Wine. Its quite a good vintage this year, and I had the pleasure of taking care of pretty much the whole thing from brewing to filtering, the only thing I didn't do was bottle it. So I'm quite proud of this, since we only do this once per year!
This years is 9.9% alc/vol and about 100 IBU in bitterness. I really like the flavour myself, the hoppiness lasts for almost half an hour in your mouth!

The bottle I'm holding in the picture isn't the size we sell it in, we just happened to have that cool bottle and filled it for ourselves :)

Come by the brewery and pick some up.

Cheers!

Heriot-Watt Campus

2007-03-13T04:54:00.000Z

I was thinking I'd show some of you where I'll be going to school in October for my MSc in brewing in Scotland.
The university is called Heriot-Watt, and its located at the google maps link below:
http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?f=l&hl=en&q=heriot-watt+university&layer=&ie=UTF8&near=edinburgh&z=12&ll=55.927471,-3.277702&spn=0.088286,0.279808&om=1&iwloc=A

So the school isn't really in Edinburgh, its actually just outside. Which isn't quite as fun as being in the city. But its not too far of a bike ride or bus to pubs in the city. I was thinking about living in the city, but staying on campus has the advantage of being able to walk to classes without having to bike or bus in. And I'm pretty lazy in the morning. Plus I'll be living with other post-grads, who are in the same situation as me most likely, which makes people easy to meet.

The main website is http://www.hw.ac.uk/home/ and the site for my program (with all the courses, etc) is http://www.postgraduate.hw.ac.uk/course/118/.

Cheers!

Ordinary Bitter Review

2007-03-06T06:01:00.000Z

So as of tonight (Monday) my Ordinary Bitter has been in existence for exactly two weeks. This is a great style to brew quickly, as I cracked the keg open at the monthly meeting for the Edmonton Homebrewer's Guild and it tasted great! Its definately a lighter beer (only 3.3% alcohol) but has a decent but not overpowering bitterness with some hop flavour on the finish. I received many positive comments on the beer, even from experienced beer judge gurus, which makes me quite happy.

I think I'm going to try to brew one of these per month, as its a great quaff beer... I can get home from work, have a couple of pints, and its only really like having a pint of beer. Plus I get the health benefits from moderate alcohol consumption, the vitamin B + a bazillion other nutrients & minerals in the yeast and beer mixture.

Yep, stop by and try some!
Cheers

English Premium Bitter Brew Night

2007-03-02T23:30:00.000Z

Well, since I was off Thursday and Friday this week I decided to do a homebrew batch in the evening. I got a little busy... so I didn't actually end up starting the brew until midnight... which means I didn't get out of there until 6 am! But I'm kind of a night owl.

I've always really liked Fuller's London Pride, so I wanted to make something similar (but not the same). I found a clone on BYO, but I didn't really like the recipe. The recipe I used is below. Unfortunately, when I used the BeerTools recipe generator I left the mash efficiency at 75%, when I usually get 85% or so... thus, I had a hell of a lot more extract than I expected. I had to stop the runnings at 7.6 P and top up with a lot of water. I could have made a barley wine out of this! But thats not what I wanted. So I just got a very full boil kettle :)

I've decided to call this "London Self-Esteem"... ;)

Recipe:

Brian's "London Self-Esteem"
8-B Special/Best/Premium Bitter

Size: 48 L
Efficiency: 85%
Attenuation: 73.2%
Calories: 223.44 per 500 mL

Original Gravity: 1.048 (1.040 - 1.048)
|=======================#========|
Terminal Gravity: 1.013 (1.008 - 1.012)
|===========================#====|
Color: 13.6 (5.0 - 16.0)
|====================#===========|
Alcohol: 4.56% (3.8% - 4.6%)
|=======================#========|
Bitterness: 31.27 (25.0 - 40.0)
|==============#=================|

Ingredients:

7.6 kg Maris Otter Pale
0.8 kg Carastan 25
0.4 kg Crystal Malt 120°L
0.2 kg Carawheat®
0.2 kg Honey Malt

70.5 g East Kent Goldings (5.5%) - added during boil, boiled 60 min
64.5 g East Kent Goldings (5.5%) - added during boil, boiled 20 min
22.5 g East Kent Goldings (5.5%) - steeped after boil
45.5 g Fuggle (4.8%) - steeped after boil

600 mL WYeast 1968 London ESB Ale
--------------

So as you may be able to see its just barely within the style guidelines, but I don't really care. I've also decided to not use the standard Alley Kat Ale yeast and try the London ESB yeast that is apparently used by Fuller's. Its very highly flocculant, so apparently it needs rousing now and then.

Anyway, the brew went pretty good otherwise. Just a couple of pictures below. Cheers!

Running into the kettle... nice and clear!

English Bitters

2007-03-02T00:01:00.000Z

I've been more fascinated with the concept of the low alcohol, high flavour style of traditional English bitters of late. A week and a half ago I brewed an ordinary bitter (link to recipe), which ended up being 3.4% alcohol by vol. Its got very little malt flavour (its kind of "aqueous" actually, which is like being watery but a little better), but decent bitterness and hop flavour. Next time I'll probably up the flavour and aroma hop additions.

But why drink a low alcohol beer?? Doesn't that not get you drunk as fast?? It sure doesn't. But thats the point. At 3.4% having 2 pints of beer is like having one pint of strong beer... you get a good amount of flavour, plus the healthy aspects of beer, without getting drunk. I can come home from work, have a pint or two, and not be half drunk like I would be drinking a 8% Belgian.

So the ordinary bitter should be on tap here by the weekend, just waiting for it to carbonate in its "cask" (just a 20L sankey keg).

I'm now developing a recipe for a 4.5% premium bitter... I want to get a lot more body and malt flavour into it so as to get away from the aqueousness possible with a lower alcohol beer, so I'll be putting a bunch of carastan and dextrinous malts into it. I'm also going to try the Wyeast 1968 London ESB yeast. I'll post the recipe later when I finalize it.

Anybody want to try and ordinary bitter?
Cheers!

Beer Launching Fridge!

2007-02-28T06:19:00.000Z

Below is a link to this crazy beer launching fridge some guy with lots of time came up with. Its very cool, theres a link to a video too. Check it out:

http://www.duke.edu/~jwc13/beerlauncher.html

If only the beer was better...

Cheers!

Hop Tasting, Session One

2007-02-25T03:51:00.000Z

Today with several other brewer and homebrewer types we had a "hop tasting". Basically, each of the following varieties of hops were dry hopped into a bottle of Coors Light for 5 days. Coors Light was used because it basically has very little other flavour (being the "coldest" beer available... and whats with that marketing crap anyway? Coldness isn't a property of the beer... its a property of the fridge its in. Guh). Of course this only gives the dry hopped flavour and aroma of the hops, but its still pretty interesting.
In this session we tried Czech Saaz, German Tettnanger, US Tettnang, German Tradition, German Hersbrucker, German Hallertauer T-45, New Zealand Organic Hallertauer, German Spalt, US Santium, German Northern Brewer, French Strisselspalt, US Ahtanum, US Glacier, US Amarillo, US Galena, US Chinook, and US Warrior.

I found that the traditional noble hop types (basically the first 9 or so in the list) had very tea-like characteristics, with spicy, lemony citrus, and sometimes mint. I want to make a pilsner with Hersbrucker from flavour & aroma hopping. It was a very nice hop. My favorite was probably amarillo, which I have never knowingly had before. It would make an excellent dry hop, its very grapefruity and strong. I was surprised by warrior hops, they are very high alpha acid (16%) but don't have the harshness and bad flavours associated with other high alpha hops. Warrior is slightly citrus with some tea and floral notes. It doesn't have a lot of flavour either... I believe I will be using these for bittering hops for many an ale in the future.

The bad hops... Chinook is horrible, its a high alpha hop, but has a harsh and somewhat metallic flavour. Maybe a lot of that would boil out if boiled for long enough, but I'm not going to take that chance. Galena was pretty bad too... one guy described the aroma as "new plastic garbage can". At best, it would be used for bittering... but not by me.

I was surprised to find that Saaz didn't seem to have as strong of a flavour or aroma as I thought it would have compared to the other noble hops. Although it is a famous hop, you really would have to use loads of it in any application, be it bittering, flavour or aroma.

Cheers!

Ordinary Bitter

2007-02-14T06:31:00.000Z

Planning on brewing a simple English Ordinary Bitter on Monday. The style is interesting because it is low alcohol (this one ~3.5-3.7%) but still has plenty of flavour. Thus, I could have a few pints after work without getting drunk but still get all the benifits of the yeast, hops, proteins, and carbs that beer includes. Really, 4 pints are like 2 and a bit!

Here is the recipe that I'm pondering right now:

Ordinary Bitter

8-A Standard/Ordinary Bitter

Size: 40.0 L

Efficiency: 83%

Attenuation: 74.9%

Calories: 169.72 per 500 mL

Original Gravity: 1.036 (1.032 - 1.040)
|================#===============|

Terminal Gravity: 1.009 (1.007 - 1.011)
|================#===============|

Color: 13.2 (4.0 - 14.0)
|======================#=========|

Alcohol: 3.56% (3.2% - 3.8%)
|=================#==============|

Bitterness: 32.74 (25.0 - 35.0)
|====================#===========|

Ingredients:

5.3 kg Canadian Craft Brewers Pale Malt
0.3 kg Extra Dark Crystal
0.25 kg Crystal Malt 120°L
0.15 kg Torrified Wheat

65 g East Kent Goldings (5%) - added during boil, boiled 60 min
28 g East Kent Goldings (5%) - added during boil, boiled 30 min
28 g East Kent Goldings (5%) - added during boil, boiled 1 min

300 mL Alley Kat Ale Yeast

Schedule:

00:03:00 Mash In - Liquor: 12.0 L; Strike: 76.2 °C
01:03:00 Saccharification Rest - Rest: 60.0 min
01:04:00 Mashout - Water: 8.61 L; Temperature: 98 °C
01:49:00 Sparge - Sparge: 33.44 L sparge @ 78 °C, 48.05 L collected, 45.0 min; Total Runoff: 48.05 L

Yep, thats the plan!
Cheers!

Beerfest Wrap-up

2007-02-11T20:50:00.000Z

The Edmonton International Beer Festival this weekend worked out pretty well. I had seen most of the beers/vendors at other festivals so most of it was "same old" for me. However, there were a few new things for me:

First was the presence of Paddock Wood Brewing from Saskatoon. I've only just recently seen their products on Edmonton liquor store shelves. Its good to see another craft brewery on the scene! So far they seem to make some really "big beers" with lots of flavour and alcohol. I haven't had as much of a chance to try all of their beers yet, but I did have a few Bête Noire Oatmeal Stout last night and they were pretty good... although quite a "thick" beer that takes time to drink.

I was also surprised by Molson's "craft" branded beer Rickards' who is now producing "White", which actually wasn't a bad attempt at a Belgian Wit style. Its fairly subdued in flavour, but it does have some of the coriander and orange notes you'd expect in a wit. It also appears unfiltered, or at least not filtered tight enough to remove the haze found in the wit style. I bet this will be a big seller in the summer.

There were several imports represented as well. It looks like product from Brooklyn Brewery is here to stay, which is awesome since they make some pretty good beers. I tried some "He'brew" barley wine which contained some pomegranate juice... quite tasty! Its very subtle, if I hadn't been told there was pomegranate juice in it I would have thought it was a yeast character perhaps.

Noticeably absent was Maverick Brewery from here in Edmonton... they had a booth reserved but didn't show up. Apparently they didn't pay either. If you ask me, it seems like their operation may not last too much longer...

As for us, Alley Kat, we had a pretty good showing. People devoured our Aprikat (a wheat ale with some apricot in it... a "beer cooler"). We had a great booth location which helped for sure.

The event in general was pretty good, although I never have much patience for retartedly drunk people. The first evening wasn't so bad, but the second night seemed a lot rowdier... dumbasses getting kicked out as early as 7. I heard somebody got pushed down some stairs and there were maybe 3 fights. And the end of the night is never fun when you cut people off... they always want more beer. But I guess thats the business... luckily I just spend most of my time making beer and not selling it :).

Cheers!

Edmonton Beerfest!

2007-02-09T18:39:00.000Z

This weekend I'll be serving up our fine Alley Kat beers at the Edmonton International Beer Festival, which is being held Feb 9 & 10 at the UofA Dinwoodie Lounge. Come down and chat with me about beer for awhile!

You can also check out the booth that the Edmonton Homebrewer's Guild will have set-up. The guild is one of the best in North America and have some of the beer-nerdiest people you can find!

It should be a pretty good event, although I worry that with it being held on campus there will be a lot of "drink to get as drunk as possible" types attending, which gets annoying. But hopefully lots of "beer nerds" show up, I love talking to beer nerds :)

Cheers and see you there!

Perhaps Brewing Sunday

2007-02-08T07:18:00.000Z

I'm thinking of brewing at least one beer this weekend on Sunday, but I'm not too sure yet. If you're interested in helping out, let me know.
I'll probably brew the fourth in my series of Amber style beers, not sure what to do differently this time.

Cheers!

George Conrad Reifel, 1893-1958

2007-02-05T04:49:00.000Z

When I was staying in Delta, BC (just outside of Vancouver) this xmas with my parents, we stayed at a hotel not far from the George C. Reifel Migratory Bird Sanctuary. My suite was called the Reifel suite, and I was interested to read that Mr. Reifel was, in fact, a brewmaster according to a plaque on the wall. Well, sounds like this was the right room for me to be in!
Here is what the plaque read:

The Reifel Story
Born in Nanaimo May 15th, 1893, George Conrad Rifel was the son of Brewmaster, Henry Reifel Senior.
Together the father and son worked in the Union Brewing Company, Nanaimo, B.C. until 1910. The Reifel's moved to Vancouver and built the brewery, which is still in operation, now owned by Carling O'Keefe.

During prohibition, Henry and George C. traveled to Japan to assist in the establishment of the Anglo Japanese Brewing Co., a joint venture of Japanese, British, and Canadian.

Prior to the Japan trip, George C. married Alma Lucy Barnes and they had three children: Audry, George Henry and Alma Jane.

In 1922 the Reifels refurnished and re-opened the Vancouver brewery and the family business diversified with the establishment of the B.C. Distilleries Company in New Westminster.

During the late 1920's, George C. became interested in an area of southwest Delta, then known as Smoky Tom Island. Close to the mouth of the Fraser River, it was a virtual paradise of birds and wildlife.

As a big game enthusiast, George C. traveled extensively throughout British Columbia and the Yukon on hunting trip, often taking son George along. He recognized the island as an ideal retreat for pleasing his hobby of hunting and preserving game birds. George C. realized that with care and management, the area would remain a haven.

In 1927 George C. purchased a large parcel of land and over the next few years he installed dams and dikes where the Fraser River split into three narrow channels. George C. recovered additional land for his retreat forming three sloughs; Robertsons, Fullers and Ewens, that would attract birdlife.

He then proceeded to build the Reifels family home on the property in 1929. The house still stands and the land is called Reifel Island.

The Reifel story continues to grow. George Henry continues to add to the families accomplishments with unfailing enthusiasm for life.

The original sanctuary site, "George C. Reifel Migratory Bird Sanctuary" was given to the Crown by George H. Reifel in 1973 as a tribute to his father's memory.

So, anyway that was somewhat interesting to me.
Cheers

Brooklyn Black Chocolate Stout

2007-02-04T01:23:00.000Z

Its been a pretty long time since I've reviewed a beer, so I thought I throw one in. And what a worthy one it is: the seasonal Black Chocolate stout from Brooklyn Brewery in ... well, Brooklyn is a damn fine beer.

I had the chance to visit the brewery when I was visiting NYC, I was even supposed to meet up with the famed brewer Garrett Oliver. However, I was an idiot and got to the brewery too late on the day I was supposed to be there, at which point I had to leave to meet a friend. Fired!

The beer pours BLACK... I can't see through it at all, and my glass is pretty thin at the bottom. Very little head, which is quite brown. No lacing, although seemingly very thick running down the side of the glass.
I get a slight alcohol aroma off the initial nose, as well roasty and dark chocolate notes as well. Possibly a fruity note in there as well... I can't tell if its from hops or the yeast though.
There isn't a whole lot of carbonation in the beer, maybe 2.1-2.2 vol CO2.

The first thing I notice about drinking this beer though is how smooth it is. It goes down VERY easily. I had one of these last week, and I felt a little more buzzed than I expected... then I checked the bottle... this beer is 10.6% alc/vol! It certainly doesn't have the characteristics I associate with a very strong beer. I detect no fusel alcohols (which tend to give me a slight sinus headache), not a lot of alcohol warming in the stomach, and no biting finish that would make me cringe. The beer is so well balanced... very thick body and solid malt character. I detect little hop bitterness or character until the finish, about 5 seconds after a sip I get a slight bitterness bite on the side of my tongue. But it seems the hop character are just there for balance, the flavour of this beer is dominated by the chocolate & malt roasty character.

Overall, this beer is quite interesting... its a very strong beer, but it goes down so easily. You almost have to force yourself to drink it slower. Usually the strong beers make you drink them slower by their intense overpowering flavours. While the black chocolate stout is very flavorful, there is nothing overpowering about it. Its so smooth... so well balanced.

I give it a 9/10 for the style and for beer in general :)

Cheers!

Climbing...

2007-02-02T07:20:00.000Z

I've decided that I should start climbing. Yes, the rock type. How? Well I plan to take a lesson this Saturday. I think I'll be good at it and I'll like it. I'm already in pretty good shape from brewing (which, by the way is still leaving me sore at the end of the day sometimes), its a physical job in which I'm moving around all day and moving heavy things around all day too... so I'm not too worried about climbing (although I'm sure it will use some muscles I'm not used to using, but in general I should be better than your average office worker :)

Anyway... indeed this post isn't about beer, but too bad.
Cheers!

Barley Wine!!

2007-02-01T08:57:00.000Z

So on Monday here at Alley Kat Brewery I had the honor or brewing the 2007 edition of the Old Deuteronomy Barley Wine. This is a very VERY big beer, and is only brewed once a year. The recipe is pretty heavy... I can't say what it is, but the initial gravity is supposed to be 24.5 P (but I got 24.8 out of my mash!) and the IBU is supposed to be ~100 (depending on what calculation method you use).

Normally after the boil we are only supposed to have 12 hectolitres, but I finished at 13.5 hL. I think I got so much beer because I spent the extra time to make sure the mash was a solid 78 degC from top to bottom on the mashout (which makes sugars more soluble and protein less soluble, apparently), plus I took a very long time to run off from the mash-tun to the boil kettle (we only took the first runnings from the mash, no sparging... with a longer run-off time the liquid has more of a chance to trickle through the mash bed to the drain).
Anyway, we used a scottish ale yeast to ferment the beer, as the yeast had fermented out most recent seasonal "Kiltlifter Scotch Ale" very well... in previous years the barley wine was done with our house "english" ale yeast, so the switch to scotch ale yeast should be interesting.

Anyway, we're not going to tank-age it for as long this year, look for the 2007 barley wine by mid-March I think :)
Cheers!