Update

Sorry to be so long without an update. After a beautiful summer working as a plumber and saving up some cash, I found a job that is a perfect fit. Shanna and I moved to Bellingham, Washington and I joined Chuckanut Brewery and Kitchen.

During the summer I made trips to the brewery to drop off my resume and talk with their brewer Josh. He showed me the impressive setup that brewmaster Will Kemper engineered and talked about how precise their beer could be. Whether it is pitching temperature, mashing temp or fermentation, the guys at Chuckanut had it dialed to the 1/10 of a degree. It's no wonder that they got Small Brewpub of the Year at GABF after their first time entering.

Will has been making beer for over twenty-five years. He started the Thomas Kemper Brewery in '86 and moved on to help engineer breweries across the country. He's worked at Dock Street in Philly, Capital Brewing in D.C., Aviator, a brewery in Mexico, and just recently, the first brewpub in Istanbul and more. Will also taught engineering at American Brewers Guild and is a great teacher. If you get the chance to meet Will, you'll know what I mean. Ask him any question about beer and you'll learn something. Most of the time, you'll learn more than you bargained for. It's one of the reasons I am so excited about working here. Continuing my education after school is important to me and I was afraid of being locked in a brewery job that did not push to make better product, which if you're in the industry, is so many breweries.

Chuckanut is a German lager and English ale company. They won two golds and two silvers at the GABF all in lager (Dunkel, Vienna and German Pils, Schwartzbier). That hasn't been done by a small brewpub. In a time where whatever is overly hopped, oak-aged or boozy with alcohol wins all the attention, I find it relieving that well made 5% drinkable beer could win. It might be considered radical for a small brewery to make tasty lagers and no IPAs. I thought the industry was shifting, and it probably is, but at least I know some people still appreciate delicate flavor. Those that know me know my love for well crafted lager beer and the move to Chuckanut seemed natural. But indeed, I'm lucky.

During my few talks with Josh at Chuckanut over the summer I got the impression that they would be expanding their capacity soon and would be looking for an assistant brewer. That was the time I was calling, emailing, sending my resume and just plain showing up. I got the call from Will in October asking if I was still interested in becoming a brewer. "Oh yeah!" When I went up for the interview, he informed me that sadly, Josh was leaving to work at Full Sail. So although I did replace Josh, there is no replacing Josh. He is a great guy and very methodical in the brew house. The most anal-retentive ski-bum I've met. I wish I could have learned more from him. Josh has a wife, a three-year-old and a newborn to care for and Full Sail offered him a better opportunity.

So I'll be keeping this blog updated with info about beer, it's market, how it's made and any questions anyone might ask. Hope you enjoy.

Immortal Darkness issue #1 Limited Release

Why is it that beer dorks like me are so into comic characters on their beer?

I'm the kind of nerd that always buys the new, cool beers that come out of small local breweries or specials shipped in from Belgium, England and Germany. Funny thing is that these products are very deliberately marketed. Most of the locals in Europe have never heard of those beers and very special releases are nearly only consumed by aficionados like us.

We are expected to buy cases of their product and stow them away in dark closets until the time is right and then maybe we'll open one. During times like these I am reminded of running down to the comic store and buying the much anticipated Spider-Man issues that have the first appearance of a new arch-enemy, whereupon spending ridiculous amounts of money, I would hid under my covers with a flashlight and carefully examine the inside pages. After all that bother I would seal up the comic in plastic and try to forget about it for as long as possible but show the cover to friends who could covet the value but never get to read.

Are these companies playing with our childhoods? After coming back from the World Brewing Academy last May I have had a much different view of small and large breweries. Mainly I discovered what I knew all along. They're in it for the money.

Is it too much to ask to have your favorite beers available all the time? If the money's there for the product why not? I think the limited availability adds to the mystic of the beer.

Or how about an extremely strong beer(barleywine, Imp Stout, Belgian Style) that doesn't need age? From a business prospective releasing beer before its prime is ludicrous. What if German lager brewers decided to let their consumers lager the beer in the bottle to save on cost of bright tanks? It wouldn't go over very well.

Now I know all about subtle nuances that occur at peak times during a beer's maturation in the bottle. I also know about well balanced oxidation that only comes from storage. It's not that I'm against it or wouldn't practice it. I've just come to the conclusion that all great beer should be within a few months of peak flavor when it's in the store. Just because I'm a consumer doesn't mean I'm a sucker. If I buy a $10 22oz beer and it doesn't wow me, I'll never buy it again. In fact I'll regret the purchase and will be more likely never to buy another special release from that brewery again.

And please brewers from around the world: stop putting cartoon dragons on our beer! Take us more seriously than that. Dogs are cool too but they don't need to be a centerpiece of most breweries. Also try appealing to the wine consumers. They don't have comic characters. Do you want to know why women don't drink as much beer? Their choices are the macho Bud/Miller/Coors labels or the Dragon/Dogs/Comic labels. Most women I know are a little intimidated by 22oz or 750ml bottles. (That's a lot of beer!) But Belgians bottle in massive 1.5L or sometimes 3L bottles, Americans pour by the pitcher or by the sixpack and Germans serve in boots! Smaller portions of stronger beer produced well with little need for aging would be a great change. Maybe we could convert some of the corkdorks and give beer its proper place on the gourmet dinner table.

Back in Seattle

Well, it's been a few weeks back now from Europe. I swiftly got my old job back being a service plumber. It's kind of depressing spending all that time, money, brain storage and energy studying brewing science without being able to come home and immediately apply it.

The second weekend back I had to homebrew. Missing Augustiner Helles already, I went about formulating a recipe for 11 gallons. My great friends at Beacon Hill Brewing, who have stored my stuff, were having a BBQ for Memorial Day. I got there early and brewed as best as I could to follow what I had learned (except for hot-aeration).

This last Saturday after judging at the Washington Homebrew Pro-Am, I dumped the trub and tasted a sample. Huge German hops and sulpher, just as I remember with a strong Weyermann Pils background.

The hours at plumbing are still meager and I feel like a burden to the other guys who need hours and didn't leave to study brewing. With that in mind I've sent my resume to all local Washington breweries. With a little luck you'll see me with rubber boots on in one of the country's best breweries.

Shanna and I have moved in together and are now month to month on our lease. She, like me, is happy in life but would welcome a life change. I believe we'll embrace a move if the opportunity arises.

As for now, I'm broke and out of shape. I'll keep on working off the twenty pounds that Germany bestowed me with and saving up my dollars waiting for an opening in the industry.

Aging of Beer

When I first came to Germany I noticed right away that the beer tasted different than in the States. It tasted clean and fresh, with good hop character and a tasty malt profile. While traveling through Belgium and the Netherlands I've noticed that the Belgian style beers either taste the way they do in the States or a little different.

In the States the dominant character of Belgian beer in my mind is the yeast. It adds all the esters, light fusals, phenols, and the typical bready flavor. What I wasn't ready for when I tried my first fresh Belgian beer is that the hops are very forward in most styles. They're bitter! Also the lack of aging allows fresh malt character I'm not used to in a Belgian beer.

To tell the truth, I like the aged Belgian beers that I get in the States compared to the same product only a few weeks old. And that leads me to my question if anyone is still reading this beer blog:

How do you store your beer? Why do you celler beer? What kinds of beer do you celler and what do you think it'll achieve? What's your oldest beer? Will you invite me over to drink your oldest beer?

I've been in the school of thought that beer should be drank fresh and only Lambics should be aged. However, two of my favorite Belgian beers, Westmalle's tripel and dubbel, I can say taste far better a little old.

Gastronomical delight

After a long day of walking lost around Amsterdam, Shanna and I are staying in to catch up on the sleep we missed on the overnight train. Right now Shanna's making pancetta pasta with onions, mushrooms and arrabbiata sauce and I'm finishing a Westvleteren 8.

The 8 smells of figs and cherries just like a well aged barleywine. The subtle oxidation that makes this sherry-like nose is one of my favorites. It appears dark brown and has plenty of yeast floaties in it. The taste is strongly carbonated, sweet and delicious. Not phenolic or fusel, it has big esters that coat the mouth. It's a delicious beer. It reminds me of a very good bottle of Chimay Grande Reserve. Although this may be considered a dubbel, I would lump it in the dark strong catagory. Sure it has the lower alcohol %, but the warming flavor, lack of intense caramel flavors and well aged caracteristics move me toword the the dark strong.

Shanna's having a Westmalle Tripel right now. We also got the Westvleteren 12, Brew Dog Paradox Islay and a Danish porter named Hamer and Sikkel by De Molen. The Brew Dog is a islay casked imperial stout. Mmmm Mmm.

We've also been treating ourselves to raw milk Cambert, Buffalo Mozzarella, Swiss Appenzeller, authentic Landjager, and of course chocolate. Tonight we're eating Mozart balls for dessert with the White Widow.

Goodbye Munich!

Sorry I've not been keeping up the blog so well. The traveling made it very difficult and now the screen on my laptop is broken. Oh well, I'll keep chiming in as much as I can with the hotel/hostel computers.

We had a fun graduation on Friday; Lyn from Siebel flew out to Bavaria to hand us our diplomas. We got to sample our horrible wheat beers and our IPA. Later that night I met up with Shanna, (finally!), and we went to join the rest of the fellas at Augustiner Keller for some liters and some goodbyes. I've spent more time with these guys in the last three months than I do my best friends in a few years. Although at times I got really sick of them (and them of me), I know that I made some great friends for the rest of my life. Now if only there were some yearly beer festival held in the center of the country that we could all meet up at...?

Shanna and I had a wonderful three days in Munich. We ran into Nick Phelps and Annie at Dachau and ended up at St. Jakobus in Polach for a beer. Now we're in Amsterdam on a house boat were we'll stay through Queen's Day. Queen's Day is like St Patrick's Day but you wear orange instead of green. After Amsterdam we'll be going through Belgiam and on to Paris to meet up with friends and fly home.

I'll try to blog some more beer geek stuff, but for now I'm just relaxing.

Ta Ta for now,
Kevin

Uerige Alt homebrew recipe

While at Uerige, I "came" up this homebrew recipe. John, one of the brewers there who happens to be a Siebel grad, didn't help me with it. I promise. This is the most popular alt in Dusseldorf and happens to be very bitter with tons of hop character. Sorry for the metric, it's just how we do things here.

Uerige Alt:

for 42Liters (around 11 US gallons) assuming 90% effeciancy

6.72 kg Weyermann Bohemian Pils malt (slightly undermodified)
170 grams Weyermann CaraMunich II
170 grams Weyermann Carafa III
mash schedule: direct heat step mash
infuse at 1:4 ratio to 45C and immidiatly heat to 52C for protein rest. Hold for five minutes.
Heat to 64 and rest for 30 minutes beta rest.
Heat to 72 and rest for 15 minutes. Check iodine before continuing.
Heat to 78 for mash out.

Boil for only 60 minutes with slow boil.
80 grams Hallertau Perle 8.25% at 50 min
20 grams Spalter Spalt 4.75% at 10 min
20 grams Spalter Spalt dry hop in secondary for three weeks at 4C.

Use moderatly hard water, not Seattle tap.
Pitch large amount of Wyeast's 1007 German Ale yeast to 20C aerated wort. Allow to free rise to 26C and hold for 18 hours or when ferment is done. Approx. 77% attenuation. Attempt to follow Reinshietsgebot for show.

Cologne

From Dusseldorf we headed to Cologne for a tour of Rastal the glass designers. In a country of automation, it was refreshing to see a place with few robots controlling their product. If Rick from Uber is reading this, I'd like to tell him that I saw next years SIB/PIB glasses being made. It is a small world after all. After Rastal we left to see a Kolsh brewery in all of its automative glory. This brewery was unique in that it didn't employ a boil kettle rather it utilized a few mixing tanks that held the wort at near boiling temps for hop utilization and formation of break material and then sent the wort to an evaporator to expel the DMS. Later, we found the largest church I've ever been in and were spellbound for at least an hour.

On the subject of automation, I've been told that the reason the German people are so cutting edge in the field of automation is that after the war most of their workforce was absent. In the early fifties, bottling lines were mostly filled with women. The need for automation was born out of necessity.

Bavaria Brewing and La Trappe

We stayed in Tilburg, Netherlands for a few nights. During the day we toured the Malting facility at Bavaria Brewing in the Netherlands. It was the first large-scale malthouse that I've been to. However, no pictures were allowed there.

After a nice lunch we headed up to La Trappe for the last monastery tour of our trip. Unlike Orval, the beer made at La Trappe doesn't separate their brewhouse and their monastery. It wasn't uncommon to see Kenyan monks walking around with bundles of house made cheese. Profits from the beer sales go to charity in Africa, and the monastery serves as a refuge for monks during the war in Africa.

La Trappe is the only "Trappist" brewery located outside of Belgium. Originally located in France, the monastery was re-located during anti-religious movements under Napoleon. It's also known as Koningshoven.

That night was spent in downtown Tilburg gorging ourselves over the 200+ beer menu at Cafe Kadinsky. We also were in the Netherlands...nuff said?

Next day we were off to Dusseldorf. I've seen quite a few Altbier breweries. It's funny but I thought that Alt and Kolsch were just styles that came out a certain region. In truth, Alt is the only beer you can purchase at most places with the exception of Pils. Don't even think about ordering a Kolsch in Dusseldorf! Not if you want to get a punch in the face. The opposite is true about Koln. We travel there tomorrow after touring the Uerige brewery. We met one of the new brewers for Uerige, John, who happens to be an American graduate of Siebel. John took us to a football game to watch Fortuna Dusseldorf lose to FC Union Berlin.

Tonight I'm having a Dortmunder Union Export and catching up on some computer time. I was always curious about the Dortmunder style of beer. The only import I can find in the states is DAB. DAB tastes more like a Pilsner/Helles than how the style guidelines dictate. Great Lakes makes an award winning Dortmunder, but after the three kegs of it at Siebel I thought the beer was terrible. It tasted bitter with no hop aroma or flavor and sweet. Definitely not a sessionable beer for me. It seems that the Dort I'm having tonight is my first real Dort. Well, I'm not wowed. I get the hard water thing, and it's tasty, but boring. Oh well, maybe my love affair with this style is over. If anyone can email me a brand of Dort I should try I would appreciate it.

Cantillion and Heineken

Cantillion is located in the ghetto end of Brussels. The Brewery is actually a museum although they still brew there once a week only in the winter. Beer is produced only in the coldest parts of the year because they employ an coolship in the attic to cool their wort. After cooling, the wort is sent to a open fermenter for fermentation. You can guess that many bacteria can become present with a week of open and spontaneous fermentation. After a week of fermentation, the beer is moved to used wine barrels where it's stored for a year at the very least. The barrels are used until they fall apart. Refermetation occurs in the barrels sending foam out of the bung. Spiders are welcome in the brewhouse because of the excess of fruit flies. Aside from the spiders, the house cat shown here takes care of other pests. We call her the CIP or CAT system.

The whole place smells dank with the exception of the barrel storage and fermentation room that smells of yeast. The smell of yeast is so strong that it's no wonder that spontaneous fermentations occurs so rapidly. The fruit is added to the lambic in the summer months when brewing is not held but fruit crops are matured. The fruit is added directly to the barrels, stored for six months and bottled. The brewers here suggest not storing the fruit lambics because the flavor is best at bottling. However, the geuze can be stored with excellent results.

The Heineken brewery in Tilburg was easily the largest brewery I've been in. They used a double-decker bus to show us the facility. Every part of the brewing process was automatized. The workers never come close to touching the product as it's being made. We were not permitted to take pictures. The contrast between Cantillion and Heineken was staggering. I would personally brew at a dirty museum than an immaculate, computerized factory. Cantillion produces 3,300hl of beer per year while the Tilburg brewery (one of many Heineken breweries) produces over 8 million hl.

Oh yeah, check out a video of Cantillion at my friend Geoff's page:
http://seattlebeernews.com/?p=300

Bofferding and Orval

On the second day we went to Bofferding in Luxembourg and Orval in Belgium.

Orval is a small monastery in Belgium making only one beer. The beer is produced once a week. We got to see all the new equipment next to all the old. In 2007 the monastery purchased new equipment. So next to the old copper kettles are new stainless kettles covered in copper for appearance. Also, their beer is dry hopped! This was quite exciting for our American brewers.

First day of the study tour

It's the first day of the study tour through Germany, Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg. Our first stop was the OeTtinger Brewery to see the largest brewery in Germany. These guys produce 8 million hectoliters of beer per year and sell their beer at a near loss to take advantage of the frugal market. When on sale, some of their beer will sell for 4euro a case (ten liters!).

Well, cheap beer is cheap beer if you ask me. After a fantastic lunch, we were off to the original KHS plant where they manufacture filling stations. It was incredibly huge for a plant that doesn't supply washers or labelers. The kind folks at KHS fed us and gave us beer (see a trend with the Germans?). They showed us where the anti-aircraft guns were stationed during the war when their plant was leveled to the ground. Tune in tomorrow; I'll be at Orval.

Garmisch

Easter Sunday Gordon, Craig, Nick and I went hiking up the Bavarian Alps in the small skiing city of Garmisch. Although the hike was only 1,000 feet in elevation, we were worn out from following nearly every other trail before finding the trailhead. It does help to learn some German before you travel.

It was a clear 70 degree day and as we approched the top we were dreaming of biergartens again. Jokingly, we said it would be great if their were a biergarten at the top.

Well, to our suprise, there was one. We had some Weissbier and hung out in the sun before heading back into town.

Gearing up for the study tour

Yup, like I've been saying, our class is starting a rock band and have chosen this picture of us with bikes as the first cover. Our internet has been off and on so I've had a hard time keeping up the blog. That and I've been having too much fun to play on the computer.

Last week at Doeman's is finally over. We've just finished the final exam and I feel confident that I passed.

Last Wednesday, Matt from Firestone Walker brewing flew out here to give a day seminar on hops. He also shipped sample beer from California. Most everyone was excited to taste the overly hopped US beers, except the Brazilian students. We had a liter of Augustiner at the Kellerhall and talked shop after class.

The weekend before a few of us traveled to Nuremberg. We traveled through the Coliseum and Zeppelin field where Hitler held his massive Nazi rallies. Walking into the Coliseum was chilling. It was run down, full of shrubs and birds. A haunting thunder rolled in on rain clouds when we entered. There is a museum inside and a small platform to view the massive enclosure. The coliseum is mainly used for storage.

More updates from Bayern!

This week was spent using a DE filter on our beer and in the bottling plant packaging. Working on the filling side of the beer industry is not very interesting to blog about.

On Thursday we got a chance to brew again. Our teacher Eder nabbed some American hops from HopUnion while in the States so that we could show these German students how IPAs are made. Eder's expression while we added large handfuls of Centennial every five minutes was priceless.

I also found my favorite beer: Augustiner Lagerbier Hell. Liters of this delicious lager cost only 5.20euro at the Braustube. Half of the Munchiners prefer this beer and the other half prefer the export version Edelstoff.

Export lager is another style worthy of consideration.

There are basically two types of export beer: type 1 is very pale(7-9 ebc) and dry. Final attenuations of up to 86%(Augustiner Edelstoff) and a bitterness of up to 30BUs. The increase of alcohol and bitterness balance the dryness. Type 2 is higher in color (12ebc) and lower in final attenuation (80%). Because this beer is slightly sweeter, the bitterness is also lower (18-26BUs). If Dortmunder were still being brewed, it would fit into this category. However, most Dortmunder beers being made are moving toward the Bavarian Pils style which is more acceptable to a large audience.

Another point I would like to make: Bavarian Pils is not really "Pilsner". Sure it's stronger, dryer and made with soft treated water, but the brewers in Bavaria have been lowering the bitterness for the south German palate and calling it Pils. BUs on this sub-category dip dangerously down to 18-20. The trend for more boring beer is here in Germany just like in the States. Northern German and Bohemian styles have anywhere from 35-50. Flensburger Pils I know from experience is 44BUs. That's quite hoppy for a dry lager!

Weekend and Beer Styles

Over the weekend we rented bikes to go through the English Garden and stopped at the second largest biergarten in Bavaria for lunch while the sun was still out. We admired the fellows that surf the river in the park.

On Sunday we went to the Deutches Museum to ponder for hours their wonderful technology displays.

But enough about touristy stuff; let's talk about beer style. The German brewmasters recognize many different variations in beer styles.

Pale lager exists in two catagories: Munich Helles and non-Bavarian Helles. Munich Helles is very slightly sweeter, fermented traditionally in open fermenters and has HUGE amounts of SO2 due to the pressurization of the fermenting tanks to achieve natural carbonation. It's also a bit darker (9-12 EBC) due to single decoction mash. Non-Bavarian Helles has a higher degree of attenuation (82-86% apparent). This is the style we know in the States as European light lager.

The Pilsner category can be divided up to three styles: Bavarian, North German and Bohemian. Bavarian is less hopped, degrees dropping as low as 20BU and taste more like Helles lager. North German is mid-range to high and Bohemian is always high sometimes pushing 45BU. Original pilsners were much darker and sweeter than the pilsners we know today and always had a hint of diacetyl. This color change was caused by the intensive decoction procedure. It was felt that the pale malt made in the Bohemian area would not make good beer so intensive boiling was instigated.

More beer styles later...

Flotzinger Brau mmmmmm,

Friday after class we took the Bahn to Rosenheim to meet up with our good friend and teacher Dr, Michael Zepf. Mike's the brewmaster at Flotzinger Brau and had us over for a backstage tour, some wonderful food and, of course, beer. The murky liquid that Zak and Brian are drinking is an acidified wort. Due to the German purity law Reinheinsgebot, brewers here cannot add anything that isn't malt, hops, yeast and water. Sometimes a brewer desires a low pH mash. How the Germans got around this was allowing the bacteria found naturally on the malt to acidify a solution. They keep tanks of acidified wort around to mix with fresh mash.

The brewery was beautiful and dates back to 1904. The family has brewed there since 1543. We saw traditional equipment next to state of the art Steinecker vessels. At the end of the tour Mike took us into the maturation rooms to have a glass of Helles unfiltered, straight from the tank. It always confused me that the BJCP made a score sheet for beer that was on a scale of up to fifty, but no beers ever got a fifty. I thought some beers should be that good. This beer and the experience is why the beer scores go up to fifty. It was the best beer of my life. Fifty out of fifty, hands down.

After the tour we went to the lunch hall where Mike and his wife had made us livercheese, sausage salad and pretzels. Oh yeah, and a barrel of Marzen. We had a fun night, but I shouldn't go into details.

more pics

More pics like I said from Zak.
http://www.flickr.com/groups/siebel2009/

First times at Doeman's

It's been three days at Doeman's Academy for Beer, Food and Beverage and I've been having a blast. The campus has many classrooms, laboratories, a brewery (shown here), a bottling line, a bottle washer and a cafeteria. It's a German school that dates back to the late 1800's although this campus was built in the 1960's. The Siebel class is the only class taught in English.

Monday was devoted to getting things at home together and getting over jet lag. Yesterday half of the class including me brewed a traditional Bavarian Wheat on the Doeman's pilot system. Notice the open fermenter that Brad is filling and the horizontal brite tanks that Jeff is leaning against. I wanted to take a nap on the bags of Weyermann malt.

I believe that one of the teachers plotted against us and set the grind on the mill too fine. We tried to lauter for three hours before giving up and adding malt extract! Everything went wrong that day. Our teacher Bjorn was very considerate about all the mistakes. With any luck we won't mess up the Pilsner scheduled for next week. Brian and I put the spent grain in one of our teacher's 7 series and drove it a kilometer to a dairy farm. Only in Munich, huh? We actually got to dump the grain for the cows. So that's why all of Munich smells of manure! There are farms in the center of towns.

The brew day took eleven hours. After school the guys thought it would be nice to head up to Augustiner Keller for some real German beer and food. I'll get more pictures of this. We drank liters of Helles and Maximator and ate pig's knuckle and snitzel.

I love Germany. I could live here. There are many things about Germany that I won't explain here, but I love it. I really should have learned the language; I always wanted to.

Remember how I was excited about the spring? It's 34F and snowing here. Arrgh. I can't escape the snow.

Deutchland!

So we got to Germany alright. At least all in one piece. The first stop we made after dropping off our luggage was to Marienplatz. It's the big tourist stop. I'll try to take more pictures when we go back. I was/am very tired from the plane ride. The Hofbrauhouse was enormous and wonderful. I can't wait to go to more biergartens.
The sauerkraut is fantastic. It's not sour, but sweet and goes well with mustard. Check out the picture of the automatic beer pourer. Now that's engineering!