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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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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