Friday’s ad is for Blatz Pilsener Beer, probably from the 1940s. I’m guessing that because in the bottom righthand corner of the ad, it says “Brewing Better Beer for the 97th Year.” And depending on what year they’re using for when Blatz started — it could be 1850 or 1851 or even 1846 — that would put it at 1943, 1947 or 1948. I’m not entirely sure why there’s a bucket of bottles and a spilling bucket of blackberries, except that’s probably the freshness angle, for hat great tagline: “At the Peak of Flavor.” It must be working, because I’m certainly thirty just looking at the ad. Although there’s a part of me that will certainly be disappointed when the beer does not have a hint of blackberries in the flavor when I taste it.
Archives for March 1, 2013
Session #73: The Beer Audit
Our 73rd Session, is hosted by Adam W., who writes Pints and Pubs (from beer to eternity). His topic is all about something he does at least once a year, which he calls a “beer audit” and he’s asking people to blog about their own efforts at managing their beer. Here’s what he means by a Beer Audit:
Once or twice a year I take a beer audit. I open cupboards and boxes and just have a good look at what’s there. Some beers get moved about, some make it from a box into the fridge, others get pushed further to the back of the cupboard for another day. Often I just stare at the bottles for a while and think about when I’ll drink them. Apart from the enjoyment of just looking at a hoard of beer, It tells me something about my drinking habits.
- I store too many bottles – over 150 at the last count, which would keep me in beer for over a month, compared to less than a week’s worth of food – but evidently that’s still not enough bottles as I return with more every time I leave the house.
- I have a tendency to hoard strong, dark beers – great for a winter evening, not so great when a lazy sunny afternoon starts with a 9% imperial stout and then gets stronger.
- My cellaring could be improved. I found three beers from breweries that closed last year. I found these, not hidden away in a box under the stairs, but in the fridge. The fridge!!!
- My attempts to age beer usually just result in beer that’s past its best.
- The oldest beer in my cupboard is probably an infant compared to the aged beers people must have in their cellars.
So, I’m interested to know if you take stock of the beers you have, what’s in your cellar, and what does it tell you about your drinking habits. This could include a mention of the oldest, strongest, wildest beers you have stored away, the ratio of dark to light, strong to sessionable, or musings on your beer buying habits and the results of your cellaring. I look forward to reading your posts on Friday March 1st, leave a comment here when you do.
Like Adam, I could probably do a better job managing my own stash of beer, which generally grows larger with the passing years, despite my constant efforts, and best intentions, to drink it all. Things have certainly improved because I also used to have whatever beer I had just scattered about wherever it would fit, and at out last home had four refrigerators for beer, in part because our garage was not temperature controlled. So I was constantly losing track of where bottles ended up and had a devil of a time trying to find anything. What I really have always wanted to do was but a numbered sticker on every bottle (a barcode would be even better — and geekier) and keep a file listing what each bottle is along with its location. Time being fixed, unfortunately, means that I never found enough spare hours to make that dream a reality.
But since we moved into the new house last year, most of the beer is now, at last, in one place. This house has a beer cellar built under it specifically for that purpose. The people who built the house kept wine in it, but I’ve repurposed it, although we do keep some wine there, of course. It’s built into the side of the hill, has a gravel floor, with a raised brick floor running around the four walls. There’s also a working sink in there. I wish it was a few degrees cooler, but it’s fairly constant at least. I may add a swamp cooler when summer reasserts itself this year. I put up one large shelf, one smaller shelf but most of the rest of the beer is in boxes.
But at least it’s in one place now. Or most of it is. We still have two refrigerators in the garage, one of which is for food (plus the added freezer space allows us to buy in bulk) but the other one is where I put the beer for drinking, and where my wife’s stash is. Long ago, I used to put a dot, an orange sticker, on any bottle that she wasn’t allowed to drink so she”d know what was being saved and what wasn’t. That method proved unworkable because, although she usually respected the dot, visiting friends and relatives rarely did. So instead I began segregating the aging beer meant to be saved from the beer ready to drink now. Out of site, out of mind worked far better for keeping prized bottles of beer from being opened before their time. Now there in completely different parts of the house, with beer separated into three groups. Beer that’s meant to be enjoyed now is in the garage, in the refrigerator, or in boxes next to it — the on deck circle, so to speak — waiting for their tun in the cold box. Another group is set aside for my once monthly tasting — the Philopotes Society meetings — and because they haven’t been monthly lately due to being so far behind on finishing my book, they’re piling up. 22 cases at last count. Many will have to be moved into the “must drink now pile” before they perish. The rest go into the beer cellar.
The big shelf in the beer cellar. It’s hard to tell in the photo, but they’re about four or five bottles deep. I’ve tried to keep like bottles together — Cantillon with Cantillon, Russian River with Russian River, etc. — but there’s still a lot that are scattered. I really need to do an actual audit, something I’ve never formally accomplished. I think doing one annually, as Adam suggests, is what I should do, too. But you see all the bottles on the shelf in the photo? That represents about a quarter or a fifth of what’s down there in boxes, so I really need to audit it all so I have a better idea of what I have. I also noticed I still have a couple of cases of LBV Port from 1994. I should open one of those soon, too.
The funny thing is, I never really set out to build a collection of aging beer, it just sort of happened. I suppose if it had been a planned event, I would have gone about it differently, picked up specific bottles, filled in collections of vintages, things like that. As it is, people give me bottles, or I happen to be in the right place at the right time where certain bottles happen to be. Over time, they accumulate, and now that I have a place to keep them — and equally important in a place that’s out of the sight of my beloved — I suspect the cellar will just keep growing, like wild yeast feeding on fermentables. What I really need, apart from a serious audit of what’s down there, is more excuses to open the bottles. I need more friends stopping by, because there are few things I hate more than opening a bottle by myself. If you know where I live, c’mon by. Let’s open some bottles. Every one we drink is one less that I have to audit later.
Here’s one more bottle I’d like to add to the collection: Westerham Audit Ale. That seems like it would be the prefect beer to drink while I conduct my beer audit.
Give An AlcoHoot
This looks promising, although it’s not yet out on the market. A new device that pairs with your smartphone, Alcohoot, will apparently be a police grade breathalyzer. But not only that, it can direct you to the nearest restaurant for a cup of coffee, start a timer until your body should be below a preset BAC, or if all else fails call a friend or a taxi. It can even give your exact position using GPS even if you’re too far gone to know where you are.
I could do without the scary statistics that begin the video below, but I know their goal is to make sales, so it’s understandable, at least. You can safely skip the first 30 seconds and get to the meat of it. Unfortunately, as I mentioned, it’s not on the market just yet, but it may be soon. The suggested price it should be around $95, and may even drop as sales increase, which given everything it does seems like a bargain, especially when compared with the cost of standard low-tech breathalyzers.
PopSci also has a short video of the two founders of the company demonstrating the Alcohoot at an event at the New York Stock exchange recently. If it delivers on its great promise, it may be quite the device. I know I’d like to give it a try. I have an e-mail out to the company to see if I can find out more about it and when they think they’ll begin selling Alcohoot.
Firestone Walker’s Newest Brewer
Just got some great news this morning. Matt Brynildson, brewmaster at Firestone Walker, and his lovely wife Alison, had their first child this Wednesday. Alison gave birth to Mateo near the end of the day on February 27, arriving right on schedule. According to the proud papa, “Mateo Peter Brynildson was brewed, fermented and finally born to the sweet sounds of Bob Marley’s Babylon by Bus – Exodus. Both mom and baby are perfectly healthy and happy and still resting at [the] Hospital in SLO. The father is wondering why FW is not on tap here. Can’t wait to show him the brewhouse!”
Particulars:
Original Gravity: 7 pounds, 2 ounces
IBUs: 20 in.
Style: Boy
Release Date: February 27, 2013
Label: Mateo Peter Brynildson
Matt and Alison’s new son Mateo. “Healthy, Blonde — Blue Eyes — No Beard … so far!
The Family Tree of Beer Styles
Today’s infographic is a Family Tree of Beer Styles, created for a B.O.P. in Massachusetts, Deja-Brew.
Click here to see the chart full size.