Brookston Beer Bulletin

Jay R. Brooks on Beer

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Bavaria in Pictures: Updated

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Roughly the first two weeks of November, I was fortunate enough to be invited along on a press junket to the Bavarian part of Germany along with a dozen colleagues. I took around 2,000 photos and it’s been taking me forever to go through them all. Day one of our trip went up in early December and today I’ve finally gotten up the next day’s photos. I’ll keep updating this post as I get more of the photos up and in the photo gallery.

 

The gang of twelve plus three at the Faust Brauerei in Miltenberg, Germany. From left: Cornelius Faust, me, Lisa Morrison, Johannes Faust, Julie Bradford, Andy Crouch, Peter Reid, Horst Dornbusch, Jeannine Marois, Harry Schumacher, Tony Forder, Candace Alstron, Don Russell, Jason Alstrom and Todd Alstrom.

 

For more photos from my trip Germany, visit Miltenberg Sunday, Miltenberg Monday: Faust Brewery Tour, the Wurzburger Hofbrau, Weyermann Malting and Schlenkerla Tavern in the photo gallery.
 

 

Anchor Christmas Bash 2007

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Last night was the annual Anchor Christmas Party at the Anchor Brewery in San Francisco. I’ve been going to this party for more than ten years now and it’s always a great event. Anchor puts on a terrific spread of food and all of the Anchor beers are available on tap, including this year’s Christmas Ale. The main floor of the brewery where the taproom is and the beautiful copper kettles are fills up with local beer industry people and other friends of the brewery.

My wife Sarah, beer chef Bruce Paton and Jen Garris, with New Belgium Brewing.

For more photos from this year’s Anchor Christmas Party, visit the photo gallery.
 

Picking Hops at the Moonlight

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Sunday was picking day at Moonlight Brewery in Windsor, California. Having recently returned from Hop School in Yakima, Washington, I was eager to see once more the old-fashioned, slow way of picking hops. Brian Hunt invited me to help him and several friends and neighbors to help with this year’s harvest. I’ve helped out before, but this year was particularly fun because I had just witnessed the industrial hop processing in America’s Hopbasket, Yakima, Washington, and was interested to see the contrast between the two methods. I took over 500 photos of hops while in Yakima and hope to have those up shortly so you can see the entire process from ground to glass.
 

Moonlight Brewery owner Brian Hunt with a vine of hops freshly cut from his hopyard.

For more photos from this year’s hop harvest at Moonlight Brewery, visit the photo gallery.
 

Anchor Celebrates Toronado’s 20th

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Earlier tonight the folks at Anchor Brewery in San Francisco threw a little get together to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Toronado, the best beer bar in San Francisco and one of the best anywhere.

We enjoyed Anchor beers with some appetizers at the bar while we waited to sit down in the brewery for a wonderful meal.

Dave Suurballe with Anchor’s head brewer Mark Carpenter.

Drake’s brewer Melissa Myers with Jeff Bagby, freshly arrived from San Diego where he brews at Pizza Port Brewing.

Publicans three: Dave Keene (Toronado), Chris Black (Falling Rock) and Matt Bonney (Brouwer’s).

Jennifer and Dave.

 

Wunder of Wunders

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It’s always cause for celebration when a new brewery opens, doubly so when it represents the resurrection of a long-dead brand. Wunder Brewing last brewed in San Francisco in 1909. So it’s been almost a century since it closed. There was another Wunder brewery in Oakland just after Prohibition ended, around 1934, but it lasted less than a year. So it is with great promise that this historic brand tries to make a go of it once more in San Francisco’s inner sunset district. The only downside to this story is that Eldo’s — and more importantly their brewer Joe — are now gone from the local brewing community. So I wish new owner Carl Durham well, and hope his new venture will be …, well, wunder-ful. According to the brewery’s website, they should be open the first week of July.


I love the tagline they used on this tray, “None Purer, None Better.”

The original Wunder Brewing was first known as Philip Frauenholz & Co. when it opened in 1852. Over the years it went through five more name changes, usually involving some form of Bavaria Brewing, before becoming Wunder Brewing in 1898. That was after John C. Wunder purchased the brewery, having arrived in California a few years before, either in 1895 or on March 15, 1896, depending on the source. The first thing Wunder did upon arriving was found the San Diego (California) Brewing Co. in San Francisco. He later bought out the Bavarian Brewery, organizing his two breweries under the Wunder name.

The brewery was originally a steam beer plant but it’s unclear if it remained so through its many incarnations, not to mention locations, which include Vallejo and Green, Vallejo and Montgomery, and Greenwich and Scott Streets. The brewery on Greenwich was still standing until 1990, when damage from the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake caused it to be torn down. Sometime in the 1920s or 30s it had been turned into a residence and was made to look like a Spanish-style stucco home.

As for the new brewery, they started their first batch at 11:50 a.m. on Saturday, June 9. It was a pale ale, and they expect to also offer a brown beer, which is described on the website as like a Viennese lager, among others. That makes some sense, since Vienna Lager’s color is usually described as reddish brown or copper, with a pretty narrow SRM range (10-12). But there’s certainly no reason why a commercial beer can’t make something close to that style that’s slightly darker. I like Vienna lagers, they’re a little sweeter and toastier than pilsners, but are also clean and crisp like their more popular cousin. I’m looking forward to trying Durham’s interpretation.

I’ve been staring at this poster below for many years now, as there’s one hanging in the Celebrator Beers News‘ offices, so it seems more like a familiar friend than an antique. It’s interesting to note that it’s exactly 100 years old.

The New Stone Brewery

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I was down in San Diego Sunday through Tuesday for a CSBA meeting and finally had a chance to see the new Stone Brewery, along with their World Bistro & Gardens in Escondido on Monday for the very first time. The place is very impressive from top to bottom and seems very well-thought out at every stage. The food was pretty tasty, too, especially the deep-fried garlic mashed potato balls. Yum.

Stone’s gleaming new brewery during our tour by new head brewer Mitch Steele.

Co-owner Greg Koch toasting the end of a great day, in front of his Stone World Bistro & Gardens.

For more photos from my Stone Brewery and the World Bistro & Gardens tour, visit the photo gallery.
 

Finding the Lost Abbey

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As I mentioned yesterday, on Sunday I flew down to San Diego for a couple of days to attend a CSBA meeting. My first stop was to visit Tomme Arthur at Port Brewing‘s new production facility, which they bought a little over a year ago from Stone Brewing. I wanted to see what they’d done to the place and also sample Tomme’s wonderful beers at the source.

The lobby of the brewery has been fashioned like a ship with portholes looking into their conference room.

The original paintings from the Lost Abbey’s beautiful labels hang behind the tasting bar.

Aging beer in wooden barrels line the brewery and are fit into nooks and crannies throughout.

Tomme’s daughter Sydney, who’s just over a year-old, came to work.

Tomme Arthur and Sydney in front of aging beer destined to be in future bottles of the Lost Abbey.

Session #4: Local Brews

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Today is our fourth Session a.k.a beer Blogging Friday and the theme is something of a departure from our usual topic. This month’s host is the Gastronomic Fight Club from Omaha, Nebraska, and they’ve chosen “Local Brews” as the theme, describing his goal as wanting to “create a guide book of tasting notes to drinking local.”

As I often do, I decided to tackle the theme literally, and so I went to the closest brewery, which is Moylan’s, a mere 1.7 miles from my home (2.3 if you take the freeway) in Novato, California.

We moved to the town of Novato in northern Marin in late December, just over five months ago. We sold our condo in San Rafael for a small house, but one with a yard for the kids and no more stairs (our condo was on four levels. After a while, it began to feel like we were living in an Escher drawing.) Condo life was also impersonal, and we craved more of a community and neighborhood feel to where we lived.

Novato is a relatively small (population approx. 50,000) bedroom community with a small downtown area. It was only established in 1960, making the town one-year younger than I am! We live only two blocks from the main downtown street, Grant Avenue. In the few months we’ve been here, it’s been far more enjoyable than the three years we lived in San Rafael. We can walk to a lot of places, which is great. One place that’s a little far, unfortunately, is the town’s only brewery.

Moylan’s is located on the outskirts, so to speak, a part of our only really big shopping center, Rowland Plaza, along with a Costco, Target, Staples, a multi-screen movie theatre and many other chain stores. It was built and opened in 1995 by Brendan Moylan, a Novato resident. Moylan also opened nearby Marin Brewing six years earlier, in 1989. In addition to the brewpub and full pub menu at the brewery, there is also a production facility where Moylan’s and Marin Brewing bottle several of their popular beers in 22 oz. bottles.

I had thought about going to Moylan’ for lunch, but I just couldn’t get it together and so didn’t manage to get there until around four in the afternoon. At that late hour I didn’t expect anyone to be in the brewery itself, but happily Moylan’s new head brewer Denise Jones was still there. She recently replaced James Costa who left to work at E.J. Phair. Denise has been brewing commercially for many years and is probably most well-known for her years at Third Street Aleworks in Santa Rosa. She poured us a beer and sat down with me to chat.

I told her about “The Session” and this months theme as we tried the Pomegranate Wheat, a beer that James Costa first made last year. Denise had told me she’s been increasing the amount of fruit and lowering the IBUs so I wanted to taste the difference. Indeed, it did taste more “juicy” and had a nice sweetness that wasn’t at all cloying.

Next, I tried their ESB on cask, but unfortunately it was oxidized. Denise confessed they’ve been having a problem with the line and she’s working on fixing it. In the meantime, I also tried the ESB from a regular carbonated tap and also the nitrogen line. It was interesting to have the same beer from three different delivery systems. Oxidation aside, the cask version naturally was the smoothest of the three, though the Nitrogen one was a pretty close second. No matter how many times I try it, I’m amazed every single time how much better cask beer is, especially when you can do a direct comparison. Not that Moylan’s ESB was bad, but even the oxidized cask was almost preferable to the harsh, forced CO2 of the regular version.

Denise brought up one aspect of drinking locally that had not occurred to me before. She suggested that one reason people preferred their local brew was that it was made with the same water that was already familiar to them and that familiarity made it automatically taste more unconsciously recognizable and thus was preferable on a visceral level. It reminds me of the way your Mom’s home cooking tastes better, not because it actually is better than a five-star restaurant, but because it has that familiarity, a certain nostalgia perhaps, that makes it taste better than it really ought to. Given that water, like human beings when you get right down to it, are mostly water it does make a certain kind of sense. I’m kicking myself that it hadn’t occurred to me before now. Many beers are rightly famous in part because of what the local water source added to the beer’s flavor, but that would be true of almost everything affected by the local water, from food cooked in it to the simple tap water you drink day after day.

After a pair of session beers, I decided to go out with a bang and for my final beer decided on Ryan O’Sullvan’s Imperial Stout. It’s a style I’m already fond of and I’ve had the beer before but I don’t order it on draft often enough. It’s a mighty fine beer and at 10% abv packs quite a wallop. It’s thick and viscous, something on the order 10W-30, and very full-flavored with hints of berries and roasted coffee. It’s a great sipping beer that deserves to be enjoyed slowly so it’s ever-increasing complexity come through as it warms. It was a nice beer to finish with and I sat and savored it after Denise left for her commute home to Napa.

Here’s a list of all the beers Moylan’s currently has on tap at the brewpub. The descriptions are their own. A dozen or more of their regular and seasonal beers are also available in 22 oz. bottles throughout the Bay Area and Califoria generally, as well as parts of Arizona, Massachusetts, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Rhode Island and Washington.

BEERS CURRENTLY ON TAP AT MOYLAN’S
 

  • Unfiltered Wheat – A Light and Refreshing American Style Wheat Ale. 4.5%
  • Pomegranate Wheat – Tasty Unfiltered Wheat blended with Pomegranate Juice that makes perfect Summer afternoon treat 5.0%
  • Extra Special Bitter – Our Traditional English Style Bitter. This one is served on Co2 for a slightly more bitter finish. Enjoy! 5.2%
  • Moylan’s Special Bitter – Our Traditional English Style Bitter served on Nitrogen for Smooth Maltiness and a Creamy Finish. 5.2%
  • Tipperary Pale Ale– Our Award Winning Classic Style Pale Ale. It’s slightly hoppy with smooth, subtle malty finish. 5.0%
  • India Pale Ale – This American Style IPA is Slightly Malty with an aggressive Hop flavor crisp finish, that leaves you wanting another. 6.5%
  • Moylander Double IPA – This Ale has received a score of 97 points and a rating of SUPERLATIVE at the World Beer Championships in Chicago. Huge and Hoppy, Thick and Hearty . . . not faint of heart! 8.5%
  • Hopsickle Triple IPA – A homage to hops with an Ale that stimulates the taste buds with the blast of Tomahawk, Cascade and Centennial hops. 9.2%
  • Kilt Lifter Scotch Ale – “FIRST PLACE CALIFORNIA STATE FAIR 2005 & 2006” Our Flagship Beer! Traditional Scottish “Wee Heavy” Ale is Big, Rich, and Malty, with a Warm Finish. 8.0%
  • Old Blarney Barley Wine – HUGE malt flavors with a big hop kick, this heavy ale is not for faint of heart! 10%
  • Irish Dry Stout – A classic Irish style dry stout. Rich and Creamy with a roasted character finishes smooth and dry. Served on N2 4.8%
  • Imperial Stout – A Monster Stout with a Warming Smooth Malty Finish and Hints of Roasted Coffee and Chocolate. 10.0%
  • Cask Conditioned Ales – Irish dry stout & extra special bitter.

Rogue Ales Brewery Tour

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Chris Garrett, a Rogue employee created this humorous tour of the main brewery in Newport, Oregon. I first saw it during a seminar about internet marketing at the Craft Brewrers Conference this year. The speaker singled it out as a good way to use humor to reach your customer, but toward the end of it Garrett makes a little dig at the brewery’s owner, Jack Joyce. Jack was in the audience at the time and told the attendees that Garrett had been fired. He said it with a straight face, but knowing Jack’s sense of humor it’s hard to tell whether he was joking or not. He probably was, at least I hope so. At any rate, I recently came across it on YouTube and thought I’d share it since it is entertaining.

So It Goes: Kurt Vonnegut’s Beer Heritage

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vonnegut
Sad news indeed was the passing of Kurt Vonnegut yesterday. Besides being one of America’s finest minds and literary talents, he was a favorite author of mine since I first read Breakfast of Champions at around age 14 or 15. Over the next few years I read Slaughterhouse Five, Cat’s Cradle, Player Piano and Welcome to the Monkey House, along with most of his other early books. Till the end his mind remained as agile as ever, evidenced by his searing appearance on Jon Stewart last year.

kurt-vonnegut

Paul Gatza, Director of the Brewers Association, reminded me of a story I’d almost forgotten about Vonnegut’s family and their association with beer. His grandfather, Albert Lieber, was heavily involved in the brewing industry in Indianapolis, Indiana. Albert’s father, Vonnegut’s great-grandfather, was Peter Lieber and he owned P. Lieber & Co (a.k.a. City Brewery) which later joined with two other Indianapolis breweries to form the Indianapolis Brewing Company in 1887. And in 1904 they won the grand prize gold at the St. Louis World’s Fair. Apparently one of Vonnegut’s short story collections also recounts this story, possibly “Palm Sunday.”

There’s a nice history of this at Indiana Beer, so let’s pick up the story with their account.

Kurt Vonnegut’s grandfather was Albert Lieber. The recipe for a dark lager beer that Peter Lieber devised was brewed by Wynkoop Brewing, Denver, in 1996 to celebrate the new library there. It was called Kurt’s Mile-High Malt. A “secret ingredient” of the brew was coffee.

I also recall someone telling me the father of Wynkoop’s founder — and current mayor of Denver — John Hickenlooper was a friend of Vonnegut and that he, too, is mentioned in one the novels, but I can’t for the life of remember if I ever knew which one.

One of the more personal tributes I’ve read was by Denver Post staff columnist and sports writer Woody Paige, a self-avowed fan, and entitled “My muse, more or less.” In it, he tells an undoubtedly more accurate tale of how Kurt’s Mile High Malt came to be.

Vonnegut came to Denver in 1996 to show two dozen of his sketches at a gallery and to introduce a new short story he had written for the label of a beer bottle. As he might say, most of what I’m telling you is true, except the parts I’m making up.

The owner of a LoDo microbrewery had the grand idea of producing specialty beers with famous authors writing stories for the labels. The brewpub owner, a disheveled sort, worked up the courage to ask Vonnegut to contribute, and he agreed, under the condition that the beer’s recipe be the same as his grandfather’s, brewed commercially in Indianapolis before Prohibition.

It turned out that the brewpub owner’s father lived down the hall from Vonnegut, and was his fraternity brother, when they attended Cornell. (Vonnegut later attended Tennessee, which is my school, and you’re thinking I’m making all of this up.)

The secret ingredient in the beer – called “Kurt’s Mile-High Malt” – was coffee. Vonnegut’s story on the label was entitled “Merlin,” about a golden knight with an automatic weapon.

Vonnegut documented his Denver visit in his last biographical novel, “Timequake,” and told of meeting his friend’s son — the brewpub owner.

The barkeep’s name: John Hickenlooper.

“Ting-a-ling,” as Vonnegut would write.

Hickenlooper knew of my idolization of Vonnegut and invited me and my daughter to spend time(quake) with Vonnegut. My daughter sat on a bus bench with him and talked about colleges, and I later had a beer with him.

Does anybody have a copy of the story or the label? I’d love to include it here if anyone does have it. Thanks. We’ve lost one of this country’s literary treasures, IMHO. Let’s all raise a glass to his memory with Vonnegut’s own words.

Still and all, why bother? Here’s my answer. Many people need desperately to receive this message: I feel and think much as you do, care about many of the things you care about, although most people do not care about them. You are not alone.

So it goes. (from Slaughterhouse Five, 1959)

UPDATE: Craig Hartinger from Merchant Du Vin sent me this photo of a reproduction poster of the Indianapolis Brewing Co. from around the same time as they won the gold medal in 1904. There’s also one of these hanging in the Celebrator’s offices, too. Thanks, Craig.

indy_brewing_poster