Today’s infographic is still yet another poster about Oktoberfest, which began six days ago in Munich, Germany. This one is titled simply Oktoberfest Munich and was created by Destination, a travel website. It features several factoids and then compares two other prominent Oktoberfests, one in Brazil and the other in Cincinnati.
CLick here to see the infographic full size.
Today’s infographic is yet another poster about Oktoberfest, which began five days ago in Munich, Germany. This one is called Get Ready … For Oktoberfest and was created by Wimdu, a house and apartment rental website.
CLick here to see the infographic full size.
Today’s infographic is still another poster about Oktoberfest, which began four days ago in Munich, Germany. This one is called How To Survive Oktoberfest with Your Liver Intact and was created by Accredited Online Colleges. It features a brief history of Oktoberfest and some tips for navigating the festival.
This is a pretty funny video, JDirty and BIG Trox — GABF “Great American Beer Fest Rap”, made at last year’s Great American Beer Festival, which Charlie Papazian just tweeted. Enjoy.
Today’s infographic is another poster about Oktoberfest, which began two days ago in Munich, Germany. This one is called the Down-Low on Oktoberfest and was created by Travel Insurance, which is an “online resource for travelers and people looking for more information on travel insurance.”
Click here to see the poster full size.
Today’s infographic is a poster entitled “O Zapft Is!” and showed various factoids about Oktoberfest, which begins today in Munich, Germany. It was created by Visible, a social media monitor company.
Click here to see the poster full size.
My son Porter turns 12 this coming Tuesday. In his dozen years, he’s visited more breweries than the average adult. He’s listened to countless tour guides, brewers, Daddy’s beer friends, and me ramble on about beer and brewing for his entire life. Apparently it started to sink in. A few years ago, he began asking me if we could homebrew together. A casual question initially, but his desire intensified over time and earlier this year I promised him we could start homebrewing when he turned twelve.
Regular readers will no doubt know at least a little about Porter. By age three, he barely spoke. We visited numerous specialists and eventually he was diagnosed as being autistic. I quit my job as the General Manager of the Celebrator Beer News to stay home and do whatever we could to help our son. We found a special pre-school, hired tutors, took him to physical therapy, worked with endless flashcards, and basically did anything we could in the hopes of changing Porter’s fate; we read so many horror stories about worst case scenarios that we were committed to preparing him for a best possible future, at least. Happily, he responded magnificently, and by the end of the first year he was doing well-enough that I started freelancing. That’s also when I started the Brookston Beer Bulletin. Porter’s progress continued, but we decided to hold him back from starting kindergarten for a year (primarily because we’d been convinced that all boys tended to do better in school the later they started). Whatever it was we did, at least some of it worked. Academically, Porter flourished. His math and science (scores and grades) were off the chart. And perhaps more importantly, he caught up in language. When people meet him now, they’re astonished to learn he once didn’t talk. He’s certainly made up for lost time. In his last round of state-mandated testing, he scored perfects on four out of the five math sections, and even managed three perfects in language skills.
His autism mostly manifests itself these days in social awkwardness — but then he has me (and Sarah) for parents, so that’s not too surprising. We notice little things because we’re hyper-attuned to him from years of closely monitoring his behavior and progress. But most people don’t, and he appears more and more like a typical middle-schooler each year. He plays in band, loves Minecraft and was an all-star in little league baseball, where his team won the league championship this year. He even has a girlfriend and several good friends, something we thought impossible as recently as five years ago. The other way that his autism manifests itself is that he’s incredibly detail oriented. Some might say anal retentive. He often takes things literally, missing the nuance of humor or sarcasm. But I’m working on him. But that attention to detail I also thought would serve him well in homebrewing. A lot of brewing is precision and consistency.
I’d been eyeing Russian River Brewing’s pilot brewery — a 20-gallon brew sculpture from MoreBeer — and over time had asked brewer Vinnie Cilurzo how he liked it. I wanted to recreate commercial brewing at home, as best we could, for Porter to learn the brewing process along with the chemistry and science behind it. I spoke to Chris Graham, COO at MoreBeer, about getting a slightly smaller 10-gallon system for Porter and me to brew on. In anticipation of homebrewing, Chris recommended that Porter read John Palmer’s How to Brew. He made it through 18 chapters before he decided it was getting too complicated and felt overwhelmed. Chris and I lamented the fact that there were no books on “homebrewing for kids,” and suggested I work on the problem.
Because the last time I homebrewed was over twenty years ago (when I was a messy carboy homebrewer at best), I thought I’d ask a few friends if they would be willing to help. To my delight, everybody I asked enthusiastically agreed and we set a date, September 7. Vinnie Cilurzo, from Russian River Brewing, agreed to come and brew with Porter for his first time, and we concluded that his first beer most certainly had to be a porter. I thought we’d use one of Vinnie’s old porter recipes, but he surprised us by creating a brand new porter recipe, which he named “Porter’s Porter.” We also got some help from Rich Norgrove, from Bear Republic, Sean Paxton — the Homebrew Chef — and Dave Keene, owner of the Toronado.
Since we were going to do all-malt brewing, our first job was milling the barley, which Porter’s sister Alice seemed to love doing. Along with some friends, she ran the mill and got ready about twice as much of the base malt as we needed, just because she was enjoying herself so much. She’s now talking about becoming a maltster when she grows up.
The next step was weighing and measuring out the base malt and specialty malts needed to start the brewing. Porter weighed it out and kept track of the grain build.
Then Vinnie and Porter started the homebrew and got things really going. If you noticed that camera in the corner, my friend Justin Crossley, from the Brewing Network, brought a film crew to record Porter’s brew day. He interviewed father and son, along with all of the helpers, and is planning on creating a short film about families brewing. After the beer is finished, we’ll take some to the Brewing Network studio, and everyone except Porter will try the beer for the first time on the Sunday show. Should be fun.
Vinnie watching the numbers, while Porter measures the kettle, getting ready to move the wort for the hop additions.
Porter making the first hop addition.
Porter trying the sweet wort for the first time.
Getting everything set up to transfer the wort to the fermenter using a counterflow chiller, while Vinnie and Rich lamented the fact that we had no glycol.
Brewmaster Porter and his intern/assistant Vinnie Cilurzo posing for a photo after the brewing was done.
After a six-hour brew day, the wort was in the fermenter and we had to wait for the temperature to drop so we could pitch the yeast. In between, we drank some great beer, ate some tasty food, and enjoyed a beautiful day in Sonoma County. We can’t thank Vinnie and Natalie Cilurzo enough for making Porter’s first brew day such a special one. He was thrilled and excited the entire day. In addition to Vinnie and Natalie, it was great seeing (and having the help of) Rich, Tami and Sam Norgrove, Dave and Jennifer Keene, and Sean, Arlene and Olivia Paxton. Five families getting together to eat, drink and brew. And thanks to Justin Crossley for recording it all for posterity. What a day!
Porter’s Porter fermenting. Stay tuned to see how it all turned out in a couple of weeks.
Today’s infographic was originally created for Valentine’s Day earlier this year, by Save on Brew. I picked today to feature it because it’s Women’s Equality Day. Entitled Beers The Ladies Love, it gives tips for beers to give to the lady or ladies in your life. I’m not sure about their list of “10 Top Rated Craft Beer,” and especially the three that are imports, but they’re pretty good beers, at least. And there’s not a fruit beer in the bunch. It’s certainly better than many other attempts at this sort of thing I’ve seen.
Today’s bonus infographic, since this is the only day I can really use it, is about all things “4th of July.” It was created by DegreeSearch.org, and includes a mention o beer as one of the historical factoids in the infographic.
Click here to see the infographic full size.
Last week, the judging took place for the 18th annual California State Fair Craft Beer Competition in West Sacramento. This year’s entries came from 83 of the state’s breweries, with roughly 700 beers judged.
From the press release:
Some 40 beer experts from all over the state judged the various panels with blind tastings of the entries considering beers by style and classification. The judging panels were selected by Head Judge Tom Dalldorf, publisher of Celebrator Beer News, a national beer magazine.
The Best of Show tasting panel consisted of five of our top judges who were confronted with an unprecedented 47 entries all gold medal winners in previous rounds of judging. After a lengthy judging session, the panel agreed on giving Best of Show honors to a stunning Vienna Lager called Una Mas from Left Coast Brewing Company in San Clemente, Calif. A new award, Best of Show Session Beer (under 5% alcohol) was awarded to a wood-aged saison called Ocho Barril from Half Moon Bay Brewing Company in Half Moon Bay, Calif.
Beer enthusiasts can taste the award winning beers from the State Fair’s Craft Brew Competition on Saturday, July 20, from 3 pm–6 pm at Cal Expo, 1600 Exposition Blvd., Sacramento, Calif.
Full disclosure, I was privileged to be one of the dozens of judges who tasted all of the beers over three days, and even was on the panel of five that tasted all 47 of the winners of each category to pick the “best of show,” this year’s choice for the best beer in California. It was a very hard decision, as there were some unbelievably great beers on the table, in a breathtaking variety of styles. Best of show judging is harder than regular judging, because you’re not comparing like styles against one another. Instead, your looking for intangible qualities that make one beer stand out over another, made doubly difficult because every beer was already an award winner. But we persevered, and after a few hours emerged with a unanimous decision.
Below are all of the award winners. 1 is a Gold medal, 2 is Silver, 3 is Bronze, and 4 is an Honorable Mention.
Category 1: Light Lager — Dortmunder/Premium American
Category 1: Light Lager — Munich Helles
Category 2: Pilsner — German Pils
Category 2: Pilsner — Bohemian/Classic American Pils
Category 3: Amber Lager
Category 4: Dark Lager
Category 5: Bock
Category 6: Light Hybrid Beer — Cream Ale
Category 6: Light Hybrid Beer — Blonde Ale
Category 6: Light Hybrid Beer — Kolsch
Category 6: Light Hybrid Beer — American Wheat/Rye
Category 7: Amber Hybrid
Category 8: English Pale Ale — Standard/Ordinary Bitter
Category 8: English Pale Ale — Special/Best/Premium Bitter
Category 8: English Pale Ale — Extra Special/Strong Bitter (English Pale Ale)
Category 9: Scottish/Irish Ale — Scottish Heavy 70/-
Category 9: Scottish/Irish Ale — Irish Red Ale
Category 10: American Ale — American Pale Ale
Category 10: American Ale — American Amber Ale
Category 10: American Ale — American Brown Ale
Category 11: English Brown Ale
Category 12: Porter — Brown Porter
Category 12: Porter — Robust Porter
Category 12: Porter — Baltic Porter
Category 13: Stout — Dry Stout
Category 13: Stout — Sweet Stout
Category 13: Stout — Oatmeal Stout
Category 13: Stout — Foreign Export Stout
Category 13: Stout — American Stout
Category 13: Stout — Russian Imperial Stout
Category 14: India Pale Ale — English IPA
Category 14: India Pale Ale — American IPA
Category 14: India Pale Ale — Imperial IPA
Category 14: India Pale Ale — Other IPA
Category 15: German Wheat/Rye Beer
Category 16: Belgian and French Ale — Wit Beer
Category 16: Belgian and French Ale — Belgian Pale Ale
Category 16: Belgian and French Ale — Belgian Pale Ale
Category 16: Belgian and French Ale — Biere de Garde
Category 16: Belgian and French Ale — Belgian Specialty Ale
Category 16: Belgian and French Ale — Flavored Saison
Category 17: Sour Ale
Category 18: Belgian Strong Ale
Category 19: Strong Ale — Old Ale
Category 19: Strong Ale — English Barleywine
Category 19: Strong Ale — American Barleywine
Category 20: Fruit Beer
Category 21: Spice/Herb/Vegetable Beer — Spice, Herb, or Vegetable Beer
Category 21: Spice/Herb/Vegetable Beer — Christmas/Winter Specialty Spiced Beer
Category 22: Smoke-Flavored/Wood-Aged Beer
Category 23: Specialty Beer
A few statistics: Firestone Walker, Karl Strauss and San Pedro Brewing won the most medals, six apiece. Ol’ Republic Brewing and Sudwerk Privatbrauerei Hubsch each won five. And Auburn Ale House, Heretic Brewing, Marin Brewing and Mendocino Brewing each won four medals. Eleven more breweries won three medals each.
BEST OF SHOW
BEST OF SHOW SESSION BEER
Congratulations to all the winners.
