Brookston Beer Bulletin

Jay R. Brooks on Beer

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GABF 2007: Day 2, Thursday

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Thursday morning began, not counting judging, with a quick trip to Great Divide Brewing‘s Hospitality Reception for brewers and the media. I’ve been going to their soirée for as long as I can remember. Then the first session began at the Denver Convention Center. The first session is not usually as crowded as later ones, but all four session sold out in advance, which is the first time that’s happened. As a result, Thursday night was every bit as packed as Friday and Saturday. New Glarus ran out of beer in less than three hours.

At the Great Divide Brewery on Arapahoe in Denver, the only couple to have both won Beer Drinker of the Year, Cornelia Corey and Ray McCoy.

At the Denver Convention Center, this year’s festival fittingly included tributes to Michael Jackson throughout, including this large banner that hung in the center of the hall.

The panelists from one of the “In the Brewing Studio” discussions, this one on women in brewing. From left: Carol Stoudt (from Stoudts Brewing), Jennifer Talley (from Squatter’s Pub Brewery), Natalie Cilurzo (from Russian River) and Teri Fahrendorf (formerly with Steelhead Brewing)

 

For many more photos from Thursday at GABF, visit the galleries for the Great Divide Reception and the Thursday Night Session.
 

GABF 2007: Day 1, Wednesday

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Each year, the night before GABF, the Brewers Association holds a reception at Wynkoop for the brewers and then afterwards the party continues just around the corner at The Falling Rock. Below are links to galleries from both parties. Look for additional photo galleries from the festival throughout the day.

At the Brewers Reception, Chris and Cheryl Black, owners of the Falling Rock, Mark Dorber, formerly the publican of the White Horse in London (and now owner of the Anchor, his new venture) and Glenn Payne, of Meantime Brewing.

Over at the Falling Rock, Greg Koch, from Stone Brewing, gets down, gets funky.

 

For more photos from the night before GABF, visit the galleries for the Brewers Reception and the Falling Rock
 

Northern California Homebrewers Festival

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I spent a fun weekend with the family attending the 10th annual Northern California Homebrewers Festival. Friday night we had a great beer dinner by Sean Paxton, the Homebrew Chef, and Saturday all day we enjoyed some excellent homebrewed beer. The theme for the festival was sour beers and beers made with wild yeast.

Homebrew club booths at the 10th annual Northern California Homebrewers Festival.

For more photos from this year’s Northern California Homebrewers Festival, visit the photo gallery.
 

Session #8: Food and Beer

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Our eighth Session, hosted by Captain Hops at Beer Haiku Daily, involves the pairing of beer with food, a subject near and dear to my heart. I have been persuaded by extensive testing — better known as eating — that beer and food go together far better than wine will for the average meal. Oh, I’ll grant you that there are fine pairings that can be made with wine, but a diet of heavier flavors, potent seasonings and meat dishes will yield to beer’s superior ability to cut through this complex and thickly rich mélange of tastes. There are many people to thank for that awareness, from Michael Jackson to Garrett Oliver to Bruce Paton.

Friday night, I was happy enough to be invited to the 10th annual beer dinner at the Northern California Homebrewers Festival held at Lake Francis Resort in Dobbins, California. It was put on by Sean Paxton, the Homebrew Chef and ran to six courses. And many of the courses had several dishes, too, so the amount of food was truly staggering. Sean went all out for his tenth anniversary dinner. And with eight great beers being paired, it was sure to be a memorable evening. I had come with the entire family and because the weather had grown quite cold, we were all bundled up and brought our appetities, ready to eat. We were not disappointed. Chef Sean Paxton deserves much praise for not only his pairings, but also using the beer in the dishes, as well. When you consider the entire dinner was accomplished by amateurs, the achievement is all the more impressive. But enough praise, here’s a nutshell account of the evening’s culinary and fermented delights. But before we can begin, a haiku is both necessary and appropriate:

Pairing food and beer
To compliment or contrast
That is the question

Our chef for the evening, Sean Paxton, addresses the hungry and thirsty crowd.

The beer paired with our first course, a Belgian endive salad, was Watermelon Funk, a collaboration between 21st Amendment Brewery and Russian River Brewing. This is perhaps the fourth time I’ve had this beer and it just keeps getting better, it’s too bad it’s virtually all gone. Here Vinnie Cilurzo from Russian River tells the beer’s story in humorous fashion. They took a barrel of Shaun O’Sullivan’s popular Watermelon Wheat and aged it in an oak barrel, sparking it with brettanomyces. It worked nicely with the crisp flavors of the salad, especially the pomegranate seeds.

I sat with Vinnie Cilurzo at the dinner and happily he brought along a few extra beers for the table. Here my wife Sarah holds up one my personal favorites: The Damnation Batch 23.

A bit unusual for the typical beer dinner, but — and I can’t stress this enough — Frittes should become de rigeur for every beer dinner. You can just never have enough frittes for my tastes. Served with two kinds of aioli sauce (Duvel Shiso Aioli and Fou’ Foune Aioli), Sean’s frittes were spectacular.

Two of the other beers served at the dinner were brewed by these two gentlemen, Peter Hoey, from Sacramento Brewing, and Todd Ashman, from Fifty Fifty Brewing.

We weren’t the only ones thrilled that Vinne brought some of his beers along with him. Matt Bryndilson, from Firestone Walker Brewing, kisses a bottle of Russian River’s Toronado 20th Anniversary Ale.

Piping hot steamed mussels, steamed in beer that is. They were Prince Edward Island mussels, with shallots and thyme steamed in homebrewed wit, which was also the beer paired with them. Delicious!

For the vegetarians among us, pumpkin steamed in beer topped with spinach, sorrel, parsley and a Japanese mint (that Sean had grown in his garden). Yum.

At this point I got too busy eating and drinking and forgot to keep taking pictures of the food. The next beer was one of the GABF Pro-Am beers for this year. It was brewed at 21st Amendment Brewery and was Jamil Zainasheff’s award winning Belgian Strong Dark, which he named The Beer Hunter. It was paired with a thick stew of a dish, Les Carbonnade Flamandes, which Sean described as a Flemish stew cooked with beef, lamb, dark candy syrup cured bacon, leeks, shallots, thyme and, of course, the Belgian Strong Dark beer. It was piping hot and very rich. In the cold October night air, it warmed our souls.

An extra treat, Sean created a sorbet-like dish at our table using liquid nitrogen.

Much to the delight of my daughter Alice.

Sean stirring the sorbet looked more like a scene from Halloween than a restaurant. But the sorbet was delicious.

The fourth course paired Peter Hoey’s sour mashed farmhouse style saison with a Waterzooi, described as a classic Ghent milk stew made with cod, leeks, fennel, onions, shallots, saison, milk and herbs. A very nice saison, it worked well with the complex and diverse flavors of the stew.

The fifth course paired two beers from Russian River, Sanctification and Temptation, with two amazing dishes, duck legs cooked in a brett blonde and beer-braised veal cheeks. These were served with Brussels sprouts cooked in brown butter and nutmeg and cauliflower gratin, which had been blanced in an ale and topped with a Gruyere cheese sauce. Also, there was a bier risotto made with heirloom tomatoes and pearl barley served with a sauce made up of Temptation, lobster mushrooms and roasted thyme shallots. There were just so many different tastes going on here it made your head swim. Luckily the two Russian River beers cleared your head as they cleansed your palate so that each subsequent bite could be enjoyed as much as the first one.

Finally, the dessert course had two sweet pairings. First there was Todd Ashman’s Trifecta Belgian Style Tripel, from his new brewery in Truckee, California, Fifty Fifty Brewing. It went with a vanilla bean tripel infused pot de creme, a very creamy dessert using Todd’s beer along with vanilla beans infused into cream and slowly cooked in a water bath. If that sounded too light, then there were the dark chocolate framboise truffles. Sean took a Brendan’s wisky barrel and filled it with porter and dark chocolate, spiked it with Brettanomyces and let it age for seven months before blending it with Thirsty Bear’s Golden Hallucination and Brown Bear. It was served with Brendan Dobbel’s Thirsty Bear Menage a Framboise. I could have eaten these all night, as full as I was, because they were so damn good. I just kept telling myself with each one, “they’re wafer thin,” which, though a lie dead surely, allowed me eat as many as I possibly could guilt free.

After the dinner, chef Sean Paxton and my wife, Sarah, share a hug.
 

Toasting Michael

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Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know last night was the National Toast to Michael Jackson, a benefit for Parkinson’s Disease and a chance to all raise a glass to the leading light in beer writing. I went to the Toronado in San Francisco to join the toast. Real Beer was there with a camera, documenting people’s thoughts about Michael and his legacy. They interviewed a number of us, asking us each the same seven questions and apparently this was going on in bars across the country with the idea of editing it all together in one media package.

 

Celebrator publisher Tom Dalldorf was on hand to emcee the toast as Toronado owner Dave Keene looks on, glass in hand, ready for the toast.

And exactly 6:00 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time, we all raised our glasses, as hopefully millions more did across the continent.

And then drank to Michael’s memory.

Dave opened a big bottle of Russian River Temptation.

After the toast, those of us that stayed adjourned to the back room for some heated games of washoes. Dave and I won at least ten straight before finally being unseated by Rodger Davis and Melissa Myers. Dave also opened a very big bottle of the anniversary beer Vinnie Cilurzo made for the Toronado’s 10th anniversary in August at Russian River Brewing.

Celebrating their one-year wedding anniversary, Claudia and Rodger Davis. Claudia works at 21st Amendment and Rodger is the former brewer at Drake’s. Believe it or not, this was the only picture I could get where Rodger did not have his mouth open with his tongue wagging.

 

Bière de Manger

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Most people don’t think of France as a place for great beer, but there are several very fine, world-class small — tiny really — breweries in Northeastern France, not coincidently near the border of Belgium. Back in the mid-1800s this region of the world was home to 2,000 breweries. By the advent of the first World War it was half that, but during the German occupation their equipment was dismantled and sent back to the Fatherland. Between the two wars after after it, things stayed pretty much the same and today only around 25 breweries remain in the region.

So last night’s dinner themed “The Beers of France” may not have been as big a draw as some of the Beer Chef’s other beer dinners, but that a shame because the people who stayed away out of ignorance or prejudice missed a wonderful dinner and some fabulous beers.

Our salad course: composed salad of wild mushrooms, summer vegetables, duck ham and watercress.

All of the beers were courtesy of Shelton Brothers, a beer importer who brings in some of the finest beers from all over the world to the U.S. Here’s the Beer Chef, Bruce Paton, with Dan Shelton.

 
Since I believe these beers do deserve to better known, here’s some more information about the French beers that were part of the beer dinner. Seek them out and try them for yourself.

 

St. Droun French Abbey Ale

From the Brasseurs Duyck, founded in 1922, whose brand Jenlain is probably better known, St. Druon was re-named (the original name was Sebourg) in 2000 “as a tribute to Saint Druon and the little church in Sebourg, the next village to Jenlain. Druon, a homeless but pious orphan, wandered the roads until he settled in the village, and is still honoured and revered by pilgrims each year.” It’s been run by the same family for four generations.

From Shelton Brothers website:

Jenlain is the second largest independent brewery in France, and by far the largest one making bière de garde – France’s only original, traditional beer style. Jenlain is credited with reviving the style, and encouraging countless smaller bière de garde breweries in Northern France.

It’s a 6.0% abv Bière de Garde that uses a distinctive yeast that different from Duyuck’s other beers. it’s a very clean, refreshing beer and worked well with the diverse hors d’oeuvres.

The other beer we had with our appetizers was one of only two beer at the dinner that I’d had before, the Thiriez Extra. It’s a surprisingly hoppy beer, though not in a west coast sort of way. In France, the beer is known as “Les Frères de la Bière,” which means “The Friends of Beer.” It’s a collaboration of sorts between brewers in England, France, and Belgium. The beer uses an relatively unknown English hop called “Brambling Cross.” It’s really something of a session beer at 4.5% abv.

The second beer from Thiriez was their Blonde, which is a little spicier than the Extra in the way of a saison, and a little stronger, too, at 6.0%. It was paired with our first course, sea scallops in fennel nage.

From Shelton Brothers website:

Daniel Thiriez’s rustic little brick-and-beam brewery graces the village of Esquelbecq, plunk in the middle of the rolling farm country of French Flanders. With a brewing degree from a Belgian university, and decidedly ‘Belgian-oriented,’ Monsieur Thiriez makes ales with an earthy, slightly wild character that recalls the early days of farmhouse brewing, before there was a border between France and Belgium.

Thiriez Extra and Blonde

La Choulette Le Sans Cullottes and Ambree

The “no pants” beer, which is what “sans cullottes” refers to was the other beer of the evening I’d had before, and it’s a great Bière de Garde style beer. It’s 7.0% abv and quite effervescent, like a good champagne. This wonderful beer was paired with a composed salad of wild mushrooms, summer vegetables, duck ham and watercress.

From Shelton Brothers website:

La Choulette is a charming farmhouse brewery whose beers are classics of this French style. The brewery dates back to 1885. Alain and Martine Dhaussy bought it in the 1970’s and revived traditional brewing there. This, the brewery’s masterpiece, proudly pays homage to Les Sans Culottes – the “trouserless” craftsmen who could not afford uniforms but unflinchingly did the handiwork of the French Revolution. A number of brewers were included in their ranks.

The other beer from La Choulette was their Ambree, a slightly stronger Bière de Garde at 8.0% with a deeper amber color. I found it quite sweet, which nicely cut through the heavy meat course, loin of rabbit with bone marrow ravioli and onion apple gratin.

The last beer, Garvroche, is from St. Sylvstre, who is better known for their 3 Monts. The Gavroche is a bottle-conditioned amber ale, and at 8.5% was the strongest beer of the evening. The name comes from one of the characters in Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables, the generous and rebellious Paris urchin. It was divine with our dessert of poached pear with flan of fromage explorateur.

From Shelton Brothers website:

Serge Ricour is one of those guys – probably a genius, but it takes one to know one, and we’re not really sure we can meet that standard – who just produces fantastic beer, but doesn’t seem to know it himself. The Brasserie Ricour, or Brasserie St-Sylvestre (you use either one and everyone in town knows what you’re talking about) makes, arguably, the best beer of France: 3 Monts. We Shelton Brothers would probably argue with that, since we’ve found so many nice beers in France and brought them to the U.S. for your inspection, but you can’t really argue with the proposition that 3 Monts is, at least, one of the very best beers of France.

St. Sylvestre Gavroche

 

Oktoberfest O’zapft is!

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Today is the first day of Oktoberfest in Munich, Germany, one of the world’s most famous beer festivals, though the German consider it a folk festival. I confess I’ve never gone and while I’d like to go at least once in my lifetime, I suspect it’s one of those experiences where once will be enough. As has been the tradition since 1950, today the Mayor of Munich, Christian Ude, tapped the first keg signaling the start of the festivities. In German, this tradition is called “O’zapft is!” meaning “it is tapped.” The first liter of beer poured was consumed by German premier Edmund Stoiber.

The festival will last sixteen days, ending, as it does each year, on the first Sunday in October. Since 1990, a modification has been introduced into the schedule so that is the first Sunday is either October 1st or 2nd then the festival will end on October 3rd, which is a holiday, German Unity Day, celebrating Germany’s reunification. This year, Oktoberfest ends on October 7. Unlike most beer festivals, it’s all day affair, with beer first served during weekdays at 10:00 am with last call not until 10:30 pm, and on the weekends things get started an hour earlier at 9:00 am.

There are over 100,000 seats in fourteen tents on just over 100 acres. About 72% attending are from locals from Bavaria with about 15% from outside Germany. Many of these aren’t used to handling a lot of alcohol and some pass out as a result of over-indulging. Locals call those who pass out “Bierleichen” (or if female, “Bierleiche”), which means “beercorpse.” Over the sixteen days of the festival last year the more than six and a half-million people attending Oktoberfest consumed an astounding:

  • Beer: 6.9 million litres (1.82 million gallons, or over 14.5 million pints)
  • Roasted steers: 102
  • Sausages: 144,635 pairs
  • Roast chickens: 494,135
  • Knuckles of pork: 43,492

Undoubtedly even more will be enjoyed this year.

 

One of the many Oktoberfest waitresses in the traditional “dirndl” dress (from the BBC’s Oktoberfest in Pictures) though the steins of beer are covering her bow. According to an AAP account, “[t]he dirndl has in any case become a fashion item this year. The knot in the bow reveals key information to potential suitors – on the right means the woman has a partner; on the left indicates she is available.”
 

Though the first Oktoberfest took place in 1810, it didn’t become an annual event until 1850. Here’s a history of the event, from the official website:

The Royal Wedding

Crown Prince Ludwig, later to become King Ludwig I, was married to Princess Therese of Saxony-Hildburghausen on 12th October 1810. The citizens of Munich were invited to attend the festivities held on the fields in front of the city gates to celebrate the happy royal event. The fields have been named Theresienwiese (“Theresa’s fields”) in honor of the Crown Princess ever since, although the locals have since abbreviated the name simply to the “Wies’n”.

Horse races in the presence of the Royal Family marked the close of the event that was celebrated as a festival for the whole of Bavaria. The decision to repeat the horse races in the subsequent year gave rise to the tradition of the Oktoberfest.

The Oktoberfest continues in 1811

In 1811 an added feature to the horse races was the first Agricultural Show, designed to boost Bavarian agriculture.
The horse races, which were the oldest and – at one time – the most popular event of the festival are no longer held today. But the Agricultural Show is still held every three years during the Oktoberfest on the southern part of the festival grounds.

In the first few decades the choice of amusements was sparse. The first carousel and two swings were set up in 1818. Visitors were able to quench their thirst at small beer stands which grew rapidly in number. In 1896 the beer stands were replaced by the first beer tents and halls set up by enterprising landlords with the backing of the breweries.

The remainder of the festival site was taken up by a fun-fair. The range of carousels etc. on offer was already increasing rapidly in the 1870s as the fairground trade continued to grow and develop in Germany.

174th Oktoberfest 2007

Today, the Oktoberfest is the largest festival in the world, with an international flavor characteristic of the 21th century: some 6 million visitors from all around the world converge on the Oktoberfest each year.

And since the Oktoberfest is still held on the Theresienwiese, the locals still refer to the event simply as the “Wies’n”. So “welcome to the Wies’n” means nothing other than “welcome to the Oktoberfest”!

 

 

25 Years of California Brewpubs

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Thursday, September 13, marked the 25th of anniversary of the signing of the California bill — AB 3610 — which removed the “tied house” restriction then present in California prohibiting any person or company from brewing beer and selling it directly to the public. The new bill allowed beer to be sold where it was brewed, as long as the brewer also operated a restaurant at the same location. It was only the second brewpub law passed in the country at that time. The bill was written by then-state legislator Tom Bates, who is now the mayor of Berkeley.

California was home to three of the first five brewpubs in America. The second brewpub to open America (and the first in California) was the Mendocino Brewery in Hopland, California, which opened in August 1983. Mendocino Brewing has moved to a new facility in Ukiah and the Hopland location is now a bar, but the company is still going strong. The third brewpub in the U.S. was Buffalo Bill’s in Hayward, California, which opened in September 1984 and still a brewpub. And the fifth was Triple Rock Brewery in Berkeley, California, which opened in March 1986. It’s also the only one still owned by the same people who started it.

Triple played host Thursday to a ceremonial signing of the bill by Tom Bates, who authored the original legislation. They also presented a proclamation — which I helped write — signed by state legislator for District 14, Loni Hancock.

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CSBA lobbyist Chris Walker reads a letter congratulating California small brewers from Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

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Representative Loni Walker presents the state proclamation to Triple Rock owner — and CSBA president — John Martin.

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A close-up of the proclamation, which originally sough to declare the week beginning September 13 as California Craft Beer Week. Next year, with more lead time, we hope to make that an officially recognized holiday week for California.

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The brewpub bill’s author, Berkeley mayor Tom Bates, holds up a photo that ran in the Oakland Tribune 25-years before, of him celebrating the signing of Assembly Bill 3610.

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Then John Martin presented Mayor Bates with a specially made beer by Triple Rock brewer Christian Kazakoff. Wanting to make a truly California beer, Kazakoff brewed a California Common, better known as a steam beer. They called the beer AB 3610, in honor of the bill.

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The commemorative beer’s label art.

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Then mayor Tom Bates presented a framed copy of the original AB 3610, inviting everyone present to sign the mat.

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Everyone there also got a small glass of the commemorative beer and Mayor Bates led a toast to California’s beer industry.

Jeremiah Was a Beerfest

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Sunday was the second day of the 4th annual Brews on the Bay, sponsored by the San Francisco Brewers Guild. Each year it’s been held on the SS Jeremiah O’Brien, a World War II era Liberty Ship docked at Pier 45 at Fisherman’s Wharf.

The S.S. Jeremiah O’Brien, with Alcatraz in the background.

21st Amendment owner/brewer Shaun O’Sullivan with Marty, one of the Jeremiah O’Brien volunteers.

 

For more photos from this year’s Brews on the Bay, visit the photo gallery.