I can’t help but notice there is a growing rift in the beer world. There are several different players in this. It is certainly not a case of good vs. evil. I want to think about this more before I expound, but here is my initial thoughts. First and foremost, the link above is not the only example I want to shed light on, there will be more.
I have noticed that there are two main things dividing the beer world: the big breweries and the craft breweries. These “craft” breweries include giants like Sam Adams, Sierra Nevada, Stone and Dogfish Head. There are some in the craft segment that are growing resentment to the bigger of the craft breweries, dissing them for being in “Beer Wars” and saying they are out of touch with the small, “real” craft brewers. They also are getting at the established beer aristocracy, as the above post pokes at Charlie Papazian’s AHA. I’m getting kind of sick of it. To me, it all boils down to one fact. You either make good beer, or you don’t. You’re either “extreme” or you’re not. I’m having trouble with that final valid point, but I think what I want to say is that let’s stop only liking things “before they were popular.” That’s like saying you only liked the Beatles when they were called The Quarrymen and playing in Liverpool pubs. The biggest breweries have their product and they make it and sell it well. The bigger craft breweries make good beer and so do the small ones. Let’s bring back “we’re all in this together.” We all like beer.
Revisited. I’ve already posted my initial visit to Lost Dog, but last night Jenna and I decided to go the delivery route.
Well, that’s how it started at least.
We originally decided to reward our hour-long run with some good grub, and grub that we wouldn’t have to move to get — hence the delivery. We decided to go pick it up if it was going to take much longer than 30 minutes though, because one-hour runs make you hungry.
I ordered the lasagna and Jenna the eggplant parmesan. I also wanted to order a Victory Old Horizontal – they deliver beer!
They didn’t have that, but I still wanted a barleywine (been on a kick lately) so I ordered a Sierra Nevada Bigfoot. It was going to take 45 minutes so we decided to just pick it up.
Got to the store and they didn’t actually have the Bigfoot, but they already rang me up for a Sierra Nevada single so I had to pick a Sierra brew. Annoying. What were they planning on showing up at my door with? I went with the Torpedo, which I think of as a revved up Sierra Pale Ale. It’s nice.
Anyway we got back, with our very heavy bag, and I really wish I had a picture of this lasagna. It’s the closest thing to the now defunct Rathskeller of Chapel Hill’s “Bowl of Cheese” lasagna that I have had. It’s hard to imagine anything topping the Rat’s, but this sure did satisfy.
It came in a tin tray, of which the slice of lasagna took up about 60 percent. The other 40 percent, however, was full of sauce and cheese. It was hard to tell where the slice was because the tray was just a level layer of cheese across the top. It came with some garlic bread so I was piling on the excess cheese and sauce onto it. There was some good sausage and ricotta in the layers that were really well done. I will be getting it again.
The bite or two I had of Jenna’s parm was also delish.
The beer situation was the only bone I had to pick. And that’s weird because Lost Dog has probably one of the finest selections in Falls Church, Va.
Also, I was glad we phoned it in. When we picked it up there was a huge standing line waiting to get seated. I’m a big believer in the logic that places with big lines are the places you probably want to be, and this would hold true of the Lost Dog.
Although I’ve been brewing for a year and consider myself to be somewhat experienced, this batch proved that I am, among other things, amateur.
It all started fine, no boilovers, and other than the extreme amount of time it took my tiny apartment’s stove to get five gallons up to a boil, everything was running very smoothly.
Then it all started to go downhill.
I miscalculated how well my brewpot fit in my sink. I did not realize it would not sit in the bottom of it and only got about halfway down. So when it came time to take the pot off the stove and cool it, the ice bath I provided ended relatively quickly (45 minutes or so) and hadn’t done the job I wanted it to. What’s more, we managed to lose any sink stopper that might have existed, and my makeshift clogging device wasn’t doing the trick. I was losing most of the cold water through the drain. After all the ice had melted, and I was using ice packs like mom used to put in your lunchbox, it was midnight, and I decided that 80-degree wort was cool enough for me. Turns out it wasn’t cool enough for the yeast, but more on that later.
Now to that yeast-pitching temp. I knew that I was supposed to get it down to 70, I really did. But I also knew that 80 wouldn’t kill it, and I was tired. So in my temporary deliriousness, I thought it would make no difference. Wrong. Sure enough, it started bubbling away by the next morning, which was only about seven hours later. Then by the time I got home from work that day, it stopped. Weird, right? Two days later and the airlock was sitting level. At that point I knew something was wrong and consulted “How to Brew” by John Palmer, a very good book that I find myself referring to more than my other brewing books. Mr. Palmer suggested that my beer might have stopped fermenting because the high pitch temperature more or less sent the yeast into a frenzy, and they gobbled and gobbled those sugars until they died prematurely. Yeast are a lot like vampires when they are exposed to higher temperatures. At least that’s what I can figure because I was forced to watch Twilight.
So my solution? In my infinite knowledge I decided to rack the wort to secondary and re-pitch. There was a big ol’ pile of trub in the primary, which lead me to believe that Mr. Palmer had been right, and the yeast had dug into that wort faster than Al Roaker at a Red Lobster.
So after I racked it, it bubbled slowly for a day or two and calmed, all I could ask for really. “How to Brew” said I could correct some of the off-flavors that might occur from pitching too high by conditioning, which I took to mean “leave it in the secondary for a while.” It probably means in the bottle, too.
So that brought me to last night. My bottling partner fell through, and I found myself ….by myself. But, as things had been going haywire with this batch, what the hell, why not bottle by myself? Some photos of my solo work:
This was my first time using the dishwasher to sanitize bottles. Getting the labels off proved to be the hardest part. Sam Adams and Brooklyn Brewery bottles are a B%*#@! Sierra Nevada and Great Divide, however, are made de-labeling. My dishwasher sucks though. It took over two hours for it to wash the bottles on high heat, so the solo-job started about 10:30 p.m.
There was an issue with a leaky bottle filler, but other than that, no real complications arose until I tried to cap an Amstel Light bottle. (Some friends left them over here, I promise!) The things won’t crimp all the way! They start to, but then the capper kind of pops up and you realize it’s not working. I tried to use a hammer to bang down the sides of the caps, but that didn’t work.
Because I had counted six Amstel bottles in my total bottle count, then had to subtract all six, I didn’t have enough to bottle all my beer. I came up one full bottle short. So thanks to those damn Dutch, I had to dump one out for the homies.
All in all though, the uncarbonated version of this hefe was pretty good. I don’t think it will be bad whenever it’s ready.
And I do actually like the Dutch, just not their beer bottles.
