Fire at the Abbey

ARRGHHH!!! Fire at the Rochefort Belgian Brewery yesterday. You can read about it here: BBC News

 

Rochefort is one of 5 Belgian Monastic breweries that quite frankly brew some of the worlds most delicious elixirs. The fire was apparently started near a generator that was being used due to a power shortage. The monks were having dinner when the fire broke out and all escaped unharmed but it took 70 firemen to extinguish the flames.

There was minimal damage to the beer, thank God (literally) and no one was harmed but this remains a tragic event. The red-bearded one and I toured this facility last winter while on holidays in Belgium and it is a beautiful abbey. They had pear trees growing against a wall that was built in twelve hundred and something. TWELVE HUNDRED! for bloody sake.

 

They hope to be back up and brewing within a few days so that is good news but I do hope there wasn’t too much damage to exitsing buildings. Those Europeans build to last though,  our roads and bridges are all falling down while they are still using infrastructure that the romans built. Also this particular brewery has already been destroyed twice in history and rebuilt  so the monks are probably thinking “c’est la vie” and getting on with things.

King of beers?

King of conflict is more like it.

Earlier this month August Busch IV, aka ‘the fourth’ and heir to the Budweiser empire, took 40 minutes to call in the death of his 27 year old girlfriend to the police. Apparently foul play is not suspected.

Neither was it suspected when he:

Left the scene of a car crash that killed one 22 year old woman, from which he was found 8hrs later still covered in blood.

Nor the time he was involved in a police car chase in which they shot out one of his tires and then replaced it for him when they realized who he was.

It has been reported that he has never received the attention he wanted from Auggie the III.

So I guess…you know….poor thing.

The Future of Brewing

According to the latest installment of Brewer\’s Guardian, in a day where we have both water shortages AND high energy costs the future of brewing will be to mount breweries onto the backs of ships. There were scenarios for situations where we just have water shortages and just high energy costs but ship brewing is apparently the answer when we find ourselves with both. IF we find ourselves with both you might add, but I think it’s safe to leave the when in that statement.

Now how, putting a brewery on a ship eleviates any kind of environmental disaster escaped me even after having read the article but here’s what I did not miss:

If we put a brewery on a ship we could then commence doing what all brewers were really put here to do- Pirate Brew.

The idea of Pirate Brewing began a few years back when a colleague and I were unloading a malt delivery and laughing at the slogan ‘use no hooks’ printed on each and every bag.

What if you were a Pirate? we joked

What would happen if you showed up on your first day and the malt arrived and you couldn’t unload it? gafaww!   There would be trails of spilt grain everywhere! how embarrassing would that be? Har Har!!

and on it went as we laughed our way through 60 -25Kg sacs up 2 flights of stairs. Sometimes you gotta do whatever gets you through the day you know?.

Anyway from then on Pirate brewing became a regular in the fantasy work talk. You know like ‘what would you do if you won the lottery?, only ours became ‘what will we do once we’re real life pirate brewers?’. This is the same colleague who once told me ‘we should invent the brewery olympics and then enter as a team, we would kick everyone’s ass!’, so you understand the level of reality while the two of us were on the job.

Anyway I figure hot commodities on the pirate brewing scene will be yeast and kegs, empty or otherwise. Why  these two items? because those are the two things brewers already covet. When we discover a new beer we like we think ‘damn I wish I knew what yeast they were using!’ the grain and hop bills can be discerned easily enough if one has the right palate and if not, well then they can be improvised such that a similar brew is created. But the yeast, that’s the key ingredient, without knowing which strain to use you don’t stand a chance of coming anywhere near the same final product.

And kegs! lord how many times have brewers shipped off a palette of kegs with tears in their eyes thinking ‘ please come back to me, please. It’s so hard and frustrating when you don’t’.  A million! that’s how many.

So my plan for when, not if but when we are finally pirate brewing is to seal up my yeast in an air/water tight contraption, wrap it up with a stash of brand new stainless steel kegs (not those terrible plastic ones, they wouldn’t last the elements)  and throw them out to sea where X marks the spot.

 

 

Beer Dinner

A little while ago the Red Bearded one and I were asked to co-host a Beer Dinner with Chef Moe Mathieu of Willow on the Wascana and Beer Bros fame. Of course we jumped at the chance and this past saturday the event was held at the Superintendents Residency located on the grounds of the Forestry farm here in Saskatoon.

 

Chef Mathieu got in touch with us a few weeks ago  wanting to discuss the menu and off we went to meet him.  It was of course a fun and interesting discussion about beer and beer cuisine and the red-bearded and I were intrigued that Chef Mathieu wanted us to plan the beer menu first, after which he would plan the dinner menu. This is the opposite of how I normally plan my dinner menus and at first I felt somewhat overwhelmed; if I can serve whatever beer I want, where would I begin?? Thankfully (ha ha) the SLGA doesn’t have a large selection of beer so already the choice was narrowed down.

The evening went off very well indeed. There were 21 guests, all eager to have the red-bearded one and I regale them with stories of how pilsner became one of the worlds most popular beer styles and why the Wychwood brewery has a Hobgoblin as the mascot of one of their beers. We talked also about the flavours and aromas in each beer we served and why we chose those particular beers for this particular dinner.

Chef Mathieu prepared an amazing dinner, each course perfectly matched to each beer. He mimicked the flavours of the beer in his cuisine to perfectly compliment what the guests were tasting in their glasses. The evening was a great success and I believe everyone had a good time learning the history of beer styles and some of the newer guerilla marketing techniques being used to attract new beer drinkers today. I certainly know they had a good time enjoying the food of Chef Mathieu.

 

The menu and beers served were as follows:

 

Blanche de Chambly with Chambly Chowder

-Potato dumpling, Citrus Cracker, Orange saffron sauce. Lime zest and pink peppercorn.

Hobgoblin Ale with Chorizo Stuffed Pork Belly

-Chorizo crumble, caramelized carrots, sweet relish, fresh herbs and potato puree.

Red Tractor Ale with Chicken Two Ways

-Baked Beans, snow peas, corn puree, chives, bread disks and coffee oil.

Czech Mate Pilsner with Rilette

-On rye crustini, mustard sauce, pungent beet salt and pea shoot greens.

Maudite with Steak Frites

-Belgian Fries, maudite demi glazed onions and smashed turnips, horseradish foam and beer gelee

London Porter with Heart Stopper Pudding

Heart Stopper bread pudding with London Porter ice cream, a red jalapeno coulee, chocolate mousse and brown sugar shards.

 

NB: Red Tractor Ale is one of four regular beers you will find on tap at the Shiny Penny Brewery when it opens.

Teach a friend to Homebrew

Whoops! been a little slack with the old blog for a couple of months. Sorry about that…..

 

Since saturday was international teach-a-friend-to-homebrew-day the Saskatoon Headhunters club decided to host a communal homebrew and invite the public. The event was held at the PaddockWood Brewery and we had a fantastic turn out. There were three homebrew systems on the go:

One member brought his converted picnic cooler and turkey fryer kettle. His recipe was an American IPA and he used Cascade, Centennial and the  new kid on the block Citra to get as much hop flavour as possible into his beer.

The red-bearded one and I brought our 2 keg system in and brewed up a Belgian Dubbel. We had helped Paddock Wood make some rock candy for this years Winter Ale and we had a little jar of it so we added that to our mix and have high hopes for this beer.

The current Smith-Dauchot brewhouse

 

The third system was Paddock Woods own Automated RIMS system, which was used to make a german Alt style. I didn’t actually pay that much attention to what those guys were up to so I can’t divulge their secret ingredient here.

 

Anyway we probably had 25 people show up to learn the tricks of our trade and the enthusiasm was off the charts. One guy kept exclaiming ‘ well, this changes everything!’. So all in all a great first teach a friend to homebrew day in Saskatoon.

Hop off results

And the winner of our first annual family Hop off is……. a tie of course!.

Both versions were a nice reddish copper colour with nice thick heads.

Mine has quite a strong aroma of ‘garden vegetable’ like green peas which can be slightly off putting at first but when you realize its actually fresh hops you are smelling, well, who can stay mad at fresh hops?.

The red-bearded ones version had less of this aroma but also less hoppiness in the finish.

Mine had a lingering hop flavour, his did not.

So I say I won and he says he won and we agreed to call it a tie.

Funtimes beer reviews

There is a fun new website out there for those who love beer as much as I do and those who need to spend more time on the internet.

Pintley.com is a beer review site. Now before I say anything else let me say that I don’t do beer reviews. My beer geekness has never extended into the territory of carrying around a notepad to scribble down thoughts on head retention and mouth feel every time I sit down to drink a beer. Maybe its lazy but I’ve just never been able to get  the whole rating beer thing.

It might seem odd then I am blogging about a beer review site but that’s the beauty of Pintley, I actually found it fun.  They set it up so that you can rate pretty much any and every beer on their: Appearance, Aroma, Taste, Texture, Drinkability and Value.  All you have to do is select between one to five pint glasses for each category. There is space to fill some word commentary if you wish but you’re not obliged which I think is great because sometimes I think sentences like  : ‘dry earthy aroma with underlying copper pipe mouth feel’  are long-winded bores more than helpful commentary.

Anyway I am Brewyana if you want to get in on the fun and friend me on Pintley.

Great Canadian Beer Fest

We are just home from the Great Canadian Beer Festival which is held in Victoria, BC every September. It was a first for the red-bearded one and I and boy were we impressed. Whats so great about it you ask? well basically it’s so great because there is no crap. At the Calgary beer fest, Hooters had  a stand -crap. At the Penticton beer fest some bright pink breezer concoction was voted best drink-crap. Even at the Mondiale de la Biere in Montreal where there are over 300 beers showcased, Boris, Corona and Molson have stands and they pay girls in skimpy clothing and oddly, sometimes stilts, to walk around and hawk their wares-crap!.

The GCBF however had no crap, there were probably 50 beer tents and only craft beer was on offer. Sure you can argue that companies like Rogue and maybe even Central City are starting to get a bit big but the fact remains that they are making a quality product so for me it’s still craft beer.

Anyway we had a blast. I got a free, yellow snow IPa viser from Rogue. we saw a guy dressed up as Duff man and I had my picture taken with Kurtis which was pretty much the highlight for me. see you next year GCBFers!

Me and Kurtis at the GCBF

Hop off

I used to think home brewing was for amateurs, you know like those not in the profession, until I realized the potential for experimentation. Not sure if thyme will work in your saison? home-brew a test batch! always wondered what the difference between crystal and caramel malt is? brew 2 batches of the same beer each using a different special malt. These are the kind of things the red-bearded one and I have been using home brewing to determine. Until this week.

This week we found a new use for home brewing: deciding the winner of an argument.

With all the wild hops we’ve found growing around our neighbourhood, we’ve had a busy couple of weeks, harvesting, brewing, drying and vacuum sealing. The regular autumnal line up of to do’s. All the while we have been ‘discussing’ (read: arguing) about how to deal with the dry hop portion of our fresh hop IPA. My feeling is, fresh is better, so take the hops right off the vine and into the secondary fermenter. The red-bearded one however, feels that by dehydrating  them first, the real hop flavour will come out. We were at a stale mate and so did the only thing we possibly could.

We staged a hop off.

I picked my hops and my fermenter;

and he picked his;

Only time will tell who the winner of this years hop off will be. Stay tuned for results.

Wish list

There is a new trend lately for 2 or 3 breweries to join up and collaborate on a brew. I posted a while ago about Saison du Buff which Dogfish Head, Victory and Stone Breweries all made together. These are the kinds of things that get my brain turning non stop and sometimes its good to just write my thoughts down rather than bother the red-bearded one with them incessantly. Also the Oprah-God is always going on about bucket lists and such, so without further ado here is my wish list of breweries I would like the Shiny Penny Brewery to collaborate with:

1. Wild Rose Brewery in Calgary, AB.  I love the concept of this brewery, an old hangar at the farmers market? please. I love their beer and the head brewer Dave Neilly is pretty much the nicest guy you could ever meet.

2. Half Pints Brewing in Winnipeg, MB. ‘Its not the size of the brewery that counts, it’s what you brew with it’ with a motto like that and an IPA named Humulus Ludicrous you can be sure you’ve got my attention. Plus my grandparents wintered with his grandparents in Texas so we’re like essentially family.

3. Plan B Brewing of Smithers, BC. Talk about nano brewing, I think these guys installed a 50L or possible 1HL brewery in their space in northern BC and started churning out some really great stuff. We met them at the Penticton Fest of Ale and they are really nice guys as well as gutsy entrepreneurs.

4. Picaroons Brewing of Moncton, NB. The red-bearded one was crushed when he found out these guys had named their IPA: Yippee IPA…saying ‘I really wish we would have thought of that’. Not only can they come up with fun, quirky names but the beer is good too.

4. Smuttynose Brewing of Portsmouth, NH. Anybody who uses two old Gramps sitting around in lawn chairs drinking beer for a label is somebody I want to be associated with.

5. Sierra Nevada of Chico,  CA. Ok we’re getting into the bigtime here, this is pretty much my favorite brewery on the planet. These guys lead the industry in every aspect. They grow and malt their own Barley, they grow their own hops, they once travelled to Bavaria to learn the technique of brewing heffeweisen beer because they were unsatisfied with their own rendition of the style. I mean come on these guys are amazing. They are leading this collaboration movement too so maybe it’s not such a long shot?

6.Brewdog in Fraserburgh, Scotland. This one is obvious, no comment necessary.

7.St Feuillien of Le Roeulx, Belgium. There is so much beer in Belgium that people will often describe where they live by their local brewery, as in: we live south of Brussels near the St Feuillien brewery. Which is how my in-laws would describe to you where they live and why I want to work with these guys….also the brewery is stunningly beautiful and they are still using the original mill that was installed in 1050 or something ridiculous.

8.Cantillon Brewery in Brussels, Belgium. This brewery goes against everything I have ever be told about the brewing process, namely: sterilize everything twice before you use it. They have probably never swept or passed a mop in the Cantillon brewery and their beer is awesome, I could definitely learn a thing or two working with those guys.

9.Chimay in Chimay, Belgium. Last but the opposite of least, I cross my heart and hope to die that I will one day work with the Trappist monks at the Chimay brewery in southern Belgium. Sierra Nevada might be my favorite brewery but my all time favorite beer is the triple from this brewery, Chimay White label. It is just so yummy and while I often crave different beers at different times, depending on what I’m up to, this beer always suits the mood. Don’t worry, I am rationally aware that working with this brewery is not likely to happen but a girl can dream can’t she?