Damn Sam

Samuel Adams has released a couple news items recently. One is about teaming up with the oldest brewery still open, Weihenstephan Brewery, to make a collaboration beer. The most recent press release is about their limited release Barrel-Aged beers. A lot of beer enthusiasts are annoyed at all of the barrel-aged fad, but for me it is just some more bottles to add to my obsessed collection. They are coming up with a Tripel, a Kriek and a Red. These will only be sold in 4 states (3 in the Northeast and also Denver, CO). Who knows if I'll get any of these but figured I'd show my ever-growing Sam Adams collection where each of those pictured is Sam Adams:

Winter is Here!

So what is your favorite winter beer?

Anyone want to go in half on a Sam Adams Utopias with me? It's only $200 a bottle. Gomer's Midtown just got some in, not sure how many. Oh and I'm only joking about buying one. I already have an empty bottle of it and the smell alone will get you drunk. Utopias is 27% abv and barely a beer. The bottle is shaped as a brew tank. Pretty cool.

I really like Sierra Nevada's Celebration Ale. Great stuff. Also you should buy some Nutcracker that I got to help dry hop this year!

Big Brew Day 5

If you follow my blog then you'll have seen that we have been organizing brew day get-togethers for a few months now. They really are a great time if you like good beer. This go around I hosted for the first time as we took the brewing North of the River with a theme that was across the pond. Our theme this time was British style beer. I did not brew this time because of hosting but we did get a couple of first timers to brew and it was great to just help out and get people into the hobby. Matt brewed a Coffee Porter. He had ground his own coffee beans to give the recipe his own twist and it made my garage smell heavenly. Drunk Monkey brewed up an English Special Bitter (ESB) using his friends home grown hops to add his own special touch as well. Jason was going to brew but we were running short of time.
There were about 30 people throughout the day to sample beer and learn about the brewing process. I had my Hop Retarded double IPA on tap and everyone seemed to really enjoy it. We got through about 5 gallons or so. Then everyone brought some great English styled ales but mostly imperial stouts were being drank. The Worthogs brought an English Bitter and a Roggenbier they brewed. Jake brought his first lager. So we had plenty of homebrew along with an entire fridge stuffed full of commercial brews.

Probably the two top beers of the night for myself was the Imperial Stout Trooper from 2006 that Matt brought and then the Alaskan Baltic Porter was incredible. Something I'm not proud of is 14 hours of straight drinking with no food. It was a rough Sunday morning to say the least. It's a tough job but someone's got to do it! I'm happy to say both brews are fermenting away. Thanks everyone for making the day rock!

Float Fail

So I had heard of Guinness ice cream floats before and it sounded delicious. I have tried a bite of this once or twice before with other stouts and thought it to be fairly good. So I figured I'd take it to the next level... FAIL.

The other day I had a Péché Mortel and loved it. It's rated very high on ratebeer and beeradvocate and finally found it in KC. It's now at 3 stores that I know of. It's an imperial stout with coffee. The coffee isn't quite as overwhelming as a Founders Breakfast Stout because of the bold malt backbone. As this warms to room temperature it tastes magnificent. So I poured some in with some frozen yogurt, hey it's all we had. It tasted terrible. Why did it fail? Tasted the yogurt by itself and it was fine. Drank the rest of the beer and it was awesome. But the two went together like cheese and dirt. Oh well, it looks good.

Beer Geek Tuesday

Want to see what beer geeks look like? Remember when I was trying to coax someone in LA to get me a bottle? Check out this great video from the Black Tuesday release party. This kind of thing happens all over the country and I think it's a great way for breweries to make money and build hype. Black Tuesday now stands at #3 on beeradvocate.

The Bruery - Black Tuesday from benjamin weiss on Vimeo.

Gomers and a Cuvée

I was over in Lees Summit yesterday and decided I'd stop by Gomers since it is the only place that I've heard has the Olfabrikken Porter around Kansas City. I had been to almost every good beer store in KC except for this Gomers. I picked up a La Trappe Tripel, Rochefort 10 and a Mikkeller Black and then realized I'm going to need a shopping cart and knew I was in for a large bill. I rounded out with (you ready for this?) Sierra Nevada Big Foot, Mikkeller Beer Geek Breakfast, Oflabrikken Porter, Péché Mortel, Nogne #100, Southern Tier's Oak Aged Cuvée Series 1 and Boulevard Nutcracker that I got to help dry hop which was fun. Oops, that's a large bill. I signed up for their savings program and got 5% off, but still going to have to delay my next beer run. This store has a great selection of beer and wine.

Tonight I'm drinking Southern Tier's Cuvée at 11% abv. The other night I had the Series 2 and tonight Series 1. There is a Series 3 to come out at some point and I believe that is it for the Cuvée's. All 3 Series are American Strong Ales. American Strong is an interesting category which is beers that don't really fall into any category that are higher than 7% abv or so. Typically these are experimental brews that can go as high as alcohol can go in beer; however, most taste like a cross between a farmhouse and a barleywine. This particular beer tastes like sugar bomb. Tons of residual sugars and maltiness. You can taste a bit of the French Oak but not much, like a ligther Gread Divide 15th Anniv. IPA. A fair amount of bitterness and somewhat of a sour taste. Smells of apples and apricots with a sipping drinkability. Pretty good, but I'm not rushing out to get another. Have you tried Ska Decadent IPA or a DFH 120 min IPA? It's kind of like that. Love/hate beer.

My Name is Mud

On our last brew day get-together I decided to change up my previously successful double IPA. I wanted to do an extract brew for time's sake and hauling my equipment around. This time I wanted to push the envelope with abv and hops. Well maybe I should have stuck with my original recipe, I haven't decided yet. I wound up with 2 kegs that have over 4 gallons and Mr. and Mrs. Worthog wound up with 3 or so gallons and fermented with US-04 yeast whereas I fermented with US-05. Nice experiment.

As you can see this brew looks incredibly similar to mud water. "Muddy Mo" if you will. I thought about that for a name, but we'll get to that soon. The merkiness came from tons of pellet hops and scorching the extract some. Now the floaties are because I am kegging 3 oz of hops in each keg which I decided not to filter out the dust. I went with an 80 minute boil here. I figured, the typical homebrew boil is 60 minute and sometimes 90 minutes, why not go with something else. I yielded an 8.1% abv with this guy and some ridiculous amount of IBU's. You can do the math if you'd like. Yes those are Chinese lanterns below, no I did not pick them out.

13 gallons of water

steeped 2 lb of Crystal 60L for 30 or 40 minutes at 150-160 F

16.3 lbs Briess Light LME

3 lbs Briess Light DME

All pellet hops:

2 oz Warrior 90 min

2 oz Simcoe 70 min

4 oz Cascade continuously between 60 and 30 min because they were handed to me!

4 oz Centennial 25 min

whirfloc at 15 min, oops!

2 oz Willamette 10 min

2 oz Simcoe in keg

4 oz Tomahawk in keg

I was talking about how much hops I put in this brew with someone and I told them it was a stupid amount. Suddenly I realized that maybe that's how Lagunitas came up with the name Hop Stoopid for their brew. And it dawned on me that I can make fun of their beer without copyright infringements because, well, it will only be consumed at my home for free! Hence the name, Hop Retarded. Now I know it's not politically correct but it's the only thing that came to mind when I have went beyond stupid and put too many hop pellets in. I hope you enjoy my new logo that will not be printed or distributed :)