Did everyone hear about Beer Wars that Ben Stein backed? I didn't find out about it until a couple weeks ago, but it played last night and I got a good group to go with. So it only played once
simultaneously across America so that they could do live interviews at the end of the movie. It was a production that started in 2005 and finally finished 4 years later. I thought it was a very good documentary. It got off to a slow start but essentially the meat of the story was following around Sam
Calagione (Dogfish Head) and Rhonda
Kallman (Moonshot). The whole premise was just ripping on
BudMillerCoors and the politics of the industry. But they did that through the eyes of these two small and medium-sized breweries. I found out that Sam is awesome. I am pretty sure he was Ted in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. Ha ha. You should hear is 90's-
tastic surfer accent. Side topic:
Bring Dogfish Head to Missouri group on
facebook from Bull. Rhonda represented the small brewery struggling to survive. She got an
ear full from the craft brewers and from beer advocate, but she is trying to make a
caffeinated party beer. Anyway, it was very interesting perspectives. The movie was focused more on the marketing and politics as opposed to making the beer or tasting it.
Here is a picture of Sam and Rhonda:
So before the movie we hit up Granite City. I found out they brew the beer in Davenport then ship in the wort to the stores and pitch the yeast there. I was talking to the brew master from Amerisports and he was kind of joking about how they just put up the pretty fermenters. Anyhow, the beers are still better than watery beer.
After the movie we hit up O'Dowds at Zona Rosa. To my surprise Bob Reeder was there busting out all his dirty limericks. Yes! Few more beers and it was quite the Thursday night. Also I did notice that as everyone from Granite City was getting off work (including the bartender) they were heading over to O'Dowds. Funny stuff.
Did anyone else see the movie? What did you think?
You brew and you learn. One thing I learned today was when dry hopping not to overfill your carboy. You can see from my last post how full it was. 48 hours and this thing is still bubbling like crazy. At least while I was cleaning hops off the ceiling it smelled delicious. Yeah the wife didn't appreciate that. You can see from the pictures below how active the brew was before it exploded and then the hops lying around the carboy. Yeah Jared, you did mention a bomb in my last post :) My new name for this beer is Dropped-Explosion IPA.
