Crown Valley Brewery

Let the competition begin. For those Kansas City beer drinkers that don't get over to STLHops very often, I read an interesting post that I think you should take a look at. What really got my attention was the fact that their goal is to become the largest craft brewer in Missouri. They've got a long haul after Boulevard and Schlafly, especially that they're not located in a big city. I was very impressed with the pictures included in the post and with their good looking, expensive equipment. Bling bling. Unfortunately they were not able to get to Parkville this year and I assume that is because St. Louis had their beer fest. While I am interested in trying their brews and collecting their bottles I am skeptical of how well they will do. I wish them the best of luck.

http://stlhops.com/photos-crown-valley-brewery/

Parkville Microfest and the Nebraska Hangover Cure

Turned out to be a good day for the festival and I was worried it was going to be rainy. Unfortunately, the ground was too wet to have the festival on but it worked out pretty good having it on the asphalt. There were around 26 or 27 breweries. There were 2000 people drinking this year. Although I am a hop head, I'll have to say that the Concentrated Evil from Lucky Bucket (NE) was the best. I was pretty disappointed with some of the booths because they didn't know anything about the beer. Whoever was pouring O'Fallon didn't even know it was sold in Kansas City. It was unfortunate that STL brew fest was going on the same day. I didn't get to try all of the beers because I was busy yapping to people. But I did get plenty of time to get good and drunk. My buddy Jason drove me to the Saucer afterwards where it was jammed packed because of the anniversary and I got to drink some more! This morning was like someone hit me on the head with a 2x4 and you gotta wonder what stupid things you did the previous day. Well, can't wait for next year's.

Speaking of Nebraska, I took the bike up to NE this morning. Good way to cure the hangover is to get that adrenaline pumping. I am a KC MO resident and took me 1 hour from my house to get to the corner of Nebraska. On my way back I stopped off in St. Joe because I heard about this "Belt Brewing Co", but come to find out it went out of business. I looked around St. Joe for an hour or so and talked to a few people in search for a St. Joe beer, but none were found. Oh well, fun ride.

Ceiling Decorations

I got home from work and found a little surprise. I had green decorations on the floor, couch, pool table, bar and ceiling! 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.

Looks like I'm not the only one who's ran into this...
http://www.batchesbrew.com/wordpress/?p=589

IPA Brew

I took off the training wheels and stepped up my game. It was time to make an extremely hoppy, high gravity beer (my style). With the kegerator complete I'll probably keg most of this and bottle a few for those really interested. I woke up at 2am this morning and remembered that I forgot to take a reading. So 8 hours after transferring I took the original gravity and it was 1.076 or so. It will probably be a little over 8% abv. I got a yeast starter going strong the night before and this beer is ACTIVE! From the picture you can tell I got it a little too full but wort activity is starting to push it's way through the airlock now. Any of you brewers know if that's bad? I think it should be alright because no oxygen is coming in.

Check out this recipe I kind of compiled:

Mashed 1 lb of Crystal 40L, .5 lb Munich, .5 Wheat

6.6 lbs Briess Light LME

3 lbs Light DME

WLP001 California Yeast - Starter

Hop time...

1 oz Warrior 70 min

1 oz Simcoe 50 min

1 oz Cascade 35 min

1 oz Cascade 15 min

.5 oz Amarillo 5 min

1 oz Simcoe at KO

1 oz dry leaf Cascade 1st fermentation

1 oz dry leaf Cascade 2nd fermentation

116 IBU - OG 1.076 - FG 1.015 - SRM 9

Kegerator Project

I was able to do all of this yesterday (Sunday). The biggest part was to tear apart this tank of a mini-fridge. Built in 1987 and with the family ever since then. This sucker has been in more dorm rooms than I can count on one hand. It's time for old woody to graduate to the kegerator. I already had the components ran in the bar for parties with an ice bucket, but because I'm brewing now, I'd like to keg my beer and enjoy it for a while. I took the components and sacrificed a drawer that kept my cigars. My brother and I insulated the hell out of the inside using a couple different styles of insulation and lots of duct tape (ghetto). Just needs a coat of paint and a keg. Let me know if you have any questions on it. Pretty cost efficient.

Beer Wars: The Movie

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?

KC Breweries, Old, New, Hopeful

I've been meaning to get to this post for a while, but I've really been slacking. A quick note, you should really try the Sam Adams Imperial Series. Just don't drink 6 or 7 at once like I did. There's been a lot of change in breweries with the economy sinking. Late last year Power Plant Brewery in Parkville shut down "indefinitely", according to the sign on their door. Economy, service, and a political mess ended that brewery but I am hopeful that it will open again. With Parkville's exciting Microbrewfest (coming May 2nd) you'd think they'd get a lot of business.

River Market Brewery was another casualty. To me it's not a huge surprise. With the new Power & Light district dominating the downtown cash flow, RMB became an okay lunch spot, if that. The beer was decent, the service not so great. Still it's sad to see another original bite the dust.

So did Flying Monkey close down? I heard rumors that Flying Monkey Brewery in Olathe shut down, but haven't confirmed that. I saw that up in Ontario recently a brewery just changed its name to Flying Monkeys Brewery. Hmm...

On a brighter side of the topic we've got two hopeful breweries in DCB and DBC both in KC area.

Doodle Brewing Company in Liberty is underway with a building site. Nick Vaughn from KC's 75th st brewery has a good resume of brewery experience and knowledge. Nick is taking a leap with his kids college money to construct his dream. KC should really help Matt once he gets his operation in full force.


Dead Canary Brewery has kept us awaiting some good news for a while, but has plans in the West Bottoms to create a fun nano-brewery that contains a dodgeball league. Also they did a better job on the new logo.