2009; a Tasting in Remeberance

Ugh. What a Holiday! It's over now, but in that time I imbibed massive amounts of homebrew. All the preparations for my Holiday company paid off in full. The fretting over the Christmas Stout was for naught. Everything went off without a hitch. In addition to finishing off 20 of the 25 gallons made for the occasion, my guests, my wife, and I managed to visit the New Orleans Rum distillery, the Abita brewery, and attend a beer tasting of my own exploits.

Since I began brewing in the All-Grain method last summer, I have saved one 750mL bottle of every beer I made, except those I kegged. In total I had 8 bottles. On one of the last nights of my guests visit we sat down, all eight of us, and I unloaded the vault.

The first beer tasted was made in June. It was a Pale Ale, my first attempt at the yet unperfected Istrouma Pale Ale. This being my first foray into All-Grain methods it was fraught with mistake, inefficiency and frustrations. I mashed in my brew kettle on the burner in a futile attempt to control the heat. My false bottom did not operate in the manner I had suspected so I had to wedge it into place in the lauter tun. I believe now that I am missing a piece to it so I am forced to continue to use this method. The wort chiller my father-in-law and I crafted did not work as suspected and I had to abandon counter-flow methods and opt instead for immersion chilling, a dirty process indeed. The beer itself was drinkable, but lacked any flair and was quite generic. One could almost taste the amateur nature of the brew, or maybe only I could.

Of the next two beers I made that summer one went bad completely due to a chlorine-based sanitizer, and the other was kegged. So the next beer was dated August and it was the summer wheat ale to which I allude to in other posts, Rouge Wheat. I saved two bottles of those so I was fortunate enough to enjoy it twice. I made it often and once in the form of a 10gallon batch. Five gallons I bottled and saved and the other five I kegged and brought to a homebrew/swimming party. Other beers there were an IPA and a very tasty English Old Ale, but being a hot summer day the Rouge Wheat was a smash hit, the smash hit of the summer.

Between those and following later were two more incarnations of the Istrouma Pale Ale. The recipes were similar, but one was created in another 10gallon batch, which I again kegged 5 and bottled 5. The major difference were not what types of hops, but the order to which they were used. It was interesting to notice how Chinook, Centennial, and Cascade hops, all very similar strains save higher Alpha Acids %, used at different point could change the brew. With the first I used Cascade as bittering hops, Centennial as flavor, and Chinook as aroma. In the other I reversed the Order as Chinook has highest Alpha Acid, therefore more bitter, and Cascade the least for more Aroma. The second bottle was a 7.5% ABV monster and the closest I've come to what I desire in an IPA, but only 3 gallons were yielded so I strive to do better next time.

I had saved a bottle of the ill-fated Kolsch, which never met my expectations, from another 10gallon recipe. I believe the failure was due in part to the heat. A Kolsch, unlike an IPA, does not rely on its hops flavors, it is a Malty brew. The types of malt are important, but not as important as the way the yeast uses them. I have since come to find that in the old country summer beers, like a Kolsch, are brewed in the winter and aged in the cold until summer. At lower temperature yeast are more mellow and impart mellower tastes, better esters. Different types of yeast require different temperature, but a good temperature is 68-70 for a malty Kolsch. I couldn't leave my A/C in my house at 65 in a Louisiana summer without going bankrupt. As a result the beer fermented and aged at something more like 80. This produced a rather sour, flat taste. It was drinkable, but this year I am more likely to be brewing Kolsches and Blondes in Late February/Early Spring time.

The last two bottles of the evening you can read about in other posts here on the Herrmann Brew Company Blog. The Punkin' Porter and the Amber Clone. It seems that my Adventures in Homebrew have caught up to my e-jounaling about it. 2010 looks promising for brew in general. I've begun a new vault. The Holiday Hangover is the only resident there now. It is getting lonely and I have to refill it now that the craziness of the Holidays is over. I hope to open it Christmas 2010 as The Ghost of Christmas Past, it has the alcohol to last that long. New Orleans Lager & Ale Brewing Company and its distributor settled their differences (the distributors won), and now the Blonde is flowing again. Their new IPA, Hopitoulas, is amazing, but just starting to flow. Its name is a pun on their brewery's address, 3001 Tchoupitoulas Street. In addition two breweries are starting up in and around my hometown, Parish Brew Company and Bayou Teche Brewing. I wish them the best of luck. I cannot imagine it's easy with all the bull-crap you have to go through to get beer to people and try to make a living doing it. I know I'm discouraged to even dream of it. Good luck to us all.

A Conversation We All Need to Be Having

I got my Christmas present early this year. In part it was my wife's generous nature, in part it was done out of necessity. My 10 gallon batches being made for our holiday company are on schedule, but I am running out of storage capacity. When what to my wondrous eyes should appear, but a featured item at the Austin Home Brew Store Website, The Brew Cube.

It is plastic yes, and I've never used plastic, but I am ready to make that leap of faith. It's ideal because I can ferment 10gallons without wasting the space of two carboys. The extra three gallons leaves plenty of volume for a healthy yeast head, but its opaque exterior make it impossible to watch it form and churn, a simple pleasure I took for granted.

Ten gallons of Amber Ale Clone are in there now and ready to be transferred to a secondary vessel. The Brew Cube is so convenient that I will probably clean it and transfer the 10 gallons back into for aging, again saving lots of space.

With this extra space I will brew the Satsuma Wheat again this week. I have a slightly different recipe, more akin to the Rouge Wheat. In fact exactly akin, save Satsumas in lieu of apricots. In addition, to make it a more Winter ale I plan on adding mulling spices at flame out. Chamomile might make a nice addition as well as cinnamon, allspice, more citrus peels, etc.

Everything seems all set for an enjoyable holiday season, yet there is no joy in Mudville for a most depressing development has come to pass. The conversation transcribed below took place on Monday December 21, and carries an important Christmas Message. The names have been changed to protect the innocent, and the grammar corrected for the same reason:


Not Me: your off now?
Sent at 12:59 PM on Monday
me: yes i am off
Sent at 1:14 PM on Monday
Not Me: damn your black heart
Sent at 1:16 PM on Monday
me: mwha haha
Not Me: how was your weekend?
me: very nice, relaxing
we spent most of it with family
Not Me: coolio
and your working half days this week right
Sent at 1:22 PM on Monday
me: no i am off all this week
last week the kids had half days,but mine were full
Friday I took off around noon and never looked back
Sent at 1:31 PM on Monday
Not Me: hah
me too
went to nola and went to the Avenue Pub, then when I got back here, i have sinus problems now
at work and slightly miserable
me: the Avenue pub is great!
did you head about the problems with NOLA brew distributors?
Not Me: i had not
whats up
me: http://www.nola.com/drink/index.ssf/2009/08/nola_brewing_cos_dispute_with.html
they're being sued by their distributor
Not Me: ?
why?
me: they tried to switch distributors and got caught in a license legal argument
the old distributor sued and so a cease and desist order was called by a judge
Bar tender at the Bulldog told me all this and NOLA.com verifies
you can't get NOLA in this town anymore
some places have a few kegs, but when they're gone, they're gone
Blonde is nowhere in town
Not Me: wow
that sucks
me: yeah
worst case scenario is NOLA pulls out of LA for 2 years
Not Me: so they were trying to switch and got caught in a breech of contract?
wtf is with NOLA liquor producers?
both of them are screwy now
me: If I understand the situation correctly,
NOLA claims their distributor Glazer broke contract
when they claimed "premium distributive services"
Not Me: that's a hard one to press
me: to which NOLA says was not "premium" because they won't distribute on the weekends nor in the Quarter
so yeah until the dispute is settled, their new distributor, Southern Eagle, cannot sell a drop
NOLA can sell to Southern Eagle, but Eagle cannot sell to anyone else
screwy huh?
Not Me: welcome to LA
Sent at 1:41 PM on Monday

Welcome to LA will be the first thing I say to my visitors and, God willing, I will be able to serve them a NOLA brew. Now the half dozen of you who might be reading this most likely know the backwards-ass distributing laws that govern the State of Louisiana. It has taken a long time and a slow progression to repeal or amend most of the "Blue Laws" in my town. Now we can purchase alcohol on a Sunday whenever the spirits take me. (pun intended) But the 800 lb gorilla that prevents most of us Beer Nerds from satisfying our unquenchable pallet with a variety of fresh and unique brews is the distributing laws. These laws are in place as a form a political pork. There's more of gravy than grave in this set up. The only way for anyone to sell any fermented beverage in this state is through a middleman, a distributor.

These distributors are an independent company and, as with any independent company in place since Prohibition, the strong have survived by placing a parasitic, vice like grip on people's booze-to-money stream. I understand the need for such an organization. By going through a middleman we are setting up checks on sanitization and cost control, but there are only 3 of them who have any pull. New Orleans Lager and Ale Brewing Company has fallen victim to these companies greed and capitalistic intentions.

For some reason the legal norm is to hold the producers up to the whims of the distributors, not the other way around. After years of mediocrity in the beverage community, distributors need to go away like the dinosaurs. At one time 3 distributors was all that was needed because there were only 3 breweries, Budweiser, Coors, and Miller. It made sense for a distributor to hook up with a macro brewery to funnel the money from the consumers all over the world to a centralized location in St. Louis or Colorado, but the times have changed. We are clutching like barnacles on a sinking ship and trying to force an ever mutating market into a system which crushes creativity and prohibits change.

Moreover, the companies listed above are not even located in the United States. Craft brew is becoming our beer of choice and rather than embracing the change the courts of Louisiana are holding up our consumption on a technicality of legal terminology. Basically NOLA wanted to fire its distributor, it did, and now they cannot sell any brew at all. It could be that not a drop of NOLA flows for 2 years. That would cripple the company and set the flow of events leading up to where we are now back 30 years.

Update: Wednesday December, 23 Two days until Christmas

On Monday December 21, shortly after this post NOLA brew made this statement via their Facebook Page:

"We are pleased to announce that NOLA and Glazer's have resolved our differences and all legal proceedings are being terminated. Although we have had our differences with Glazer's, we are looking forward to working together in the future. They will serve as NOLA's distributor in the state of Louisiana."

So it seems the worst is over, though it appears that Glazer won the dispute. What that means as far as NOLA's desired distributing, I don't know. What I do know is that yesterday, while eating oysters with my wife, I ordered a NOLA Blonde, which has been hard to find, everyone was sure they were out, but the waitress checked and sure enough I got what I ordered. It has never tasted so good. Maybe now we'll see some of their new Hopitoulas make its way down here.