It all comes East Sooner or Later

Humulords and Ladies,

Exciting news today from the West Coast. Nothing breaking for the first time, the chatter is out there, but one in the form of a quote and one in the form of an announcement from my bunker today.

Hop Head Red, the multi-award winning, initially draft-only beer from Vista, CA's Green Flash Brewing Company is heading to Philly and it's coming in botttles and it's coming on draft. Some East Coast hop heads have held a watchful eye over the Red since it grabbed silver at GABF earlier this year. I love a beer with some mystique behind it, and the HHR has the sauce. Not listed as an offering on the Green Flash site, all of us cold winter folks were left scratching our heads a bit.

I touched base with Green Flash earlier this week and got word from a Mr. Mike Hinkley:

"Yes, Hop Head Red Ale will be in Philly soon. Hop Head Red has been a local favorite on draft in San Diego. When Hop Head won silver at the Great American Beer Festival in September, we decided to start bottling the beer in 6packs so more Green Flash fans could join in the excitement. With our first scheduled bottling set for this coming Monday, we were blown away to win Gold at the World Beer Cup last week. It is truly a great beer that we are very proud of and Philly will surely enjoy the beer which will also send in kegs for draft in that fine city’s best beer bars."

Perfect. Mr. Hinkley, we await.

And from Sierra Nevada comes news of a transcontinental Harvest Ale. Pretty cool news from the West Coast big boys.

-I'm lifting this quote from Beer Advocate which was lifted from the Sierra Nevada site. If anybody comes calling, i will track down a direct link and post that way.

"Sierra Nevada Brings Fresh Hops Year-Round With the Release of Southern Hemisphere Harvest

Sierra Nevada, the pioneer of fresh hop ales in America, has expanded its Harvest Ale Series with the release of another ground-breaking product introduction, Southern Hemisphere Harvest Ale. This marks the first time in known history that a fresh hop ale has been available in America in the spring since hops are harvested in the fall in the northern hemisphere. The inaugural ale will debut in early May.

- full article

To make this project happen, Sierra Nevada traveled to New Zealand to harvest fresh hops, and then transported them from the southern hemisphere to Chico where they were immediately used in brewing. Like their award-winning Celebration Ale, the fresh hops in this beer are dried right after being picked then shipped immediately to Chico for brewing, so that they retain their peak aromatics and flavors. Freshly harvested hops are richer in hop oils so they impart more hop aroma and hop spiciness into beer.

"We love fresh hop ales, but until now fresh hops were only available here once a year - during the fall hop harvest," said brewery owner and founder Ken Grossman. "So we journeyed to the southern hemisphere to catch their hop harvest, which occurs during our spring." The result is the North-by South fusion of fresh-picked New Zealand Pacific hops with the finest North American malts. Southern Hemisphere Harvest will feature fresh Pacific Hallertau, New Zealand Motueka and New Zealand Southern Cross hops, all from New Zealand.

The introduction of Southern Hemisphere Harvest gives Sierra Nevada three fresh-hop ales in their Harvest Series. In addition to Southern Hemisphere Harvest, Sierra Nevada produces Chico Estate Harvest in late summer and its original Harvest Ale in early fall.

Chico Estate Harvest is one of the very few estate harvest ales produced anywhere in the world today. All the hops in the beer are grown organically on the premises at the Chico brewery. The brewers pick the hops themselves and then take them directly to the brew kettle, without being dried, just after picking so they retain nearly all of their natural oils and resins. It is made with Cascade, Centennial and Chinook hops. Until now, this beer has only been available in draft. Starting this year, Sierra Nevada will bottle it on a very limited basis (Chico only this year) with plans to expand its availability as they expand their Chico hop field in the coming years.

The cornerstone of their Harvest Series is the beer that started the modern-day fresh hop ale phenomenon in America, the original Harvest Ale. Created in 1996, Harvest Ale features Cascade and Centennial hops from the Yakima Valley in Eastern Washington. These hops are harvested and shipped as "wet," i.e., un-dried hops--the same day they are picked--to their brewery in Chico where the brewers eagerly wait to get them into the brew kettle while their oils and resins are still at their peak.

Representing the journey following the hop harvest around the globe, the Harvest Series includes hops sourced from new regions and brewed using new methods in an effort to maximize the oily, resinous qualities of the hops from each harvest as they transported them to the brewery in Chico, California.

Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. was founded in 1980 and is one of America's first microbreweries. It is regarded as the standard of quality for American craft brewers and has won numerous awards for its beers and ales. Its flagship product, Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, has been the number one selling craft beer brand in America for the past five years according to IRI scan data. The brewery is still 100% owned by Ken Grossman.

In addition to Pale Ale, Sierra Nevada makes a Wheat, Porter, and Stout year-round, a host of draft-only specialty beers, and offers five seasonal beers. Harvest Ale will be available in limited supply nationwide in 24-ounce bottles and draft. The cost is slightly above Sierra Nevada's year-round products."

That is all. Cheers.

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Everybody's Firkin For The Weekend

Troegs Brewing Company from Hustlin’ Harrisburg has hit the firkin scene hard this year. There’s a firkin scene? Yes friend, there is a firkin scene and they are all over it. As the radius braces for another season of Nugget Nectar come and gone some have begun to question their own existence, others are hot on the trail of the freshest beer they can taste.

And the brothers Trogner deliver. Touted as a Chris event, they threw a fresh off of CBC San Diego John Trogner at the happy and thirsty crowd at Teresa’s Next Door on Wednesday. Armed with a ton of cool news to share, John and Mid-Atlantic sales dude Nick Johnson worked the room and watched glass after glass of Hopback drain from their firkin.



The Hopback got a bit of a boost from a bag of Palisades floating on the beer and the brownish-amber ale was far from the hoppiest thing in the house (upon sitting down i had a full pour of Lagunitas IPA as well as a side-by-side of Nugget Nectar samples from the tap and from the cask), but it was darn good drinking. Along with the Hopback on gravity and both Nugget Nectars, Teresa's also had Sunshine Pils on tap to give folks a nice variety of Troegs to choose from.


Beer packaging and market placement seem to be fresh in the minds of our local brewers, John picked up right where the Victory crew left off last week. One thing that seems less apparent sometimes to us as we sit on our barstools and wax romantic about how cool the brewing industry is is the fact that a lot of these guys have to live and breathe the industry 24/7. The tireless efforts and travel of these guys isn't something that gets mentioned all too often.



John talked a bit about his time out in San Diego last week as well as some very cool upcoming projects that are about to start rolling forward at the brewery. Some are as simple as two or three degrees celsius and others involve a certain award winning beer getting the bomber treatment.

Despite the crowd gathered at the end of the bar (including the likes of Mr. Charity himself, Wayne luminary Matt Guyer) it seemed as though plenty of Hopbacks were being served to tables and down the bar. Three hours after tapping the firkin had run dry and everyone was in high spirits. Another fine showing from Troegs and another event in the books for Teresa's summer schedule.






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Get Real

Let this be a preview to you lot out there privy to peruse my public picklebox of personal ponderings. I plan to run a few recurring series here on the Grain Bill, I am pretty excited about some of them, but with my summer gig starting tomorrow night I don’t know exactly how much of a chance I am going to get to pull them all off. But the plan is there, and when the iron is hot I will strike.

The first series I’ll clue you into is called Know Your Blogger, and basically it’s just a chance to put someone else’s blog in the spotlight for a day. I plan to talk about their site and interview them to give you folks a bit more insight into the people behind the rants, reviews, previews, and posts. That said, this is not one of those posts, however, but I am going to do a bit of highlighting anyway.



Real Ale, Cask Ale, CAMRA, beer engine, hand pump, cask breather? Firkin?! Pin?!!! What does it all mean? Beer in all it’s glory James, that’s what it means. Real Ale is more or less beer to be dispensed from a vessel without the force of CO2 or Nitrogen, therefore it is the closest representation of the beer that has been brewed…no filtering, no pasteurizing, no nothing. Hops and a bit of priming sugar are sometimes added to a cask as the beer will still be maturing and finishing even as it arrives at the pub.

And you know what? Pennsylvania has more of it than any of other state on the map. PA accounts for 12.8% of the country’s cask ale outlets with New York right behind it spurred by the amazing work of Mr. Alex Hall.

Of the 65 different bars serving cask ale you can catch a daily report of about 25 of them on Kevin Rowe’s site, Cask Ale Kev. Through a network set up by Kevin he is able to provide daily updates of who’s pouring what in Philly, Delaware, Montgomery County, Chester County, and Delaware County. It is a great resource site that I visit often and think you should too. Whether you love yourself some real ale or have never tried it, Kev’s site is going to steer you towards your local options.

If you’re new to real ale and are thinking about taking the plunge, the following are a few tips as prescribed by me in hopes that your first experience will be a good one:

*If they have Nugget Nectar on cask, just get it and ignore everything below.

*Cask Ale is going to have less carbonation than you’re used to in a beer, remember the only carbonation in Real Ale is created naturally by yeast consuming sugar. To a new comer the beer may seem ‘flat’. Conquer this by getting all of the beers aromas up your nose and concentrating on flavor as you swoosh and swallow your beer.

*Real Ale is going to be served a bit warmer than you may be used to as well. This is a great thing. We discussed temperature big time here, but as a quick line- beer that’s a bit warmer with release more aroma and there will be no coldness to numb your taste buds and/or mask the actual flavors of the beer.

*Unless the bartenders are extremely busy, don’t be afraid to ask questions. One I’ll usually always ask is how long the cask has been on for. Sometimes they know, sometimes they don’t, but it is good information when you can get it. Real Ale won’t hold up more than a few days once oxygen has been introduced to the beer. This is called oxidation and it basically just means that the beer is going stale. It is the risk we take for the glory of cask ale. If you are out for your first pint from a cask and you know it’s been on for like 5 days, maybe you want to hold off.

-Side note: Many places are wise to the beauty of the cask breather which introduces a blanket of nitrogen over top of the beer, not allowing oxygen (which is lighter) to come into contact with the fragile beer. Genius.

-Sidier side not: The same happens in a beer fermenter, but naturally as yeast consumes sugars creating alcohol and releases CO2 upwards.

It’s been a great couple of weeks for Real Ale in my neck of the woods, Iron Hill’s Phoenixville location has been running a dry hopped cask version of their Iron Bound Ale which has been just delicious (along with English and Dry Stouts on nitrogen) and Teresa’s Next Door has a great cask of Nugget Nectar on right now. I’ll have to go check out Kevin’s site to see what else is being pulled around these parts.
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Duncekap

I've been sitting here all morning thinking about life, about what the future will hold, about the fact that i want to do a really big post on my blog about some really bad and really good beer coverage in the mainstream media, but don't have the time....and what am i forgetting?

Troegs will be tapping a firkin of Hopback at Teresa's Next Door in, like, a couple hours dude. I'm going, some of my favorite people to chat over beers with are going, Chris Trogner will be there, Nick Johnson will be there, it's gonna be a darn good time.

Nick will be giving a brief dissertation about a new product he is developing and rather than link i will quote and italicize myself.

"I also understand Nick has been in development with some company overseas to develop just about the coolest thing i've heard of in a while. He's calling it a Firkegskin and its modeled after that almighty feast the Turducken. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turducken

Basically it's a vessel that will hold a pin inside of a cask inside of a half barrel. It's got two taps and a handpump and allows you to taste a beer all three ways. He keeps sketches of the prototype in his pocket and will talk your ear off about it all night."

That is all for today good people. I have some stuff in the works. I promised to praise a local blogger, which i will do tomorrow. I've got some more pictures to post undoubtedly. I'm outta here, meet me at the end of the bar. Read more!

Winner's Dinner

Victory Brewing Company from out in Downingtown enjoys success in the craft beer industry on two levels – on one hand they have a line of award winning beers with recognition worldwide as witnessed by judges from Los Angeles to London. On the other hand they treat their hometown crowd to a host of exciting beers on cask and in smaller release. Their lineup leans towards Germanic influence, but certainly doesn’t stop there; two of their most popular beers would be flung far from the Hofbräuhaus. So how do you really get a feel for what Victory is all about without bar hopping for a Boisterous here and a Victorious there?

Well, you go to a Victory beer dinner of course. Master of Ceremonies himself, Bill Covaleski gave a nice preview to Grain Bill here, in case you missed it. Armed with his master of marketing and a very boisterous restaurant manager the Victory show rolled into Wayne, PA on April 14th and set about pairing five of their beers with five plates from the kitchen of chef Andy Dickerson and company.

The evening kicked off with the customary Welcome Beer (one of my favorite beers in the whole beer game) and for this the delicious Moonglow, Victory’s weizenbock was chosen. It’s not every beer dinner you go to that offers up an 8.7 % welcome beer, but hey, this wasn’t every beer dinner. Seating was arranged ahead of time, as were all ticket sales, and for the sold out gathering of 25 or so, the whole thing was rather communal. Each table got to know each other as Teresa’s deft staff poured a bit more welcome into everyone’s glass. This would be the trend through the night and i don’t think i saw a glass empty for more than a second or two as pitchers and bottles came as if from a well. As the chats and introductions died down Bill Covaleski took to the floor with a few words about the brewery, the beer, and how much he enjoys beer dinners. From there it was all business in a dinner kind of way as each course followed right on the heels of the one it was trying to catch. Covaleski worked the room and the conversation at my table never seemed to cease.

The menu had the Teresa’s Next Door fingerprint all the way. As i have come to expect from Wayne’s first Belgicana gastro-pub, a lot of amazing things happen when you close the menu and open your ears up a bit. Sure, i’ve got a ton of favorites in the book, but between specials and their weekly pairing menu, a lot goes on there that people just seem to miss. Not to mention the late night staff meal. This being a case as such, the menu put together to pair with Victory’s offerings was a very good fit.

Moonglow Weizenbock
Welcome Beer

St. Boisterous
Victory’s Hellerbock paired with a seared day boat Scallop, preserved meyer lemon Boisterous butter and baby watercress.

St. Victorious
Dopplebock paired with an aged goat cheese puff pastry with French morel mushrooms on top.

Baltic Thunder
Baltic Porter with Grilled kangaroo loin, salt crusted fingerlings, baby leeks, asparagus, and porter reduction.

Old Horizontal
Barleywine with Colston-Basset stilton balls in a honey and grain cradle.

V-Twelve
Homemade bourbon vanilla ice cream with V-Twelve soaked apricots, candied almonds, and a V-12 syrup.



Little known fact coming to light: i don’t think i have had a scallop in at least 15 years. No exaggeration. It might even be more. Certain things just don’t have an appeal to me and scallops are one of them. In my mind i just associate them as the rubber of the sea, little white pucks of chewiness that are basically an excuse to eat bacon. I don’t need excuses when bacon is around.

But I’ll be darned if i didn’t dive right into the scallop and Hellerbock pairing. The more i read about food and the more i read about beer, i really see that i have some opening up to do. So many fine pairings come recommended or by way of the reading i do and i am closed to them because i think i don’t like something i wasn’t into during the wise ages of my early teen years. So many chances to eat a beautifully cut piece of salmon or tuna have just passed me by. I read about their delicate flavors and i have just tuned them all out. Bad joel, you need to stop that. And so i will. I got 99 problems, but a fish ain’t one.

One thing is absolutely certain though. i will never eat yogurt again as long as i have a breath in my body and full function of my hands. Long story, one you certainly do not want to hear.

At the conclusion of the meal Dickerson’s kitchen staff was brought out for a well deserved round of applause which they seemed to enjoy. That is of course until a few insensitive individuals had to show their impressive understanding of the Spanish language. I could feel my skin tighten after a half heartfelt, “Gracias amigos” was followed by a few more ridiculous phrases bounced naturally off of well lubed tongues. Kind of a shame.

In all, the night seemed to be a hit. A lot of good conversation about Victory, about the beer industry, about the food sitting in front of us. It’s nice to experience beer on this level when you can. At the least it’s just not something you get to do everyday, at the most it’s a chance to see that beer is the almighty punctuation; capable of stealing the show, providing a foundation, or singing harmony.


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Oh the hours we've wasted.

Wrapping up all of that Pliny business, all i can tell you is that these two kegs must have fallen from the sky because what looking into things i did do (read: World Rabies Day) turned up conflicting stories about keg departures, keg arrivals, kegs etcs.

And truth be told, i don't care nearly as much as those posts below might imply. Just having some fun and screwing up google searches from the West Coast to the East. I was asked if that whole mishap in Walcott, IA actually happened or not, which i guess is a small triumph for my cause.

So to the three of you who actually read this blog: Let's get back to business as usual.

Ortino's Northside was quite busy on Friday and for good reason- they were pouring some great beers. I just didn't want to leave.

The Pliny was tasting very nice, whenever it was from. Plenty of fun for the nose, plenty of tongue smacking hops. It was certainly more Pliny than the last one we talked about. Ditto Perkuno's Hammer. Held up really well and was a going down almost too easily. Alongside of the Stone Black IPA and Founder's Dirty Bastard, Ortino's was looking like the place to be on Friday. Plenty of friendly and familiar faces around the bar and some good chatter in every direction. Assuming everyone had a good time is something i feel i can do in safety.

So where do we go from here? Well all of the reports on Russian River, including word from Vinnie himself, are that we'll have more beer at some point this summer. I can live with that. I mean, from a few days shy of May until they fire the school busses back up in September is about as big a gap as a lot of folks have between Russian River stuff anyway, so really those that didn't get a taste over the past two weekends shouldn't feel terribly left out. I don't think i'll be tracking any delivery trucks across country for a long time, but if i do get word on any RRBC beer headed our way i will be sure to share the news. Read more!

Quick Update....On The Move

Just popping in quickly here with an update and a preview.

UPDATE:

Pliny The Northside in far better shape than TDR.
Perkuno's Hammer was mighty fine.
Teresa's Next Door has a really nice keg of Deranke XX on at this very moment.

What are you doing tonight? If you want to watch the Sixer's playoff game on a mega screen and drink all of the Brooklyn, Oskar Blues, Erie Brewing Co, and Hook & Ladder you want than come on down to the Full Mooner in The Garage @ Ugly Moose in Manayunk. Bring $10 and an illegal smile. I'll be pouring beer and juggling kittens from 6-9 pm.

PREVIEW - This Week on Grain Bill:

Wrapping up that Pliny thing.
Victory Beer Dinner Recap from Teresa's.
Praise of a local blogger.

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