Dez's Brewz and Reviewz: New Albion

I should start by welcoming you all to the new home of Dez's Brewz Reviewz. A novice beer drinkers thoughts, observations and musings while tasting what's what in the world of beer...with an emphasis on Minnesota, Midwest craft beers.

Word seems to have spread quickly on the release of this remake. A quick check on google and twitter brings up not only hundreds of reviews but it seems like anyone who's anyone in the "craft beer" world has got their hands on a bottle of this if not only to take part in the seeming "nod" to New Albion founder Jack McAuliffe. History alone is enough to try this beer out. The story of someone who literally pieced together a brewery and made a go of it, unsuccessfully, but left such a lasting impression on the industry that 30 years later, Sam Adams reproduces your recipe. I'd say they did something right back then, and again with this one. Their New Albion is quite good. It pours clear, yellow-golden, light white head. A slight hoppy smell, just enough to taste, but never over powers your taste buds. I'm not a regular fan of pale ales. I'm not on the Hoppy train most of the craft beer world seems to love right now. But this beer I could drink. At a time of the beer year when I'm sick of winter, growing tired of dark, smokey, coffee infused everything, the timing of this was perfect. I read how Sam Adams was getting some negative feedback on the earlier release of their spring seasonal mixed sampler packs. To me, its perfect. I want to think about the winter turning to spring and the days getting longer and sipping beers like this, humming "oh its such a perfect day, I'm glad I spent it with you" and watching the sun go down. Its hard to rate this one, only because Pale Ale's aren't my favorite, but this is quite good. Dare I say a beer history lesson in a bottle?  ** 1/2 GREAT
 

Beer Night in the 612

 

 

Wednesday seems like a pretty boring day. Too far removed from last weekend to fondly look back and relive the fun that was had and too far away from the up coming weekend to get excited about it. I found out last night though that Wednesday is the perfect night for some local beer fun!

 

 

I heard about 612Brew opening their new tap room, so after a long day at work I jumped in my car and headed to Northeast Minneapolis to check it out. The place is awesome! It was a mix of industrial, modern, and hipster. There is a huge beautiful mural painted on one wall and a good sized bar on another. Everything else was pretty much nice wood tables and brewery. They played some good tunes in the background instead of the usual elevator music b.s. some places force you to suffer through. It is a great place to have a beer with a great vibe to it.

 

 

There were four different beers on tap. Pints were 5 bucks and flights of the four were 11 bucks. I wanted to try them all, but since I had plans to go to another beer event after this one, I just went for a pint of 612’s Zero Hour. It was a hoppy black ale that was very tasty. One thing that I liked about it is how clean the mouth feel is on this beer. It seems like lots of times aggressively hopped beers have this thick lingering mouth coating feel. This one didn’t have that, but yet still had a good hoppy aftertaste that lingered for a while. I thought this was a pretty cool attribute to this beer that helped create a refreshing drinkability.

 

 

After finishing my pint of Zero Hour I headed over to the Nomad for Midweek Beer Geek. If you haven’t been, you should try to make it sometime. It is a weekly event put on by Andrew Schmitt, the MN Beer Activist, where one certain beer is spotlighted each week.

 

 

This week’s beer was Weyerbacher’s Insanity. It is their barley wine that they aged in oak bourbon casks. It was malty, boozy, and super cloudy with absolutely no clarity to it. After the bartender shook up the keg a little that did improve a bit. The cloudiness was attributed to the beer aging since 2011. Some settling has to be expected when a beer is sitting there for 2 years. All in all it was a good beer, but at 11.1% A.B.V. you should approach this beer with some caution.

 

 

No more middle of the week blahs. We live in a great area for great craft beer. You don’t have to break the bank or stay out too late on a work night to have fun. Just head out for a pint in a great setting or head to the Nomad to try something you have probably never had before.



Big Time Branding Terms Debunked pt 1:

Ask any head of a multibillion dollar corporation about how to keep their customers coming back, and you will most likely be starting a conversation about brand.  Branding is the image that a company portrays to the public using symbols, terms, or methods that are unique to their company.  Multibillion dollar beer companies spend millions of dollars every year creating a brand around the beers, most often to cover up the fact that there really is not difference behind their equally shoddy product.

So when you think about big beer commercials what is probably the most common theme you will see?  Take a look:

Silver, cold, ice.  Yes all the major companies at one time or another promise a refreshing beer served ice cold, the colder the better.  In my humblest opinion this serves two purposes for their brands.  The first to cover up that they all taste the same, and second to cover up the fact their beer tastes
"funky" (dare I say like crap).  No a good craft beer can hold up to temperatures of 40 to 50 degrees, but try drinking a Coors at that temperature...

Don't Fruit Your Beer:  Do you remember Miller's "Man Law" commercials.  Here is one of my favorites:

It's funny how this commercial and mindset vanished from Miller's bag of tricks.  It might have something to do with the fact they now own majorty stake in the following beers that out right break this rule:

1. Miller Chill (Lime)
2. Leinenkugel's Berry Weiss (Mixed Berries)
3. Leinenkugel's Honey Weiss (often served with Lemon)
4. Blue Moon (often served with an orange)

Those are just a few that I was able to find at a glance.  So much for not fruiting your beers!We of the craft brew persuasion have been fruiting our beers for year, heck the most ancient beers (sour beers) were most probably fruited!  Here are some great Midwest "fruited" beers:

1. Lift Bridge Brewery:  Spring Fling (Bitter Orange)
2. Flat Earth Brewing :Cygnus X1 Porter (Various flavors)
3. Raspberry Tart:  New Glarus Brewing (Raspberry)

Again, these are just the ones I could find off the top of my head.  If you like this article leave a comment an let us know!  We'll write another!

Silhouette Release Party at Lift Bridge Brewery in Stillwater

 

Great Beer; Ok Party

 

I love Russian Imperial Stouts. They have to be one of my favorite types of beer. And I love visiting breweries. It is one of my favorite things to do and I wish I had more time to visit them a bit more frequently. So, when I saw that Lift Bridge was having a release party for their Russian Imperial Stout, Silhouette, I snatched up a few of the free tickets, grabbed a few friends, and headed to Stillwater!

 

This review will be two fold. First the party, then we will get to the beer. I brought my wife and two friends. We all had a great time. I think if you like beer, anytime you are in a brewery you are going to have a blast. That said there were some downer parts to the party.

 

We got there right towards the beginning of the party. There was already a HUGE line to get beer tokens. Either they didn’t trust the beertenders with cash or felt this way would be more efficient. It was not. We sat in a line that wrapped around the entire tap room for quite a while. And this was just to buy tokens for beers, not to actually get beers.

 

When we finally got to the front of the line there were several choices for tokens depending on what kind of beer you would like. I will just come out with it; that sucked! Maybe for this party they could have streamlined things so there weren’t multiple price points. Plus, I don’t walk into a place saying, “I will have exactly one beer,” or, “I will have exactly three beers.” Not to mention you basically had to decide what kind of beer you wanted right then and there. We each purchased two tokens. I probably would have liked to of had another beer later in the evening, but I wasn’t going to sit in the token line AND an actual line for beer again.

 

After I purchased the tokens I asked the person I purchased them from where I go to get beer. She directed me outside saying there was an outdoor ice tap room, as advertised on the event announcement. So, my wife and I headed out only to find Biscotti with Vanilla and Farm Girl with Cinnamon in the outdoor “tap room” but no Silhouette. Ugh! I had to head back inside and finally found places to get the beer of the night.

 

By the way, the outdoor tap room? A small, and I mean small, chicken wire fence with some snow blown on it and two firkins sitting on a pile of ice blocks. There was room for the two firkins on the ice blocks and the two people pouring those beers. It should have just been called a parking lot with beer, not an “Outdoor Ice Taproom.”

 

Other than that there were several hobo barrel fires, a 10 foot by 3 foot rectangle of ice they billed as some sort of hockey shoot out, a couple patio heaters, and a food truck. Inside there was a pretty good band, although we didn’t get to hear much of them because they didn’t even start playing until we had waited in lines, found, purchased, and finished our beers, headed out to the food truck, purchased food, and went back inside. I am not sure what they were waiting for when it was only a three hour event.

 

So to sum up the party, we had a blast. But that was mainly due to great beer and great friends. The party, while fun, was a bit of an unorganized mess and a little bit of a let down when compared with what was advertised. But hey, the party was free so maybe we should have lowered our expectations a bit.

 

Now the beer… Man was it good! They had two versions, a barrel aged and one that was not barrel aged. I had the barrel aged. It was super dark, a bit boozy, a bit smoky, and had hints of coffee and chocolate. I am not super good at writing the beer snobbery notes that others do in a beer review, but all I can say is this beer was a damn good beer. My only complaint is that it could have just been a little bit smoother. It had a tiny bite to it that seemed unnecessary. I have had Russian Imperial Stouts that were a bit smoother than Silhouette, but the great complex flavors in this made up for it.  

 

I purchased a bottle to go as well. The price point of 15 bucks was at the very top of what they should charge, but within what I am willing to pay for a bomber of good Russian Imperial Stout. And hey, it is cheaper than Surly Darkness, which I have felt hasn’t really lived up to the hype nor the dollars. However, I will say that charging 5 bucks for a small plastic cup of Silhouette at the actual brewery seemed a bit steep to me. I get it is a release party, not a tour, but charge a few bucks to recoup some costs, not more money than if I had purchased it at a bar.

 

So, in conclusion I would say that Lift Bridge may want to work at throwing a bit better of a party for their customer’s benefit, but they have the beer part down pat!

 

Adventures of a Beginning Home Brewer

My First Original

 

In the past I have always brewed with recipe kits. You just buy the box of goodies. Everything you need is in there and in the correct quantities; grains, hops, malt, yeast, etc… I have manipulated these kits, like adding cherries to a stout or vanilla beans to a porter, but have always started with a kit. But, for this round it was time to go it alone! I decided I would invent my own recipe and make my first original beer.  

 

I wanted something different. I didn’t just want to make a stout or a red or something boring like that. I wanted something a bit more complex. So, I decided to make a Caramel Mocha Porter.

 

I have made a couple porters before, so I get the gist of it on a basic level. I really wanted the sweet caramel, espresso, and chocolate flavors to jump up front. Too many beers have that flavor you just barely notice as a hint during the aftertaste. I wanted more out of my beer.

 

I started the beer by steeping 1 pound of grains. I used ½ pound of Caramel 120L and ½ pound of roasted Chocolate Malt. I hope that with using caramel and chocolate grains the beer will take on… well, the taste of caramel and chocolate!

 

(Caramel on the left Chocolate on the right)

 

After about a half hour I tossed in 6 pounds of dark unhopped liquid malt extract. I brought that to a boil and tossed in an ounce of Willamette hop pellets. Then the fun began!

 

Like I said, I wanted the flavors of a caramel mocha to really pop in this beer. So, I asked my friend, Mark, to bring over his espresso machine. He cranked out 2 cups of espresso while I got started making a caramel by cooking some sugar with a little water. With just a few minutes left in the boil I chucked in the espresso, the caramel sugar, and some fuggle hop pellets.

 

After cooling the wort I tossed it in the primary fermenter, aerated it a bit, and added yeast. I have only used dry yeast before, but since this was my first recipe I made I splurged and got an Irish Ale Activator pack from Wyeast. I figured I kind of went all out on this recipe, why blow it on budget yeast.

 

(Irish Ale Yeast)

 

As we speak the airlock is bubbling and things are on their way! The verdict will come in a little over a month… Stay tuned!