Minnesota, Land of Ten Thousand Beers... Or is it 4?

I was reading an article on Vita.mn that had "Beer Experts" pick a MN 6 pack of fame. I have a bone to pick with these "Beer Experts."

 

Every week there seems to be another list like this. The silly part is that they are all the same! Sometimes I wonder if these "experts" are going to the same bars and beer stores in MN that I am.

 

MN has so many great craft breweries and beers. We have such an awesome diversity of beers. MN as a state is at the forefront of the craft beer movement, but yet these types of lists never change.

 

We have a Surly beer, check! We have a Summit beer, check! We have a Schells beer, check! Throw on Grainbelt for the hipsters, Check! And throw on maybe one lesser known MN beer to make it seem like we have cred, Check!

 

I LOVE beer! Heck, even more I LOVE MN beer! I drink a fair amount of it weekly.... let's just call it blog research...He-he!... But I haven't had a Surly or Summit in a long time. I tried Schell's Star of the North and Goose Town, but other than that haven't had Schell's in forever.

 

Grainbelt? Uhhh.... couldn't tell you the last time I had one of those... Probably a night when I had already had a few good beers at a friends house and maybe accidentally grabbed the wrong bottle out of the fridge or something.

 

I do want to be clear, I am not trying to bash any of the breweries, or their beers, on these types of lists. More what I am doing is questioning why these "Beer Experts" can't get off a kick that started many years ago, and for most of us ended years ago too. 

 

Surly and Summit are not the only game in town anymore. They haven't been for a while now. By only making readers aware (again and again and again and again) of these few beers the "Beer Experts" are selling our craft beer scene short. It takes something that is really awesome about our area and makes it seem so small, dull, and old.

 

So, I am going to make a pledge. This weekend I am going to drink nothing but MN beers. I am going to open my eyes to some new MN beers and I am NOT going to drink a Surly, a Summit, a Schell's, or a Grainbelt... although I wasn't going to be hitting up that last one anyways.... All I want to know is, who's coming with me, man?

 

 

(Here is the article if you want to take a look:  http://www.vita.mn/best-of/230914481.html)

Adventures of a Beginning Home Brewer

 

Big Beers Need Big Yeast!

I have started dabbling in bigger beers. Most recently an imperial stout which will be the makings of this year’s Merry Cherry Christmas Stout. But, big beers need big amounts of healthy viable yeast. The answer? A yeast starter!

 

(Yeast Starter Kit)

A yeast starter kit is basically just a glass flask and a foam stopper. What you do is make a very small batch of unhopped wort using water and dry malt extract (yeast food!). Then just pitch your yeast into this and give it a few days. The yeast eat and reproduce in a happy healthy environment. Then just pitch it into your fermenter on brew day. But what is the point?

Yeast starters have several purposes. First is that it increases the amount of yeast cells for pitching into your brew. A yeast starter can take a 100 billion cell packet of yeast and turn that into hundreds and hundreds of billions of viable yeast cells.

This is important for several reasons. Higher pitch rates make better beers because under pitching causes stress on the yeast. Too much work for a small amount of yeast cells causes this stress, I think we can all relate. When yeast get stressed they can produce an off flavor and aroma.

Higher pitch rates of healthy viable yeast also increases the tolerance for higher concentration of alcohol. That is pretty important for making higher gravity beers. In line with this is that lower amounts of yeast may cause the yeast to ferment slowly or incompletely. Basically if you want a big beer, you will need big strong healthy yeast and lots of em!

 

(Yeast Starter in Action)

Another reason to use a yeast starter kit is that it reduces the lag in growth of the yeast. The sooner actual fermentation of your beer starts the less likely it is to be contaminated. Eliminating any lag lowers the chance of contamination. A healthy beer is a happy beer!

Yeast starter kits can be purchased at any homebrew store for around 20-30 bucks, depending on what size you want. They also have stir plates that you can purchase for these, but they are kind of spendy. According to the directions I received with mine you can just give it a good swirl every time you walk by and you should be fine. Also, feel free to throw in a drop of FermCap-S to eliminate any chance of over foaming.

On a quick side note, Beerploma was nominated for Best Beer Blog in the Growler’s Kind-of-a-Big-Deal awards. Thanks to those who nominated us! If you like what you read here, please take a second to go to www.growlermag.com/vote  and vote for beerploma.blogspot.com for best beer blog.





Take Me Out to the Beer Game

 

 

 

I will just come out and admit it… I am not a baseball guy. It just isn’t my sport. I need a sport that has violent collisions on a regular basis, like football, hockey, heck even NASCAR. I probably catch a combined total of one inning of baseball a year.

 

That said, recently I had a chance to go to Target Field to see the MN Twins try to play baseball for a work outing… Let’s see; sit at my office all afternoon or go drink some beer on a sunny afternoon at the ol’ ball park…. Easy decision!

 

Baseball aside, I was actually really excited to go. I had heard great things about the ballpark; the beer, the food, the views, and it didn’t disappoint.

 

Target Field itself is a beautiful ball park! It’s new, clean, and easily accessible. Even though we had the cheap seats the view of the field was great, and we didn’t need a Sherpa to get to them!

 

 

 

 

Blah, blah, baseball, ballpark… Whatever, lets get to the beer side of things! This place is a beer drinker’s paradise. It was great to finally go to a stadium and have options other than beers that start with the word Miller or end with the word Light.

 

My first stop was right inside the gate I entered, Twin’s Pub. Just a normal average looking hot dog, nachos, and beer type stand that is at every stadium I have ever been to except this one had tasty beers! I went for a bomber of Summit Extra Pale Ale. Nothing too adventurous obviously, but I have always liked this beer and never have ordered a bomber of it, so why not?

 

 

 

 

I walked through the concourses searching out other fun beer stuff and found Hrbek’s. Hrbek’s is a full service sports bar inside the ballpark named after former Twin’s first baseman Kent Hrbek… He played back when the Twins were good. Anybody remember that? I didn’t get a drink there because I was still working on my Summit, but the place looked nice and at least had leinie’s on tap.
 

 

After watching a couple innings of baseball with my coworkers I headed back out for another beer. I came across a small beer counter the size of a large walk in closet built into the wall called Twin’s Brews, Beers of Twin’s Territory. This little place was awesome! They had countless local craft beers. It was a cool touch to see the hometown team promoting hometown beers. We need more of that type of stuff if you ask me. I had a Lost Trout by Third Street Brewhouse. It was a little on the chilly side that day, so a good brown ale went down great!
 

 

The Twins lost, but I was really impressed with the wide selection of craft beer available at Target Field. The beer combined with some great food stands, like Foods of the State Fair and a variety of sausage vendors among other things, makes for a great fan experience, even if you are not a fan in the first place.
 

On a quick side note, Beerploma was nominated for Best Beer Blog in the Growler’s Kind-of-a-Big-Deal awards. Thanks to those who nominated us! If you like what you read here, please take a second to go to www.growlermag.com/vote and vote for beerploma.blogspot.com for best beer blog (category number 18). 

Welcome To Beerploma!

Welcome to Beerploma! 

It's been a little over year since we started out Blog here, so it might seems strange that we are posting a Welcome post this late in the game, but I will get to that in a second.  After one year of working on the Blog Beerploma has expanded into a growing Social Media empire.  Well today the Growler Magazine gave us with the honors of being nominated for the Best Beer Blogs award in their annual Its Kind Of A Big Deal.  So if you like our Blog feel free to head on over to their site and vote for us (it's poll #19).

And with that we are anticipating a lot of traffic coming into the Blog, so we thought we would take some time out and say WELCOME TO BEERPLOMA!

First off the blog is currently being run by myself, Will, and my cohort Andy.  Click here for more details.  Andy writes the Adventures of a Beginning Homebrewer, and I cover Beer Styles Learning Guides, and Rise of the Beer Baron.  Both of us cover Brew Reviews, and Brewery Tour exclusives.

But Beerploma goes beyond that.  Our organization is all about the education of craft beer, drinking locally, and supporting craft brewers.  In order to do this we have started putting together a great social media campaign.  We offer some great Videos regarding beer.  You can find us on several podcast directories including iTunes, and YouTube.  We offer two great show.  Our first is "2 Growlers" hosted by Lynn and myself.  It's about two guys, in a garage, growling about great local beers from Minnesota and beyond.  Check out one of our episodes:

We also have our "Brewery Tour" series podcast where we get an inside peek and the finest breweries of the Midwest:

And last but not least we have a great interactive network on Facebook and Twitter.  Feel free to drop us a line there and lest us know about your favorite beers.

So if you are new to our blog, or have been visiting us over the last year, I hope we let you in on our organization, and found some new ways for you to interact with us.

Until next time!  PROST!  And don't forget to vote in this year's Its Kind Of A Big Deal awards!

Cooking With Beer: Great Football Gameday Snacks!

First off let me apologize for my absence.  I have only written one article in the last two months, and I promise you that I will get back on track.  And thank you Andy for keeping our blog fresh and exciting in my absence.  For those of you who don't know we are in the process of building an audience for our Podcast show "2 Growlers".  If you haven't seen it I highly recommend that you do, just follow this link.

We have an upcoming episode where we cook up some great tail gate snacks using beer.  I promised I would post the recipes.

The first is from the book "Cooking With Beer":

 

Sweet and Spicy Beer Nuts:

2 Cups of Pecan Halves

2 tsp. Salt

2 tsp. Chili Powder (I would actually use a LOT more)

2 tsp. Olive Oil

1/2 tsp. Cumin

1/4 Ground Red Pepper (again, I would use a lot more)

1/2 Cup of Sugar

1/2 Cup of Beer

1. Preheat oven to 350 F.
2. Mix first six ingredients in a bowl and spread out on a baking sheet. 
3. Toast for 10 minutes, then set aside to cool.
4. Combine sugar and beer.  Heat over medium heat until 250 F on a candy thermometer, or until thick.  Be careful of boil overs!
5. Remove from heat, stir in the toasted nuts.  Spread nuts on baking sheet (I put down wax paper), separate clusters, and let cool.

Check out our show here:

Wisconsin's Finest!

Life has been pretty busy this summer. My wife and I really needed to hit the open road together for a short vacation and some beer. Since my wife’s favorite beer, as well as one of mine, is Spotted Cow from New Glarus Brewing it was easy to decide where to go; New Glarus, Wisconsin.

New Glarus is a small town nestled in the rolling hills of south central Wisconsin which boasts a deep sense of Swiss tradition. In fact, it is often referred to as “Little Swiss Town”. It really is this town’s thing. A majority of the buildings look like chalets straight out of the Alps. They have a Swiss bakery, a Swiss chocolate shop, a Swiss meat market, and a great Swiss restaurant which was oddly called the New Glarus Hotel. I say oddly because it was not a hotel and they have no rooms. Figure that one out! While we really enjoyed the town that was not why we were there. We came for the brewery!

(New Glarus Hotel Restaurant)

The New Glarus Brewery is absolutely beautiful! It has almost an old farm type feel to its architecture but has landscaping that will just blow you away, like the huge stone stairs and creek leading to the entrance. We were already amazed and we had barely gotten out of the car!

(Me standing outside New Glarus Brewing)

(My wife, Vicky sitting by the creek in front of the brewery)

The front of the place is nothing compared to the back. They have a huge patio beer area with vast views of the rolling hills and farmland below. Forget taprooms, forget little beer patios, this was bar none the best beer drinking area I have ever seen associated with a brewery. Words can’t describe it, heck pictures barely describe it. In person it was breathtaking.

(The view from the beer drinking area)

 (Drinking beer on the New Glarus Patio)

We grabbed a couple of tasters and headed into the actual brewery for a self-guided tour. New Glarus was brilliant when putting this place together. Basically you walk through a glass hallway where you can see all the inner workings of the brewery, but you get to go at your own pace with a beer in your hand. Plus, no overhead of tour guides for the brewery! It’s very clean, dry, and quiet, which if you tour breweries often you probably know this isn’t always the case.

(Cheers from inside New Glarus!)

(It's working!)

 (Great words to live by inside the brewery)

But back to the beer, which is why we came in the first place. It was a little bit spendy, but for such a beautiful environment for beer drinking I was fine with it. A taster flight of 3 beers of your choice was $3.50, which isn’t a bad price when you add in that you get to keep your taster glass. If you wanted a pint it would cost you 5 bucks (refills were a couple bucks cheaper), but again you walk out with a nice pint glass out of the deal. Heck, they will even rinse it out and wrap it up for you. Talk about attention to customer service and detail!

The most expensive beer we had was a pint of Serendipity. Man, was this beer great! It is a fruit sour ale made with cranberries, cherries, and apples. It was a creation which came about due to a Wisconsin cherry crop that was devastated by a drought in Wisconsin. Thus, instead of making their usual cherry sour beer they used some different fruits and Serendipity was born! It’s fruity, sour, dark, thick and perfect! It came in at a whopping 9 bucks for a pint, but consider that this is a beer that you will pay around 10 or so for a bomber of it at a liquor store. And of course, you keep the glass.

(Vicky enjoying a pint of Serendipity on the beer patio at New Glarus)

We didn’t want to leave, but there was more exploring to do in town and if we didn’t want to have to walk the couple miles back to our hotel room it was time to go. Lucky for us, New Glarus has a beer cave where we could buy some brews to go!

We hit the beer cave and found, among other beers, a strawberry rhubarb beer. It was amazing. It’s a wild fruit ale that had a great tart and sour taste of rhubarb balanced out with the sweetness of strawberries. It reminds one of summer time picnics with strawberry rhubarb pie. What a creative beer!

New Glarus Brewing only sells its beers in Wisconsin. In fact they have a motto, “Drink Indigenous.” Lucky for me I am in Wisconsin almost every weekend.

I did have one beer I did not like, but it had nothing to do with New Glarus Brewing. We went to dinner at a Swiss restaurant. They had some pretty good food, but I think I took the whole Swiss thing too far when I tried the one Swiss beer they had on the menu. It was bad. I couldn’t really tell you anything about this beer because the label is not in English. I drank it, but it was just plain not a good beer. But, when in little Swiss town… right?

(Yuck)

We had a great time in New Glarus, WI and at New Glarus Brewing in particular. The area is beautiful, the town is beautiful, the brewery is beautiful, but most importantly the beer is spectacular! The brewery is worth the drive to New Glarus and the beer is definitely worth the drive to the Wisconsin border.

One last thing! If you enjoy reading  our blog, whether it's for Adventures of a Beginning Home Brewer, Rise of the Beer Barron, our Brewery Series, or just for beer reviews, please take a moment to nominate us (beerploma.blogspot.com) for the best beer blog in the Kind of a Big Deal awards. Just click on the link here, http://growlermag.com/nominations/  and go from there. It only takes a minute and would mean the world to us!

Rise of the Beer Baron Pt. 4: Cheese Please!

First off, before we begin if you haven't taken some time to fill out a nomination yet for "Kind-of-a-big-deal" awards please take a minute to do so.   These are Minnesota's very own Beer Awards.  Also if you like our blog please consider nominating us (beerploma.blogspot.com) for best Beer Blog!  We would really appreciate it!  Just click the link provided above.  Thank you.

   That is my Dad, William Matthews Sr. (yes I am a Jr.).  He went by Bill (actually so did I until 2006 when I changed to Will to end the suffering of being called "Little Bill" despite the fact I was a good 6 inches taller). My Dad passed away June 2011.  He didn't leave me empty handed.  I learned to cook from him, how to speak in public, how to camp, how not to hold a hammer, but I never had that "Clark and Rusty" moment with my Father.

You see I never saw my Dad drink, except for twice in his entire life, and one of those was on his death bed.  Not that my Dad had anything against alcohol.  Some say his sobriety stemmed from his chronic ill health, others say it was a lesson learned from his reckless youth.  Who knows it was probably a little of both, or it was neither.  It was one of those secrets that died with him.

But he did play a major role in my passion for craft beer.  It all started with the high prices of cheese back in 2005.  Our favorite cheese shop was Bass Lake Cheese factory:

Now my Dad and I could easily drop a hundred dollars in cheese factories, but the problem was we were noticing that we were getting less and less cheese for that money, and the shop was getting a little too trinkety.  So we started to venture out to look for new places.  One place we discovered was a little cheese shop in Pine Island.  Their cheese was great, and reasonably priced.  But there was something else about this shop.  It doubled as a homebrew, and winemaking shop.  My Dad and I looked at the equipment and we toyed around with the idea of homebrewing.  We talked about it, but it didn't go much further than that.  The idea stuck to the back of my mind, and I guess it did my Dad's too because for Christmas...

 My very own Mr. Beer Kit!  From here on out I was a homebrewer....

To Be Continued!