mark.veerman.com

September 24, 2007

Dale's Pale Ale, cans, and a Budweiser nod

Back in the early days of my beer snobbery, I looked at canned beer with disdain. You just can't appreciate the inner beauty of a beer when it's served in such a common container. A bottle or pint glass was the only acceptable delivery mechanism. Perhaps I've sold out, perhaps I've matured; regardless, all that now .

A while ago I discovered Dale's Pale Ale (DPA), brewed by the Oskar Blues Cajun Grill and Brewery in Lyons, CO, and as you intelligent (or sober) readers have guessed, it comes in a can. The can takes absolutely nothing away from the experience. I'm going to go so far as to say that the can actually enhances the experience. DPA is awesome, and very drinkable.

If I've lost any credibility, I'm about to lose more. My father in law drinks Budweiser, mostly in a bottle but often in a can. I've come to appreciate not only the beer, but especially the can. Perhaps because he's an ex-Marine (if there is such a thing as ex), and he owns a rifle (you're not allowed to say gun to a Marine trust me), but mostly because of it's drinkability. Perhaps I should defend myself. Budweiser does in fact taste like Budweiser. It's not as tasteless as some of my peeps would argue. It is a mass produced beer intended to appeal to, well, the whole world, so it's certainly pretty simple. However, I could pick Budweiser out of a hidden taste test every time, and have actually come to like it; It's really not that bad, and on certain occasions is perfect. Just don't get me started on 'light beers.' Moving on to the can -- I think it's easier to take a pull from a can. There, I've said it. It's easier to drink from a can. There's something satisfactorily innate in drinking beer out of a can, especially when it's good beer like DPA.

It used to be that the can imparted a metallic taste to it's inhabiter, but I think that chemistry and manufacturing have caught up with this one. Whatever it is that they are lining their cans with, just works. DPA tastes as good as if it came from a bottle. About the only danger is that it's so good and drinkable, they tend to go down fast. Actually, here's what the Oskar Blues folks say on their website with regard to the can's coating:

"But then we discovered that the belief that cans impart flavor to beer is a myth. The modern-day aluminum can and its lid are lined with a water-based coating, so the beer and the can never touch. Cans, we discovered, are actually good for beer. Cans keep beer especially fresh by fully protecting it from light and oxygen. Our cans also hold extremely low amounts of dissolved oxygen, so our beer stays especially fresh for longer. Cans are also easier to recycle and less fuel-consuming to ship."

I'm not really sure about the 'myth' part, since I cseem to recall metallic tasting beer, but it seems to work for them. Ummm, I guess that's it. Please forgive the glut of superlatives, they are complements of DPA ... hic!?

Posted by mark at 5:31 PM | Comments (2)

June 15, 2007

Unorganic organics

Thanks to Alan at Maona.net, I discovered that the USDA has a list of allowed non-organic products to exist in certified organic products.

http://www.thedailygreen.com/2007/06/11/nonorganic-foods-allowed-in-organic-products/2452/

As a brewer, the one that jumped out at me was hops. I would love to see a detailed explanation for why the USDA has granted each exception.

Posted by mark at 12:28 PM

January 5, 2007

Tasting Beer

I've always wanted to be able to truly appreciate wine and beer on the level of those who craft them. For most of my life, I've always assumed that my nose and palate weren't capable of detecting the smells, flavors, and tastes on the level of a somelier or tasting expert. While this has obvious merit, I think there's a lot more to it than that. This may seem rather obvious, but we can only appreciate what we pay attention to.

A while ago, I was reading a book about tracking animals in the woods, I can't remember the name, but one of the things that struck me was how the art of tracking and awareness came down to almost two things: silence and focus. You can't track animals by just memorizing their tracks, scat and behavior patterns from a book, you literally have to observe them. He said that to observe nature in it's own element, requires a level of patience, silence, and attention that almost nobody experiences, even people who love the outdoors. It can take an hour or more of absolute stillness before the woodsy inhabitants return to their normal behavior and before the opportunity to learn presents itself. There was a zen-like focus to his art, and I'm guessing that while I may not be gifted with a super nose or palate, a similar level of focus on drinking beer and wine can teach me more about the art of tasting than I've ever thought possible.

Also, I've had some really good beers in the past, but I've forgotten what they were. With a tasting log, this wouldn't happen.

With this in mind, I've decided to be a bit more deliberate in my beer consumption. I'm going to take note of different characteristics of the beer. I don't really have any idea what I'm doing, but there's a surprising amount of information about beer tasting online: here, here, here, and here. I'm going to track my notes on ratebeer.com. You can see my profile here.

Posted by mark at 1:10 PM | Comments (2)

November 17, 2005

IPA

I brewed my first successful all-grain batch of beer last night. I brewed an IPA, and it weighed in at 1.075. I started around 6:00PM, and finished at 1:00AM -- including all of the clean up. It took a bit longer than expected, but I wasn't exactly efficient.The picture below on the right is my attempt to keep the mash at it's optimal temperature (150-158 degrees). I wrapped the whole mash tun in a blanket, and then put another pot over the top. Who knows how much this helped, but I did manage to keep it in the optimal temperature range for 1 hour and 15 minutes.

From Andy, who happened to brew an IPA on the same night:

Given this calculation, my final gravity should be around 1.020 with an alcohol volume of 7.2%. Not too shabby.

Here's the recipe:

For the most part, the process went smoothly. I picked up a few tips for my next batch:

• Make an action list to follow for the process from start to finish. For example: When mash reaches a stable temperature, START heating up the sparge water. I forgot about this until the end of the mash, duh!


• Make sure your pots all have internal markings for fluid volumes. It would have been helpful to know how much wort I started with, and how much I ended up with. Or, how much sparge water I was heating up.


• Boil the hops in a cheese-cloth bag.


• You can squeeze out wort from the saturated hop flowers when transferring to your primary. I think I left a lot of good wort in my 6 ounces of hops, which probably explains why I ended up with 4.5 gallons of wort after the boil. I ended up using 1/2 gallon of water to bring things up to 5 gallons.


• Dry hop in the secondary. I didn't realize that it isn't preferable to dry hop in the primary -- although I think this could be subject to personal preference.


• Insert the airlock into the lid BEFORE you put it on the bucket. The stupid black gasket has fallen into my wort 3 times, no matter how careful you are. ;-) Yes, it's difficult to get it out without contaminating the wort.

Posted by mark at 12:29 PM | Comments (5)