Category: Brewing

GABF 2015 through the rear view mirror

9/30/2015

You wouldn't know it from media reports, but the week is barely about medals. (Which is a good thing, seeing as how we won none!)

Loads of you likely have experienced the Great American Beer Festival in Denver and have your own impressions and memories of the hoopla. Here are some of ours. (Page down if you want to skip to the pictures.)

People seem to begin flying in for beercations the weekend before the festival and some spend some quality time visiting breweries up here in FoCo. This was a blast (photoless, however) -- meeting brewers and craft beer lovers from all over the country -- and some from further afield (ahem, Carolina & Leo) -- is a joy. Goofy to say, but if you haven't felt that craft beer joy yet, I recommend sinking your life's work & savings into opening a craft brewery and experiencing how rejuvenated and elated and connected a week like this one makes you feel. Folks traveling and gathering to share a love of craft is awesome.

Craft-centric bars throughout Denver and Fort Collins (and, I'm guessing, several other cities) celebrate this week with special tappings of beers from all the heck over the place. Falling Rock Tap House in Denver and The Mayor of Old Town in Fort Collins tapped the last 2 kegs of our Rum Barrel Aged Coconut Porter (inventive name, we realize) on the same night, the Monday before the festival. The Mayor created Tap Into Northern Colorado (TINC) a couple of years ago and has 100 Northern Colorado breweries' beers on tap for this week, partly so that we can enjoy our local brew scene, and partly so that people coming in from out of town who can't make it to every brewery can try a whopping number of them at The Mayor. Tap & Handle has special tappings each night for a week before the festival. Restaurants around town do all kinds of beer-related events. And, as you might imagine, Denver craft bars & restaurants go to town all week with awesome beers.

Truth be told, this pic is from last year. Join the mayhem and sample some fantastic brews at Falling Rock Tap House every night of GABF week!

Tap Into Northern Colorado at The Mayor of Old Town showcases 100 NoCO beers.

We started our Denver days with a pairing of small plates with LoHi SteakBar on Tuesday night.

We might have eaten twice our body weights. But can you blame us? Look at it.

Here was the conference that went on at the end of the bar when we got there -- between the staff who put on this amazing dinner every night, the owner, and his son.

How can you not love a restaurant that prints this?

Eat local, people!

We hopped around The Highlands a bit and after a beer at Old Major we made Linsey carry the keg home (the awesome bar manager there was strapped for space as he'd stocked up beer for the week -- we like that kind of full fridge and kicked-keg-filled hallway).

[In real life, Luke helped.]

Thursday & Friday we had awesome brunch pairings at The Lobby (and got to crash a fellow's bachelor party,which he was having with some H&D).

Side note: we met up with some long-time friends who where passing through from Cleveland. Hi Greens!

Throughout the week we got to visit great craft beer spots with fantastic food, and all were filled with folks celebrating this Week of Craft Beer in Denver. Too cool! It was crazy awesome to see our beer pouring at some of the places we've admired for their craft lineup for forever. Huge thanks to those Denver bars who were willing to pour some H&D during GABF week!

We were a little gawker-ish in the Big City:

Hey, are you by chance attending a beer festival?

Vanimal's big day out.

The Big Blue Bear would like in too, plz.

.Cool to run into a couple of Weldwerks Brewing fellows on the walk downtown

Setting up our booth was fun and dead easy.

[We were greeted by our neighbors' "big-ass" sign behind us, though. Kinda' sad it's in 90% of our photos!]

The session opens each day with a bagpipe procession from the "opening gates" -- very cool!

Here they were coming by the booth a few minutes later:

The GABF sessions were a scene. I'm a bit low on the people-watching photos, but here you go for a few:

Some of our favorite FoCo peeps.

Great tee.

In addition to a medal for Friar Chuck, Black Bottle Brewery wins for best-dressed.

We love these FoCo peeps!

Happy birthday, Titus!

Love this, too. From Monument, natch.
Where people are very focused.

Now THAT'S a pretzel necklace!

Tiffany & Ryan, of William Oliver's Publick House fame, might have found my phone at some point.

If you go, you must MUST go dance at the silent disco. Ohmigosh. From either side of the fence it is the best thing at GABF.
Gitcherself there.

The Colorado State Legislature brews 2 beers (one by the House, one by the Senate) and if you visit the Colorado Brewers' Guild booth, y'all can sample each, meet a rep or two, and vote on which one you prefer. I voted with the House this year, but I believe the Senate beer won. Both were great! Kudos to Cannonball Creek Brewing Company & Big Choice Brewing for brewing with these cats.

Fair warning that y'all want to empty your bladders before you enter GABF.
(And about time that this is the ratio at the restroom lines in a public place, am I right, ladies?)

Taken from the back of the men's room line 2 hours in. See the "MEN" sign off there in the distance?

Taken from the back of the women's room line
2 hours in.

We got to pour in the "Meet the Brewer" section (by lottery) and were psyched to staff our booth for all 4 sessions. Here are Linsey & Titus holding down the fort, and Chad, Tim & Luke putting in some hard time.

We might have been a bit tired between the 2 Saturday sessions.

"Who's the creepy family passed out behind the palm fronds?"

We weren't alone. Here's what the brewers' space out the door of the main hall looked like at 5pm on Saturday.

This place was an oasis. You could step out of the fluorescent lighting and massive white-noise-din of the exhibition hall into this sanctuary of natural sunlight & relative silence. One woman who walked out with us said, "Oh my gosh, I feel like I just walked out of prison!"

Yes, there was the bottling and submission of beers for judging weeks and weeks before (and yes, I should know the actual date! Alas.). In our case, that involved submitting the freshest batches of beer we had and sending them off with several other FoCo breweries' submissions in Snowball (Snowbank's delivery van -- many thanks to them for delivering!). Luke then delivered kegs for pouring samples a couple of weeks ago. We sat through the awards ceremony crossing fingers during our own categories (to no avail!) but also being so psyched that so many friends and acquaintances throughout the industry took home some hardware for their hard work, and celebrating the fact that so many states were represented in the medals. The craft revolution is well and truly upon us and folks all over the U.S. are making great beer!

Here's how sad we were to head back to the last 2 sessions medal-less:

With not-much-sleep and loads of standing-on-concrete, we were pretty happy to return to our "normal" lives up here in FoCo. But we wouldn't trade the week for anything.

Before

AFTER

It's loud, long, and a lot o' concrete-standing. But it's full of awesome people & beer!

Cheers to all those who love and support craft beer,
whether by making it, serving it, or drinking it.
How great it is to have a festival together
celebrating all of that!

Plus, how often do you get to see
sharks getting off an escalator?
Worth the price of admission.

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Barley, Baby!

7/20/2015

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I’m behind in the life of H&D. (Actually, we can shorten that to just: I am behind in life.) But rather than catch up by starting with this weekend, let’s go back to last week. We got to take a (free!) bike tour with Beer & Bike Tours of Fort Collins which included a jaunt out country roads to a farm a few miles east of Horse & Dragon. There we recreated this picture with barley farmer Greg Walker, maltster Chris Schooley (of Troubador Maltings), and brewer Linsey Cornish (of Horse & Dragon Brewing Company – woot, woot!). The first was taken shortly after the field had been planted last spring, and the second was last Wednesday.

[Zach (of Limagrain) and I took a selfie so as not to feel left out.]

We loved the field-side lecture.

We rode from there to Troubador and Chris gave us the mile-high overview on the malting process (when you get to take this tour, ask him about the heating unit).

Linsey had to dance a bit during Chris’s talk. As you do.

Noah & Lauren, of Beer & Bike Tours fame, tried out Zach Yendra’s keg-carrier. Okay, it’s really an anything-carrier, as Lauren is proving, but we can’t help thinking of kegs of freshtastycraftbeer when we see it.

We then rode on to Odell, which had brewed a beer with Troubador's malts that we of course had to try. (Delicious, BTW; Trouvere Ale.) At the moment we've got Total Genie ESB on in the taproom, which was brewed with Limagrain's Genie malt (the very type Greg is about to harvest out there, though this ESB's grain wasn't grown on Greg's fields. Hopefully, though, we were walking through next year's brew!

No better way to spend a Wednesday afternoon. Whatever you call it – acres to ales, grain to glass, field to foam – we’re happy it happens and glad to be a part of the chain. Three cheers for growing, malting, brewing, and drinking! And, o’ course, for biking betwixt and between them all.

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Watershed!

7/15/2015

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It’s possible visitors appreciate the amazingly tasty water of Fort Collins more than those of us who live here do, but every now and then, when you’ve worked up a powerful thirst in one way or another, don’t you just dig on a glass of water straight from the tap? We are grateful for it every single day. (It’s not too shabby brewed into beer, either, as 16 breweries and counting -- and a bunch of us who enjoy their product -- can attest.)

If you’re a resident of FoCo, you can sign up for a free, full-day guided tour of the Poudre River watershed. The City of Fort Collins Utilities group runs 2 of these tours each summer. (The second one for this summer is currently full, but if you follow Utilities on Facebook, you’ll see the announcement for signups next spring and we vote you go!)

TimCo and I went yesterday, and it was startlingly beautiful and educational. Presenters were excellent – in addition to having it brought home that we're glad typhoid outbreaks are less common now than in days of yore, we learned a lot about the history of settlement and water usage in the Poudre Canyon, how the health of rivers is measured and monitored, and why we are so lucky to have this close-to-pristine water source (this was a point reiterated by every presenter).

Here’s the day in photos.

Lucas Mouttet started us off with a quick lecture. Happily, no test.

Then we got in a giant comfy coach and headed up to Overland Trail Road, passing the original Fort Collins waterworks building.

Journeyed up the canyon along this beautiful, wild thing while hearing from Clyde about the history of water use/rights/work on the Cache la Poudre River.

Arrived here:

...and were greeted by this guy:

(We might have taken a few photos of him:)

(...and of ourselves:)

There were cool and informative mini-lectures (by water, bug, and tree specialists Clyde, Alicia, and Hallie -- I'm pretty sure they were things like irrigation management and infrastructure and cold-water macroinvertebrate and sub-alpine forestry experts, but hopefully "water, bug & tree specialists" works when reviewing over a #freshtastycraftbeer).

We explored these topics:

I was slightly hung-up on the bounty of flowers in the natural garden up there, including the amazing Colorado state flower, the Rocky Mountain Columbine.

And, hey, does anyone know what these are?

Also admired this perfect tree, which I thought was our state tree (Blue Spruce) but I'm pretty sure the evergreen expert would disagree, given that apparently they don't grow up there. It's beautiful, at any rate.

Let's just take a moment and be glad we are not living on Cameron Pass when the snow is being measured against this post, shall we?

We broke for lunch (provided by the City group). Here was our view of runoff in action. Yeah, yeah, Ma Nature, whatcha' got for me today?

...and had lunch to this soundtrack. Not bad.

I ate sitting next to this thing, which I'm pretty sure is producing a grain that can be malted. Just saying.

We boarded the bus again and got another couple o' pieces o' education (on stormwater and water quality) from Chris & Jill & then arrived at the Gateway Natural Area. Folks split up and explored a bit (we walked took a pic of some of Greeley's water in a very non-natural formation:)

On the way past Mishawaka, we saw these guys from Mountain Whitewater Descents. [Shameless commercial plug: we sure hope they are stopping for a #PicnicRockPaleAle at Paddler's Pub when they're done on the river!]

Amen to a fantastic clean water source, and to public lands which we can all explore (with care, please! We're all drinking that stuff!)!

(Big thanks to the City of Fort Collins Utilities team -- and particularly to our emcee, Lucas, for a great day!)

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Big Beers, Belgians, & Barleywines. And alsotoo, big mountains.

1/11/2015

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We snuck away to Vail’s Big Beers, Belgians, & Barleywines festival this weekend. It was a good time with a load of good beers. (And also, editorial aside here, some more reminders that we are spoiled in FoCo with freshtastycraft beer on at most bars and restaurants – not so in Vail. However, a couple of places we stumbled upon are making an effort. I’m not sure if that was just for this festival weekend, or if it’s a trend that’ll treat us all to a variety of great beers on there in the coming year or two, but I hope the latter!) We attended a couple of seminars, learned a few things, met a bunch of folks, and tried what were, for me, a lot of new malted beverages. If you’re a true beer geek and want to know more than my “I liked this one, that one isn’t my favorite, I’m trying to teach myself about XYZ style” sort of rating system would tell you, I encourage you to read the entries of one of the many beer bloggers and “real” writers who attended, like this guy:

The upshot is that this festival is a great way to sample small amounts of fantastic beers. Breweries really did bring things you don’t normally see at a big ol’ beer festival. I sampled some stuff I loved from breweries in Belgium, California, Massachusetts, and (of course) Colorado. I also missed a wad of them. There are just too many offerings and interesting people with whom to chatear.

If you're able to go a day early and stay a night or two, there are both spontaneous and planned gatherings that are delicious, fun, and maybe even slightly raucous. Of course, since I'm a deficient beer blogger, I didn’t take photos of the beer. Too busy sampling it, I guess. I did get a couple of photos of other aspects of the festival that struck me.

People. Always fascinating. And looky! One of them whom we didn't know before this day was even wearing an H&D shirt. Woot! Also massive bowls of bread available for between sips, and icy portapotties with a snowy backdrop. Advice (that was Tweeted, so if you follow us on Twitter sorry for the repeat): if you’re gonna’ need to go, go early. These babies were going to ice over by 5 pm and the only thing I can think of that’s worse than a portapotty steaming in summer is one with an ice skating rink for a floor in the winter. As well, it’s good to know that even in Vail, people sometimes use an outhouse.

Aside from the people and the beer, here’s a little look at Vail in January.

Many thoughts on the way up there about the engineering feat that is I-70 and its tunnels.

[Despite these signs, we saw neither.]

The mountains are spectacular, even when you can't see the high ranges.

In the event that the mountain scenery needed some augmenting, someone in Vail was on it for the holiday season:

Vail copes (as does, one hopes, any ski town) with a lot of snow. The shoveling and plowing has got to be constant.

These guys were shoveling off the roofs before the next anticipated snowfall. One guy was using (I think I'm not kidding here), a drill -- to drill through the ice but, presumably, not the roof. Dicey.

There are enormous plow-residue mountains of snow everywhere. I realize this is not an astute observation.

Despite all this shoveling and plowing, icy streets and walkways are omnipresent, even at the resorts. It’s kind of encouraging that there’s a place left in the US where they expect common sense, rather than your legal team, to prevail. “Hey, it’s 10 degrees out and you’re at a resort built here because of the snow. Watch your step. If you slip, we’ll maybe help you up and we'll try not to call you a knob.”

Despite this indication that perhaps in the U.S. mountains, at least, we're still supposed to take personal responsibility for our actions and accidents, there was this sign on the (free) bus. I blanked out the firm's name because I can't stand this message. People! You are deciding of your own free will to go 10,000 feet above sea level, strap one or two planks to your feet, and point yourself downhill. You are going to do this with hundreds of other people who may or may not have any experience. Gravity, in one way or another, will prevail. You are able to assess the risks and decide if you want to assume them...

Here was a guy making Tim jealous:

And there’s plenty of evidence of hearty winter sportspeople – check out these ski tracks coming down the slope, with nary a ski lift in sight.

Our sweet condo was flying a Colorado flag. That’s how we knew we were home. (It also had some amazing pines out front.)

We finished the weekend with a birthday dinner for Luke at Atwater on Gore Creek restaurant – one of the few places we found that pays homage to craft beer and great food.

These two FoCo-ites joined us and pitched in on singing to Luke. Thanks Matthew & Cy!

I loved this restaurant's beer menu. Particularly this section -- what it's all about. Though I realize now that we didn't share a large format craft in a bottle. Shame. We'll have to go back. Alas.

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Craft Beer Folk Is Good Folk

7/15/2014

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In the Google page for "bad blogging technique" I am surely currently featured. The last time we posted was just after Earth Day in April. Since then a lot has happened, including, but not limited to: we opened. May 1 was the day; since then it's been a tad tornadoish in our lives. As an example of where we are in the tornado, I keep finding notes on my desk saying things like (these are real-live examples): “Sean, ½ bbl, phone #XXX-XXXX,” and, “SAM! First hop t-shirt!” No idea. I hope I haven’t left Sean in the lurch and Sam surely deserved a Facebook posting with that tshirt on. There are also disturbing letters from the CO Dep’t of Labor saying we owe them $1.07. How they know that our latest payment of unemployment insurance is $1.07 off is beyond me, but I guess I'm getting the checkbook out.

Before we get into random ramblings about life at Horse & Dragon, let's talk beer. We're playing some with it, which is, as you might imagine, fun. Linsey brewed up a Dusseldorf altbier with Ryan Kopp of Pueblo's Steel City Brewers club for a pro-am entry at GABF this year.

Ryan brewed a batch that Linsey thought was terrific for a homebrewing competition and the two of them have worked their magic to replicate this delicious German amber. It's bubbling away happily in a fermenter right now (making a noise which I still avow is one of the best in the world):

We'll be serving that in the taproom come mid-August and it'll be served at GABF, too, so stay tuned. [On the topic of GABF -- if you want tickets this year, be on-line to to try to buy them at 9:59 am on July 30 -- July 29 if you are an AHA or BA member!]

There're a couple of new brews in process and a pin and firkin in the big 'fridge with interesting ingredients that should provide a flavor sensation or two. We'll be announcing on our FB page when we're tapping those, but for sure mark your calendars for July 23, 12-6, when one will be making an appearance on the dragon bar in the taproom for our First Annual Habitation Day Celebration.

Now to the rambling.

Meeting people in the taproom and around town at the great craft beer bars & restaurants of FoCo has been terrific. The number of people beercationing through Fort Collins who manage to find us tucked away back here on the airpark is a bit astounding. Although most afternoons 12-4 looks like this:

In the taproom, we've had fascinating conversations with a high school social studies teacher who is clearly inspiring but seemingly unimpressed by that and with technicians who do all manner of things I could never even begin to master. A couple who just moved to Fort Collins delivered crab and ¼” thick bacon the day after we met them, and a family shared their craft beer treasures from a roadtrip with us just because they borrowed a growler from TimCo’s office one night. Two people pointed out to us that our quote attributed to Plato (a Greek) is in Latin. [We were aware of this and still attributed the phrase to Plato, but one of these folks has convinced us to take down the attribution and allow Anonymous the credit.] We've talked with folks who are getting married and folks who are on their first date. (Our daughters can tell you how fun it would be to have us in on the convo on your first date.) A couple left $100 toward the next many pints in the taproom, and one day the "pay it forward" tip went on back through about 30 customers. All of this adds up to the same thing:

CRAFT BEER FOLK IS GOOD FOLK.

As well, craft beer taprooms can be pretty magical places.

We've had some brewers and brewing teams stop in, which we love. e.g.: a couple of Left Hand Brewing Co. sets (missed a photo of the brew team -- sorry!):

They have -- how cool is this? -- a stretch limo with a major bike rack on the back.

The brewing team from Odell (to which we are forever indebted, as you probably know) also came by. It's awesome to see brewers relax over a beer.

The Liquid Poets Society had a meeting, which was pretty inspiring, in the taproom.

And some long-time friends from previous lives (Oregon, Washington, Wisconsin, Colombia, Colorado, Canada -- good, beer-drinking folk all) have stopped in.

Around town we've gotten the chance to check out some pretty darned amazing FoCo restaurants and bars. In so doing I managed to kick our own keg -- twice -- at The Colorado Room.

Hopefully if you're a photo-type you took a look at the opening weekend and first couple of weeks of albums on FB. Since those, we've gotten some new fermenters in -- woot,

Those are still being piped, but soon we'll be able to experiment with a few more brews. So the tank forest is looking a bit more populated these days, though there's still plenty of empty space left to fill:

[Foresting the brewery.]

We co-hosted a breakfast stop for FoCo's Bike to Work Day. Seeing all those bikers was muy fun, and we hope to be in the same spot next time.

We also had good times at the Colorado Brewers' Festival (or at least: those of us who weren't in the ICU that weekend -- ahem, TimCo -- had good times), where we loved seeing some people sporting H&D gear:

We might have watched some World Cup games in the brewery.

Jim Hogan, the fellow from Knotty Ginger who made our taproom furniture, and his wife welcomed a baby girl into their family. We expect to see a lot of her on the throne chair at the big table in the coming years.

Linsey did this:

...but that's a whole 'nother story.

We sold out of growlers for a minute there -- big no-no for those of us who love the growler culture -- and got some more in; we received some other fun merchandise that included Silipints -- awesome silicone pint "glasses" that travel anywhere, are almost indestructible, will hold your coffee in the morning and your #freshtastycraft beer in the afternoon (keeping it shaded so as not to let it skunk), and that really do keep your beer colder – but only if it takes you an hour to drink a beer (?!).

We tested two pints for temperature at 1 minute, 15 minutes, and an hour. At one minute they were the same temp, at 15 minutes the Silipint's beer was a degree colder, and at an hour the Silipint's beer was 8 degrees colder. So if you're a slow sipper, run on out here and get you some. But wait a couple of weeks, because we're temporarily sold out of those, too. Whoever is doing our supply chain management for merch is clearly weak.

Next up: commissioning those 30 bbl fermenters, heading to Beer Camp Across America (Rocky Mountain Region) on July 25, a beer dinner or two, celebrating Habitation Day, and trying to keep our feet under us.

We'll do laundry next year.

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BEER!

4/1/2014

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BEER!

If it were up to me, I would promise all y’all a grand opening on May 1. Of course, it’s not up to me, since APPARENTLY I am not very discerning [read: I like all beer] and the beer professors I work with get veto power if there’s anything off about what we’re hoping to offer you all for opening. But so far, so good.

Since I can’t promise an opening date (quite) yet, I’ll just report that “we” just kegged Horse & Dragon’s first beer.

It received the highest accolade I’ve ever heard Linsey give of one of her brews: “It’s a good beer.” For those of you who think this sounds like faint praise, let me tell you that this is a woman who was disappointed with a test IPA she made (“I don’t really get the strength of the aroma I was going for.”) that I’m still craving months later.

And just when you think yesterday couldn’t get any better, you run home at lunch to tear down the Christmas lights and find this, which really is a miracle:

Nice job, Ma Nature. (Dead leaves I didn’t rake up last fall, I see you. I’m choosing to term you “protective mulch”.)

Elsewhere around the Horse & Dragon, here’s the start to our barrel aging program, conveyed home this week from our friends at Rocky Mountain Spirits in Denver in the trusty Co van. (This is glam transport, we know – but that thing has carted everything from 8-year-olds’ soccer teams to dorm room contents to table saws. And now whiskey barrels. I love it.)

Sage has a healthy suspicion of all processes brewing and is often throwing one or the other of us this look.

There are a couple more beers to keg (and then a couple more to brew) before Linsey & Tim head off to the Craft Brewers’ Conference in Denver next week.

On another (related) topic, may we just note again how craft beer brings people together? I realize this is not news to anyone who frequents taprooms and craft bars, but it’s so apparent and great that I have to comment on it. I love the craft beer community. Monday night we met these two at Equinox’s taproom (we might have been the people who gabbed until Justin & Tyler gently kicked us out) and then saw them again last night at The Mayor of Old Town during Funkwerks’s tap takeover.

They are on a beercation from Minnesota and are the nicest folks – and they love craft beer. They are on the crest of the wave in the Twin Cities in terms of asking for and expecting great tasting, well-cared for beer in their local haunts. I believe today they are headed Verboten’s & Grimm’s way, and then on down to Longmont & Boulder (heads up, 300 Suns and Left Hand). Avery is on their list, too, so Kelley, if by some chance you’re reading this, give them a big welcome.) At any rate, a shout out to Karen & Dan, and happy Colorado beer pilgrimage to you! I hope it rejuvenates you to conquer the rest of the school year with your 8th- and 9th-graders, Dan.

If you weren’t convinced about the power of craft beer to unite and make good times happen, here’s one last shot from Tap and Handle of Samantha & Reena.

The latter is just here from Japan for 2 weeks on a veterinary medicine rotation and Sam – with some help from FoCo’s awesome local craft breweries and bars – is convincing her of the beauty and deliciousness of craft beer. Good work.

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I Brew and I Understand.

9/28/2013

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One of my favorite things to do in life is study. I spent 5 years getting my undergraduate degree (Human Biology), and 3 years getting my master’s (Secondary Ed). [Note I was on the slow track both times.] I spent a good deal of time in my daughters’ classrooms and with their friends as they were growing up. I’m telling you this because I want to emphasize that I’ve spent a decent amount of time around educational research and practice. And I’ve heard this (in 3 languages, though I only understood it in two and had to trust a translator in the third) a dozen times:

“I hear and I forget, I see and I remember, I do and I understand.”

Let me tell you what everyone should do to bring home how true this is. Everyone should brew a batch of beer in his or her kitchen.

[Ironic -- but hey, it was a free wardrobe for 16 years!]

I’ve seen TimCo and various friends brew dozens of times. I have enjoyed the fruits of their labor every time – except once when he dropped a glass carboy full of wort on the way to the shower (otherwise known as our fermenting room in Whitefish Bay, WI) and what I now recognize to be precious liquid that he and ChrisMo had just created ran away through the floorboards to the basement. I have savored beer from breweries gigantic and tiny in many corners of the world. But I had never brewed a batch myself, until yesterday.

Throughout the past few months, since we really committed to making this brewery a reality, I’ve been paying a bit closer attention when TimCo brews. And over the past 3 months, he’s stopped brewing altogether. Starting a biz tends to grind some other activities to a halt, even when the biz is related to one of your favorite things. Then Linsey came on board and in her casual conversation she lets drop about 3,000 things an hour that I’ve never heard of in brewing. She talks serious chemistry here and knows minutiae about yeasts, for crying out loud. So to try to get a handle on this foreign language I began to read about the process a bit. All that got me was more confused -- I see why there’s a need for an official fermentation sciences course of study (and bravo, CSU, for developing it). It’s a broad and complex field that encompasses a whole lotta’ science, agriculture, mechanics, and artistry. Overwhelmed, I harkened back to the key learning in that phrase above and figured I’d do and understand – I needed to brew my own batch of beer.

When I announced my experimental brewing intention to Tatum, she wanted to participate. AGAIN – one more way in which beer brings people together and adds balance to our life. She took time out of a zany college and work schedule, I stopped looking at spreadsheets and paying innumerable bills for Horse & Dragon, and I got to spend some time with our daughter. We scheduled a date, I poked around for inspiration and ingredients (thank you Zach at High Hops Brewery and the nice guys at Hops And Berries), and we set to it.

We banished TimCo from the house so that we wouldn’t be too reliant on him. And we are about halfway through making a (delicious, nutritious, fresh & tasty, smooth) better-than-pie pumpkin ale which should be ready just in time for Thanksgiving dinner. (Beware, you folks who are dining with us.)

I’m not too sure there’s an audience for this, but here are some things we learned. [If you’ve brewed before, you will say a big, “DUH!” If you haven’t, you just need to stop reading right this second and go brew, because as we know from the adage above, if you just hear, you forget. Nevertheless, I’ll keep typing.]

1. If you’re making a 5 gallon recipe of beer, you really need a gigantic pot.

[Workin' out with the big pot.]

Me: “We clearly need a bigger pot.”
TatumCo: “I thought of giving you one for Christmas, but then I realized you’re getting one that’s approximately 100 times the size of this one.”

2. Chinook hops smell amazing. Even in pellet form.

3. Brewing is a good thing to do on a cold day in arid Colorado. You'll get a little mini-sauna going.

[Cold & rainy outside, tropical rainforest inside.]

4. Brewing is enough like cooking that if you love to cook, you’ll probably enjoy brewing. Especially if you like beer, but even if you don’t. For example, I took the yeast out before Tatum got here because y’all know that if you put cold yeast in the pizza dough it takes fordangever to rise. And then lo and behold, when Tatum read the tiny (I mean TINY) print on the yeast capsule, it said to take the yeast out of the fridge 3-6 hours before you pitch it. Kitchen chemistry: it’s cool, even if I don’t know the underlying true chemistry. Which brings us to:

5. There’s terminology. You might, if you’re like Tatum and me, have to Google. For e.g.:
Sparge.
Pitch.
Crash.
Flame out.
Boil. [Do you mean steeping for flavor? Or a gentle boil, to stir a tad and get it all toasty hot? Or rolling-all-over-the-place (RAOTP) boil, hot as bejeezus to kill stuff. And if the latter, does that take 90 minutes? What kinda’ organisms are LIVING in our water?!]
All this was just for this one recipe. I’m sure there’s some crossover in the next recipe, but I’m equally sure we’ll encounter some other new vocab.

6. No one wants to have his or her surgery done on our kitchen counters.
This learning lesson will not surprise anyone who knows me and didn’t shock me, so I’m not sure we can call it a lesson gleaned from homebrewing. But just in case you were thinking of scheduling that over here…

On a related note, (7) there’s a lot of sterilizing going on in brewing. There are beer enemies. Bacteria and suchlike. Even oxygen is a hostile attacker – except when it’s beer’s friend. (Apparently wort should aerate. Who knew?) There’s a magic chemical, which I sincerely hope does not cause growth of a second nose, that’s marketed as Star San. By the end of our brew day we were pretty much spraying that stuff on everything involved in the process. After reading the label and Googling the ingredients, I realize I should stop reading labels. The bottle recommends we wear gloves and protective clothing and be careful not to inhale the mist (which is all over our kitchen at this point). Hazardous to humans and domestic animals. And then this: “Do not rinse.” [After applying it to everything THE DELICIOUS PRODUCT YOU ARE GOING TO DRINK TOUCHES OR RUNS THROUGH, you’re supposed to leave this “dangerous to humans” stuff right there on it and let your treasured wort run over it.] I’m going to have to assume that there’s some magical chemical reaction during the fermenting process that neutralizes the Star San chemicals and makes it less hazardous to humans who drink good fresh beer or I won’t be able to sleep nights.

8. The giant pot produces incredible aromas.
Tatum: “Mmmmmm. I wish that you could take a picture of smell.”

[Looks: yuck. Smells: 10.]

9. There is no saving a thermometer whose alcohol (or mercury, god forbid) has separated. I know this because I have tried to resuscitate such a thermometer twice. Just bail.

10. Wort is a fabulous insulator. We were all done boiling (vigorously, BTW) and needed to drop the temp to around 70 so as not to kill the yeast we were about to pitch in there. We rigged up a little homemade heat exchanger in our fridge:

[Homemade heat exchanger.]

and then we began to wait. We waited. We stirred and checked the temp. We waited. After two hours, the temperature was still at least 40 degrees above where it was supposed to be. We went out to have a beer and a pretzel:

["Don't mind us, we're just cooling our wort."]

[Yes, that is a lily-shaped funnel. Hey, it's a women's collab beer. We get to choose the utensils.]

We came home and stirred and measured. We went over to some friends’ house for a bite of their Friday-night challah. [She makes challah from scratch every Friday. I’m telling you, she’s just a hair’s convincing away from becoming a home brewer.] We came home and measured again. We finally poured everything in the carboy thinking that process would help everything along.

When I got up this a.m. everything looked happy and tidy in the carboy, so it must have gone okay.

Having listened to Tim and Linsey talk Horse & Dragon tanks and having chatted with at least one supplier, the time it takes to drop the temp to a yeast-friendly level on a more commercial system seems to be a big selling point. I am sincerely hoping this is because, as a business needing to sell your product, you just don’t want to wait eons for those 15 barrels to cool down. If it’s because there’s a pivotal effect on the flavor of the beer that you achieve through quick cooling of the wort to fermentation temp, our better-than-pie pumpkin ale might not live up to the descriptor.

The upshot of all this is, I think we should brainstorm on some other applications for hot wort. It definitely should be in those mini-barrels around St. Bernards’ necks. I think it has potential in ski boot liners, SCUBA wetsuits, and waterbeds. Where else?

11. Wort is possibly the stickiest substance known to humankind. Heat this stuff up and Super Glue has got nothing on it. I know this because, as mentioned previously, we concluded our pot was too small. And we know THIS because:

[Permanent alteration of stovetop via homebrewing.]

When we do this again, of course we will not let our boil boil OVER. But on the off chance that we aren’t as diligent as we should be and it DOES boil over, I’m going to take the risk that interrupting the home brewing process to remove the (too small) pot from the burner to clean that stuff up immediately might jeopardize the beer. Because if you leave it on the boil, you have changed the structure of your stovetop by the time the wort is happily bathing in its home-made heat exchanger.

12. Adding even just a small baggie of fresh hops grown on a close-as-family friend’s front door vine as part of your aroma hops is the best secret ingredient ever. Don’t tell me there’s not love in that Thanksgiving beer.

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Why Fort Collins?

12/12/2012

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“Fort Collins?! Aren’t there already plenty of craft breweries there?” This was the response we got (and are still getting) from many people about our decision to move back here to establish the Horse & Dragon. Believe me, we know about the abundance of craft breweries here — we have watched them spring up and grow (and we’ve contributed a fair amount to their bottom line) for the past 20 years — and we know there are many more on the way. We think this is a huge plus — it is a part of why Colorado remains a great market for craft beer growth. There’s still a huge number of beer drinkers who haven’t yet discovered the incredible world of craft beer. And there are plenty of drinkers-of-other-beverages who we think need to be coaxed on over into this incredible world of taste, fun, and community. At the same time, there’s a base knowledge here in Fort Collins and around the state about craft brews that enables all of us to present our products with a great chance of at least some level of acceptance and willingness to give them a try. Best of all, there’s a willingness on the part of those already in the business to aid and abet those of us opening new breweries. In the past 24 hours, TimCo has met with 2 established brewers who could NOT be more helpful, positive, and welcoming. In the past few months, several other brewers, bar owners, and other business folk have been ever-so positive and willing to help. The experience is reminiscent of stories we heard about living in the pioneer west — people and communities coming together to help each other make their way and further knit together for mutual benefit and enjoyment. We’re so glad this sense of community and willingness to help still exists, and to be entering a part of the beer industry where it’s on display every day. Look around at what your local craft brewery is doing for your community. I’ll bet it’s something substantial — economically or psychologically.

And then, of course, there’s this reason to move back to Colorado:

Picture of TimCo in the river with forest and aspen turning gold in the background.

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GABF 2015 through the rear view mirror

You wouldn't know it from media reports, but the week is barely about medals. (Which is a good thing, seeing as how we won none!)

Barley, Baby!

Watershed!

Big Beers, Belgians, & Barleywines. And alsotoo, big mountains.

Craft Beer Folk Is Good Folk

BEER!

I Brew and I Understand.

Why Fort Collins?

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