Remember I told you that May was going to break this blog's "page views" record for any month? (see Record Breaking if you need to refresh your memory)
Well, May did break the record. It blew away the previous record 1383 to 1008. That 1008 page view record had held since September of last year.
As it turns out, June blew away May's record 1950 to 1383. July might break June's record. It will be close, but even if not, it blew away May as well. July's page view count is already at 1832 with a few days left to go. I'm wondering if the blog is starting a new trend or if the page views will return to the level of a couple of months ago. I guess we'll have to see.
This picture is not related to the topic of this post. I just felt it needed some picture.
In May, I had Cider Drinking and Breast Flashing to thank for increased views. I cannot attribute any one blog post in June or July for any increase in traffic, although people liked looking at my Fermentation Video in June. Readers also seemed pretty interested that I Got my G.A.B.F. Tickets and that I'm Moving on to 2011 Best Beers List. Women and Beer came on pretty strong at the end of July. Also, for whatever reason, our trip to Geneva Park Campground last August got quite a bit of interest lately. I still don't get very many comments, although I have gotten a few more than usual over the past few days.
Anyway, I'm sure no one cares, but I don't really have anything that exciting to share with you at the moment.
Seems like forever since I've brewed beer, but today I brewed up a batch of my world famous Phat & Tyred Amber Ale. This is my first 5 gallon batch of the P&T beer. It is also the first time I've tried my modified BIAB process.
My modified BIAB process is basically using a nylon bag inside a 10 gallon gott cooler. I used no sparge, and I got all my boil volume from the mash itself.
Grains ready for the strike water
Beer Smith gave me a strike water volume of almost 8 gallons at a temperature of 161F. Just in case you were wondering, 8 gallons of water is pretty heavy. 8 gallons of hot water is probably pretty dangerous, so if you are going to copy this process, you might want to be careful. I wasn't, but I'm not that bright. Plus, I lead a Semi Charmed Kind of Life, so I won't get hurt. You might.
Remember back in March of 2010 I mentioned that I had been surprised to find two women working in my local home brew shop (LHBS)? If not, feel free to review at "My LHBS's".
Now-a-days, I see a lot more women in the LHBS's. Not only do my two main shops employ women, but I see more that seem to be there shopping for brewing ingredients rather than just tagging along with their husbands or boyfriends. Heck, even the Beer Model has brewed a couple of batches of beer, so I see at least one female home-brewer every day.
I would also say that women make up a decent percentage of craft "Beer Geeks". I think of the beer bloggers that I follow, at least half are women. And I think that a higher percentage of women who say they are beer drinkers tend to drink craft beer than do men who say they are beer drinkers.
And yet, BMC (Bud/Miller/Coors) breweries continue to act as if women don't drink beer. Worse, they act like women CANNOT like beer. Remember my blog post "Beer Ads"? I commented on sexist beer ads and how I'm not sure they actually sell beer like they should. I made this observation after reading an article in which "The Beer Wench" had been complaining about the sexist nature of beer advertisements from large breweries. Personally, as a male chauvinist pig, I have no problem with the sexist nature of the beer ads. I just don't think they are effective at selling beer. I can understand that female consumers might not be too happy about these ads. The Wench is not the only beer blogger I've seen make the same point. Unfortunately, I didn't save the links to any of the other articles. Trust me, though, most women beer geeks don't appreciate seeing sexist beer ads.
They came in last Thursday night and then we spent the weekend (Friday thru Monday) up in Breckenridge.
I wanted them to help me reduce my SheppyBrew inventory, and they did. Boy did they help.
I started them off with some Summer Lovin' American Wheat in hopes that they would help me kill that keg so that I could have an empty one (see below for why it was important to have an empty keg). After awhile Thursday night, though, they wanted to try some other beers, and of course I let them.
Tracy's dad seemed to really enjoy both the Gringo Cerveza Cream Ale and the Gringo Cerveza Jalapeño Cream Ale. He is certainly not a craft-beer drinker, and I was not surprised at all that the Cream Ale would be his favorite. I am a bit surprised that he like the Jalapeño beer, though.
The newest brother-in-law tried a bunch of different kinds. The one he seemed to like the most was 15 Year Anniversary Amber Ale. He told me that ambers are his favorite. I suppose he probably would have been a fan of Phat & Tyred Amber Ale, but I didn't have any to offer him.
The older brother-in-law (older than the newer b-i-l ... not older than I am) also tried a bunch. He was a real big fan of the Fox Sox Knox Rye Pale Ale and the TommyHawk APA. He especially enjoyed the dry-hopped version of the TommyHawk, which was my favorite of the evening. I thought both those beers were tasting particularly delicious that night as well.
Tracy's youngest sister is pregnant, so didn't have much. She did have a few sips here and there and made some very complimentary comments.
I brought the rest of the keg up to Breckenridge. It emptied early Friday afternoon. This makes me very happy.
I let youngest sister take some beer home to one of my virtual beer friends. Hopefully next time I see her, she will be able to obtain some of his for me to try.
The SheppyBrew inventory is much lower than it was before the in-laws came to visit. In fact, it is lower than it has been in a long time. This is good in that I now can brew again. Sadly, we wiped out 15 Year Anniversary Amber Ale and Fox Sox Knox Rye Pale Ale. I'll certainly have to brew those again.
Can't wait to work on my pipeline again.
So, why did I want to have an empty keg? The last beer I made and kegged was Quarter Life Crisis Hoppy Red Ale. I dry hop this beer, and this time I decided to try dry hopping without using any kind of hop sack. Then, I didn't cold-crash and probably was not as careful as I should be to leave behind the bottom hop matter when I transferred from the carboy into the corny. Anyway, I ended up with enough hop matter in the keg that my poppet valve on the beer-out side was clogged up and the keg did not dispense beer.
The only thing I could think of to rectify the situation was to move the QLC into another keg, but at the time, my only other keg was full of Summer Lovin' Wheat. I would have bought another keg, but at the moment, used corny kegs are pretty expensive, plus I knew that the Beer Model's family was coming and that they have been known to consume a fair amount of beer when with me.
Tonight, I sanitized the empty keg and siphoned beer from the full keg to the empty one. I left a couple of liters of the QLC behind just to try to keep as much of the hop matter out of the new keg. I didn't waste it, though, I transferred some of that into a pint glass and the rest into a growler. I drank the pint glass and the growler is still in my fridge.
The new keg of QLC has been pressurized and is in the keggerator. I just poured myself about 10oz, and it does flow. It also tastes very good.
I guess the SheppyBrew Brew Master will consider this a learning experience. I'll be using hop sacks for dry-hopping and/or making sure I cold crash and/or be careful transferring dry-hopped beers into kegs. All's well that ends well, but I don't want to make this same mistake again.
You can see over on the left side of this blog in my "Blogs I Read" section that I follow the New Belgium Brewery blog.
Today they posted "A sneak peek at something new and exciting... " Apparently, New Belgium Brewery is going to start brewing its Belgo IPA as part of its "Explorer Series", which basically means it will be available all the time instead of as part of its experimental / small batch "Lips of Faith" series of beers.
I liked the beer, but I think part of its appeal to me was that it was a limited edition type beer. For the most part, if I want a hoppy IPA, I am not really in the mood for the Belgium funk. If I feel like the Belgium funk, I'm not really looking for the citrusy hops of an American IPA. If I am purchasing an experimenting or limited edition beer, I am looking for something different than usual, so I am fine with that sort of conflicting flavor profiles. But, if it something I can buy at any time, I'm not sure that I will.
I guess we'll see. I wonder if it will come out in cans.
Anyway, I thought this was an interesting development, and so I thought I'd share it with those of you who don't follow the New Belgium blog. Of course chances are no one but me find it interesting.
I sort of jokingly refer to my "world famous" Phat and Tyred Amber Ale. It is one of my favorite SheppyBrews. Not only does it taste wonderful, but it was also my first completely non-Mr. Beer recipe. It was my first partial mash. It was one of my first all-grain beers. It is one of the beers that I've brewed over and over again, and tweaked the recipe just about every time. I've only brewed Buckwheat's Belgium Pale Ale more often.
When I recently shared with my Mr. Beer virtual friends that I had only brewed 3 times last quarter (see 2nd Quarter 2011 Brew Stats), I got a response from one of the guys, "I brewed your Fat Tire Clone 3 times this past quarter if you want to add that to your stats...". (don't believe me? click here)
Also, Phat & Tyred Amber Ale made it to the "The #homebrew Daily" on July 10th. Apparently the guy who does "The #homebrew Daily" follows me on twitter, and his paper.li picked up on my tweet. I am pretty sure this is the first time I've ever made any type of paper.li news paper. Pretty exciting.
So, I guess my Phat and Tyred Amber Ale is "world famous"! This is at least the third non-Sheppy brewer that has made a version of this beer. There are one or two others who told me they were going to brew it, but who never let me know if they ever actually did. If I know about these people, I'm sure there must be countless more who have or are planning to brew it as well.
It usually gets referred to as my "Fat Tire Clone". Although it did start out as an intended clone, I do not like to call it one now. I've purposely modified the recipe away from being exactly like Fat Tire to more perfectly match my tasting preferences. It is fine if others call it my Fat Tire clone, though. I'm just honored that they recognize it.
Of course, I had intended to brew Phat and Tyred Amber Ale to be my first kegged beer. But as you may recall (Worst brew day ever?). Things got screwed up and I ended up with "Fat and Stoopid" instead. While a very good beer and a wonderful way to start kegging (and a beer that did not last long at all), Fat and Stoopid was certainly not the same as my Phat and Tyred Amber Ale.
And so, I've decided what I'm going to brew next. It is going to be my 7th batch of my world famous Phat and Tyred Amber Ale. I've updated the recipe just a bit, mostly to account for alpha-acid percentages in the willamette and fuggle hops that I have. My recipe is now based on a 5.5 gallon batch instead of 5 gallon.
I have mentioned before that Billy Broas at BillyBrew.com is one of my favorite beer bloggers. Actually, he probably is my favorite beer blogger. If I were to take beer blogging seriously, his blog would be what I would try to model mine after.
Today, I came across a great post that he did quite awhile ago, and I thought I'd share.
You may have seen me reference on SheppyBrew.com and / or this blog about me harvesting yeast for my home-brews. I've been doing it for some time. People ask me via email, facebook, or online forums from time to time questions about the details behind how I do it. I usually start with urls to a couple of pages that describe the process.
Billy took the explanation to the next level. He did a video about the process. I figured it out from text descriptions on the internet, but it really would have been helpful to have had Billy's video back in June of 2009.
Anyway, Billy did a blog post called "Yeast Washing". The url is http://billybrew.com/yeast-washing . If you are wondering how I harvest yeast, Billy will tell you. Our processes are pretty much identical. This is the link I'm going to give people from now on.
I just listened to CYBI's third Arrogant Bastard clone show (yes, I'm behind on my beer casts). Mitch Steele, Stone's head brewer was there to taste the beer. It was a failed attempt.
Remember I told you (see http://blog.ericshepard.com/2011/04/arrogant-bastard.html) that last time everyone but Tasty called it cloned. They decided to let Mitch and AHA members try the next one at NHC. I thought they had agreed to do that same recipe, but Tasty switched up the recipe a bit. And it was a failure.
I'm so disappointed. I am not really disappointed that it was a failure as I am that Tasty decided to change up the recipe. I was really curious to hear what the brewer thought on a beer that CYBI declared a clone.
So, I'm still considering #2 the recipe.
Here it is again:
OG: 1.066
94.8 IBU
22.5 SRM
90% pale 2 row
10% special B
24g Chinook 85 min
24g Chinook 45 min
24g Chinook 15 min
24g Chinook 0 min
WLP 007 Dry English Ale
148 degrees mash
Again, since I love the description on the back of the bottle:
"This is an aggressive ale. You probably won’t like it. It is quite
doubtful that you have the taste or sophistication to be able to
appreciate an ale of this quality and depth. We would suggest that you
stick to safer and more familiar territory–maybe something with a
multi-million dollar ad campaign aimed at convincing you it’s made in a
little brewery, or one that implies that their tasteless fizzy yellow
beverage will give you more sex appeal. Perhaps you think multi-million
dollar ad campaigns make things taste better. Perhaps you’re mouthing
your words as you read this. "
After the ridiculous amount of beer I brewed in the 1st quarter (just over 32 gallons), this 2nd quarter has been my least busy brewing quarter ever. I only brewed 4 batches, and that is including a double-batch of Gringo Cerveza Cream Ale, where I split the batch into two fermenters and added Jalapeños to one of them. So, in the whole quarter, I've only brewed 3 times. I brewed almost 15 gallons, which is the least amount since I've been keeping track by quarter, but not by too much.
I made 12 batches of beer, which puts me on pace for 24 for the year (33 batches in 2010)
I have made about 47 gallons of beer, which still puts me on pace for a record-breaking 94 gallons (75 gallons in 2010)
6 of the batches were completely new recipes (18 were new in 2010)
1 batch was a lager (2 in 2010)
All the batches were SheppyBrew recipes.
1 was a partial mash (9 in 2010)
The other 11 were all-grain mashes (10 were all-grain in 2010)
My average cost per 12oz bottle per batch has been $0.52 (I did not really keep this stat for all of 2010, but the average for the 4th quarter was around $0.79).
Some things of note for the nano-brewery this past quarter:
SheppyBrew now owns 2 kegs, and both Summer Lovin' and Quarter Life Crisis are in my keggerator right now. I obviously like kegging, but I am going to have to continue bottling quite a bit. Corny kegs have really risen in price. Plus, I don't really have room for the number of kegs it would take to have the same kind of variety in my inventory.
I've changed my mash process to be BIAB. As I mentioned in Brew day: Quarter Life Crisis, I am thinking of changing my BIAB process to include a 10 gallon cooler, so that I can do slightly bigger batches. This will also help with cold-weather brewing.
My wife (the SheppyBrew beer model) brewed the Summer Lovin' Wheat with me (see Beer Model Brew Day). I guess that means my brewing month was even less busy as one of those brews, my wife did half the work.
Summer Lovin' American Wheat
My inventory is still high, but I am not as completely overflowing as I was recently. My wife's family is coming into town this week, so I might get quite a bit of help reducing inventory from them. This will give me an excuse to brew more in the coming months.
Anyway, that was your report on how the SheppyBrew brewery has been going. I know no one cares, but it interests me to look back at these every once and awhile. I am not sure why I have not done this before, but I now have a blog label: Brew Stats to keep all these posts together.
Many of you know that the SheppyBrew Beer Model turned 40 over the weekend. One of her gifts was a trip up to the Copper Mountain ski resort for the weekend.
On Saturday, we spent most of our time around the village. We also rode the chair life up the mountain. Copper Mountain's fireworks were Saturday night.
On Sunday, we took our bikes down to Frisco and rode them around Dillon Lake to the Dillon Dam Brewery and then to a playground.
We came home on Monday (the 4th), but not before we went up the chair lift one more time.
At that time, I had never had numbers 1 through 4. Out of the top 10, I'd only had 2. Out of the top 50, I'd only had 8. That is pretty sad for a supposed craft beer drinker.
I made it my quest to try more of the beers. I don't know if I ever stated the exact goal, but I always had it in my head that 8 of the top 10 and at least half the beers on the list would be respectable.
I have not progressed on the list since I posted Update on "My" List" in December, so the information I posted there is the same. As I said then, I've had all of the top 5. I've had 9 of the top 10. I've had 25 on the list of 50 (actually there are more than 50 on the list due to ties at 49). I'm pretty satisfied with those numbers.
I blogged about some of the beers on the list. Between the blog "labels" Zymurgy BBIA and GABF, you can find most of what I wrote specifically about the beers on the list.
Of the 2011 Zymurgy Best Beers in America poll, I've had 3 of the top 5. I've had 8 of the top 10. I've tried 23 out of the whole list of 52 beers. Most have been checked off because they are repeats from the 2010 list. There are a few that I think I tried at GABF last year, but don't remember for sure. I'll just count the ones I know for sure that I have tried.
I don't know what my goal should be this year. Since I am starting with a higher count this year, the final count should be higher too. I certainly want to try Founders Kentucky Breakfast Stout and Bell’s Hopslam (the two beers in the top 10 I have not had) before the 2012 list comes out. Neither brewery distributes to Colorado, so I will have to attempt to get those at GABF this year. At the moment, I think trying 16 more of these beers is a reasonable goal. That will put me at 39 of the 52 for a respectable 75%.
Last year, Rahr and Son's Brewing Company was all over the list (12 of the 50 beers). This year, they have no beers on it. As I mentioned in GABF Final Session and Random Thoughts, I tried two of their beers at GABF and was not really all that impressed with either one. I read somewhere last year that patrons of Rahr and Son's had some sort of campaign where they "stuffed the ballot box". I'm glad this did not seem to happen this year.
Anyway, stay tuned. I'll try to let you know what I think of the beers I try. I'll certainly blog about the total numbers.
One of the perks of being an AHA member is that I got to purchase GABF tickets before the general public. The member's "pre-sale" went live at 10:00 AM on Tuesday June 28th. By 10:05, I had my tickets ordered. An even better perk is that I will be able to get through the members only entrance, which (based on last year's experience) will save me a considerable amount of time getting into the event.
One of the cool things about attending GABF is seeing all the interesting costumes. Of course, the sexist chauvinist pig that I am, my favorites were worn by women. I thought this year, the SheppyBrew Beer Model would like to wear some sort of Beer-Wench-type costume. I even pointed her to some possibilities on Amazon.com . She has informed me that she will not be purchasing a Beer-Wench outfit for the festival. She is planning on wearing her Stone Brewing Company "You're not Worthy" tee shirt, which is a pretty good choice too. It is beer related and it does show off her chest nicely.
Of course, GABF doesn't take place until the end of September. It does always sell out, but I probably didn't have to purchase my tickets right when the pre-sale started. We certainly don't have to nail-down our outfits for the event, yet. Just thought I'd share that I have taken the first step to attend this year.
One disappointing thing is that Mr. Beer is not planning on attending this year. I actually had fun helping out in their booth last year. I guess I'll have more time for beer sampling now that I won't be covering the booth, but I was planning on spending some time with them this year. Oh well.
If you would like to partially re-live my GABF experience from last year, check out GABF Final Session and Random Thoughts and the links on that blog post. I'm sure I'll blog about this year's GABF as well.
Beer Model with the pretzel necklace.
Another great outfit from last year's event. I stole this from the GABF picture albums.
Well, I guess today is this blog's 6th anniversary. On June 27, 2005, I made my first blog post. I still am not sure why I blog, but I must have some subconscious reason if I've lasted this long. Despite the fact that my blogger stats tell me differently, I still sometimes feel no one is reading this blog. I'm a terrible writer and really don't have much interesting to say. The blog lacks any type of focus, so even if a particular reader finds one of my posts interesting, chances are the next one will be so utterly uninteresting to that same reader that they will stay away forever.
I guess as I am listed on the "Complete List of Beer Blogs" on the Beer Bloggers Conference website, you might call me a beer blogger, or at least a home-brew blogger. "Brewing" is certainly the most common tag on the blog. But then, there is just too much random junk on here to call it a beer blog, isn't there? My second most common tag is "Kids", which doesn't really fit with brewing at all (although it is surprising how often my blog posts include something about my kids AND something about beer.
One sort of cool thing about this blog for me is going back and looking at old posts. And one thing that is interesting about looking at the old posts is seeing how much my kids have grown in what seems like such a short amount of time.
Not too long ago, I was looking at my blog stats. For the day, there was one pageview on "All Aboard!" from January 2008. It featured this video:
Not sure how someone came across that post after all this time. But seeing that made me want to look. It struck me how little Connor was back then (as compared to now). After I watched the video, I spent some time looking through other pictures of the kids I've posted on the blog.
I guess I did not do quite as good a job of posting pictures of the kids here when they were really young, but here are some I did come across a few.
Isn't it amazing how much they have grown ... or is it just me, a sentimental father?
Well anyway, happy anniversary everyone.
P.S. For what it is worth: last week, my "stats" told me that the blog had reached 10,000 "page reads" since blogger started the stats feature (July 2010?). I suppose that indicates that someone is at least seeing the blog.
Apparently some fathers spend Fathers' Day away from (as a break from) their kids. This seems like a really weird concept to me. My fathers' days are always full of activities with the kids.
This year, the boys decided they wanted to take me camping for fathers' day weekend.
At first, Mommy was going to be in charge of reserving the campsite, but would not be coming along. At some point the boys decided she should come with us so she could be in charge of getting us to the actual Fathers' Day activity.
I am glad they decided to bring her along. Fathers' Day would have been too much work without her.
The campsite that Mommy reserved was in the Kenosha Pass campground, which is at 10,000 feet is about an hour and a half drive from our house. Tracy was a bit concerned as we were driving there Friday night that it would be too cold up that high. I, of course, scoffed at such an idea.
The campground itself has undergone tree-clearing recently. A bunch of the pine trees were victims of the dreaded pine beetle epidemic. The nice thing about the tree-clearing effort is that it resulted in a bunch of free firewood, so we were able to have bigger, longer lasting campfires than we usually allow ourselves. This area happens to have lots of aspen trees, so the cleared out trees didn't necessarily make the area look as bare as an it could have.
Saturday morning after cleaning up from breakfast, we packed up a lunch and started hiking the Colorado Trail. For those of you who don't know, the Colorado Trail runs about 500 miles from Waterton Canyon South of Denver to Durango. The trail passes over Kenosha Pass, and practically goes through the campground.
Before we could start our hike, we (of course) had to climb some of the rocks by the campground. Dad told the kids there would be plenty of rocks to climb on the hike.
Turns out that Dad lied. There were no good climbing rocks along the portion of the trail on which we hiked.
We did come across a couple of shelters built out of sticks along the trail. The most impressive one is the one to the right here. Someone obviously spent a bunch of time building this shelter.
We saw some mountain bikers and backpackers along the trail. Both the boys tell me they want to go backpacking soon. I am glad to hear that, but I am a bit skeptical that they will actually enjoy backpacking once they are actually doing it.
They insist they want to, though, so I will try to accommodate the request.
It was a nice sunny day. It also wasn't overly hot. The perfect day for a hike. The views were very nice too.
We had a nice picnic lunch along the trail.
Then, we headed back to the campsite to relax for awhile in the afternoon until supper time. Mommy even played her guitar for a bit.
We had another great big campfire at night with the free firewood lying around.
Usually on Fathers' Day, I get breakfast in bed. This is impractical in the tent, but my wife did make us pancakes and sausage.
I did have to help pack up the camp on my "special" day, but at least I didn't have to do dishes.
After packing up the camp, for my official Fathers' Day activity, we headed over to Fairplay Colorado to go to South Park City.
South Park City is basically a restored 1880's mining town. Its buildings were relocated from various ghost towns all over Colorado.
We went on the self-guided tour through the town and its buildings. It was very interesting and we all had a good time.
There was a recreation of a mine.
There was a train. The kids had fun climbing on the locomotive and the caboose.
The school house was a hit.
We got to go into an old-town bank that had been relocated from Alma, Colorado.
The whole camping trip and ghost town tour made for a great Fathers' Day weekend. The boys and their Mom did a great job setting everything up, and I had a wonderful time.
I guess I am under some pressure to help the boys come up with what to do next Mothers' Day.
From time to time I give away home-brew. I always have to remember to tell people how to drink the beer. Seems sort of like a weird thing to have to tell people, but if I don't educate, they might do it wrong.
Of course, the most important thing is:
"Don't drink straight from the bottle."
Usually, this surprises people enough to interrupt me and ask "Why not?" At this point I try not to get annoyed about being interrupted.
"You want to pour it gently into a glass, trying to leave the sediment behind. Use a glass big enough to hold the whole thing plus some head. A pint glass is the right size."
It sort of surprises me that it surprises them when I tell them not to drink from the bottle. Of course, when I show them the sediment, they understand, but you really shouldn't drink commercial craft beer straight from the bottle either. I suppose the surprise comes from a society that still drinks mostly light, flavorless Bud / Miller / Coors. You might as well drink those straight from the bottle or can. Any flavorful craft beer, however, is better when you pour it into a glass.
When you pour your beer into a glass, you allow the aromatics of the brew to come out of the beer. A huge part of tasting actually comes from what you can smell, and you will miss out of most of the aromatics when they are trapped inside a bottle. Plus, when you pour your beer, a beautiful, creamy, visually pleasing head is released (at least it should be). If you are going to take the time to drink a beer, you should let yourself enjoy it with all your senses, shouldn't you? Sometimes, I'll even put my ear up next to the beer and listen to the carbonation being released (I don't usually do this in public, though. People might think that is weird).
Some will insist that you need the right kind of glassware for different types of beer (see The Right Beer Glass) . Personally, I don't own all the different types of glassware, so always drink my beer from a pint-sized beer mug (or a liter-sized beer mug if I'm drinking one of my larger bottles). That is just what we own. I would love to own different types of glassware, but so far it has not been a priority to purchase any more. Our cupboards are too full to find room for a couple each of a dozen different glass types, so I guess I'll have to live with what we already have for now.
Actually, I do now own a New Belgium globe glass that I got for free when the Beer Model and I visited breweries in Ft. Collins. So far, I have only had my TommyHawk APA in the globe glass. I don't think it increased my beer-drinking enjoyment. I did think it helped with head-retention, but TommyHawk has fine head-retention in my beer mugs as well. Regardless, it is sort of fun to drink out of something different.
And now that I keg SheppyBrew, I also have some 10 or 12oz pilsner glasses that I use when I want to grab a littler size beer from the keggerator. I never used them for SheppyBrews because they are not quite big enough for a whole bottle of beer.
One of my home-brewing "friends" (friends in quotes because I've never met most of the people I know who home-brew) puts this on all his bottles:
The yeast at the bottom is living proof that this is a homebrewed, hand-crafted, bottle conditioned beer. Conditioning in the bottle gives the beer a lush, velvety smooth texture that you won’t find in force carbonated beers. The bubbles are smaller giving your taste buds more surface area to grab onto. It’s fantastic! To serve, chill to about 45-50 degrees. Pour gently into a glass leaving the yeast in the bottle. Don’t be afraid to pour with a nice foamy head. It releases CO2 & makes the beer less filling. Cheers & always drink responsibly.
He was nice enough to send me a digital picture of what he prints out to put on his bottles. For me, that is a little over the top to add to all my home-brew bottles, but I think I might put instructions for drinking on the Sheppy Brew web site somewhere, and have his text as part of the instructions.
The Beer Model and I have a kid-swapping arrangement with another family. They have two boys the same age as our two boys, and a few times a year we take their kids for a weekend. Then, they take ours for a weekend. This past weekend, we were without our kids.
I had been wanting to do the New Belgium Brewery tour for quite awhile. But, it is a long drive to Ft. Collins and dragging our kids along to do that just didn't seem like a good idea. Knowing we were going to be without the kids, though, seemed like a good idea to go ahead and do the tour.
But, the New Belgium tour is a pretty popular thing to do. They take tour reservations and their weekend tours are full for months into the future. Tracy called to ask if we showed up what the chances would be to get on a waiting list for any cancellations or no-shows. When, the Beer Model mentioned that her husband and she would be without the kids, the person she talked to told Tracy that she also had three kids and would get us on a tour. And she did. Awesome.
We got the earliest tour time (11 AM) so we could fit in some tours of other Ft. Collins breweries. We got to Ft. Collins around 10 AM, parked our car at our hotel and walked to the New Belgium brewery. It was a nice walk around a mile, and we got there in plenty of time.
As it turned out, a group of 20 did not even bother to show up for this tour, so we would have easily gotten in. Of course the tour after ours looked VERY full, so I am glad we had the peace of mind of having an official reservation. There were quite a few people on the waiting list who were happy to find out that 20 spots opened up.
The New Belgium brewery tour is absolutely without a doubt the best brewery tour I have been on. My only complaint was that Bernie (our tour guide) kept throwing all these cool benefits about working for New Belgium that made me absolutely jealous.
Of course, the New Belgium story is famous. And, it is a great story, but, somehow it sounded even better when Bernie told it. The tour includes 6 good-sized samples of New Belgium beer. The samples included Abbey Grand Cru, Super Cru, and even La Folie, so it is not like they held back the good stuff.
Of course as someone who actually does brew, seeing their brewing equipment and hearing about their alternative power sources and brewing efficiencies was down-right fascinating to me.
I even took a video of their Mash Tun at work:
AND, Bernie let us go down their slide:
So, if you are ever going to be in Ft. Collins, Colorado and need something to do, try to get a brewery tour. As I mentioned, they take reservations and those spots fill up quick, so sign up early. Here is a link to their tour calendar.
I was able to use my AHA Membership "Pub Discount" in their tasting room. I bought a hat for 15% off, AND they gave me one of their globe glasses free with the purchase. That is a great little discount. I think I might have paid for my AHA membership for the year with this trip alone.
After the New Belgium tour, we walked 10 or 15 minutes to Odell Brewing Company in hopes of getting their 1PM tour. We did not get there quite on time, and they would not let us sign up for their 2PM tour yet. And, we were hungry. Neither the New Belgium tasting room nor the Odell tasting room serve food. But, the girl at Odell told us that Ft. Collins Brewing company had a brew-pub on-site, and it was within walking distance. We decided we had really better get some food, so we headed down that way.
The restaurant in front of Ft. Collins Brewery is called Gravity Ten Twenty. Their food was awesome for a couple of starving brewery crawlers. We got a couple of sampler trays to sample a wide range of the brewery's beers.
Tracy got a chance to update Facebook with pictures and status updates etc. It sure took her a long time to do it. I'm sort of regretting letting her get a smart phone, but it is too late now.
Neither Gravity Ten Twenty nor Ft. Collins Brewery are listing on the AHA website as participants to the AHA Pub Discount program, but I asked the waiter anyway. He had to ask his manager, and we did end up getting a 10% discount on our lunch.
With food in our tummies, we headed back to Odell to sign up for their tour. I got a hat there and used my AHA card there to get 10% off the hat and a FREE sample tasting tray. We had a little over half an hour until the tour, so we had plenty of time to do our tastings.
Odell has some great beers, but their tour is nothing compared to New Belgium's tour. The tour guide was not nearly as entertaining as Bernie. Plus the tour itself just was not as interesting. They didn't even give us free samples. Oh well. It was still worth it for me.
After the Odell tour, we headed back over to Ft. Collins Brewery. Again, we had plenty of time before their next tour, so I used my discount to help pay for another couple of taster trays for Tracy and I to share.
Whenever we share taster trays, we each taste all the beers. Then, Tracy claims one or two that I am not allowed to drink, and I get the rest.
The Ft. Collins Brewery tour is certainly nothing to brag about, either. One of the bar-girls shouted out for anyone who wanted to do a tour to follow her. It was pretty obvious very quickly that she really didn't know much about the brewery (or brewing in general). But, it turns out one of the brewers was following along as well, and he took over. I actually had fun talking to him talking about some of the geeky details. I'm sure no one else on the tour enjoyed it as much as I did. One thing about that tour that still blows my mind is how small their mash tun and brewing kettle are. To fill their bigger fermenters, they have to do their mash and boil three times. I asked the obvious question about if / when they are getting bigger ones. The brewer showed me where those are going (as soon as they can find time to set them up).
Honestly, Ft. Collins Brewery seemed like more of a larger scale home-brew setup to me. Amazingly, these guys distribute to about 10 states. There is nothing wrong with their beer, though. I'm just amazed how such a small-feeling brewery was able to keep up with demand in such a wide geographical range.
So, that was our last tour of the day. After Ft. Collins Brewery, we headed back to our hotel and checked in. Then we headed back towards where we had come from to eat at a local brew pub Cooper Smith's. He had a nice dinner with another couple of beers. One of the beers I had there was a green chili beer, which I thought was pretty good. Tracy was not a fan, but then she never does like unique and interesting beers.
After dinner, we got into "Taste of Ft. Collins". We wandered around a little bit, and then got to listen to Third Eye Blind, who were the headline act of the night. After they were done, we headed back to the hotel.
NOTE: I was going to put a video of 3eb in this post, but I didn't really like how it turned out. Instead, here is one someone else posted to YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKcklm5HXa8 we were much farther away.
Third Eye Blind is in the distance of this picture.
Sunday, we slept in for awhile with no loud kids to get us up. We had a leisurely breakfast and then headed over to a local park for some hiking.
My wife up high. Can you see her?
We got back to get the kids around supper time, so we let the the family who had taken care of the kids feed us brats and potato salad. They even started up a fire so the kids could have roasted (and non-roasted) marshmellows.
