tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-104308192024-03-06T19:40:13.973-08:00Pfiff!A beer blog, about tasting, brewing, history, culture, and general fermented grain goodness.Robhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02647783153036439028noreply@blogger.comBlogger331125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10430819.post-49369640814941646942010-08-14T21:48:00.000-07:002010-08-14T21:48:09.748-07:00Enjoying the time away<img src="http://www.hifimundo.com/pfiff/IMG_7398sm.jpg"><br />
.. but will perhaps come back to play.<br />
<br />
Someday.Robhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02647783153036439028noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10430819.post-80735753672321118672010-04-16T14:43:00.000-07:002010-04-16T14:43:07.672-07:00Loosey goosey<div style="text-align: center;"><img hspace="3" src="http://www.hifimundo.com/pfiff/jessematilda.jpg" vspace="3" /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: center;"><i>And so it goes, when one has neither the chops nor the gear to take shots like <a href="http://beerandnosh.com/">Jesse Friedman</a>, the least you can do is use him as your backdrop.</i></div><br />
So when is it a good idea for a brewer, upon delivering the origin stories of their beers to an unfamiliar populace, to overtly reference other, more well known beers, as their respective influences? Such was the case when Goose Island's brewmaster <a href="http://www.gooseisland.com/pages/greg_hall/49.php">Greg Hall</a> descended on the Monk's Kettle to rub shoulders with local media and business associates as part of their foray into the San Francisco market; here was an opportunity to showcase some beautifully crafted, unique ales that certainly speak to what he described as Goose Island "doing differently", a message that was hamstrung somewhat by references to two of the best beers on the planet, Orval and Rochefort 8, as their inspirations. (I eagerly awaited the Saison Dupont hat trick, but was sadly left hanging.) Does it do the brewer a disservice, conjuring up the juggernaut of an icon like Orval, down to <a href="http://www.orval.be/an/FS_an.html">its very name</a> having been derived from the fountain of legend at the Trappist monastery, when its chances of capturing its essence are so very, very slim?<br />
<br />
It's particularly jarring when someone as skillful and well-traveled as Hall, someone who has averaged an annual trip to Belgium over the past 15 years, makes those emphatic allusions himself, rather than coming from the mouth of a marketing exec looking to be evocative. One of the very first lessons a homebrewer needs to learn is that trying to clone anything is a path fraught with disappointment. Trying, on the other hand, to emulate certain appealing characteristics as evident in commercial examples, makes for great learning, and a fun way to heighten your sophistication with the craft. Certainly he knows that Matilda, for all its malty-sweet goodness, bears little resemblance to the hoppy, funky delight that our <a href="http://www.genx40.com/images/beerblog/orval1.JPG">ring-bearing fish friend</a> represents. Being portrayed as a domestic alternative to one of the most singular beverages on Earth seems almost cruel in how it devalues Matilda on its own merits as an eminently enjoyable, spicy, well-balanced pale ale that deserves to find success on local menus.<br />
<br />
Hitting the admittedly larger, somewhat easier target of a Trappist-inspired <i>dubbel</i>, Pere Jacques, the tawny ale named in honor of the abbot of <a href="http://www.abbaye-rochefort.be/">Rochefort</a>, strikes a much truer chord, yet seems unfairly saddled with unmeetable expectations thanks to its open homage to Notre Dame de Saint-Rémy. Clearly, this trio of beers, rounded out by the delightful Sofie, a brett- and barrel-tinged saison that pairs embarrassingly well with soft ripened goat's cheese like Humboldt Fog, owes its existence to Greg Hall's travel experiences in Belgium. But in a town like SF, where one can easily get the beers on which these were inspired, one has to wonder if the overt comparisons hurt their chances of finding their way into the glasses of an uninitiated, alien market.<br />
<br />
It would be a disservice to both Goose Island and the local dining public if that were the case. These are exceptional beers on their own merit, and hopefully with some time out from underneath the shadows of the giants whose spirit helped guide their inceptions, they'll gain the opportunity to find their own place on menus and draught lists throughout the City.</div>Robhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02647783153036439028noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10430819.post-71131099519339368522010-04-15T09:04:00.001-07:002010-04-16T15:16:30.034-07:00This blog has moved<br /> This blog is now located at http://pfiff.hifimundo.com/.<br /> You will be automatically redirected in 30 seconds, or you may click <a href='http://pfiff.hifimundo.com/'>here</a>.<br /><br /> For feed subscribers, please update your feed subscriptions to<br /> http://pfiff.hifimundo.com/feeds/posts/default.<br /> Robhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02647783153036439028noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10430819.post-13752809520413113102010-02-08T19:51:00.000-08:002010-02-08T19:51:47.996-08:00SFBW'10 - Funky Fairfax<div style="text-align: center;"><img hspace="3" src="http://www.hifimundo.com/pfiff/whythefunk.jpg" vspace="3" /></div>One of the more popular bumper stickers of the "local pride" variety refers to Fairfax as "Mayberry on acid". It's a town that prides itself on waving its freak flag high, and, to the extent that it's possible in a place like Marin county, being a funky little joint.<br />
<br />
How appropriate then, that today, the first Monday of <a href="http://www.sfbeerweek.com/">SF Beer Week 2010</a>, marks the release of Iron Springs' first foray into the funky and freaky world of brettanomyces-influenced beer, with a somewhat unexpected choice from the house line-up as the guinea pig: their Chazz Cat Rye, an amber, mildly spicy rye beer that's been a mainstay on the draught list since the pub's inception. Dubbed "Rye the Funk Not", the name nicely sums up the degree of experimentalism the brewers invoked in putting this batch together. Head brewer Christian Kazakoff explained it thusly:<br />
<blockquote>I was impressed with the flavor of a Rye beer I did in a firkin with oak chips soaked in Chardonnay; so, I decided to purchase a Zinfandel barrel from a local winery in Oakland and fill it with a new Rye beer I brewed that was in the pre-chill conditioning stage. It took a little over two barrels of Rye to fill the barrel. I inoculated the beer with some brettanomyces and buried it in "The Brett Farm" at Drakes brewery in San Leandro for seven months. When the secondary funk fermentation finished out in October, Persimmons were just being harvested and I love Persimmons. I added twenty pounds of chopped Fuyu Persimmons to the barrel and let it stand for another three months.</blockquote>He describes the result as a pale, 7% alcohol, oaky beer, with rye spice contrasting with a slight sourness, and a lingering sweetness from the fruit. Besides the limited run RTFN will have on tap at the pub as part of their <a href="http://www.facebook.com/#%21/event.php?eid=276948732928&ref=ts">barrel-aged beer month</a>, there are a dozen or so cases of 750ml bottles that were hand-corked and caged in the Belgian style which are conditioning with champagne yeast and awaiting label artwork for a small release in another month or so. Compared to its second cousin twice removed, it's drier, fairly stronger, and plays its hops much further in the background, letting each of its unique qualities come out to play in distinct order: a spicy, leathery aroma leads into an initial taste of old barrel, ceding to hints of the rye and West Coast hops before the fruity persimmon finish (which I wouldn't have been able to distinguish if it hadn't been for the multiple sessions of a friend's persimmon wine I've had the joy to experience over the past year) cleans up the palate, dryly, with that slight sourness that stirs the appetite and warrants a second taste.<br />
<br />
It's warming to see experimentation such as this taking place so close to home (even if the intentional "infection" occurred in Contra Costa), and with today's news that <a href="http://millvalleybeerworks.com/">Mill Valley Beerworks</a> got their brewer's notice from the TTB, it might not be long before we're seeing the first spontaneously brewed Marin beer. Perhaps I'm fantasizing a little. But it's a fun fantasy to harbor when enjoying something as wickedly complex and time-consuming yet blithely titled Rye the Funk Not.Robhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02647783153036439028noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10430819.post-59804746122149569012010-02-08T13:32:00.000-08:002010-02-08T13:34:56.493-08:00SFBW'10 - The Younger and the rest of us<div style="text-align: center;"><img src="http://www.hifimundo.com/pfiff/welcometosfbw.jpg" vspace="3" hspace="3" /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>The sign says it all.<br /><br /></i></div>"I can't imagine getting in line for a beer," came one slightly tongue-in-cheek comment from the small assemblage of local beer writers huddled beside a table overflowing with Ryan Farr's <a href="http://groceryeats.com/2008/04/12/chicharrones/">chicharrones</a>, as we discussed the completely unforeseen mad dash that had occurred earlier in the day up at Russian River, where demand for their annual February release* had formed, to say the very least, a "line". Even Natalie Cilurzo's <a href="http://russianriverbrewing.com/wordpress/?p=121">own estimates</a> on the lifespan of this year's batch of <a href="http://www.ratebeer.com/beer/russian-river-pliny-the-younger/43181/">Pliny the Younger</a> (<i>"I don’t know how long it will be available at the pub. However, I venture to guess less than one week and more than one day!"</i>) turned out to be quite generous, as by 6pm Friday afternoon, after about 7 hours of being poured, the 600 gallons on tap at the Santa Rosa pub had already dried up. Even <a href="http://www.brewedforthought.com/">Mario</a>, a Santa Rosa native and stalwart supporter of all things Russian River chimed in to say (unbeknownst to all of us that <i>just </i>as we were making the rounds at the SF Beer Week gala, the atmosphere up in Sonoma had already turned somewhat <a href="http://russianriverbrewing.com/wordpress/?p=123">grim</a>) had he would have been happy to wait until Saturday to get his share, had he been able to foresee the unprecedented crowds that had appeared well before the door's had even been opened. After all, <a href="http://www.hifimundo.com/public/blog/2009/02/localize-it-pt-3-younger-better.html">last year</a> there'd been no crowds at all, no lines, not the slightest bit of fuss - that easy, relaxed Sonoma pace had been shattered this time around, the pub apparently having fallen victim to its own success, the obsessive completists monitoring the ubiquitous <a href="http://beeradvocate.com/top_beers">top ten lists</a>, and the ease with which social networking tools can amass armies of beer fanatics like blinkered, hops-driven flash mobs.<br /><br />Not that it mattered entirely on my part, thanks to Mario having stashed my very own growler of the stuff by the gala entrance. And as we departed into the early evening, someone perched outside the event noticed the bottle I was casually swinging from my pinkie and called out, "Hey, is that Younger?", forcing me to glance over my shoulder the whole way back to the parking garage in fear that we were being followed...<br /><br />Despite all the hype and a reputation it couldn't possibly live up to, it remains a wonderful treat of a beer, and one for which I'm happy to say that I didn't have to stand in line. A fortuitous way to begin <a href="http://sfbeerweek.com/">SF Beer Week 2010</a>, indeed. Expect it to make some further, albeit brief appearances over the course of the week, in your finer Bay Area drinking establishments.<br /><br />* And as for that <i>other</i> February special release, the darling Valentines' Day black Belgian ale dubbed "Rejection", expect that one to make an appearance at Toronado <a href="http://toronado.com/events.htm#258">tomorrow night</a>.Robhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02647783153036439028noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10430819.post-14669823319408019412009-11-06T16:28:00.000-08:002009-11-06T16:28:28.968-08:00Greater than the sum of its parts<blockquote>"Those only are happy who have their minds fixed on some object other than their own happiness: on the happiness of others, on the improvement of mankind, even on some art or pursuit followed not as a means, but as itself an ideal end. Aiming at something else, they find happiness by the way.<br />
<br />
Ask yourself whether you are happy and you cease to be so."<br />
- John Stuart Mill <br />
</blockquote><div style="text-align: center;"><img hspace="3" src="http://www.hifimundo.com/pfiff/gestaltsign.jpg" vspace="3" /><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>Bookshelves are put to second best use at the new Gestalt Haus.</i><br />
<br />
</div>For the better part of the year, Fairfax locals had been teased with the promise of the impending opening of an outpost of San Francisco's Gestalt Haus, a venue that's but a smudge on the map in the SF beer scene but one that had the potential for making a big mark in our little burg. For months, the little ex-furniture shop on Bolinas Avenue sat unchanged, wrapped in the same secretive butcher paper and adorned with a coming soon sign that indicated, curiously, that despite the name, our local version of this popular little bike-friendly sausage-and-a-pint shack was, for better or worse, entirely unaffiliated with the SF joint of the same name.<br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><img hspace="3" src="http://www.hifimundo.com/pfiff/gestaltdunkles.jpg" vspace="3" /><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>Hofbr</i>ä<i>u dunkel is as dark as it gets here.</i><br />
<br />
</div>Then, back in September, thanks to messages out of the blue posted both on the <a href="http://mtbr.com/">mtbr.com</a> forums and <a href="http://www.twitter.com/gestaltfairfax">Twitter</a>, we discovered they'd be hosting a quick and dirty open house. Turns out they'd gotten their liquor license squared away, yet were still tied up in logistical wrangling with the health department, so they'd planned on pouring a fresh keg of Hofbräu lager for suggested donations of $2 a cup while showing off their nearly completed digs. A ton of obvious work had gone into the place, most notably the 14' redwood bar at the center of the action, adorned with two gleaming towers promising some fine German draught choices and some equally fine local selections. The jukebox was loaded with the appropriate amount of Fugazi, the tables were set, the bike racks were loaded in, and things looked ready to go, simply waiting for the green light to finish the kitchen, and they'd be open in two weeks.<br />
<br />
Two weeks passed quickly, without any news, and then it was October, and the still unchanged storefront facade caused me to wonder if I'd imagined the whole thing, riding down the hill through the late summer's breeze on that fine September evening, filling up on an honest pint of Munich's finest while gamely chatting up the obviously excited, if not slightly terrified, proprietors of our town's newest watering hole. And with the annual hubs n' hops <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/americanidle/4002996097/in/set-72157622566290844/">Biketoberfest</a> fast approaching, it was starting to become a bit of a concern, how the place would survive having missed, in its construction phase, all the year's big crowd draws, all the events that actually get folks to take that wrong, long left turn and wind up here on the dark side of Mt. Tamalpais, before the winter sets in and the rain cloud obscures our existence from the rest of the world until May.<br />
<br />
And so, then, the day before the festival, something very strange happened.<br />
<br />
They moved.<br />
<br />
Apparently, things with the health department weren't progressing as quickly as the Haus folks would've liked, so when a nearby bookstore that happened to already have both a liquor license and a fully functioning kitchen abruptly closed its doors, Gestalt Haus just as abruptly moved in and made themselves at home. And with untold back-breaking hours building a plywood bar from scratch and moving the keg coolers and draught towers and picnic tables and glassware, they opened their doors just in time to see the largest parade of pedal-pushing beer drinkers of the season ride past, and stop in.<br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><img hspace="3" src="http://www.hifimundo.com/pfiff/gestaltpour.jpg" vspace="3" /><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>Half liter, liter, or keg: you choose.</i><br />
<br />
</div>And it may just be the "how much weight will this support?" feeling one experiences when bellying up to grab another Maß from the bar that lends the place's name such appropriateness. While the original's tagline - beer, brats, and bikes - was supposed to convey its gestalt, whole experience being greater than the sum of its parts, the gestalt at our own, potentially short-term bar (because they <i>do</i> still hold the lease up the street, and aren't pinning themselves down just yet) is quite different, and pretty endearing. The parts here - communal seating with a real <a href="http://www.toytowngermany.com/wiki/Stammtisch">Stammtisch</a> feel, excellent, simple beers in proper glassware, great natural lighting and a quiet, relaxed vibe - add up to a gestalt that virtually defines "session". Not much worth commenting on by themselves, but put together, it adds up to something of real worth, and in a place that's better for it.<br />
<br />
And did I mention they have bacon potato chips?Robhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02647783153036439028noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10430819.post-29124517170955028432009-10-20T12:33:00.000-07:002009-10-20T12:33:42.761-07:00Not forgotten<div style="text-align: center;"><img hspace="3" src="http://www.hifimundo.com/pfiff/yoshibrew.jpg" vspace="3" /><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>Fat cats in party hats are standing by<br />
</i><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">It's literally been years since I've been able to conjure up a strong enough blend of bravery and laziness to allow <i>Pfiff!</i> to go this long - nearly two months! - without any posted updates, but there's no denying the past six weeks have been an enjoyable sabbatical, made of equal parts reflection and disregard. And it would be a shameful, outright lie if I didn't state how pleasant it's been to take a break. Absence, the heart, fonder and all that. While the past few months have seen many acquaintances increasing their responsibility to write diligently, often, and in depth about beer, I've been feeling preternaturally detached from the scene, at last in terms of writing about it. Of course, it's only natural that this waxing phase should coincide with a nice, <a href="http://www.chow.com/stories/11885">traffic-driving profile</a> that excusably calls me out on a lack of regular writing, an event that would throw anyone looking to drive and snare traffic on their site into a hysteria of shotgun composing, throwing up scattershot postings in an attempt to create a web of interest in which to capture this newfound audience unawares. The fact that it elicited an even smaller shrug of dismissiveness on my part than usual should have been a good clue that something was amiss.<br />
<br />
This short, but <a href="http://beercritic.wordpress.com/2009/08/12/10-reasons-why-im-giving-up-beer-blogging/">well spoken piece</a> by John LeMasney, is a good detour at this point. Which is not to say that's what's happening here, yet, anyway. I'll prove it to you soon. What's irrefutable, though, is that my attention, interest, and energy has been recently diverted, but surely not permanently. If there are actually any readers out there who've been waiting and wondering, my apologies. We'll be back shortly.<br />
</div>Robhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02647783153036439028noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10430819.post-71606425590692159442009-08-28T19:27:00.000-07:002009-08-28T19:27:56.939-07:00Fermentation Friday - Abby Abbey*<div style="text-align: center;"><img hspace="3" src="http://www.hifimundo.com/pfiff/holiday09OG.jpg" vspace="3" /><br />
<i>Is </i>this <i>normal? </i></div><br />
<b>Lowered expectation warning: The following is a complete cop out.</b><br />
<br />
I don't know if it's the weird muggy heat or the headache that's accompanying it or what, but despite digging as deeply into my smartass as possible, this month's <a href="http://aworldofbrews.blogspot.com/2009/08/august-fermentation-friday-topic.html">Fermentation Friday</a> isn't happening for me. Sorry to disappoint, Matt. No matter how hard I force it, this baby's not moving out of neutral. While I'm stuck in the driveway here with the engine running, I wonder if I'd been deluding myself in the past in thinking I was witty enough to word my way around any topic, but this one (<i>"I want to know if and why you break away from the norm")</i> has me completely con- and dumbfounded. For the life of me, I can't remember the last time we brewed <i>anything</i> that one might consider "normal". (This should not be taken as boasting: I never said they were any "good".) Years ago, deeply hidden in the ancient mists of my already cloudy memory, I seem to recall brewing up batches that didn't include homegrown herbs, oddly modified grains, obscure hop varieties, unusual sugar sources, or peculiar tinctures, beers that you could matter-of-factly call "a stout" or "a West Coast pale ale". In fact, when joking last week about how we were simultaneously putting up a batch of <a href="http://www.foodrenegade.com/how-to-grow-a-kombucha-scoby/">kombucha</a> while prepping a yeast starter for our holiday ale, and how haha funny would it be were I to swap the two by mistake, I'd be lying if I didn't say that the thought had, yes, momentarily, crossed my mind. Seriously. What if?<br />
<br />
So, rather than waste any more of your precious Friday reading time (go out and kiss a girl or pet a dog or vice versa), we'll make our entry simple. <a href="http://www.hifimundo.com/pfiff/X%2709.html">Here's the recipe</a> for this year's holiday ale (the original gravity reading of which you see pictured up above), and <a href="http://hypem.com/track/893111/tUnE+yArDs+-+SUNLIGHT">here's a link</a> to the song that's been stuck in my head all day. And if you need a reminder on how to make the amber candi sugar yourself, <a href="http://www.brewcookpairjoy.com/2009/02/diy-belgian-candi-sugar/">here are the instructions</a>. Enjoy.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">Many thanks to Matt at <a href="http://aworldofbrews.blogspot.com/">A World of Brews</a> for hosting this month's mind-boggling <a href="http://beerbits2.blogspot.com/2008/04/homebrew-blogging-day.html">Fermentation Friday</a>, a monthly blogging carnival gathered around the topic of homebrewing, originated by </span><a href="http://beerbits2.blogspot.com/" style="font-style: italic;">Beer Bits 2</a><span style="font-style: italic;">. </span><br />
<br />
*About <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOe_4mgmyyA">that title</a>.Robhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02647783153036439028noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10430819.post-76881653257829428432009-08-18T11:04:00.000-07:002009-08-18T11:04:52.159-07:00What next?<div style="text-align: center;"><img hspace="3" src="http://www.hifimundo.com/pfiff/italianlineup.jpg" vspace="3" /></div><div style="text-align: left;">After a month in the making, our <a href="http://www.hifimundo.com/public/blog/2009/07/introducing-second-annual-pfiff-beer.html">Italian Modernists</a> dinner is in the books. And while the jury's still out as to whether or not we'll have an official wrap-up of the event posted here, it would be unfair to go too long without publicly thanking the folks who made it the success it turned out to be. It's no small feat to collect nine relatively obscure beers in quantities to serve fourteen diners, nor is it terribly easy to convince those fourteen diners that an afternoon of Italian beer could be all that enticing (especially when up against the likes of <a href="http://www.stumptown.com/revival/">Stumptown</a> and the <a href="http://toronado.com/events.htm#243">Toronado anniversary party</a>), to say nothing of assembling and executing a equally lengthy pairing menu.<br />
<br />
On the topic of the menu, <a href="http://www.hifimundo.com/pfiff/The%20Italian%20Modernists.pdf" target="_blank">here it is</a>.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><img hspace="3" src="http://www.hifimundo.com/pfiff/alexthebeerblogger.jpg" vspace="3" /></div></div>The first order of thanks has to go to our ably dexterous mate in the galley, Mr. Alex of <a href="http://www.drinkaweek.com/">Drink A Week</a>, here caught childishly trying his hand at the delicate art of beer blogging*, who not only kept the food train running for the five hours that we were serving, but managed to keep a <a href="http://twitter.com/drinkaweek">live microblog feed</a> of the event running simultaneously for his dozen or so followers. If there's a kitchen assistant who can handle a bigger heap of verbal and physical abuse during an event than Alex can, I'd be shocked (and if you know of one, please let me know as I could probably use them next year).<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;"></div><div style="text-align: center;"><img hspace="3" src="http://www.hifimundo.com/pfiff/polentadave.jpg" vspace="3" /></div>Second in line for kudos is Dave Hauslein, the beer manager for Healthy Spirits, without whose help the wicked variety of beers we had chance to sample would not have materialized (here seen apparently doubling up on his portion of the polenta and sopressata). Dave goes way out on a limb to provide an unmatched service to local weird beer lovers, not only stocking the big name trends of the day, but allowing space for bottles that may sit a little while just waiting to be united with a certain taster with an adventurous palate.<br />
<br />
(And on the topic of thanks, while I know Des is listed as a contributor on the masthead here, that's really just a formality that allows her to pop into any of my published posts and clear up any unbearably unsightly editing errors, and as such it would be completely uncouth for me not to publicly thank her for the enormous contributions, in cooking, hospitality, and the immense clean up effort, that she donated to what is truly my singleminded obsession of hosting this annual affair.)<br />
<br />
Lastly, I would be remiss if I didn't thank our guests for not only taking a chance in coming in blind to our little experiment, but also for doing my job for me in taking <a href="http://www.ericdenman.com/gallery3/index.php/092/08-16-ItalianBeerDinner">some great pictures</a>, bringing along <a href="http://underhill-lounge.flannestad.com/2009/08/15/botw-modernist-punch/">extra delicious beverages</a>, and even lending a hand in the kitchen when our pacing dragged a little. As taxing as these events can be, the guests make them completely worthwhile, placing you in the odd position of being simultaneously exhausted and eager to get the next event scheduled on the calendar, whatever it may be. So, until then...<br />
<br />
* Yes, the <a href="http://beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/258/1790">Peroni</a> made multiple appearances, and yes, it's intended as humorous irony.Robhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02647783153036439028noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10430819.post-11581106413412629782009-08-04T17:19:00.000-07:002009-08-07T16:43:40.442-07:00A new Marin beer destination in the Works<div style="text-align: center;"><img src="http://www.hifimundo.com/pfiff/mvbw_logo_RD.jpg" vspace="3" hspace="3" /></div>As anyone who balances a 9-5 with a handful of obsessive hobbies can attest, it doesn't take much motivation to find oneself daydreaming, entertaining notions of transforming the "fun" part of the workweek into the "business" part, until the original "business" part becomes utterly eclipsed by non-stop, buck-the-system, financially-gratifying "fun". But in terms of brewing beer, while many homebrewers would find the offer to swap their daily grind with a good pair of boots and a mash paddle deliriously enticing, such (often psychoactively enhanced) delusions of crossing the great divide between 5 gallons and 5 barrels are often met headlong by sobering apprehension over reams of legal paperwork, sparse sources for funding, and the uncertainty whether you've got a clear vision of your business and your market beyond getting compliments at your buddy's BBQ when you show up with the free keg. Despite how much homebrewers may adore their hobby, the vast majority of them will never dare try to parlay it into a living.<br /><br />Two young brothers from Mill Valley, however, are taking the plunge with <a href="http://millvalleybeerworks.com/">Beerworks</a>. And "plunge", at this stage of their start up, probably feels like an accurate descriptor to Justin and Tyler Catalana, considering that what they foresaw as one of their biggest hurdles - getting the town council to approve their bid to open up a brewery and on-premises beer bar in a <a href="http://maps.google.com/maps?q=173%20Throckmorton%20Ave%2C%20mill%20valley&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&hl=en&tab=wl">small storefront</a> at the edge of the downtown square - passed by with hardly a blip of resistance. In fact, the first I'd heard about their proposal was the day they brought it to the council meeting, and watched as they proceeded to update their website three times with 12 hours, from "we're heading to the meeting, would love some support", to "council said they'll review", to "council has approved". Thank our cruddy economy for removing the typical barrier of neo-prohibitionist, NIMBY neighbors: In times like this, a town's desperation for tax revenue and desire to add foot traffic to a quiet edge of downtown's retail area trumps all others.<br /><br />When asked about their inspiration, the brothers point to their recent travels in Asia as a turning point in both the nature of their relationship with beer, and also in determining the direction they wanted to take in starting a business. They might even argue that it all hinged around one particular beverage they experienced in Vietnam, the <a href="http://www.thingsasian.com/stories-photos/1188">"morning brew"</a> known as <i>bia hoi</i>. "They see it as nutritional, as a cereal beverage", says Justin. "What breweries are doing around here, especially in California and down the West Coast, is such a small window of what you can do with grains." And one look at their <a href="http://millvalleybeerworks.com/#bottle-list">anticipated bottle list</a> (which they quickly concede is a "work in progress") demonstrates a fondness for otherness, with Danish, Italian, Norwegian and Japanese craft beers, many with strong local flavor, dominating the board.<br /><br />And while they admittedly also want to feature local beers, Tyler going out of his way to mention that one of his favorite recent beers has been Lagunitas' <a href="http://www.brewedforthought.com/?p=1269">Undercover Investigation Shut-Down Ale</a>, while also heaping praise on Berkeley's <a href="http://www.trumer-international.com/trumer-web/trumer-breweries/trumer-breweries.html">Trumer Pils</a>, the modus operandi behind Mill Valley BeerWorks is clear:<br /><br />"We want people to try new things," Justin asserts.<br /><br />Tyler concurs, ""We're trying to set up a business model where people aren't coming to us for consistency." And certainly, showing people the extent of what's possible in beermaking, keeping things fresh and somewhat unexpected, appears to be a core concept of their vision. They talk in terms of art galleries and theaters when referring to what they plan to offer their community, places one goes for pleasure without having a concrete idea of what the end experience will entail. It's a artful move that dissipates one of the cornerstones of Big Brewing, wherein the promise to the consumer is the unwavering assuredness that all preconceived notions will be fulfilled the same way, unvaryingly, endlessly.<br /><br />"We're going to have a heavy emphasis on outside beers, which is really nice because it means we can be more experimental with the beer that we're brewing, as we're not relying solely on the sales of our own beers." It's obviously attractive to any brewer, being given the space to fiddle around with recipes without fearing the repercussions of not churning out a predictable product. As Justin says, "We want it to be a sort of studio for us. We'll probably have a beer or two that we always have on tap, but other than that..."<br /><br />Tyler interjects, "We want to be experimental, but not in a way that's just for experimental's sake." I wondered if their enthusiasm to stretch themselves so thin across the plane of what's possible in brewing would dilute their brand, but it's clear that they both see it the opposite way, as a trademark value of their brewing. As Tyler sums it up, "Something for me, a connection between each thing we brew, beers that have some sort of - and I don't want to say we just want to brew <i>uncommon</i> beers - but like that Vietnamese beer, making people aware of these things out there that are really unique."<br /><br />They then relay the story of recently asking a local storeowner for their impression of one of the beers they were selling, Baladin's Nora, and being told that while the storeowner enjoyed it, he sternly assured them it technically wasn't a beer. "People can have a narrow view here about what beer is. And people’s bad experiences with fruit beers, when they’ve never had a good kriek? We want to show people what’s out there."<br /><br />In looking for a word that sums up an admittedly ambitious beverage-making wishlist that included side discussions about such things as Russian <a href="http://yulinkacooks.blogspot.com/2006/08/kvass-rye-bread-beer.html">rye bread beer</a>, African-inspired beers fermented with <a href="http://www-rcf.usc.edu/%7Eforsburg/"><i>Schizosaccharomyces pombe</i></a>, and <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2008/nov/10/health/he-nutrition10">kombucha</a>, "unique" seems fairly apt. Which is not to say that they want to be entirely defined by being obtuse, but rather as they put it, by taking the chance in "re-popularizing beers that other breweries might not be doing because their brewing systems can't."<br /><br /><blockquote>"We both like cooking, and it's been a large part of our upbringing, being part Sicilian, and knowing the way cooking works definitely affects our brewing. There's thought behind it, you can change the process, knowing <i>why </i>things are doing <i>what </i>they're doing."</blockquote><br />And their desire to have the flexibility to produce a broad spectrum of beers, from sessionable cask ales to heady eisbocks, is driving the size and design of their brewing system (not to mention designing it to share a space just a hair over 1,100 square feet). So rather than it being a hindrance, their experience with tinkering in the homebrewing realm will serve them well, as the 3-barrel system that's being designed for them will be in essence a blown-up homebrewing rig, capable of being switched around and reconfigured to handle a wide variety of mashing and fermentation techniques. They anticipate that those beers will be delivered via ten taps alongside a few handpumps, with the odd bottle conditioned beer coming out of the cellar now and then. And while they won't be serving food, they're eager to connect with <a href="http://www.smallshed.com/">local businesses</a> in the same way City Beer and Toronado have, welcoming people to bring in food to enjoy with their drink.<br /><br />And connecting with local businesses, particularly in the community of Mill Valley, seems like an essential goal of these two locals. "I like Mill Valley," Tyler says, "and there’s a lot that’s cool about Mill Valley." When I comment on how my brief habituation in the town that we lovingly referred to as Ewok Village was marked by a nightlife that shut down around eight o'clock, he reminds me that I probably wasn't the only one wishing there was something more up my alley (literally) to occupy my time with. "There's a lot of people in the woodwork who regret having to go into the City every Friday or to just stay at home."<br /><br />Despite the apparent ease that they had in getting the town's approval, Tyler admits, "It was hard convincing the town that we're not going to be just a rowdy bar, because we have this emphasis on beer. But we don't want to promote the status quo of current American beer culture, we want to help in changing that, to enjoying beer, versus beer as an auxiliary to various activities." And one of the ways they intend on changing public perceptions of beer is through transparency and inclusion, hosting monthly brewing classes, setting up a few homebrew kits so that people can brew their own beers while the brothers brew adjacently on their system.<br /><br />As if to dispel any hovering concerns about being accessible, Tyler adds, "We want to have some very cheap beers, like a $2 pint all the time. You're always skating a weird line, people thinking it's 'cheap' because of the price, but it's literally so cheap for us to make it, the mark-up just seems unfair. But for me, when I go to the place where they make the product, I expect the product to be cheaper." They talk about how they ensured their licenses would allow people to bring their kids in, how they intend on always having a low alcohol session beer on tap for folks who're just looking to relax with their laptop, and how they picture the interior being run with communal tables that invite the friendly, sociable attitude that they are fond of in places they themselves frequent.<br /><br />When asked for the single biggest piece of advice they would share with any other would be entrepreneurs, the reply comes swiftly: "Find your money first." While they do have some major investors lined up, they were blindsided by how quickly they got approval to open shop, and admit that they had expected to use the time waiting for the council's approval to secure their funding. They're also in the process of developing a way for small investors to help get them off the ground. When asked about the "adopt a bottle" section of their website, Justin explains, "What we want to do is be able to people the chance to buy a bottle for $5,000, and that will pay back at a certain percent over three years." While they're currently hammering out the details with their lawyer (they won't be actual "shares" of the company, nor will it be open to buyers outside of California), they're hoping it will provide some help on a local level, and increase the buy-in from the community.<br /><br />Other than the financial hurdle, though, as far as a pair of enterprising homebrewers go, these two bring some unique experience to the table that may give them edge they need to be truly successful. Tyler's experience in architecture has paid off not only in drafting plans, but also in handling the requisite presentations and being mentally prepared for all the bureaucracy. "There is lots of paperwork," he concurs, "which is intimidating, but not impossible. All the information you'll ever need is on the internet."<br /><br />Justin points out that while his dad is a contractor, the two brothers grew up in a very "hands-on" environment, a quality they suggest is one of their strong points. Knowing how to do metal fabrication, electrical engineering, and, as he puts it, "being comfortable manipulating things in the physical realm" all contribute to what they envision as being successful in building up their own brewery and bar from scratch. It certainly doesn't hurt that he also studied fermentation science and spent some time at Chris White's <a href="http://www.whitelabs.com/">yeast lab</a> in San Diego.<br /><br />They recognize it's an uphill battle, but one that they appear to be masochistically enjoying, recognizing that the act of being good beer ambassadors has begun far before they open their doors, as they try to explain to investors why they decided not to get licensed to sell wine ("What are the women going to drink?") and why don't intend on being open past 10:00 p.m. They're clearly taking pleasure out of dispelling the myths of what enjoying good beer responsibly is all about, and hopefully that positive attitude will serve them well as they encounter the unforeseen but inevitable impediments down the road.<br /><br />"And don't forget to put in there that we're looking for money," a smiling Tyler reminds me. It's a running theme. "While we've been cautious at every step, we've been lucky." With the big obstacles seemingly melting away (the town's approval, a rental space with an agreeable landlord), and brimming with creative ideas, it looks like the only thing that could stop them from being Marin's newest brewery is if the dollars dry up. Otherwise, it looks like all signs are pointing to us having a unique new place to savor a thoughtfully handcrafted beer amongst the redwoods.Robhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02647783153036439028noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10430819.post-78922176179824124372009-08-03T11:32:00.000-07:002009-08-03T11:32:46.460-07:00Fermentation Friday wrap up - CTRL+C<div style="text-align: center;"><img hspace="3" src="http://www.hifimundo.com/pfiff/hoprye.jpg" vspac="3" /></div><br />
Thanks to all the folks who showed up on Friday to pitch their tales of <a href="http://www.hifimundo.com/public/blog/2009/07/fermentation-friday-sincerest-form-of.html">beer forgery</a>, counterfeit and deceit. Feel free to add plagiarism to your list of vices as you thieve from the collection of recipes this month's roundup has yielded:<br />
<br />
M. Randolph at <a href="http://justanotherboozeblog.blogspot.com/">Just Another Booze Blog</a> uses the "we ain't no stinkin' cover band" analogy to explain why cloning beers isn't part of his regular routine, with the exception of emulating via tribute the <a href="http://justanotherboozeblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/ferm-friday-cloning.html">cask beers of Britain</a>.<br />
<br />
John at <a href="http://www.brew-dudes.com/">Brew Dudes</a> digs out two copycat recipes in his repertoire <a href="http://www.brew-dudes.com/homebrewing-clone-recipes/536">from opposite ends of the color field</a> that he's looking for some feedback on. <br />
<br />
Jason at <a href="http://perfectbeer.blogspot.com/">Brewing the perfect beer</a> ponies up two recipes, one garnered the easy way (thanks to the good folks at Brew Your Own and tips from the brewer in question) and one the hard way: <a href="http://perfectbeer.blogspot.com/2009/07/fermentation-friday-homebrew-clones.html">trial and error</a>.<br />
<br />
Jimmy at <a href="http://hopwild.com/">HopWild</a> told of his odyssey of mocking up his version of a beer that he's never had, taking <a href="http://hopwild.com/2009/07/31/fermentation-friday-copycat-recipes/">matters into his own hands</a> when tiring of waiting for a wildly popular beer to become available in his neck of the woods.<br />
<br />
Jake at <a href="http://www.northerntable.com/">Northern Table</a> took this month's topic as an opportunity to do something new, and after having up to this point only brewed out of inspired by, but not in mimicry of commercially available beers, is going to bang out a version of one of <a href="http://www.northerntable.com/?p=398">his favorite and difficult to acquire beers</a>. <br />
<br />
Matt at <a href="http://aworldofbrews.blogspot.com/">A World of Brews</a> debates the merit of trying to copy what one can readily get commercially, opting instead for a <a href="http://aworldofbrews.blogspot.com/2009/07/july-fermentation-friday-copycat-clone.html">Frankenstein approach</a> of extracting particular aspects of different beers he likes and recombining them in his own creative way. <i>(Of course, he does eventually admit he'd like to do a 120 Minute IPA clone at some point, so I'll just point him <a href="http://homebrewchef.com/120minuteIPArecipe.html">in this direction</a> and see what he comes up with.)</i><br />
<br />
Thanks again to all who played along this month. I'm unclear as to who (if anyone!) is hosting for August, so if you're interested, head on over to <a href="http://beerbits2.blogspot.com/">Beer Bits 2</a> and drop Adam, our fearless Fermentation Friday founder, a quick note.Robhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02647783153036439028noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10430819.post-64249846497202006172009-07-31T16:36:00.000-07:002009-07-31T16:36:15.358-07:00Fermentation Friday - The sincerest form of flattery<div style="text-align: center;"><img hspace="3" src="http://www.hifimundo.com/pfiff/noraclone.jpg" vspace="3" /></div><div style="text-align: left;">While one as hobby-obsessive as myself never requires a special occasion to haul out the brewing equipment, there's a definite soul-satisfying aspect to crafting beers of a purely commemorative nature. Like in the poetic alchemy I discussed briefly <a href="http://www.hifimundo.com/public/blog/2009/07/reminders-italian-modernists.html">the other day</a>, imbuing a recipe with a sense of story, an essence of heart, makes for a uniquely satisfying experience. Over the years as we've experimented, there's occurred a natural progression away from devising beers in accordance to a sense of style or the urge to imitate, but rather to celebrate something, whether it's the aroma of <a href="http://www.hifimundo.com/public/blog/2008/08/fermentation-friday-best-is-yet-to-come.html">lavender plants</a> being scorched by the last gasp of summer's heat, or the <a href="http://www.hifimundo.com/public/blog/2008/08/session-18-but-once-year.html">dark candied fruit</a> and old world spices of the holiday season, or the austere mood that accompanies the <a href="http://www.hifimundo.com/public/blog/2006/09/port-er.html">deeply grounding</a>, fathomless life change of bringing one's first child into the world. And as is to be expected, as we've deviated from the conventional, the resulting beers have gotten odder - but they're <i>personally </i>odd, <i>our </i>odd, and in that was have become more homogeneous over time.</div><br />
It's oddly ironic, then, that when formulating my customary annual beer for my beloved this year, upon asking what she'd like to have ready to pour on her birthday, I was, rather than being asked to capture the smell of the color purple in a malty bock or to synthesize the guitar music of <a href="http://hypem.com/#/track/371819">Oscar Aleman</a> into a crisp pilsner or distill the serenity one feels when dipping your toes into a completely still lake, only to see the tracing ripples distort the passing shadow of an eagle flying closely overhead into a balanced IPA, instead challenged to simply recreate the flavors of a commercially available beer.<br />
<br />
Even more ironic, the beer in question is brewed as a tribute to <i>that</i> brewer's beloved, and is named in her honor: <a href="http://www.birreria.com/home.html">Birreria Le Baladin</a> brewmaster Teo Musso's wife <a href="http://www.hifimundo.com/public/blog/2008/06/1016-words.html">Nora</a>. But who am I to deny a request that's simultaneously a birthday wish and a test of my brewing prowess? That brings us to this month's installment of <a href="http://www.hifimundo.com/public/blog/2009/07/announcing-julys-copycat-stole-rat-put.html">Fermentation Friday</a>, wherein I cast aside all aspersions of originality and novelty, and dive in to completely ripping off the most iconic Italian brewer of the modern age. <br />
<br />
Nora is by all accounts an exquisite beer, a fluffy, semisweet, creamy golden ale that exudes a copious amount of floral and spicy perfume, one completely bereft of any hop presence and yet etched throughout with mysterious layers of flavor that slowly reveal themselves as you go deeper into the glass. Hearkening back to its namesake's Algerian roots, the beer is drawn with a distinctively Egyptian flair. Besides incorporating an ingredient known to most people as a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myrrh#Religious_context">gift of the Magi</a> (or conversely, as a <a href="http://www.tomsofmaine.com/products/product-detail.aspx?id=34&s3=MzF8N3wzNnw0N3wzNHwzMnwzM3wzOXwzOHwzNXwxMHwzMHwyOXw1MQ==">toothpaste</a> ingredient), its grain bill includes <a href="http://www.kamut.com/">kamut</a>, an Egyptian khorasan cereal grain thoroughly unfit for brewing with, which was at one time believed to be a wheat of the lineage from the ancient Fertile Crescent. And in addition to its specialty ingredients, the core beer is designed to be served as an accompaniment to foods spiced in a <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/alanood/2206175276/">North African manner</a>.<br />
<br />
Granted, coming from a guy who puts <a href="http://www.beeralewhatever.com/lebaladin.html">headphones on his fermentation tanks</a> so that the yeast have music to enjoy while they work, this isn't even close to a "weird" beer. But it's an immensely personal one, one that succeeds in his quest: <i>"A new taste is like a new way of communicating with people. My beers try to communicate new flavours and aromas to people."</i> And when it came to sit down and draw up the plans for my version, it became painfully obvious that I was pleasantly in over my head, that the mere act of trying to recreate one of Musso's beers I was being forced to sketch the recipe a little like him as well, a position that was very freeing, joyful, creative, and bound to engender a beer poised to "communicate" something, hopefully something pleasant.<br />
<br />
While our version shares many of the hallmarks of (and thanks to the myrrh*, bears a striking first impression resemblance to) the original Nora, it's decidedly stronger (over 8% versus the original 6.8%). The agave worked to help keep the body nice and light, along with adding a bit of floral sweetness. The grape juice also helped cut back the density that I feared the wheat and kamut would be providing, while additionally adding a little bit of vinous tang and "mystery fruit" aroma that goes nicely with lychee, tropical fruit esters that the Belgian ale yeast can contribute. And on top of all that, despite my initial intentions, the amount of kamut was cut back to a serviceable but inconspicuous degree, mostly out of fears that my stovetop cereal cooking technique wasn't cut out for providing a more generous portion of fermentables in the mash.<br />
<br />
Here's how it ended up:<br />
<br />
6 lbs Pilsner malt extract<br />
2 lbs Belgian Pilsner malt <br />
2 lbs white wheat <br />
1 lb flaked kamut<br />
1 lb Crystal 15L<br />
1 lb CaraFoam <br />
1 lb light agave nectar<br />
1 lb Sauvignon Blanc grape juice concentrate<br />
<br />
1 oz East Kent Goldings for 60 minutes<br />
<br />
WLP550 White Labs Belgian Ale Yeast<br />
<br />
Place kamut in small pot with just enough water to cover, and bring to a boil. Lower heat and simmer, stirring often and adding water occasionally, until it resembles a thick porridge, around 10 minutes. Add to steeping grains. Steep grains for 50 minutes at 149° F. Boil for 60 minutes, adding liquid fermentables in kettle during last 15 minutes. Once vigorous fermentation has subsided, add small amount of tincture of Curacao orange, ginger, and myrrh, gradually increasing bi-weekly over the course of 6 weeks until balance is achieved. Carbonate to about 3 volumes. Find yourself some <a href="http://www.yelp.com/biz/truly-mediterranean-san-francisco">shawerma</a> and enjoy.<br />
<br />
* Honestly, if you're thinking about brewing a beer with ingredients like kamut, agave and myrhh, and want to pick them all up at the same time along with a sixer of <a href="http://www.sierranevada.com/beers/torpedo.html">Torpedo</a> you could do worse than living in a place like <a href="http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/07/30/NSMH18TIAM.DTL&type=travel">Fairfax</a>.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">This month, Pfiff! has the privilege of hosting Fermentation Friday, a monthly blogging carnival gathered around the topic of homebrewing, originated by </span><a href="http://beerbits2.blogspot.com/" style="font-style: italic;">Beer Bits 2</a><span style="font-style: italic;">. If you'd care to participate, either post a comment here or send me an email, and I'll include your entry in the roundup that we'll be posting over the weekend.</span>Robhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02647783153036439028noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10430819.post-9871953449960616682009-07-29T13:53:00.000-07:002009-07-29T13:53:13.835-07:00Reminders - Italian Modernists & Fermentation Friday<div style="text-align: center;"><img hspace="3" src="http://www.hifimundo.com/pfiff/verdi.jpg" vspace="3" /></div>When Jay Brooks went to witness Italian brewer Agostino Arioli brew a batch of La Fleurette with Vinnie Cilurzo and the Russian River Brewing team in Santa Rosa, he summed up the origin of this uniquely peculiar beer <a href="http://brookstonbeerbulletin.com/fleurette-part-1/">quite nicely</a>:<br />
<blockquote><i>How Agostino’s <i>La Fleurette</i> came about is a romantic tale. Seven years ago, he met a girl and fell in love. Awash with the emotions of new love, he set out to create something that would be “a celebration beer of personal happiness.” So he started experimenting and after a year of trial and error was satisfied with the beer and released it commercially as <i>La Fleurette</i>. To the kettle he adds turbinado raw sugar and orange blossom honey, but he also adds black pepper because, as Agostino puts it, “love is also spicy.” At the end of the boil he dry hops, or rather dry-flowers, the beer with both roses and violets.</i></blockquote>This is precisely the vein of artistic spirit running through the current generation of Italian brewers that inspired us to want to host an event celebrating their individuality. Whereas it's arguable that American craft brewing boom was borne of a Wild West approach to re-imagining the ales of the British Isles, there doesn't appear (beyond the slightest Belgian whiff) to be a similar obvious precedent for what the Italians are doing right now. That's not to say that their approach is recklessly improvised: Despite an apparent lack of stylistic benchmarks, the Italian beers we're seeing come stateside have poetic roots, such as beers made with carob and chestnut in memory of the scarcity of food and sweets during World War II, beers modeled after the brewers' lovers, and recipes designed to evoke memories of the exotic foods the brewer had experienced in travels to India and Nepal. Combine that level of soul with with oddball techniques (only adding hops in the last 10 minutes of the boil?), odder ingredients (farro? wormwood? <i>myrrh?</i>) and the Italians' much romanticized love for food, and you have something truly unique emerging out of an area that has never been (and most likely never will be) known for its beer.<br />
<br />
That's a rather lengthy way of reminding you that if you're in the SF Bay Area and want to try some of these exceptional creations at a centrally-located, public transit-friendly, private venue alongside some equally tasty food with a lively group of beer enthusiasts, you're in luck, as we've still got a handful of seats free for our dinner on Saturday, August 15. There's more information at the original post <a href="http://www.hifimundo.com/public/blog/2009/07/introducing-second-annual-pfiff-beer.html">here</a>.<br />
<br />
On a similar topic, as our <a href="http://beerbits2.blogspot.com/2008/04/homebrew-blogging-day.html">Fermentation Friday</a> post will hinge on an inimitably Italian beer, let this also serve as a reminder that we're proudly hosting June's edition this Friday, so if you're a homebrewing blogger or a blogging homebrewer, you owe it to yourself to read the <a href="http://www.hifimundo.com/public/blog/2009/07/announcing-julys-copycat-stole-rat-put.html">original announcement</a> and get ready to join us on the 31st.Robhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02647783153036439028noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10430819.post-20668962726178530602009-07-27T12:06:00.000-07:002009-07-27T12:06:35.663-07:00Little update from Big Sky<div style="text-align: center;"><img hspace="3" src="http://www.hifimundo.com/pfiff/freesacks.jpg" vspace="3" /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>the land of ubiquitous carved bear sculptures and no recycling </i></div>The biggest news from our recent foray into the land of shining mountains actually came as a rumor before we'd even gotten on the plane, that Flathead Lake Brewing, a topic of minor <a href="http://www.hifimundo.com/public/blog/2009/07/session-29-return-to-flathead-lake.html">previous discussion here</a>, had shuttered its doors for good, the owner having set off for presumably greener pastures, rumored to be a new venture in the sprawling metropolis of <a href="http://www.cityofcolumbiafalls.com/city/">Columbia Falls</a>. It was a tale that proved true, as it turns out we passed the closed doors a mere ten days after they'd ceased operations, a tale made even sadder as I was regaled with a story (one filled with disgusted and puckering facial expressions) from my father-in-law about how they'd attempted to foist some new, weirdly sour, vinegary concoction on him, one he deemed so wretched, he sent it back, professing to me that if that's what they thought good beer was, he wasn't surprised they'd closed down. From the sounds of it, the Flanders brewing techniques they'd started experimenting with last year, starting with a pretty delightful <i>oud bruin</i>, had been well in the works, but we'll apparently be waiting a while longer before wild ales establish themselves in the <a href="http://www.travellady.com/Issues/Holding/MontanaTheWildandNotSoWildWest.htm">Wild West</a>.<br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><img hspace="3" src="http://www.hifimundo.com/pfiff/double%20haul.jpg" vspace="3" /><br />
<i>Tons of great, un-recyclable canned craft beer in Montana</i></div>On the more positive side, though, was an unexpected proliferation of locally brewed beers being stocked in grocery stores, more often than not in cans, laying claim to the treasured square footage that had not long before been the sole domain of the majors. Even <a href="http://www.glacierbrewing.com/products.html">Glacier</a> has gotten on the bottling bandwagon (sadly lacking their much touted IPA), alongside the newly-in-cans Big Sky heavyweight Moose Drool, <a href="http://www.visitmt.com/categories/moreinfo.asp?IDRRecordID=9750&siteid=1">Bayern</a>, <a href="http://www.harvestmoonbrew.com/?p=why_belt">Harvest Moon</a>, and the standout new favorite, <a href="http://kettlehouse.com/">Kettlehouse</a> IPA and scotch ale, both packaged in lovely pint cans. <br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><img hspace="3" src="http://www.hifimundo.com/pfiff/glacierpils.jpg" vspace="3" /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>Because some occasions demand an icy pilsner</i><br />
<i></i></div>Seeing a resurgence of locally crafted beers in an area that has long been lacking, despite the area having an <a href="http://www.beerhistory.com/gallery/holdings/armstrong25.shtml">agricultural history</a> closely tied to the <a href="http://grizzlygrowler.com/?p=252">brewing industry</a>, is a heartening development, and as our growler-filling visits to Glacier proved, these breweries aren't just riding on the coattails of lakeside tourism to pay their bills, with the taproom consistently hosting a roundtable of regulars, either fresh off their bikes for a pint and a glimpse of the Tour, or catching up on local gossip while getting their cooler of growlers filled for the back of their pickup.<br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><img hspace="3" src="http://www.hifimundo.com/pfiff/tamarackbarrels.jpg" vspace="" /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>Oh whiskey barrels, what secrets do you hold?</i></div>A final stop worth noting was this newer addition to the Flathead brewing community, Lakeside's Tamarack Brewing company, a seriously impressive two year-old brewpub situated creekside at the base of the Blacktail Mountain ski area, housed in a building whose architecture is a twisted amalgamation of alpine ski lodge and urban warehouse brewery aesthetic. And while we were off-season for the <a href="http://www.tamarackbrewing.com/who-needs-one.php">"Old 'Stache"</a> whiskey barrel aged porter, their year round stout was an acceptable consolation prize, giving us a reason to add yet another bottle to our growing Montana growler collection.Robhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02647783153036439028noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10430819.post-76269370570583281982009-07-08T14:28:00.000-07:002009-07-08T14:28:39.788-07:00Introducing the second annual Pfiff! beer and food tasting - The Italian Modernists<div style="text-align: center;"><img hspace="3" src="http://www.hifimundo.com/pfiff/superbaladin.jpg" vspace="3" /></div>It was last August when we found ourselves sitting around the patio table, weighed down in our seats by the twin burdens of <a href="http://www.hifimundo.com/public/blog/2008/08/and-on-seventh-day-there-was-brett.html">good food and good drink</a>, when the topic of conversation turned to what unifying themes we could explore in subsequent gatherings. But while there's no end to which we enjoy our fill of barrel-aged imperial thises and thats and peculiarly spiced holiday ales and unclassifiable Belgian nanobrewery miscellany, none of the ideas bandied about managed to spark the dim light of inspiration we needed. It just so happens that we're lucky to exist in a time and place where stylistic panel tastings aren't terribly difficult to come by, thanks to some pretty fine watering holes and the odd renegade social group. Putting on a tasting for a tasting's sake seemed arbitrary and redundant. Not to mention, as it turned out, the greatest pleasure we gleaned from the event came from the challenge of pairing each beer with foods that presented them in their best light, seeing as we were pouring some that were potentially challenging to unaccustomed taste buds. It was obvious that whatever guiding principle the next tasting would be focused upon, the food would play an important, if not <i>more </i>elevated role.<br />
<br />
But it wasn't more than a few months after we'd closed the books on that day's affairs that the next subject we'd be attracted to became <a href="http://www.hifimundo.com/public/blog/2008/11/brew-like-mook.html">more apparent</a>. If there's one thing that was made terribly clear at <a href="http://www.hifimundo.com/public/blog/2008/09/slow-beer-nation.html">Slow Food Nation</a>, it's that beer is taken very seriously as a part of its ethos. Its interesting to note, though, that despite the attention it lavishes on finely crafted beer, the Slow Food movement has its origins in the loosely populated agricultural heart of Piemonte, an area dominated by wine grapes within a country that's perhaps only second to France in having globally established wine as the cultivated palate's beverage of choice, particularly in consideration when pairing with fine foods. But things appear to be changing. Where the Slow movement has taken root, brewers with similar philosophies are beginning to flourish. In a place that's devoted to celebrating their regional specialties, beers are being designed with ingredients true to their own <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ark_of_Taste">"Ark of Taste"</a>, and envisioned in terms of being enjoyed in tandem with the cuisine as an equal partner in the gustatory experience. Hence this year's event: <b>The Italian Modernists</b>.<br />
<br />
Like last year, the event will take place in San Francisco, and will be a small, informal affair with the goal of tasting a wide variety of rare beers alongside some tasty nibbles. Festivities will take place on <b>Saturday, August 15, at 3:00 p.m. </b>Seats for this year's dinner are $45. For questions, or to reserve your place at the table, you can either email me at <img align="absbottom" src="http://www.hifimundo.com/pfiff/email_add.jpg" /> or leave a comment on this post with information about how I can get back in touch (and as I'm generally able to reply to emails within the day, if you haven't heard back from me, it's a good sign your message has been relegated to my junk mail folder, in which case you might want to tap me a second time). I'm also happy to announce that <a href="http://healthy-spirits.blogspot.com/">Healthy Spirits</a> will be officially providing all of our beers this year, which helps guarantee you've got a local resource to stock up on any of the beers we'll be pouring, and we'll have the pleasure of their beer manager, Dave Hauslein, also in attendance. If last year was any indication, it'll be a fun, long afternoon of relaxed tasting, and we hope to see some new faces at this one!Robhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02647783153036439028noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10430819.post-88266161148067640922009-07-07T22:11:00.000-07:002009-07-07T22:16:12.886-07:00Announcing July's copycat stole a rat put it in her Sunday hat Fermentation Friday<div style="text-align: center;"><img src="http://www.hifimundo.com/pfiff/oldrasxii.jpg" vspace="3" hspace="3" /><br /><i>And for my next trick...</i></div><br />As ruthless experimenters, we're loathe to ever admit attempting to clone anything familiar in our brewing endeavors, instead opting to expend most of our efforts on doing something wholly other, whipping to life concoctions of pure imagination, beat out of thin air, pulled from the dark edges of existence over the precipice of possibility into the weird and funny world of the real. Individual, unique, individually unique, singular creations that pay sole allegiance to the imaginations of their creators. But damn, if there aren't some existing beers for which we wouldn't kill to know the alchemical code, turning cheap bunches of slightly rotted grains into bucket after delicious bucket of perfectly crafted copycat elixir. And that's the topic of this month's <a href="http://beerbits2.blogspot.com/2008/04/homebrew-blogging-day.html">Fermentation Friday</a>, which we at <i>Pfiff!</i> have the pleasure of hosting this month: <b>Homebrewed doppelgangers</b>. What beers have you attempted to duplicate in your own homes, or which ones have you always wanted to reproduce, but have been wary of attempting? Here's a chance to not only post some recipes for feedback (or secondary counterfeiting) but also a chance to maybe nail the recipe you've always hoped to figure out, but haven't had luck in getting quite right. Got a spot-on Pliny that shames the <a href="http://www3.signonsandiego.com/stories/2009/may/06/lz1c06beer183535-pint-sized-pour/?uniontrib">LongShot version</a>? Can't quite pin down that elusive whatsit character in your wannabe Orval? Submit your post on Friday, July 31, and either comment with a link here on this post or send an email to <img src="http://www.hifimundo.com/pfiff/email_add.jpg" align="absbottom" /> in order for me to include your submission in the round-up. Who knows? You may get the feedback you've been looking for to finally nail down that dead ringer recipe for <a href="http://draft.blogger.com/%20%3Cimg%20align=%22absbottom%22%20src=%22http://www.hifimundo.com/pfiff/email_add.jpg%22%20/%3E">Stroh's</a> that you've been honing for the past 10 years...Robhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02647783153036439028noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10430819.post-9081789934378573002009-07-03T10:51:00.000-07:002009-07-03T10:52:31.019-07:00The Session #29 - Return to Flathead Lake<div style="text-align: center;"><img hspace="3" src="http://www.hifimundo.com/pfiff/ddgriz_sm.jpg" vspace="3" /></div>Recently, this comment appeared on <a href="http://www.hifimundo.com/public/blog/2008/05/working-through-pain.html">a post</a> that I published last year:<br />
<blockquote><i>Just saw your comment on working through the pain from last year...good comments and helpful hints, except the Flathead Lake Brewing comment "not all craft beer is brewed equal"...this is true, but not in the way you presented it: Flathead Lake Brewing has won every award for brewing in the state, beating out all the big guys, and has actually brought home two World Beer Cup awards, which are the most prestigious awards in brewing. As far as "we've run out of beer, again"...well that's just crap, as an employee there, we have never "run out of beer", we have just run low because we sell so much of it to local accounts...so yes, not all craft beer is brewed equal...if it was, Glacier Brewing, Kettlehouse, and some of the other beers you mentioned would be winning international awards and running low on beer as well...<br />
Anyhow, my two cents...keep up the good work...just keep it accurate. :) Cheers!!! - Info</i></blockquote>To which I replied with this:<br />
<blockquote><i>Info (if that is your real name!), I appreciate getting feedback from employees at breweries I've mentioned, and apologize if it seemed I was ragging unfairly on Flathead. My comment about them running out of beer stems from two separate visits I made back in the summer of 2007, when I was refused growler service because as the person working stated, they were "running out of beer". Without speculating further on what was going on at Flathead back in '07, I will say this: A return visit this past summer showed a *very* different brewery, one that had on tap a number of great beers, some fun experiments in the works, and absolutely no problem filling up a number of growlers for me with some excellent sustenance with which to spend my evening staring at the lake. I apologize for not putting that positive update on this post earlier.</i></blockquote>The truth of the matter is, you're put at a serious disadvantage (and I'd be curious to hear what <a href="http://appellationbeer.com/">Stan</a> has to say on this) whenever you try to establish an informed opinion about anything, not least of which a brewery, based off brief, singular visits.What's been said about first impressions often haunts the words of blogs (and Info, that's "blog" as in "web log", not to be confused with a travel guide, nor something that anybody reads anyway), capturing quick observations, often read divorced from the greater timeline, one that can frequently be misconstrued as concrete, permanent, final judgments. Unfortunately, though, most blogs, this one included, oftentimes neglect to amend their stance on particular experiences regardless of a change of heart on a subsequent visit. Something tells me if I'd be more proactive in expressing my pleasant return to Flathead last summer, Info wouldn't have felt need to comment in such a way that seems a little disparaging to the other local breweries in his/her community.<br />
<br />
This month's <a href="http://beerbybart.com/2009/06/04/announcing-session-29-will-travel-for-beer/">Session</a> pertains to tips and strategies on the road of beer travel. Lesson learned? Simply, don't be shy about voicing your impressions, but alternately, be prepared to reevaluate those impressions after repeat visits. And <i>that</i> said, be willing to revisit places that may have disappointed the first time around, because there's really nothing more rewarding than being proven wrong. Ultimately, I'm certainly looking forward to revisiting <a href="http://www.flatheadlakebrewing.com/">Flathead Lake Brewing</a> again this summer (if only to fill another growler with that Flanders brown of theirs) to see what fresh surprises they have in store. This time: more pictures, more notes, and a promise to make good on updating our impressions. I'll hunt out for Info, too, if just to apologize in person.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://appellationbeer.com/blog/time-for-a-beer-blogging-day/" style="font-style: italic;">The Session </a><span style="font-style: italic;">is a blog carnival originated by Stan Hieronymus at </span><a href="http://appellationbeer.com/blog/" style="font-style: italic;">Appellation Beer</a>.<span style="font-style: italic;"> This month's party is being hosted by Gail and Steve of <a href="http://beerbybart.com/">Beer by Bart</a>. For a summary of the Sessions thus far, </span><span style="font-style: italic;">check out <a href="http://www.brookstonbeerbulletin.com/the-sessions/">Brookston's handy guide</a></span>. <i>You can also follow folks' entries on twitter by searching for posts marked with the #thesession hashtag.</i>Robhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02647783153036439028noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10430819.post-62376381706869196922009-06-26T13:57:00.000-07:002009-06-26T14:01:26.172-07:00Fermentation Friday - Riding the heat wave<div style="text-align: center;"><img hspace="3" src="http://www.hifimundo.com/pfiff/tootnangelinaroosting.jpg" vspace="3" /><br />
<i>The requisite farmhouse accouterments</i></div><blockquote>Night in Day<br />
<br />
The night never wants to end, to give itself over<br />
to light. So it traps itself in things: obsidian, crows.<br />
Even on summer solstice, the day of light's great<br />
triumph, where fields of sunflowers guzzle in the sun--<br />
we break open the watermelon and spit out<br />
black seeds, bits of night glistening on the grass.<br />
<blockquote>-Joseph Stroud</blockquote></blockquote>With the longest day of the year having just past, the inevitable severe weather alerts warning of impending heat waves have begun to crop up. After an abysmally dry year, the hills are already crackling with dry brush, the deer eerily shedding their typically protective secrecy of their young fawns, bringing the whole family out from under cover in pursuit of green food and fresh water. It's an atmosphere that summons the chef away from the fire of the kitchen, preferring instead to let the heat of cooking to dissipate and mingle with the vapors of evaporate waving off freshly watered plants and heady trimmed grass. To my mind, the activity that aligns best alongside the bbq, the requisite lidded yellowjacket-proof <a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/ibP9cQXAo7AWAKSdKa4ecA"><i>bierstein</i></a>, and the passive deep tissue massage of mellow, warm humidity, is the act of brewing, throwing yet another funnel of steamy aroma into the cloudless sky.<br />
<br />
Ironic, then, isn't it, that while doing a bit of brewing makes for the perfect mid-summer's daydream, those same exceedingly high temperatures can easily spell doom for most beers during the subsequent fermentation stage, what with the yeasts most commonly employed for brewing ales preferring a summer in San Francisco's seemingly static sixty-something degrees. But we don't live in San Francisco anymore, and while yeast character in some brewing styles tend to be more subdued by the use of cooler temperatures, particularly those that employ the use of lager yeasts and long periods of cold storage, yeast itself can actually behave like a secret ingredient in many specialty styles, not the least being <a href="http://www.hifimundo.com/public/blog/2005/06/saison-season.html">saison</a>, a beer that happens to often employ a yeast that thrives at <a href="http://www.brewingkb.com/homebrewing/Fermentation-Temperature-Of-Wyeast-3726-Farmhouse-Ale-Yeast-1593.html">stunningly high temperatures</a>. And with the mercury here hovering in the mid-eighties with the promise of high nineties in the near future, it's the perfect time to let nature take its course, and prepare to get your farmhouse funk on by brewing something where the yeast will truly benefit from being cooked, yielding that otherwise elusive level of orchard fruit, pepper spice, and lingering dryness that helps define how we currently think of saison.<br />
<br />
Quite simply put, our response to <a href="http://www.brew-dudes.com/fermentation-friday-june-2009/504">this month's Fermentation Friday topic</a> could be summed up, oddly, thusly:<br />
<br />
Q: "How do you beat the summer heat?"<br />
A: "Why beat it when you can join it?"<br />
<br />
Brewed as the third installment in the increasingly ludicrously named <a href="http://www.aleuminati.com/forum/topics/aleumination-batch-3">Aleumination</a> series, a sort of online collaborative open source brewing experiment, the recipe below <i>[this is our version, mind you, and should in no way implicate the other homebrewers involved or imply anything about their talents at composing recipes]</i> is a unwieldy weird beast, one that I'm not entirely promoting you all rush out to replicate. But for all intensive purposes (ie, that of being imbibed to fend off dehydration and give summer yard/farm work a smeary air of rustic delight), it's working out just fine, taking prime advantage of these long, hot days to work itself into condition.<br />
<br />
Admittedly, the grain bill is ludicrously redundant, ill-measured, and disproportionate, but I gave it the green light by convincing myself it's true to (some variation on) the <a href="http://beer.about.com/od/ale/p/SaisonProfile.htm">historical nature</a> of saisons for them to consist of a variety of farm grains and little else. The real reason though: An interest in brewing something all-organic led me to purchase our ingredients via Santa Cruz's <a href="http://www.breworganic.com/">Seven Bridges</a> co-op, where, as it turns out, they just happened to be having their summer sale, at which they were offering up a nicely discounted 15lb sampler pack of their different malts. Long story short, pretty much everything that seemed to fit the "farmhouse" bill made its merry way into the grist, with little worry for measurements or balance. When it turned out to be a full seven pounds worth of specialty grains, though, I put away my bags of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spelt">spelt</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamut">kamut</a> and oats for another day...<br />
<br />
<b>Summer Saison 2009, aka "The Insatiator"</b><br />
<br />
<i>Grains: </i><br />
4.40 lbs. Generic Liquid Malt Extract (Light)<br />
1.00 lbs. Pilsener<br />
1.00 lbs. White Wheat<br />
1.00 lbs. Wheat Malt<br />
1.00 lbs. Cara-Pils Dextrine Malt<br />
1.00 lbs. Pale Malt (2-row) America<br />
1.00 lbs. Pale Malt (2-row) Great Britain<br />
1.00 lbs. Flaked Soft White Wheat<br />
<br />
<i>Hops:</i><br />
60 min 1.00 oz. Opal<br />
30 min 1.00 oz. Tettnanger Tettnang<br />
10 min 1.00 oz. Opal<br />
0 min 1.00 oz. Tettnanger Tettnang<br />
<br />
<i>Yeast:</i><br />
WLP565 - White Labs Belgian Saison I <br />
<br />
<i>Notes:</i> Mash for 60 minutes at 149°. Pitch yeast when wort has cooled to 90°. Allow to ferment in a space where temperature doesn't drop below 75°. Rack onto oak in secondary fermenter and bottle when gravity has dropped to below 1.010.<br />
<br />
Have at it, if you're game (and happen to have the <a href="http://www.breworganic.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWPROD&ProdID=176">Seven Bridges sampler pack</a> in your fridge). Of course, none of this pertains to the "you think it's chocolate milk but it's watered down Belgian imperial stout" which we'll be brewing this weekend (except for it consisting of the remainder of the aforementioned sampler pack), but that's where having a cellar that never gets above 60° comes in awfully handy.<br />
<br />
<i>Many thanks to John at <a href="http://www.brew-dudes.com/">Brew Dudes</a> for hosting this month's <a href="http://beerbits2.blogspot.com/2008/04/homebrew-blogging-day.html">Fermentation Friday</a>, a monthly blogging carnival gathered around the topic of homebrewing, originated by <a href="http://beerbits2.blogspot.com/">Beer Bits 2</a>. </i>Robhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02647783153036439028noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10430819.post-23886355259648806722009-06-19T14:22:00.000-07:002009-06-19T14:25:39.830-07:00Local brewery (temporarily) expands<div style="text-align: center;"><img src="http://www.hifimundo.com/pfiff/kentlakefilling.jpg" vspace="3" hspace="3" /><i> </i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>Optimistic bottles: Not half empty, but half filled...</i></div><br />I am seldom late for work, even by the obligatory rive minutes; I live far to close to the office to ever establish a genuinely feasible excuse. But, then again, I also seldom find my (albeit unlawful) bike route through town obstructed by a fully operational industrial beer bottling operation, sitting in the middle of the sidewalk, noisily huffing through cases of bombers, which is exactly what I encountered yesterday. And but oh, what a brilliant scheme it is. For those of you who have ever wondered, how exactly does a modestly sized brewpub manage to dispatch bottles of four of their releases to accounts far and wide without painstakingly doing it by hand well past the 25th hour of the day, or by utilizing a contract brewer, here's your answer: a door-to-door bottling line:<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><img src="http://www.hifimundo.com/pfiff/bottlingthestreet.jpg" vspace="3" hspace="3" /><i>No bikes or skateboards, fancy mobile bottling machines a-ok<br /></i><br /><div style="text-align: left;">That's right: The whole kit and caboodle rolls right off the back of a truck, plugs in to the tank line, and away it goes. Place labels on roll, empty bottles on the one end, caps on the crimper, and some waiting arms and empty cases on the other end, and you're off. Plenty of folks have seen what a <a href="http://media.photobucket.com/image/laverne%20and%20shirley/DrewziG71/LSfactoryline.jpg">bottling line looks like</a>, but encountering a system like this running at full tilt in the middle of the street is nothing short of a spectacle.</div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><img src="http://www.hifimundo.com/pfiff/lineemup.jpg" vspace="3" hspace="3" /><i>Lining them up while the Altman crew looks on<br /><br /></i></div>Of the many good things Christian Kazakoff has brought to Iron Springs, it would seem his dedication to a bottling program has had the greatest apparent impact. Hard at work well before most folks were even up, he, Phil and Mike were already well on their way to filling the 200 cases of empty bottles that had arrived that morning, and by the time I rode past on my way home, there was nary a trace anything fishy had taken place, all the gear packed back up onto the truck, cases put away, but for a stray bottle here and there.<br /><div style="text-align: center;"><img src="http://www.hifimundo.com/pfiff/kolschlabeller.jpg" vspace="3" hspace="3" /><i>Bottle labels boasting a beer's <a href="http://www.marinwater.org/controller?action=menuclick&id=223">water source</a> have a <a href="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v611/jagreenw/Hamms.jpg">long tradition<br /></a></i><br /><div style="text-align: left;">It's a beautifully reasonable solution, too, one that allows a brewery to flexibly make decisions about expansion without levying the enormous risk inherent in moving beyond "being a brewpub" and "getting on shelves". If it turns out to be a successful venture, you can always stage an encore performance with higher case numbers, and if it ends up applying too much pressure to your bottom line, you can simply write it off as an experiment to revisit later on. There's no equipment to learn, maintain, and pay for, no space to rent, and no fear of outgrowing the scale of your operations. At the end of the day, it's back to business as usual.<i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"></div></div><div style="text-align: center;"></div><div style="text-align: center;"><img src="http://www.hifimundo.com/pfiff/christiankentlake.jpg" vspace="3" hspace="3" /><i>One down, 199 cases to go...</i></div>Robhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02647783153036439028noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10430819.post-47917256075582383352009-05-29T22:21:00.000-07:002009-05-29T22:26:49.116-07:00Fermentation Friday - Free Improv<div style="text-align: center;"><img src="http://www.hifimundo.com/pfiff/miahoppin.jpg" vspace="3" hspace="3" /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>Joy is adding hops whenever your kid thinks it'd be fun.</i></div><br />For a length of time I'm reluctant to calculate for fears I'll have to confront quantitative evidence of just how single-minded (and old*) I am, I've been damned near certain my life would be spent as a musician. How exactly, on the other hand, has been a more nebulous decision. There have been numerous iterations defining musicianship over the years <i>[Um, hello - DJ? What the hell was I thinking?]</i>, but one constant has remained. Regardless of what was going to define "being a musician", it was bound to reflect the dominant aspect of improvisation. Whether as a guitarist or a composer or an electronic musician or an arranger (or even as a what the hell was I thinking man that's a lot of expensive gear DJ) there has always been a need to incorporate the element of spontaneous musical composition, because ostensibly, it's only when you loosen the reins and allow the truth of the moment to materialize that you can really embrace the <i>livingness </i>of the art form. In the <a href="http://www.zambuko.com/mbira.html">Shona</a> music of Zimbabwe, for instance, regardless of the fact that musicians play known pieces with names and moods associated with them, they often lack specific beginnings and ends as they see the act of performing akin to making a telephone connection to the spiritual world, and that effect of simply <a href="http://www.mbira.org/">"tapping in"</a>, much like turning on a tv in mid-show and turning it off just as arbitrarily, along with a degree of a jazz-like spontaneous interpretation, reflects an ethos that embraces the notion of music as a separate animate entity that we have access to and through which we can communicate our emotions, amplified and transmuted. That "it's there if you're listening for it" approach to creating musical sound can lend to a fascinating viewpoint on what level of control one feels they ever truly have over the creation of their own musical art.<br /><br />Even musicians trained in the most rigid Western classical traditions respect and acknowledge the discrete variations between various performances and aim for - even under the auspices of cohesively following the written instructions of the composer and/or how they're being translated by a conductor - a performance that transcends the printed page, referring to successful interpretations in terms of being alive, of their emotional resonance, and of their ability to "communicate". And outside of that rarefied sphere of purpose-driven musicianship, in the world of popular, blues, jazz, even now including dance and electronic music, the idea of improvisation as a method whereby a musician can actively exploit the use of time as medium and sound as materials to unveil music that <i>already exists</i>, but which simply needs to be tapped into in order to be brought to light, is such commonly understood routine that discussions over what truly defines improvisation are often eclipsed by the more immediately gratifying discussions over how to do it successfully.<br /><br />The prevailing argument states that there's no such thing as true spontaneity in improvisation. Any music made on the spot is going to be influenced by so many mitigating factors - previous performance experience, muscle memory, preconceived notions about stylistic guidelines, imitative gestures, unconscious mimicry - that outside of a tiny circle of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_improvisation">free improvisers</a> who've made it their guiding discipline to try to divorce themselves from those binding detractions and play from a purely ascended level not unlike a state of trance, all improvised music is <i>pre</i>-composed to some certain degree. Where that line is drawn (not to mention how broad or thick or porous or opaque that line is), between what defines a piece of music and what elements of it have been spontaneously manipulated is where the discussion of improvisation - particularly from the point of view of the composer - becomes richly rewarding, far beyond the talk of "who takes a solo when" or "what scale should I use", breathing life into music by opening the door to the chaotic nature of possibility and potential.<br /><br />It's near certain that my evolving philosophy on the creation of music has rewired the rest of my brain to the extent that it affects the way I approach pretty much anything that comes up in a given day, with understandably mixed results (let us never again speak of the savory French toast experiment). It should come as no surprise, then, that brewing in this house incorporates a good level of improvisation, for good and for bad, and which brings us to the topic of today's <a href="http://www.tedbrews.com/2009/05/fermentation-friday-509-brewday-joy.html">Fermentation Friday</a>. Simply said, the thing that brings me the most joy and the most pain is one and the same: the fact that I can't get through a single brewing session, whether it's in the composing of the recipe or the methods used during the brew to last-minute deviations in hopping to fermentation temperature changes to bottling, kegging, or conditioning choices, it's become quite clear that I'm anything but the type who "leaves nothing to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleatoric_music">chance</a>". That's all I leave it to, most of the time. And you know what? The beer turns out pretty good. Near disasters provide opportunities to get quickly creative, and unintentional moments of brilliance can make an entire session memorable. <a href="http://www.hifimundo.com/public/blog/2008/10/fermentation-friday-monster-mash.html">Ad-libbed triple decoction?</a> Pain. Spontaneous mini-decoction? Joy. Cutting short a boil time without considering full wort evaporation rates? Pain. Deciding to extend a boil for an extra hour because the weather's nice? Joy. In the end, though, my tolerance for pain is pretty low. Which is why we do so much homebrewing around here: It really is quite simply a joy.<br /><br />Here's <a href="http://www.hifimundo.com/pfiff/Aleatoric_IPA.html" target="_blank">tonight's recipe</a>. I'll post back if anything changes.<br /><br />* Additional criteria of concern: Adding a power carpentry tool to my Amazon wish list alongside completely unironic enjoyment of the piano music of Handel.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Many thanks to Ted at <a href="http://www.tedbrews.com/">Ted's Homebrew Journal</a> for hosting this month's <a href="http://beerbits2.blogspot.com/2008/04/homebrew-blogging-day.html">Fermentation Friday</a>, a monthly blogging carnival gathered around the topic of homebrewing, originated by </span><a href="http://beerbits2.blogspot.com/" style="font-style: italic;">Beer Bits 2</a><span style="font-style: italic;">. </span>Robhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02647783153036439028noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10430819.post-46774592648035458452009-05-27T10:48:00.000-07:002009-05-27T10:48:27.636-07:00Absence makes the hops grow fronder<div style="text-align: center;"><img hspace="3" src="http://www.hifimundo.com/pfiff/willi09.jpg" vspace="3" /></div>It's heartening to know that despite my absence over the past month, Pfiff! readership has continued to clip along at a reasonably regular pace. Likewise, it's heartening to see that despite my inattention in the garden lately, the hops are diligently following their own course of nature by whatever means available.<br />
<br />
We'll be returning to quasi-normalcy soon.Robhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02647783153036439028noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10430819.post-1096902740118372342009-05-02T08:51:00.000-07:002009-05-02T09:24:05.856-07:00The Session #27 - Tyranny Undercover<div style="text-align: center;"><br />
<img hspace="3" src="http://www.hifimundo.com/pfiff/torani.jpg" vspace="3" /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>Not the same. But easier than trying to make it from scratch.</i><br />
<i> </i> </div>There's no denying the truth behind the old saying about best laid plans, which is precisely how someone could find themselves in a situation like this, on a drizzly morning in May, staring at a dust-ridden bottle of Torani Amer and a folder full of unsent email drafts, wondering how these self-imposed writing deadlines can arrive so unexpectedly, and how those once grand statutory visions are often reduced, by necessity and panic, to hardscrabble dirt and mud golems imbued with the hot breath of its composer's hope that it too might live and walk and keep momentum going for just another day. It's all the more shameful when the gifts all seem to align themselves in a row - gifts of the cocktail persuasion! - offering up easy riches in the form of a puckish topic, affable co-conspirators, and the burblings of some potentially avant mixology. It's all past potential now, though, and truly, it isn't even morning by the time this sentence has been typed, another interruption likely on the horizon (how prescient, now that this bit is being typed nearly 12 hours past its inception, that light drizzle having been replaced by a whipping downpour, and my thoughts squarely with those slogging their way into the deep end abyss of Boonville to pitch their muddy tents) and odds even that the publish button below won't even get clicked, despite, as I said, the best laid plans. Certain folks will have to stow their cabinet of tinctural curiosities for a later date, curtains drawn back over the mysteries of the unrealized, and the wings of rootless fantasy clipped and grounded. What could have been, isn't. Let's make us a drink, shall we?<br />
<br />
So even though it's already been done, both <a href="http://www.hifimundo.com/public/blog/2008/05/separated-at-birth.html">here</a> (and even <a href="http://www.hifimundo.com/public/blog/2005/06/new-to-me-mixed-beer-drink.html">before</a>) and now already in <a href="http://thebeernut.blogspot.com/2009/05/mixed-feelings.html">this month's Session</a>, we're going to keep it simple with this very brief reflection on a little drink called the <b>Picon bière</b>. The recipe, if you want to call it that, <a href="http://www.drinksmixer.com/drink5850.html">isn't much to speak of</a>. But as <a href="http://www.beeratjoes.com/?p=164">our host</a> this month is a neighbor of sorts, he deserves a little more. It was three or four years ago, in the redwood enshrouded grand Victorian dining room of the Lark Creek Inn, an arguably classic dining establishment crippled and shuttered by economic woes, those weird tendrils of financial panic that've traveled even up into the toniest, most insusceptible neighborhoods, a restaurant doomed to soon be resurrected as "affordable", or heaven forbid, something more ghastly like "family friendly". They had - and I hope this doesn't change - a serious, adult, fantastic bar. And it was here that I had the most unlikely of cocktails offered to me before dinner one night, as our waiter recognized my middling response to their beer list (and as for why I was glancing over their beer list, I probably wouldn't have even ordered a beer in an establishment like this, wrought of good, heathful digestifs and aperitifs and punishingly delicious whiskeys, but it's a habit - I always look at beer menus, because there are often surprises, sweet buried treasures cellared away by one discriminating chef who knows that no matter what the others think, his poached sole goes better with that Moinette than any of the wine they've got gathering dust down there) and offered to make me a cocktail made of their Urquell and a dash of <a href="http://www.practicallyedible.com/edible.nsf/pages/amerpiconbitters">Amer Picon</a>. Little did I know how much I'd love it. Littller did I know how much I'd regret making its acquaintance when I discovered that true Amer bitters were entirely unavailable in this country and that the few bottles they'd had on hand in the bar had made their way back across the Atlantic in somebody's luggage. Granted, there are <a href="http://spiritsandcocktails.wordpress.com/2007/09/09/amer-picon/">instructions</a> on how to replicate that magical ingredient in the solace of your own home, but they're frankly not much simpler than building an ultralight aircraft in your garage and using it to fly across the North Pole to pick up a bottle of the authentic item. So we have this: From the people who brought you the the flavor <i>du jour</i> in your trendsetting latte, Torani's very own Amer mixer. It tastes only vaguely correct. But it will do.<br />
<div style="text-align: center;"></div><div style="text-align: center;"><img hspace="3" src="http://www.hifimundo.com/pfiff/undercoverpicon.jpg" vspace="3" /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>Mia's working on taking over the photg job here.</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
Blended with a continental lager, this cocktail makes sense, as the flabby taste impression that old, ship-worn and light-struck bottles leaves little to be excited about, the strange, orangy, botanical, somewhat vegetal elixir of the Picon carrying the drink into a nearly Campari-esque realm, with a gut-stirring astringency and a snap of old fashioned, resuscitative, rejuvenated medicinal edginess. The florals of the hops are accentuated. Front end bitterness is restored. Weird hints of woodsy, rooty, dirty darkness lurk on the edges. But there's as little traditional lager in this house as there is true Amer Picon. And that's how we arrived here, with a bottle of the already lively and wicked Lagunitas <a href="http://www.brewedforthought.com/?p=1269">Undercover Shutdown</a> ale, a beer that hardly calls for adulterating, being spiked with a splash of Torani's finest 78 proof bitter buddy. In a satanically crimson body it comes off like chugging on a jar of homemade marmalade, a pungent whack of orange sweetness, all fringed in a pithy bitterness that somewhat masks the dangerous level of alcohol. Would I mix one up again? Maybe. But does it compare to that sun-sprayed June afternoon in <a href="http://www.mrryderantiques.com/graton.html">Graton</a> years ago when a bottle of the stuff disappeared into cup after cup of shabby homebrewed "kõlsch" as our friends wedding spun on around us? No, but that's a whole other story.</div><div style="text-align: center;"><img hspace="3" src="http://www.hifimundo.com/pfiff/piconshoe.jpg" vspace="3" /></div>And as much as I'm usually not afraid of embarking on increasingly embedded diversionary topics, now it's not even Friday anymore. But it's still raining. Does this really count as a Session post now, being as late as it is? No matter, Mia would be sad if I didn't take the opportunity to show off her new shoes.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://appellationbeer.com/blog/time-for-a-beer-blogging-day/" style="font-style: italic;">The Session </a><span style="font-style: italic;">is a blog carnival originated by Stan Hieronymus at </span><a href="http://appellationbeer.com/blog/" style="font-style: italic;">Appellation Beer</a>.<span style="font-style: italic;"> This month's party is being hosted by Joe of <a href="http://www.beeratjoes.com/">Beer at Joe's</a>. For a summary of the Sessions thus far, </span><span style="font-style: italic;">check out <a href="http://www.brookstonbeerbulletin.com/the-sessions/">Brookston's handy guide</a></span>. <i>You can also follow folks' entries on twitter by searching for posts marked with the #thesession hashtag.</i>Robhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02647783153036439028noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10430819.post-27599504734047693382009-04-24T21:14:00.000-07:002009-04-24T21:16:59.503-07:00Fermentation Friday - But I don't even know her<div style="text-align: center;"><img src="http://www.hifimundo.com/pfiff/tinctures.jpg" vspace="3" hspace="3" /></div><i>Note to mom: Hi mom! Now that you've gotten cozy with your new iPhone and are regularly checking this site to see what your son's up to and whether or not there are any photos of (or by) your granddaughter, I thought it was be a good idea to give you a little "heads up" on today's writings. See, on the last Friday of every month, folks all around the globe post their thoughts on a common theme relevant to the hobby of homebrewing. I have a bad habit of writing seriously off topic items on these occasions. With that, consider yourself forewarned: This one gets pretty "inside baseball", if you will. There are no pictures of Mia, either.</i><br /><br />When stuck in a particularly <a href="http://pbfcomics.com/archive_b/PBF044-Falling_Dream.gif">pessimistic mood</a>, this whole "writing about beer" arena can come off as mighty insular at times, insular in a "pop will eat itself" sort of way, all <a href="http://www.guide-to-symbols.com/ouroboros/">Ouroboros</a>-like in its circular back-scratching and back-biting, that pessimism perversely amplified during a week that's seen the beer blogosphere (which I'm beginning to wonder is just one big centrally located beer blog with one singularly big beer blog brain, based off the sheer amount of déjà vu one gets scrolling through their feeds over the morning coffee) all taking sides in a genuinely retarded debate around the cultural significance of a piece of filmwork whose title may remind you of a certain low-budget space opera from the disco era, alongside the near incessant reposting of another video piece that can't help make me think of a certain <a href="http://www.dailypaul.com/node/8986">Nike campaign</a>.<br /><br />Thankfully it rarely takes more than something like a <a href="http://www.amazinganimals.biz/dakota-rockcats.htm">kit-bashing puddytat</a> to alter one's perspective on things.<br /><br />And thusly, one can view this little self-congratulatory micocosm of beer obsessives with a bit of charmed affection. Despite how the collective musings of a beer obsessed army can at times display what appears to be an alarming lack of perspective and a dangerous level of short-sightedness, there's an undeniably sunny song in there, one evangelizing the diversity, quality, and culture that the craft brewing movement brings to the table. And if you zoom in on that happy little planet of malt aficionados, you'd see a sub-population, racing across the surface, doing something for themselves, the worker bees, the <a href="http://barclayperkins.blogspot.com/search/label/homebrew%20twats">oft-maligned</a> but dutifully persistent homebrewers. Granted, they're equally - if not more - insularly referential, but unlike the folks taking up my precious "cats playing drums" bandwidth with redundantly embedded videos and press releases copied so quickly out of their email that there's little bits of broken html floating about the edges, homebrewing bloggers actually spend their spare time <b>making stuff</b>. And then when they write about it online, they typically help explain to others how they, too, can make their own stuff. That's pretty much all that's able to pull me out from under the cloak of blogging invisibility today. Proactive thinking. Let's make some booze, people.<br /><br />And today's <a href="http://www.northerntable.com/?p=238">roundtable topic</a> concerns the wonderful world of liquor (cue the dancing <a href="http://www.cs.nott.ac.uk/%7Eef/music/tunes/reels.gif/booze.m.gif">bottles</a>). Safe to assume that we're not talking about the <a href="http://sdcollins.home.mindspring.com/HLT.html">heated water</a> that's used for rinsing the grains in your mash tun, liquor, better known as "booze that isn't beer" being put into service in brewing in order to add tints, shades, and shadows of other alcoholic beverages is <a href="http://www.stranahans.com/beta/?q=node/37">not uncommon</a>. The word "bourbon" alone appears five times on the BeerAdvocate <a href="http://beeradvocate.com/top_beers">Top 100 list</a> (four times on the RateBeer <a href="http://ratebeer.com/Ratings/Ratings-Top50.asp">Top 50</a>), and the concept of reusing castoff whiskey barrels to age beers has become a stereotypical shortcut for brewers looking to cash in on "special edition" versions of their beers. In drawing inspiration from the craft beer world, a homebrewer has little to go on regarding the use of liquor outside of what would appear to be a conspiracy from the all-powerful secret cabal of coopers (yes, <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=4778318n">all four of them</a>). Simply put, to most folks, liquor in brewing means barrels. We homebrewers soak oak chips in bourbon and brandy and maybe even get our club to all pitch in and try to fill one of those 31 gallon monstrosities, topping off the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aging_barrel#Angel.27s_share">angel's share</a> every so often while praying that it ends up tasting even close to its namesake.<br /><br />Far be it from me to preempt what's guaranteed to be a far superior discussion on the topic, bolstered by <a href="http://homebrewchef.com/">one presenter's</a> quantitative research, professional experience, and within an arena where one can even get some hands-on experimentation with the matter at this year's National Homebrewers Conference, let me simply say this: Don't limit yourself to attempting to imitate barrel flavors. Fun for a while, but easy to overdo and frankly, if you're a true hipster, it's totally played out. Instead, consider these two gateway scenarios:<br /><br />- Once you've divorced the barrel character from the source liquor (and if you allow yourself to stretch "liquor" beyond the confines of simple distilled spirits, allowing for a more all-welcoming family of booze), consider what other flavor components exist in different varieties and how they can best complement what you'd like to achieve in your beer. Take a scotch ale, for example, in which you decide you want to add a particularly peaty character. What would happen if you complemented your addition of peated malt with the distinctively Islay aroma of something like <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laphroaig">Laphroaig</a>? Or what if, in a an old stock ale, you wanted to add a hint of casky oxidization, and added a touch of musky <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amontillado">Amontillado</a> sherry? Or if in a stong, dark Belgian style ale, you wanted to emphasize the dark fruit characteristics of the yeast profile by dosing it with a spot of <a href="http://www.blogwinecellar.com/2007/04/dashe-late-harvest-zinfandel-2005.html">late harvest zinfandel</a>?<br /><br />- Beyond even that, think of the excellent extraction properties a high-alcohol solution can provide. The spirit you use need not be the end, but also the means by which you add character to your beers. Tinctures (like those pictured above*) offer a measurable, sanitary, and pleasantly controlled vehicle with which to gradually adulterate your beers. We've always sworn by the technique whereby you prepare herbal tinctures in a neutral vodka base, but in the end, many "spirits" that we know are nothing more than neutral grain spirits with various botanicals infused in them, like <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sloe_gin">sloe gin</a>. Consider the<a href="http://www.infused-vodka.com/vodkainfusionstep-by-step.aspx"> "infused vodka"</a> rage: There's no reason why you can't use the exact same technique to add a touch of orange to your citrusy double IPA, some licorice to your Baltic porter, some lemongrass to your wheat beer, or some juniper to your holiday ale.<br /><br />I hesitate to think of what might become of combining those two concepts into a third, hybrid gateway, but there's little doubt that the more experimental amongst us aren't afraid of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proton_pack">crossing the streams</a>. I'll be first to admit a certain stupid fondness for the odd bourbon-aged this or brandy-aged that , but in the meantime, step back for a minute, and just consider what simple, strange, mystical concoctions you could unearth by simply thinking outside the barrel.<br /><br /><i><br />* From left to right: saffron and black pepper; ginger, myrrh, white pepper, and curacao orange; and the ubiquitous whiskey-soaked oak.</i><br /><br /><br />Congratulations. You've made it this far! More on the topic, from the archives:<br /><br />- Miscellaneous musings on the boozy tango between <a href="http://www.hifimundo.com/public/blog/2008/05/separated-at-birth.html">beer and liquor</a>.<br /><br />- Our first foray into reverse-engineered cocktailesque beers, the <a href="http://www.hifimundo.com/public/blog/2008/11/old-fashioned-home-brewing.html">Old Fashioned</a>. (With a followup <a href="http://www.hifimundo.com/public/blog/2009/02/gold-fashioned.html">here</a>.)<br /><br />- The story of <a href="http://www.hifimundo.com/public/blog/2009/03/fogs-brewin.html">Tokyo Fog</a>, the beer who loved bourbon.<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Many thanks to <a href="http://www.northerntable.com/">Northern Table</a> for hosting this month's <a href="http://beerbits2.blogspot.com/2008/04/homebrew-blogging-day.html">Fermentation Friday</a>, a monthly blogging carnival gathered around the topic of homebrewing, originated by </span><a href="http://beerbits2.blogspot.com/" style="font-style: italic;">Beer Bits 2</a><span style="font-style: italic;">. </span>Robhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02647783153036439028noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10430819.post-48191493910330036892009-04-16T14:57:00.000-07:002009-06-19T15:26:58.186-07:00Belgium comes to 94117<div style="text-align: center;"><img hspace="3" src="http://www.hifimundo.com/pfiff/dedollereserve.jpg" vspace="3" /></div>Just over a week ago, on a clear and cool Sunday morning, I slipped into the pre-dawn air armed with a freshly sharpened chef's blade and a fully fueled butane torch, cruised quickly along the empty trellis roads that connect the scattered hamlets of central Marin, and scaled the <a href="http://sfcitizen.com/blog/2009/01/03/the-eternal-struggle-volkswagen-transporter-vs-waldo-grade/">Waldo Grade</a> only to quietly descend into a still-slumbering and peculiarly vacant Lower Haight, through those <a href="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/109/298409207_eaaf95c9ef.jpg?v=0">fabled Dutch doors</a>, to receive word of my next instructions. After having harvested one of the meal's ingredients <a href="http://www.hifimundo.com/public/blog/2009/04/from-trellis-to-table.html">the day before</a>, my last directives had been simple: pack a nice blade and get a good night's rest. And thus it began.<br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><img hspace="3" src="http://www.hifimundo.com/pfiff/petruscheese_sm.jpg" vspace="3" /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>Holding the key to my cheese n' beer loving heart.</i><br />
<i> </i> </div>To backtrack a little... It's <a href="http://toronado.com/events.htm">Belgian beer month</a>, which means the taps at Toronado are currently loaded with things like, oh Cantillon <a href="http://www.cantillon.be/br/3_104">Grand Cru</a>, Ellezelloise <a href="http://www.sheltonbrothers.com/beers/beerProfile.asp?BeerID=72">Hercule</a>, and Struise <a href="http://odeo.com/episodes/23747587-Episode-028-Gulpener-Chateau-Neuborg-DeStruise-Tsjeeses-Xmas-Ale">Tsjeeses</a>. It was <a href="http://www.hifimundo.com/public/blog/2008/04/every-month-is-belgian-beer-month.html">but a year ago</a> when, in assuming that we'd be the early birds, first in line to tap a flight of <a href="http://sanfrancisco.decider.com/articles/when-in-april-do-as-the-belgians-do,26135/">David Keane's</a> annual cornucopia of imported wonderments, Des and I headed down to Toronado at our first free moment only to find it shuttered up, thanks to some mysterious and hitherto unknown special event. But based off the scraps of information we were able to glean from some considerably bent and slurry patrons, who shared lusty tales aside proffered dregs of some truly <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/11224202@N08/3274099087/">luminous rarities</a>, it was then that I declared I'd find some way - by whatever means, if you want - to be on the other side of those locked doors when the following March's lambs and lions had marched through: in April of 2009, I was going to somehow be inside that kitchen. <br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><img hspace="3" src="http://www.hifimundo.com/pfiff/affligemcheese_sm.jpg" vspace="3" /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>More abbey cheese than you can shake a censer at.</i></div><br />
And as it so happens, with the rusty tubes of my waking synapses gradually flickering to life as the caffeine made its steady course into my consciousness, that was the spot I found myself: Inside a bar still resonating from the nightlife that had only just departed scant hours before, alongside some <a href="http://beerandnosh.com/">familar</a> and <a href="http://www.beergeek.com/">equally tired</a> faces, with the unprecedented (and <a href="http://beerdirector.draftmag.com/2009/02/18/a-night-of-ales/">encore</a>) privilege of joining <a href="http://homebrewchef.com/">Mr. Sean Z. Paxton</a> for what was to be the culinary equivalent of the <a href="http://www.utexas.edu/courses/wagner/indexflash.html">Ring cycle</a>, a six-hour long gustatory bonanza nearly a year in the making (that is, since the last one).<br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><img hspace="3" src="http://www.hifimundo.com/pfiff/chouffecheese_sm.jpg" vspace="3" /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-style: italic;">Stinky gnomes and Westvleteren. As it should be.</span></div><br />
Sean, as a man considered by many to be the premiere visionary in the realm of marrying beer with modern <i>haute cuisine</i> and <a href="http://khymos.org/">molecular gastronomy</a>, is no stranger to the spotlight in the foodie-beerie circles. A well-known mercenary <a href="http://www.homebrewchef.com/magnoliaholidayparty.html">chef-for-hire</a>, regular contributor to BeerAdvocate magazine, a speaker at the <a href="http://www.beertown.org/events/hbc/speakers.html">National Homebrewers Conference</a>, and one who's consulted regularly by publications looking to get edubacted in the art of <i>cuisine à la bière</i> and <a href="http://www.imbibemagazine.com/A-Great-Pair-Host-Your-Own-Beer-Pairing-Dinner">beer and food pairing</a>, his moniker of "The Homebrew Chef" alludes to his simultaneous passions of brewing, cooking, and finding harmonious inroads between the two. Here, under the auspices of Toronado's Belgian beer month, he's made it his mission to pull out all the stops. In a way, it's his tribute to Dave Keane's fearless ambassadorship of the challenging, palate-expanding beers of Belgium, aside from being a chance to flex some creative muscle for patrons who like having their culinary horizons broadened.<br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><img hspace="3" src="http://www.hifimundo.com/pfiff/stbernie.jpg" vspace="3" /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>I imagine he's still airing out the suitcase all this arrived in.</i></div><br />
First, the beer: Not only were there twenty beers with which to pair, but another twenty beers with which all the courses were prepared. And lest you think we're talking <a href="http://rojosgourmet.blogspot.com/2008/05/barbecue-recipe-beer-can-chicken.html">beercan chicken</a> here, note that some of the world's most highly regarded and sought-after beers - <i>Scaldis Noel, Fantome <a href="http://www.hifimundo.com/public/blog/2005/06/saison-season.html">La Dalmatienne</a>, De Ranke <a href="http://www.sheltonbrothers.com/beers/beerProfile.asp?BeerID=67">Pere Noel</a>, Halve Maan <a href="http://www.globalbeer.com/body_pages/pages-beer/BrugseZot/BrugseZot.html">Brugse Zot</a></i> - never even made it to the table for folks to taste, only existing as ingredients within each of the twelve courses. Lest anyone be concerned that the day's events were going to be a retread of the classics, though, the day began with the first public West Coast tapping of a keg of <a href="http://beeradvocate.com/forum/read/1550862">Duvel Green</a>, the new filtered, non-refermented, draft version of the quintessential Belgian strong golden ale. The next five hours saw a parade of Belgium's rainbow of beer diversity make its way to the tables, from the <a href="http://www.globalbeer.com/body_pages/pages-beer/Hommel/PoperingsHommel.html">light and hoppy</a> to the <a href="http://ebenezerspub.net/PARTY.html">dark and strong</a> through all iterations <a href="http://www.hifimundo.com/public/blog/2008/06/tasting-notes-brasserie-de-blaugies.html">between</a>, with the closing bookend on the day the 2007 <a href="http://www.homebrewchef.com/BrewingwithMattBrynildson.html">Saucerful of Secrets</a> that Sean brewed himself with Firestone Walker.<br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><img hspace="3" src="http://www.hifimundo.com/pfiff/platingplating.jpg" vspace="3" /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>Well, that's certainly a lot of caviar. Or <a href="http://mylifeasafoodie.com/2009/01/10/molecular-cooking-my-new-true-passion/">is it</a>?</i></div><br />
And then, the food: One course which I got to have my hand in (hence the freshly sharpened knife) was the cheese course, consisting entirely of Belgian, mostly abbey cheeses hand-carried by Sean himself in a single, 60 lb. suitcase just days prior to the event. And thanks to the beauty of <a href="http://amath.colorado.edu/%7Ebaldwind/sous-vide.html"><i>sous vide</i></a> cooking techniques, much of the actual cooking had already been taken care of, with curing, infusing, marinading, and pickling all having been done in sealed <a href="http://www.slate.com/id/2123101/">plastic bags</a>, which was a comforting convenience as Toronado, in case you'd never noticed, <b>doesn't actually have a kitchen</b>.<br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><img hspace="3" src="http://www.hifimundo.com/pfiff/truffles.jpg" vspace="3" /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>My, my, what are you going to do with all those black truffles?</i></div><br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><img hspace="3" src="http://www.hifimundo.com/pfiff/whitegus_sm.jpg" vspace="3" /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-style: italic;">Ah, but of course.</span></div><br />
That's correct. Somehow, some way, the entire twelve-course meal for seventy-odd diners with prepared with nothing more than an <a href="http://www.hitechtrader.com/detail.cfm?autonumber=64693">immersion heater</a> and a couple of propane burners. And if there's a real bit of artistry at work in a dinner like this that needs to be spotlit, I think it has to be the orchestration of such a massive culinary undertaking with such limited resources. Sure, there was the "wort honey", a batch of pre-hopped homebrewed beer that Sean made, reduced to a caramel-like consistency, and blended with a local honey. And sure, there was the homemade pork pate and duck <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rillettes">rillettes</a>. And yeah, there was the aforementioned Cantillon Iris and bone marrow <a href="http://marxfood.com/how-to-make-a-gastrique/">gastrique</a>. But seriously, managing to supervise an amateur staff in a room primarily designed for <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/jwfriedman/3270517099/in/set-72157613598427383/">drinking</a>, coordinating the delivery of the equivilant of 900 dishes of five-star cuisine via a space the Toronado staff lovingly refer to as "the birth canal", and singlehandedly bringing <a href="http://www.hifimundo.com/pfiff/Toronado%20Belgian%20Beer%20Dinner%2011X17%20Menul%202009%20Final.pdf">this menu</a> to life with not much more than a pot of hot water, a couple tanks of propane, a <a href="http://www.surlatable.com/product/features/gifts+under+%2450/chef%27s+torch.do?search=basic&keyword=torch&sortby=ourPicks&page=1#">crack torch</a> and a <a href="http://www.cooking.com/products/shprodde.asp?sku=103263">syringe</a>?<br />
<br />
Now that, my friends, is kitchen professionalism.<br />
<br />
If you haven't already, go ahead and mark off April 4, 2010 on your calendar, as you've now got plans that day.<br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><img hspace="3" src="http://www.hifimundo.com/pfiff/smileyplates.jpg" vspace="3" /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-style: italic;">Because if you were duck fat aioli, you'd be smiling, too.</span></div>Robhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02647783153036439028noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10430819.post-12389603120610899882009-04-14T15:21:00.000-07:002009-06-19T15:26:58.186-07:0018 Reasons and at least as many homebrews<div style="text-align: center;"><img hspace="3" src="http://www.hifimundo.com/pfiff/imppilsshock.jpg" vspace="3" /></div>Before we finally get around to completing the now nearly two-week old saga of the <a href="http://www.hifimundo.com/public/blog/2009/04/from-trellis-to-table.html">Toronado Belgian beer dinner</a>, a quick interlude of the homebrew variety: This Thursday evening, we'll be joining a few other local recreational fermentation enthusiasts for a tasting at <a href="http://18reasons.org/">18 Reasons</a>, an arty foodie non-profit space in the Mission as part of the monthly <a href="http://beerandnosh.com/2008/11/dark-beers-and-cheese/">SF Beer & Cheese</a> group we've been semi-regularly attending. Jesse, whose brett-spiked witbier I had the unexpected pleasure of sampling <a href="http://www.brewedforthought.com/?p=1295">this past weekend</a>, will be pouring some of his wares alongside David, the SFB&C co-founder who introduced me to the group at last year's <a href="http://www.hifimundo.com/public/blog/2008/08/and-on-seventh-day-there-was-brett.html">wild ale tasting</a>, who will have his robust porter to sample, and a couple other brewers bringing the likes of a Belgian dubbel, saison, Simcoe IPA, and a Belgian strong dark ale aged with prunes.<br />
<br />
But what are we bringing? In the spirit of <a href="http://www.cyoa.com/">Choose Your Own Adventure</a>, I'd like that to be a decision best left to others besides the authors. Like <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleatoric_music">chance music</a> for the belly, the whim of <a href="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2015/2025970906_88bf4fc0e3.jpg">teh internets</a> will dictate what'll be crawling up from the cellar Thursday night. I've embedded a little poll below in which you can vote for as few or as many as you'd like on exhibit. Here's a quick reference guide to the options:<br />
<br />
<i><b>Imperial Pilsner</b> </i>- Just seeming to hit its stride now, a 9% lager based off a strict pilsner malt base and with a fresh bit of dry hopping in the keg. Pictured above with its little hoppy friend.<br />
<br />
<b><i><a href="http://www.hifimundo.com/public/blog/2008/10/been-too-flubbered-lately-to-post.html">Black Lav</a></i> </b>- Definitely further up the dark end of the experimental alley. It's a saison. But it's black! There's some history behind this one <a href="http://www.hifimundo.com/public/blog/2008/08/fermentation-friday-best-is-yet-to-come.html">here</a>.<br />
<br />
<b><i>Oatmeal Raisin Cookie</i> - </b>The most recent of our "tastes like" explorations, this one's finishing up as this is written, and is a but of a wild card in terms of what it'd taste like as young and green as it is. Details on its origin story can be read <a href="http://www.hifimundo.com/public/blog/2009/03/all-part-of-balanced-breakfast-ale.html">here</a>.<br />
<br />
<i><b>X'07</b></i> - Our annual holiday ale, this Belgian-inspired dark one from the winter of 2007, which Jesse referenced in <a href="http://beerandnosh.com/2009/04/cleaning-out-jays-fridge/">his post</a> about last weekend's debauchery, amazingly hasn't all been emptied yet. We wrote a little bit about it back in <a href="http://www.hifimundo.com/public/blog/2008/08/session-18-but-once-year.html">August</a>.<br />
<br />
<i><b>X'08</b></i> - Same idea, different beer. This past season's batch.<br />
<br />
<i><b>The Indoctrinator</b></i> - Before the <a href="http://aleuminati.ning.com/forum/topics/aleumination-batch-2-what-is">Inoculator</a> (the last of which disappeared into the sun-warmed gullets of this past Sunday's Golden Gate Park denizens), there was the <a href="http://aleuminati.ning.com/forum/topics/the-tasting-of-the">Indoctrinator</a>. I bottled a couple magnums when we finished this Belgian-style dubbel <a href="http://aleuminati.ning.com/forum/topics/1501346:Topic:16588?page=12&commentId=1501346%3AComment%3A20567&x=1#1501346Comment20567">back in October</a> and have been sitting on them waiting for the right occasion. Is this it?<i><b></b></i><br />
<br />
<i><b>Old Ale</b></i> - Nearly guaranteed to be nasty, it's a two (three?) year (m)old stock ale aged on oak that's seen some serious and strange refermentation in the bottle. Will probably explode. I still have some left.<br />
<br />
<i><b>Appelwoi</b></i> - A cider. <a href="http://www.hifimundo.com/public/blog/2008/08/ppelwoi-experiment-part-iii.html">This one</a>. Not beer, but not water either!<br />
<br />
Go on, now. Vote!<br />
<br />
<script charset="utf-8" language="javascript" src="http://static.polldaddy.com/p/1538436.js" type="text/javascript">
</script><noscript> &amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href ="http://answers.polldaddy.com/poll/1538436/" &amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;What DeNunzio Family homebrews would you like to see poured at 18 Reasons this Thursday?&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt; &amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;br/&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt; &amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;span style="font-size:9px;"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt; (&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href ="http://www.polldaddy.com"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt; polls&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;)&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/span&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;</noscript><br />
<br />
And sure, it's just 48 hours away, but <a href="http://www.google.com/calendar/event?eid=NWt2ZDgwNG1rN3Z0OGpqY3Zta2txN2Jjc29fMjAwOTA0MTdUMDIwMDAwWiBpbmZvQDE4cmVhc29ucy5vcmc&ctz=America/Los_Angeles">mark your calendars</a>!Robhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02647783153036439028noreply@blogger.com2