Month: September 2008

October is one of my favorite months. I get to celebrate my birthday, attend the Great American Beer Festival and at the end of the month I get to steal mini candy bars on Halloween night after Sydney goes to bed. All in all, it’s a pretty great month. Chocolate always makes me feel better. Especially when it’s stolen from a 2 and a 1/2 year old. Sorry, I’m sick like that.

This year, I am heading to Denver on October 7th which also happens to be my 35th birthday. Some guys like to celebrate their birthday for a week on end. I suppose that will be me this year since the best beer festival in the world happens to coincide with the annual glorious celebration of my arrival into this world.

The 2008 Great American Beer Festival promises to be liquid chaos for my liver. Port Brewing and The Lost Abbey will arrive in Denver as the 2007 Small Brewery of the Year as well as the 2008 World Beer Cup Small Brewery of the Year. This means that there will be an enormous amount of attention (and pressure) on us to continue our winning ways. I’m fine with that. I personally love the pressure and added expectations that go along with our past success. It’s just part of the business. As in years past, I believe we have an exceptionally eclectic range of beers. AND more importantly, they may even be better than the ones we sent to the competition in 2007. Sometimes, I think I sound like a broken record. But it’s true. We’re becoming better brewers having refined some of our processes and our beers reflect it.

With 8 days left until I board that plane for Denver, I’m most looking forward to this Saturday. This will be the evening tasting of the beers we’ve entered in the competition that we do each year before we leave for Denver. As in years past, all of the brewers will gather to sample each others beers from the bottles we packaged for the fest. It’s one last look into the mindset of our brewers (from Pizza Port) as well as affording me an introspective moment to reflect on our Port Brewing and Lost Abbey beers.

On Saturday, we will gather at Jeff Bagby’s house in Cardiff to sample all of the 2008 entries. This truly is brutal work I might add. You want to talk about having thick skin? You better have Alligator thick skin as we brutally rate each others chances. All told, we’ll sample almost 40 different entries. Port Brewing and Lost Abbey will be sending 11 beers to the GABF in 2008. Typically we would send 8 entries. This year, we couldn’t contain ourselves. We have released so many great beers in the last year that just begged to be entered.

As many of these beers are incredibly unique and easily recognizable, I will wait until Friday October 10th to post my comments on our beers, their categories and what I believe our chances are this year. So please check back in the coming days and maybe, you’ll get an idea of what’s in store for us this year. But, for the sake of a wee bit of a tease. “Yes Noah, I like our chances this year. I like them more than a little. Yours too.”

Devoted readers of The Lost Abbey blog (also known as Tomme’s ADD like Tendencies) may recall the self imposed no new beer moratorium from this summer. I had hoped that by going less schizophrenic on the new beer side of things that we might actually get caught up around here. It was going pretty well. Then my honey supplier showed up and we “had” to find a beer to use his Grapefruit Honey in. So, Witch’s Wit was released. We almost made it 60 days before I broke down and brewed a new beer. During that Moratorium, we also brewed another beer under wraps.

Perhaps from the title of this Blog, you may have figured out that we have another new beer in the pipeline. Some of you may also find it curious that we chose to brew an Imperial Pilsner given my lack of interest in brewing lager styled beers. But like every great beer here at Port Brewing, there is a story. So humor me (as you always do) as I discuss in great, but not excruciating, the details for this new little beer.

A few years ago, the Great American Beer Festival decided to create a new category of beers. Essentially, they wanted to have a category that could bridge home and commercial brewing. This category is called the GABF Pro- Am and it features award winning home brew recipes brewed at commercial breweries. I think it’s a pretty cool idea and have wanted to support it since its inception. Last year, we could not get our crap together to do it and missed out. The guys at Ballast Point won a Bronze Medal for their Sculpin IPA which as we all know is a great IPA.

Those of you who visit Port Brewing and The Lost Abbey have no doubt been introduced to Julian Shrago. No stranger to great beer, Julian and his side kick Nigel come by from time to time. I have been impressed since day one with his beers (not Nigel’s) and have always thought his Bellweather IPA would give many a craft brewed IPA a run for their money. So Julian and I started talking about using one of his recipes for the 2008 Great American Pro Am.

Around the same time, Julian went down to Solana Beach and brewed a batch of his Tovarish Cofffee Imperial Stout with Greg and Yiga. It was decided they would hold back a keg for the competition. I started thinking about how great Julian’s beers are and I mentioned in passing to Jeff Bagby, Pizza Port Carlsbad Head Brewer and Director of Pub Operations that each Port location ought to jump on the Shrago Express. Essentially, we would all select one of Julian’s recipes and brew it for the 2008 GABF.

This was all fine and dandy and in fact Julian came and brewed this batch of beer with us on July 3rd, 2008. He then went on and brewed another batch of beer in Carlsbad with Jeff. We selected the Imperial Pils recipe as we felt it would be a great departure from all the ales and weird stuff we normally do AND, there weren’t any raisins looking to jump on board.

From the moment we decided to brew this beer, I was concerned we might have an issue sourcing enough hops to make it work. We might not be Sam Adams in our hop needs but damnit this is an Imperial IPA being brewed with hops we don’t normally keep around. We were fortunate and really only had to sub Domestic Hallertau for German Hallertau. We got some great German Tett and Saaz as well. The brew day went incredibly well and the beer has been lagering away for some time now.

It looks as if it is finally time to get off our duffs and package the beer. Yes, I know I promised no new beers earlier in the summer. But hey, I’m entitled to Whims and Folly from time to time. New Belgium may be bigger but they don’t own Folly making meriment. The real bitch of this beer is that we can’t send it to Denver to the Great American Beer Fest.

It seems that we didn’t read the fine print. And by fine print, I don’t mean the part that says “No Imperial Anythings.” No, what I missed was the part that said Contestants in the Pro Am can only enter one beer per AHA Membership. Our dream of having four Shrago Specialty beers in Denver was dashed. It sucks. I guess I need a new pair of glasses?

Either way, we have this new beer coming out in a couple of weeks. Distribution will be quite limited. In fact, most of it probably won’t even leave Southern California. I doubt we’ll yield more than 200 cases. It will be on tap at the brewery for sure and growlers will most likely fly out of here. I wanted to tell the story of Panzer Imperial Pilsner today so that Julian gets credit for this beer. He needs to get off his ass and open a brewery of his own so that I can visit and talk smack. Orange County has The Bruery. Let’s hope it doesn’t stop there. I look forward to another 9.0% ABV beer on the wall. It’s just what we need around here.

Lastly before I forget there are two more notes to post today. First is that we did launch our beers in Colorado last week. Thanks to all of you who are supporting us and your local beverage store with your buying power. It looks like Colorado will be good to us. There has been some interest in our Midwest timing. I forgot to include that we are looking at more area then just Chicago at this time. Hang on for more news at 11 about this when I can post.

Finally, High Tide is progressing along nicely. We have 80 bbls in Brite Beer tank # 2 and another 120 in Brite Tank 4 as well. We hope to transfer the beer next Monday to the bottling tank and begin that process on Tuesday- Thursday for the first bottling. My guys will kill me for this but it will be worth it. We’re going to have a cask release for High Tide on Thursday September 25,2009 at O’Briens so come on out for not one but two casks that night. Bottles should be in the market starting October 1, 2008.

I’m sitting at the airport in Seattle. You see, this past week, I boarded a plane and headed for Yakima, Washington to attend the 2008 Hop School put on by our friends at Hop Union. This is the third time I have been asked to speak at the school which allows brewers to get a first hand view of hop growing, processing and logistics. I spent Monday- Thursday in Yakima talking hops. On Thursday I headed to Seattle to do some promotional work with Click Wholesale our Washington state distributor.

On Monday, having flown from San Diego to Seattle, WA. I met up with David Edgar. I have known David since his days as the President of the IBS (Instute of Brewing Studies). He now works as a representative for White Labs, Hop Union and Rastal. As we had recently ordered our new Lost Abbey glassware through Rastal, it was my first chance to thank David for his assistance on this project.

We shared a couple of beers at the airport and boarded our flight to Yakima, WA. After checking in at the hotel, I headed back to Hop Union World Headquarters and sampled some beers with Ralph Olson. Ralph and I sat down to discuss the state of the hop growing world and what can be expected for future harvests. I will be posting my notes from this conversation in another blog. Ralph hoped that our conversation would enlighten some brewers and give them some clarity about the global situation with hops.

Tuesday morning came WAY too early as we raged against the dying of the Yakima light that evening and well into the next. I unfortunately drew the dreaded short hop shoot which meant the early AM teaching slot. After a short introduction and tour of the facility, it was go time. As I had only 5 hours of sleep in my system, it was needless to say a brutal talk at best.

My talk was on the cost and difficulties associated with starting a new hop farm. This past summer Sheldon Boren and his brother had planted some 200 Centennial Rhizomes (hop plants) in Fallbrook, CA. Fallbrook is about 20 minutes north of our brewery and is well known as an avocado growing region. There are numerous brewers who undertook hop farming this year as a means to an end. Many of these breweries are hoping to grow enough hops in the coming years to develop sustainable hop supplies allowing them to make Fresh Hop or Harvest Ales.

When Sheldon approached us about planting hops, we told him we would be thrilled to have local hops at our disposal. It’s no secret, at Port Brewing we love hops! It’s apparent in our Wipeout IPA, Hop 15 and Shark Attack. We also happen to make a Fresh Hop beer each year known as High Tide. This is one of my favorite beers even though it may have the highest pain in the ass factor of anything we do which is amazing given our propensity to do absurdly weird things to our beers (yes I know Caramelized fruit seems easy in hindsight).

While my primary goal of being in Yakima was to work as an instructor, I also needed to work out the kinks with Ralph relative to our Fresh hop needs. They always say be careful what you wish for. I for one couldn’t agree more! When we launched High Tide in 2006, we felt the market was ready for a Fresh Hop beer in the bottle. There were tons of these beers being made but few to none existed on the shelf. In 2006, we brewed one single 30 bbl batch of High Tide Fresh Hop Ale. It sold out in two weeks.

In 2007 we made the commitment to a triple batch of High Tide. This was a very big step up for us. As High Tide features two additions of Fresh Hops one week apart, it was a logistical nightmare to schedule the brew. I still remember the look on Jason’s Face (our UPS Driver) when he rolled up to deliver. He was more then eager to get the 270 lbs of Fresh Hops off his truck. Either he was very sleepy or concerned about the Sheriff’s Department and their canine unit. The 2007 version of High Tide featured Fresh Centennial and Simcoe Hops. The 90 barrel triple batch sold out in 2 weeks. It was a fantastic beer.

Fast forward to 2008. It’s now Hop Harvesting time and we’re gearing up to make this years batch of High Tide. I for one am very excited. Having just come from Yakima, where I was able to secure the hops we need, you can understand why I am anxious to get home. If all goes according to plan, you will find us brewing 240 barrels of High Tide Fresh Hop IPA this weekend. It’s going to be great and painful at the same time. 240 barrels is eight batches of this beer. This will also be the largest batch of a seasonal beer Port Brewing has ever released!

On a production schedule, it means we will be brewing round the clock for two days in a row in
order to get er done and keep the hops fresh. I’m not looking forward to the 3 AM side of life but days like these don’t come along that often. We’ll suck it up and brew like mad men to make sure we can supply High Tide to as many of our distributors as possible.

Next week, we’ll get our second set of Fresh Hops in and we’ll then move the beer to the conditioning tank where we will dry hop (Wet fresh hop?) these two very large batches of beer. About one week later, we will start the bottling process and hopefully have beer ready to go in late September. I can’t wait for this beer to be back on tap. It is so fresh and hoppy.

Now, I would also like to point out that the guys went out to Sheldon’s Field today and helped pick his hops. And, rather then take our locally grown hops and burn them out in the big batches of High Tide, we have decided to do a special extra dry hopped version of Hop 15. This will be a growler only beer available at the brewery. First year hop plantings don’t yield enough hops for our batch size. However, it would appear that we have enough to dry hop an extra special small batch of Hop 15 which seems like fun to me. Look for this version of Hop 15 to be on tap at the brewery on Friday September 19, 2008.

For those of you who happen to come by and visit the brewery this week, please be kind to our brewers. We’re going to be conducting our very own sleep deprivation experiment. I for one am staring about 70 hours of work in the face. If we happen to be having a conversation and I fall asleep in a fit of narcolepsy, please don’t take it personally. Weeks like this come around very infrequently but at the end of it all, it’s so worth it. High Tide is coming! Go tell it on the mountain, Ralph and Ralph are Hop Gods and in them we trust when it comes time to make our beloved High Tide.