Inspired Beer for Sinners and Saints Alike
Head brewer Mike Rodriguez will be appearing along with Lost Abbey beers at the Hotel Del Coronado for an evening Food & Beer Fest. Coronado Brewing and Ballast Point will also be on hand.
Location:
1500 Ocean
Hotel Del Coronado
1500 Orange Avenue
San Diego, CA 92118
(619) 522-8490
Details on the web here: Food & Beer Fest at the Hotel Del Coronado
It’s 9 AM on Saturday morning and I am sitting in the dead quiet of my hotel room. The cooling fan for the room is humming along and outside my window, the sun is piercing a crystal blue sky and downtown Denver is barely coming to life.
Normally, I’d still be asleep trying to rest up for a very long day but last night, I climbed into bed much earlier than usual and as such, I am awake this morning much before I want to be. It sort of sucks, but I’m enjoying the solitude of my quiet room.
At about 11 AM this morning, the day will officially kick into gear. We’ll all descend from our hotel, stop at Chipotle on our way to the fest before arriving for the most important GABF session of the week. You see, Saturday is all about the awards show and steeling the nerves in your stomach.
Each year, the awards ceremony takes place on Saturday afternoon. And each year at the GABF, you’ll find me nervously pacing and contemplating utter failure relative to the competition. Last year, we won a single bronze medal for our Hop 15. Most breweries are happy to win a medal of any color at this fest. We’re not any brewery. Never have been and don’t want to become one.
This year, we’ve brought 13 beers to the party. Not all of them are world class beers. Some of them however just scream “look at me” and hopefully that will be enough to get us on a roll. The Judges (including myself) saw just over 3300 beers come through the competition this week. It’s an enormous increase in the # of beers for the festival. It’s doubtful that all the new beers this year are world class. Remember, I tasted a bunch of them during judging. However, there will most assuredly be some great new beers and lucky recipients of GABF fame.
It’s Saturday morning. The nerves have kicked in and we’re about 4 and a 1/2 hours from the first medal coming up on the screen. I’m going to organize my room and prep for leaving tomorrow to kill some time. In two hours, I will have my ceremonial good luck Chicken Burrito with Black Beans and Rice. So far, Chipotle hasn’t let me down in terms of Saturday morning rituals. Let’s see how it treats us this year. See you on the floor, nerves and all.
Divine Words | Volume 1, Issue 1
Greetings from Your Director of Brewery Operations.
I’m sure many of you wonder what I actually do around here. Me too. It’s kind of strange being a Director. I mean I don’t yell “Cut.” I don’t “frame scenes” in the air with my hands and I most certainly don’t hide behind the lens in a Directors Chair. Nope, what I do matters around here. I show up each and every day (except Sundays, that’s family day) and I support the brand.
What this means exactly know one knows.
Like today, I am being asked to support the Lost Abbey brand of information communication by writing this piece. Tomorrow, I will show my support as Mike and Ryan stuff body bag after body bag of Fresh Hops in the dry hopping tank. On Thursday, I’ll make some beer (it still won’t be enough brewing for me) and on Friday, I’ll settle into the bar and rehash the week with each of you.
Being a Director is still very weird to me. It’s like having Business Attention Deficit Disorder. I always have things to do but seemingly never get any of them done. But at the end of each and every day, there is always beer. So I guess, I should get used to life as a Director as long as there’s all this beer around, it can’t be that bad.
Can it?
One of the reasons we can now restrict Tomme’s activities to his actual job of “directing” operations (as well as company figurehead and sex symbol) here at Port Brewing and The Lost Abbey, is we’ve got a couple of new folks handling our brewing operation. They actually joined us back at the beginning of the year, but we’ve all been so busy that we haven’t had time to introduce them properly. So we’re making ammends now. Allow us to introduce our new faces:
Mike Rodriguez, Head Brewer
Mike hails from Kansas City, MO where, prior to joining us, he was a brewer and cellarman for the famed Boulevard Brewing for the past six years. Before that he was head brewer at The Power Plant restaurant and brewery in Parkville, MO.
Mike’s wealth of skills and experience from his time at Boulevard is the driving factor behind our ability to scale production upward to meet the growing demand for our beers nationwide.
When he’s not running the brewhouse, Mike loves to play rugby and, in true Kansas City native style, BBQ just about anything that fits on a grill.
He also has an encyclopedic knowledge of the lines from just about every romantic comedy and action-adventure movie made in America since 1975. If you ever have a chance to drop by the brewery or see him at an appearance, buy him a beer and ask him to act out all the characters in Die Hard.
Gordon Gerski, Brewer & Bottling Line Wrangler
Like Mike, Gordon, or “Gordie” as everyone calls him, comes to us from Boulevard Brewing and The Power Plant before that.
One of Gordie’s jobs while at Boulevard was to run and maintain their bottling line, a skill that’s come in handy here at the Abbey since our shiny new bottling line is of the same make (albiet much smaller than Boulevard’s). As anyone who’s ever run a bottling line can tell you, keeping one of those Rube Goldbergian contraptions running smoothly is no simple feat, so his knowledge of which dials to turn and knobs to fiddle with (or which panel to kick) are invaluable to us.
Outside of the brewery Gordie’s an avid cyclist who enjoys climbing and decending our local mountains on a bike with ridiculously thin tires. He’s also got a very large husky named Molly who can bark her ABCs.
Beyond just new faces, we’ve also been growing our brewery like gangbusters. Earlier this year we acquired two new fermenters, Heaven and Hell, named for what had to be moved to get them into the brewhouse (See the photo album here). The aforementioned bottling line is now up and running (most of the time) which has increased our bottling capacity from a couple hundred cases a week to well over 1,000.
We also acquired several hundred more oak barrels, pushing our total to over 500, and signed a keg contract that’ll allow us to significantly increase our draft accounts across the country (read: more fresh beer for you).
As you might guess, all of the new stuff has significantly increased our storage requirements, so we also added 10,000 square feet of warehouse space to handle our rapidly growing distribution.
And in the coming months you’ll be seeing even more changes. This fall we’ll also be adding cold storage to our warehouse allowing us to move shipment-ready kegs out of the brewery, tear down the exiting coldbox, and build a brand new tasting bar complete with a fancy refrigeration unit to keep some of the rare stuff chilled and ready for tasting. So when you visit the brewery, you’ll not only be able to sample our regular fare, but you’ll also be able to experience some of our epic beers from the reserve (2006 Cuvee de Tomme anyone?).
Finally, just this past week, we added a new feature to our tasting hours — food in the form of Marty and his amazing hot dog cart. Marty’s the real deal, and his authentic New York hot dogs, brats, cheesesteak sandwiches and other streetside eats are simply amazing (inexpensive too). So the next time you’re down to the brewery for a tasting, or a new beer release, make sure to grab a dog or two — you’ll be glad you did!
Here’s an event you won’t want to miss — Each year a limited number of guests are invited to join the Port Brewing family as we delve into the barrel archives to sample a few of the specialties waiting within. Barrel Tasting Night is limited to 125 lucky people who will be the first to taste craft releases aged as long as two years by brewmaster Tomme Arthur and crew.
This year is our third annual Barrel Tasting Night which will be held on Saturday, November 7 to coincide with the kickoff of San Diego Beer Week.
The event is from 7pm to 10pm and includes a number of incredibly rare beers coupled with hors d’ oeuvres and fine foods prepared by The Lost Abbey chef in residence, Vince Marsaglia.
Tickets to the event are $80 each, $150 for a couple, and are guaranteed to sell out quickly. If you’re going to be in town that week, this is definitely a “can’t miss” event.
You’ll find all the information on our website here. Tickets are available online here.
Here’s what on tap for release over the next few months (please note that all dates are estimates). If you’re in an area in which we distribute (click here for a map), you should see these start to hit your favorite tap rooms and store shelves in 7 to 14 days after release.
Here’s a list of upcoming events for the next few weeks. You can always find a full list of events, appearances and releases on our website.
Click here for our full calendar of events.
Come meet Tomme Arthur at a dinner and beer pairing at Bistro West in Carlsbad, CA.
Location:
Bistro West
4960 Avenida Encinas (I-5 & Cannon Road)
Carlsbad, CA 92008
Tel: (760) 930-8008
website: http://www.bistrowest.com/
It’s Friday and the Ramones are jamming on the CD player. Me, I’m hunkered down in my office. The tasting bar is packed and Marty is doing a brisk business of selling pork products from his hot dog cart out front. What beer am I drinking as I type this? The clear alcohol free kind known as Holy Water. You see, two days ago, I woke up feeling a bit under the weather and no, I didn’t have the botella influenza. Seems that I am the victim of either too much work or perhaps my 3 year old petri dish known as Sydney who just started preschool last week might have infected daddy. Sucks but I am definitely not 100% right now and with Denver next week, I am trying my best to lay low so that I can get well.
I am on my third set of Cough Medicine and hoping that by the time I am done swallowing these orange pills, I will feel better. As we just tapped the High Tide at 4 PM today, I would REALLY like to be having one right about now. I also would very much like to be downtown at the San Diego Festival of Beers. Haven’t missed one of these in a VERY long time! But such is life. In spite of all my woes, I will say that last night (before I broke down and started pumping my body full of meds) we had our annual tasting for our GABF beers here at the brewery.
This is the first year that we have done this outside of the Pizza Port beers but since the three locations are sending a total of 34 beers this year and we’re sending 8 from Lost Abbey and 5 from Port Brewing, it was just impossible to do them all in one night. Jeff came out from Carlsbad last night and we ran down the list of beers that we’re sending to Denver. Not everything scored highly but that’s to be expected. Bottling does weird things to beers.
We started with Midnight Sessions and Hot Rocks. Neither really WOWs me at the moment. They were bottled so long ago that I just kind of throw my hands in the air and hope. Not expecting this to be part of our year. Moved sideways and had some Carnevale and Inferno. Both of these are awesome drinking beers. A brett based Saison has never done well in the category we enterered so we’ll see. The Inferno may just be the most stylistically perfect beer we sent. It’s fluffy and smashingly drinkable which is awesome. And, this Pale Strong Belgian Ale type beer usually does very well in this category. High hopes for this one.
We opened some Wipeout, Panzer Pils and Hop 15 next. It’s funny because the Wipeout is so incredibly clean. But there seems to be this notion that the hop aroma should be more over the top. It tasted amazing but Aroma is very important. Well built either way and a beer we make and drink a ton of around here. The Panzer really has all the essence of a great Imperial Pils and I hope for Julian’s sake it scores well (read medals). This is our Pro Am entry. Basically a homebrewer and professional brewer collaborate on a homebrewer’s award winning recipe and brew it for commercial sale. This year we nailed the parameters for Panzer and Julian agrees. The Hop 15 won a bronze medal last year (don’t ask me how). None of us scored it well during the tasting. Yet there it was winning Alpha King and a bronze GABF medal. Weird. This years batch has nice flavor and it’s no slouch in the hops department. But then again this is one of the hardest categories at the fest to win. So…
Post Hoppy beer land, we turned our attention to Sour beer land (it’s like Candyland for adults). In Sour Beer land, we didn’t see any Oompa Loompahs but we did find some Duck Duck Gooze, Cuvee and In Veritas Vino 005. The Duck Duck has the necessary Acetic character to win and the depth is great. Jeff says maybe too sweet? The Cuvee is the best bottling we have ever done. Sure, there have been better kegs and single barrels but as a matter of course, this is just a nice blend of barrels. Cuvee didn’t win last year but this year the beer isn’t a shadow of its former self. Nope, it’s the paradigm of blending for us.
In Veritas Vino is an experimental beer and we think it has awesome character. And that’s all I have to say about that… We also opened a bottle of Red Poppy. This was the third year we have made Red Poppy and it’s clearly the best batch as well. The oak might be overstated for style but not in my heart. So tasty. The beer will be on the festival floor which won’t suck.
Lastly, we moved into Black beer territory with some Serpent’s Stout and a wee bit of Older Viscosity. I love me some Serpent’s but this batch didn’t sit well in the bottle and I’m not feeling it. The Older Viscosity has all the depth you would expect of a bourbon beer. The only issue we could ding it for was that the body seems too light. I mean the beer is 11.5% ABV so how light can the body be? Yet, it just doesn’t have “that” chewiness thing going on in the beer. Drinks like it’s so much lighter. You know the way we want it to be.
So that’s it for now. One week from tomorrow, we’ll be in Denver. One week from right now, the Judging will have officially have ended and the trophy people will be busy working on their part. It would be great to add some more hardware to our collection. This year there are over 3200 beers entered in the competition. That’s beyond comprehension. So many beers so little time. And to think, I’m on drugs right now.
Who knew?
Enjoy an evening with the Port Brewing family as we delve into the barrel archives to sample a few of the specialties waiting within. Limited to 125 lucky people, guests will be the first to taste craft releases aged as long as two years by brewmaster Tomme Arthur and crew.
The Details
When: Saturday, November 7, 2008 — 7pm to 10pm
Where: Port Brewing and The Lost Abbey, San Marcos, San Diego County, CA
How Much: $80 per each; $150 for a pair — Tickets must be purchased online here: http://store.lostabbey.com/Product102.
Strictly limited to 125 guests!
What does the night include?
Explore the vanguard of barrel-aged beers with 2008 world champion brewer and Tomme Arthur as Port Brewing and The Lost Abbey opens much-heralded barrel archive for an evening excursion into the ancient mysteries of barrel-aging beers. An intimate night exploration and discovery, the evening’s guests will treated to a one-of-a-kind experience with some of the world’s most coveted barrel-aged brews, coupled with hors d’ oeuvres and fine foods prepared by The Lost Abbey chef in residence, Vince Marsaglia.
Tickets for last year’s event sold out very quickly, so make sure to purchase tickets early.
For Tickets
Visit http://store.lostabbey.com/Product102
Join Tomme Arthur for a night of food and beer pairings at Eastern Standard in Boston.
Location:
Eastern Standard
528 Commonwealth Ave
Boston, MA 02215-2606
(617) 532-9100
Join Tomme Arthur and others at Beer Advocate’s Belgian Beer Fest in Boston, MA.
For more details and ticket visit: http://beeradvocate.com/fests/bbf
Join Tomme Arthur for and evening of food and beer pairings at The Crossings at Carlsbad.
Date / Time : October 9, 2008 – 4pm to 8pm.
Details: $10 gets you you a commemorative Boobs for Beer pint glass and two pints of any Port Brewing / Lost Abbey beer on tap. Beer for Boobs is the brainchild of our friends at White Labs who will be walking the 60 miles of The 3 Day walk for a cure in November. All proceeds from the evening will go to benefit the Susan G. Komen philanthropic trust.
Who should attend: Anyone who has breasts, knows someone who has breasts, or supports breasts in any way shape or form.
See you there!