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Christmas is coming…I asked Santa for a Hood and Wire Unit.

It’s Monday of Christmas week. It’s finally here! I’m sitting at my desk staring at the box with Sydney’s new Princess Scooter in it. I need to put it together. It’s pretty much the only thing she asked Santa for this year. As I stare at the box, I am reminded that there are a bunch of kids out there who have asked Santa for presents this year and may not get anything. It’s enough to make a grown man cry.

Somedays, I am reminded of how blessed we are at Port Brewing and The Lost Abbey. Last night, we held our Chirstmas Party for our employees and their families. It was a chance to reflect on where we have been and to give them hope for the places and direction we wish for in 2010. All told it was a great evening. Vince cooked. We drank and there was even festive music in the background. It was a great way to start this Christmas week.

This Christmas week is very exciting for me. First, I am happy as a pig in you know what since it looks like the new cold box I asked Santa to bring me for Christmas will finally be completed. At over 1200 square feet, it will triple the size of our old unit and make things so much easier on the distribution side. I’m thankful(and so is David) that our warehouse will also stop looking like a bomb exploded in there. For the past two months, we have been storing all manner of kegs, barrels, bottles and cold box parts waiting for the new unit to be completed. Now that it’s done, we can all breath a sigh of relief.

As part of the cold box expansion, we’re also going to finish our new Hot Box for Bottle Conditioning. This will give us much better consistency. In terms of our process, this is one area we have been negligent as the weather in San Diego is pretty stable year round. However, we are entering that time of the year when the warehouse stays a bit cooler than ideal and as such, we need this warm room.

I’m also thankful that our new custom 375 ml bottles have arrived from China. This new bottle mold(that we’re sharing with Russian River and North Coast Brewing Company) is a proprietary shape and will give us better flexibility to ship our small batch beers all over this great country. Look for 2009 Angel’s Share Brandy Barrel to hit the shelves as our first release. Last week, we packaged 800 cases of the beer and it’s conditioning as we speak. These bottles were run on our New Bottling Line and the process went incredibly well. We also have run cork finished Judgment Day and Gift of the Magi bottles on the line with no issues. It’s nice to know that the only piece missing is a wire hood unit that can keep up. Santa can I get one of these for Christmas too?

Lastly, many of you were with us for Christmas in July. I know because we have all these amazing pictures of our patrons sitting with St. Nick. They’re some of my favorite pictures around the brewery. They also remind me that we’re about to make a difference in some young lives this weekend. As many of you recall we donated a ton of presents to the Toys for Tots Foundation back in August. This Christmas (because of your generosity) smiles all over San Diego will break out. And that my friends is the spirit of Christmas. Now, if you’ll excuse me. I have some princesses who require my attention.

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Post SD BEER Week thoughts and Cold Box news

It’s Tuesday and San Diego Beer Week ended officially at 12:01 AM yesterday morning. I finished up at about 10:20 pm when my car entered the garage of my house and I was officially home with no more events to work. It was so very nice waking up on Monday morning after an epic tasting at O’Brien’s knowing I didn’t have any beer events to head off to that night. Some suggested I take Monday off and relax. Maybe catch up on a little needed shut eye they suggested. It sounded like a great plan. Trouble is, I have a 3.5 year old who doesn’t understand R and R and we had work to do at the brewery.

You see, they just completed tearing down the cold box and we’re about to set the new one up for the tasting room. It looks so bad out there in the brewery right now. We’re bottling beer at the moment as well so things are quite chaotic here at the brewery. Tomorrow, we’ll get a chance to start rebuilding the bar and for the first time we’ll actually have lighting out there at night for the tasting room (I’m smiling from ear to ear right now). We’re also expanding the tap selection and with our new microstar contract, we’ll have tons of beers throughout the year. Look for expanded Abbey offerings as well as real kegs of beer to go. There’s even talk of a vintage beer list( aka Tomme’s cellar stash ) that will launch before the end of the year. We even have ordered a commercial dish washer for our glassware so the girls won’t need me to clean your glasses anymore.

All told, we’re very excited to be working so hard after San Diego Beer Week. I mean, we could be sitting back and waiting for Thanksgiving to arrive. But, I’d rather toast my family (or is that get toasted with family?) on Thanksgiving to our continued success and my lack of sleep. Look forward to a new great tasting bar hitting a Lost Abbey near you soon.

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Recapping San Diego Beer Week

It’s Friday and the tasting room is officially open. I’m hiding in my office as I need some time to decompress.
San Diego Beer Week is now entering the final weekend and my liver went on strike this morning. I’m zoning out here in my office trying to recall if I’ve ever had a week with so much going on relative to beer. It’s been impressive and depressing at the same time. Impressive in that I have managed to drink my weight in beer (no easy feat mind you) and depressing because well this monumental week is winding to a close.

Last night we had our first ever Lost Abbey art show at J Six in downtown San Diego. Christian Graves and all the staff of J Six were amazing. We displayed some 15 pieces of art and even had Sean Dominguez (the artist) on hand to talk about the paintings and labels. It’s something that I have personally wanted for our patrons since we started commissioning Sean to do these great pieces. We brought down 14 Lost Abbey beers for the event including Duck Duck Gooze so to match the art. All told about 150 consumers and media turned out for the event. The food was out of this world good and Vince is still talking about it today.

Wednesday night we pulled double duty and hit the Toronado after a great beer dinner at the Ritual Tavern. Luca, Stacy and Michael put together an awesome menu and we poured Duck Duck Gooze, Inferno, Gift of the Magi and Red Barn. Late night found us at the Toronado for more beers and washoes. Cable Car 2008 and 2009 were on tap. The 2008 keg blew in 7 minutes! I don’t get down to San Diego enough to visit the 30th street bars so it was most excellent to have the chance on Wednesday to do so.

Today, I’m pretty worked over. Last Friday, I started my week of San Diego beer with an event at The Neighborhood. It seems like a month ago. I’m heading home tonight to put my feet up and relax with Sydney. Maureen is going out for Mom’s night out with the girls. She earned it. Daddy’s been on a guys week out and it’s not an equitable trade. But you gotta start somewhere right?

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It’s ALIVE!!!

San Diego Beer Week has shifted from first to second gear and it appears to be developing momentum on its way to third gear as we begin the week. The 10 day week kicked off on Friday with the 6th Annual San Diego Brewer’s Guild event at the World Beat Center in Balboa Park. Gordie, Tim and Nate manned the taps as we poured Sinners 2009, Brother Levonian Saison and Devotion for the masses. Sounds like I missed a great event. However, I didn’t miss out on a fantastic set of desserts at The Neighborhood in downtown San Diego (Thanks Lisa Penwell from Stone for setting this up)!

When I arrived around 6:30 in the downtown area, I drove in circles looking for parking. (Thank God the Padres weren’t playing too!) Once inside the restuarant, I orderd a Lost and Found and set out to decide on a dinner plan. Lisa joined me for dinner. I went for the Street tacos with Devotion and she had the Mushroom burger(they’re known for their hamburgers). The Neighborhood was featuring four Lost Abbey beers that evening Devotion, Lost and Found, Red Barn and Ten Commandments alongside some desserts served Tapas style. I was a bit skeptical of our beers and dessert but the pairings were quite special. Hopefully some of you got a chance to partake in this menu. It was very cool.

On Saturday we hosted a ton of people at the brewery. First, during regular business hours we saw 6 pub crawls and lots of “happy” people come visit our establishment. Then we closed the doors and cleaned up for our Night of the Barrel Party. Typically, this is the best event we host at the brewery each year. Although, you’d be hard pressed to convince me that having Christmas in July with Santa onsite isn’t equally as fun.

For the night of the barrels, we pulled out 10 different beers (or fractions there of) for the evening. On tap we saw Brandy Angel’s 2008, Older Viscosity 2009, Sinners 2009, Cable Car 2009, Veritas 006-Sangre DC, Red Poppy 2010, Soured Avant Garde, Amazing Grace 2010, Port Barrel Aged Serpent’s Stout (served with spice cake) and the last beer of the night an experimental barrel of Angel’s Share which we added Cab Franc grapes to.

As always, the party couldn’t have been a raging success without the assistance of our volunteers lead by Terri and Sage. Matt Dolman even worked security in a tuxedo (dapper stunt double that Matt). Vince knocked socks off, bowled people over and otherwise threw down the gaunlet for Junkyard Chefs everywhere. He’s seriously the MacGyver of cooking. I think a spatula, some charcoal and a fatted cloven animal is all Vince needs in order to feed the masses. It’s no miracle at Cana when he cooks but then again, I’ve seen the light and eaten of the pork belly to be convinced what he does with food on a loading dock isn’t mortal. A big shoutout to Vince for all the amazing food. This Night of the Barrels is impossible without that attention to detail.

Sunday morning, I fell out of bed and headed down to KUSI for a 9:40 AM morning news spot with Christian Graves of J Six who will be hosting The Lost Abbey art show on Thursday night. We pimped a couple of beers and paintings (Carnevale and Judgment Day) and things went well the rest of the day as the Chargers played a great game. I headed back down to San Diego for the event at Phil’s BBQ Event Center where tons of people turned out to see what we had to offer. I poured beers for two hours straight before running out. Carnevale went first, then Judgment Day followed by Avant Garde and Inferno. Met a ton of new Lost Abbey drinkers last night and all told it was a great event(their very first SD Beer Week event= Thanks Phil and Chad!)

Tonight I’m off to the Tomme Arthur Experience at Stone. I’ve never had a Tomme Arthur Experience so this should be interesting. 20 beers all brewed here since we opened our doors three and a half short years ago! Could be a long night and longer morning if we try to run the gamut. Haven’t needed to drink 20 beers in one night in a very long time (This one time at band camp…) Lastly, I talked with Michael at Trattoria Acqua today and they still have some seats left for our dinner tomorrow night. It promises to be an epic evening of food and beer. And now that the time change is upon us, we’ll have a great view of the evening coastal lights as well. Hope to see you out there this week. San Diego Beer Week is ALIVE!!!
And that’s all I have to say about that.

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San Diego Beer Week is coming…

sdbw-logo-whiteI’ve been in the beer business in San Diego since 1996. During this time, our city has gone from relative beer obscurity to bonafide beer destination status. Last month the editors and publishers of Men’s Journal even went so far as to name San Diego the # 1 beer related city in the country (without apologies to Portland, OR). Two years ago, Philadelphia, PA (another great beer city) launched Philly Beer Week and with it a host imitations. There’s now beer weeks in cities all across this country including Detroit and Saint Louis.

Well, San Diego is about to join the imitation is the sincerest form of flattery party as next Friday November 6th San Diego Beer Week (technically 9 great days of beer drinking and celebrating) begins. As of right now, there are over 160 events scheduled during the week we’re doing our part to support the 9 day party. In case you haven’t been paying attention to our Lost Abbey Calendar of events, here’s what we’ll be doing to celebrate the week.

Friday November 6th you can catch us at The Neighborhood in Downtown San Diego featuring a tapas style menu with 4 Lost Abbey paired beers. On Saturday the 7th of November we’re hosting our favorite event of the year our annual Barrel Aged Beer Party at The Lost Abbey. At this time, tickets are completely sold out (sorry about the tease). But. we’re sure some of you already purchased tickets and are counting down the days like us. Veritas 006 will be released that evening and word on the street is the beer will taste an awful lot like the Sangre DC that we poured at the Stone Anniversary party in August.

Sunday finds us dividing and conquering. I’ll be heading to Phil’s BBQ in the Sports Arena area for an event with Jim Crute and the gang from Lightning Brewery. I LOVE Phil’s BBQ and am excited as many of my childhood friends may even make an appearance. We may even have a Brian Arthur sighting as well. Monkey and Monkey Rodriguez will be venturing across the great blue bridge that spans our bay and heading for the historic Hotel Del Coronado for an event featuring beers from Coronado Brewing, Ballast Point as well as Lost Abbey. Look for Cuvee de Tomme, Inferno and Carnevale to all be on display in Coronado.

On Monday, I have agreed to something called the Tomme Arthur Experience at Stone. I guess this means that I’ll be there telling you about 20 of the best beers you can’t buy on a regular basis. We’ve got a cask of Bourbon Santa’s Little Helper (held from this summer’s Christmas in July release) as well as some other great things. Veritas 006 will be on draft in a redux of the Anniversary Party. We anticipate 8 draft beers (4 Port and 4 Abbey) along with the cask and some 12 other bottled beers. I’m excited. Hopefully I’ll be able to live up the hype of having a whole night dedicated to my “experience?”

Tuesday finds me checking into a hospital for Detox and hydration therapy. I’ll check out for lunch and hopefully grab a pint or two with Vinnie and Rob Tod who are doing an event at Stone. I’ll point the car for the coast and drop down into La Jolla for dinner at Trattoria Acqua. Can you say weight gain this week? Man I’m going to need some new pants. 5 courses of amazing food and Lost Abbey beers are on the agenda. Trattoria Acqua now features a bunch of our beer on their menu and Michael and Victoria McGeath have been gracious enough to keep us in stock.

Wednesday we’re going back to double dipping for the night. To start the night off, we’ll be stuffing our bellies at The Ritual Tavern on 30th Street. It promises to be an amazing meal and I know that we’re serving Mussels with Duck Duck Gooze, there’s also Gift of the Magi 2008, Red Barn and Inferno on the menu. We’ll spill out of The Ritual Tavern and head across the street to Toronado for a late night cap from 10-12. Ian and I haven’t worked out the details but he called me from a Cable Car the other day to say hi.

Thursday promises to bring one of the best events for us this week. We’ve partnered up with Christian Graves of J Six fame (Downtown) and we’re going to launch the inaugural Lost Abbey Art Show. This will run from 7-9 PM and feature 15 original pieces of art that we commisioned Sean Dominguez to produce for our Lost Abbey Labels. We recently got all 15 pieces back from the framers and they look amazing! Our photographer John Schulz will also be on hand displaying some of the print ads he’s created for us since we opened our doors.

Christian’s Culinary team will be working the room with passed appetizers. Our brewery staff will be on hand to sample all 15 beers that match the original art pieces. We’ve never seen an event like this done before and are incredibly jazzed about it to say the least. $20 to sample the beers, view the art and you’ll even get to keep The Lost Abbey stemware glass from the evening. If there was one event to put on the list for this week for me, it would be this one.

Friday and Saturday, I’m taking a break. I’ll need it for sure. We’ll end the week in a bang celebrating with two last events. In the early afternoon, you’ll find us out at the Chef and Beer event taking place at Qualcomm’s Headquarters in La Jolla. I’ll drop down from there across to Kearny Mesa where Tom Nickel and I will direct about 40 people through one of the last events of San Diego Beer Week. A chance to taste some of the most incredibly rare and sought after beers we have produced in our 3 plus years of business is what’s slated. I love the O’Brien’s events like this especially when Chef Vince gets involved…

Sunday night officially ends San Diego Beer Week. It’s going to kick my ass. That’s for sure. Monday will find me back at the brewery bright and early as we begin demolotion of our cold box in preparation for a new tasting bar area. Stay tuned for more details about this in my next blog. Be sure to view the calendar on our website which lists websites and more details for each event. Some of these are bound to sell out so don’t delay!

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Sister Mother Mary Came to me…

It’s a well known fact that I love Brettanomyces and Brett based beers. To me, they are some of the most interesting beers in my world and offer all sorts of flavors and opportunities for expresssion. And, while I love these “funky” beers, they cause me to have some wild (some would say bizarre) dreams. The funny thing about these dreams is that they are incredibly vivid and I know they are coming when I find myself drinking these beers in copious quantities.

Two weeks ago, I was in Boston, MA for the Beer Advocate Night of the Funk. This is a specialty beer tasting that features about 50 beers all brewed with some manner of Wild Yeast. Mostly, it means that there are beers of every sort of ilk and imagination on the festival floor containing Brettanomyces and other creepy crawlers. Heading into a room full of beers like sends my imagination into a sensory overload that’s hard to put into words.

It’s an awesome night of drinking and one that I truly look forward to. Problem is, I know going into each Night of the Funk sessions that I am going to “experience” some incredibly vivid dreams that night. I mean we’re talking like acid trip crazy stuff. On Friday, I spent the evening consuming all manners of Sweaty Bretty Beers and found myself not really too concerned about the “dreamy” world I knew I was soon going to enter.

I drank some incredible Ithaca Brute and reveled in the imagination of the Allagash, Ommegang and Cambridge Brewing Company Beers. It was a great night of sampling and I found the world of Funky Beers expressive as ever. We capped off the night by heading to Deep Ellum after the Festival concluded where Max served us up a couple of rounds of Hop 15. I retired around 1 AM that morning and fell into a deep deep sleep.

Sometime around 3:50 AM, I awoke to a smattering of noise and infomercials on the TV. I grabbed a glass of water and charged back to sleep. And that’s when Sister Mother Mary came to me. I wish I could remember all of the deatils but many of them are not that important. What is important is that I found myself in the lobby of the Nunnery seated in a chair(sharing a glass of Wine) with Sister Mary somebody or another. Apparently, I had been called to assist the Sisters in their mission to bring aide to the poor working class citizens of a village in Mexico.

Over a bottle of Wine and some serious conversations, Sister Mother Mary and I plotted a course of action for the brewery and our charitable contributions to the poor and needy. At first, we would offer assistance in the form of man hours as I volunteered my employees time in Mexico to assist the villagers in building houses and shelters.Then, as we grew as a company (and became profitable) our olive branch of assistance would include more monetary assistance and aide.

When I awoke on Saturday, I opened my eyes and half expected to find a glass of wine or a note from Sister Mother Mary next to me on the nightstand. It was a very vivid dream and one that certainly had my attention. And while I didn’t find an empty wine bottle under the bed, I did however see the program from the Night of the Funk next to me on the dresser next to the bed. Apparently, I had fallen asleep reviewing the list of beers from Friday Night.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I LOVE Brett based beers, they are so amazing. If even Sister Mother Mary comes to me in my sleep. But if I have another one of these nights in the not so distant future and Sister Mother Mary returns with a bottle of wine, I might just have to swear off the Bretta for a little while. Dig?

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When things go wrong

This past week was one of those weeks at the brewery. On Monday, we shipped out several pallets of beer for Massachussets. These pallets included beer for Distribution as well as some extra cases of beer for the two beer dinners we are partcipating in. Unfortunately, because I was out of the country the previous week, there were some cases of beers that fell through the cracks.

Given that we had an additional week’s worth of time before the events, it wouldn’t be too big of a deal. On Tuesday, I boxed up 3 cases of Duck Duck Gooze and 3 cases of Cuvee de Dumbass. We packaged them in the proper beer shippers and sent them via fed ex to our Atlantic Importing (our distributor) in Framingham. They were scheduled to arrive on Friday which would allow Atlantic time to deliver them on Monday for the Tuesday dinner in Worchester. At least that’s what we thought. You see, MA. is one of those states where it is illegal to ship beer into and Fed Ex (in Boston) halted the delivery of our packages to Atlantic.

Gina got the phone call on Friday morning stating that our packages were not going to be delivered AND that we were going to have to pay for the shipping of the bottles back to us! ARGH this blows. Fed Ex would not allow us to reroute the boxes to a legal state nor would they allow our distributor to pick them up. So now, we are minus 2 on our beer dinner beers and in need of fixing this problem.

Whew whew, this coming Monday, I am boarding a flight from Carlsbad to Boston and when I get to the airport, I will be toting an additional 4 cases of beer with me as well as my luggage for the trip. This means that when I land in Boston, I will have 5 items to handle instead of 1. It also means that I will now need to rent a car and drag all the beer with me from Boston to Worchester, MA. in order to have the right beers at the beer dinner. This is going to be a royal pain in my ass. It sucks for sure and it’s not exactly the best way to travel. I’m also counting on the fact that United Airlines will allow me to ship 4 cases of beer in the belly of their planes(I’m calling to confirm this). But they’ll also want to charge me for the right to place said beers in their planes. This is course means that on top of the Fed Ex costs (both ways), the rental car needs and the airline fees, this is turning into a very expensive proposition.

Still, when I get to the beer dinner on Tuesday night, it will be worth it. Why? Well for starters, because Alec the Chef has been prepping for this dinner for over a month and he specifically asked for these beers. We could find other stunt beers to step in for our missing comrades but that isn’t how chefs want to work. They don’t want to agonize over the details only to have things fall apart at the last minute. So, on Tuesday morning when I land at Logan Airport, I will be in search of 2 cases of Cuvee de Dumbass and 2 cases of Duck Duck Gooze. As long as these make it, I won’t mind if my luggage ends up in Tahiti. The beer is the most important thing. It always has been. Let’s hope the guys handling the luggage don’t get thirsty…

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Cask Ales, Wooden Legs and Gout

The Sunday morning after the Great American Beer Festival usually involves a long trip from the hotel to the airport in an altered state of being. Mostly the effects of drinking for 5 days in a row rear their ugly head and then there’s the lack of sleep part too. It can make for an ugly ride. This year certainly was no different in that I got very little sleep on Saturday night and we drank quite heavily. Normally this wouldn’t be too bad except that instead of flying back to San Diego to start the detox program, I hopped on a flight headed to Chicago where I met up with Maureen before jetting across to London to do some brewing.

Over the summer, I was contacted by Ian Jefferey’s of Naked Brands in the UK and asked if I would like to participate in the JD Wetherspoon’s Cask Ale Festival. The Wetherspoon’s group owns over 700 pubs in the UK and twice a year offers a promotion in their pubs whereby they tap 50 different cask ales and their patrons vote on their favorites. As part of the fest, the Wetherspoon Group works with 4 UK breweries to produce a recipe from a visiting brewer. Typically this includes an Asian brewer, another from Down Under and a continental brewmaster. Each year, there is also an American Brewer. In the past, they have hosted the guys from Stone, Matt from Firestone and our good friend Tonya Cornett from Bend Brewing visited twice this year as well.

The trip to England found me brewing at Sheperd Neame Brewery- The oldest brewery in the UK founded in 1698. Maureen and I landed in London at 6 AM on Monday morning. Ian met us and we checked into a hotel near the airport to get a spot of rest before heading down to Faversham where I was to brew. The drive to Faversham was uneventful and we checked into the Sun Inn which is located above a pub (how freaking cool is that?) Ian joined Maureen and I for a pint before we walked over to the brewery to meet up with David and Stewart.

That night after Maureen retired upstairs, David (the head brewer) and myself hunkered down and tipped more than a few pints of Master Brew before David thought it wise to procure some Champagne as well. I think I did my part as pint after pint went down. I think he met his match. A few days later, I heard from another brewer that I must have a wooden leg and in no way shape or form was he going to drink with me! It’s not a wooden leg but a West Coast liver. Tuesday had me visiting the brewery and we also went out to the hop fields nearby to see some Kentish Hops. Sheperd Neame is also now responsible for a plot of land that has over 120 varieties of hops on it. Some are experimental and not even used for brewing!

Wednesday, we actually got around to making a batch of beer. I selected a recipe from my Solana Beach days known as Grumpy’s Pale Ale. It’s an Extra Pale Ale recipe featuring no crystal malt and uses a boatload of Phoenix and Amarillo Hops. Stewart had never used Amarillo hops before so this was an interesting recipe for sure. The beer was earmarked to be 5.0% ABV with a crisp and dry finish. I was given the opportunity to send our proprietary yeast over and was excited about this beer.

At 6:10 AM, we mashed in the first of 300 bbls worth of wort. It was amazing to watch them fill the solid oak mash tuns with the grist. It took about 10 minutes for each vessel. We also mash hopped this batch of beer with Bramling Cross hops which was a first for them as well. Stewart really enjoyed this part of the process as he picked the hops himself! The beers went through their system with very little difficulty and 300 bbls was produced with nary a headache. The next day, I went back to visit Stewart and asked if it would be possible to taste the beer. We were scheduled to return to London that afternoon so in theory it would be the only opportunity to taste the beer we brewed.

Stewart was amazed at the flavors of the beer. The hops really started to shine even though the wort was still so sweet. He had this look on his face that screamed “Amarillo hops are my new favorite thing in the whole wide world!” The beer fermented completely the way I had hoped and on Monday, I got the lab results for the beer showing just over 5.0% ABV and 39 IBU’s which is a bit higher than targeted but I’m certainly not going to complain about that. There seems to be a real buzz coming from Sheperd Neame about this batch. I’m excited about that as well.

On Thursday, we checked into London and made our way to Cross Key’s which is a Wetherspoon Pub for a photo shoot and meet and greet with the other brewers. It was a nice relaxing afternoon with a wide array of Cask Ales sampled. Friday came and this was Maureen and my only really day to ourselves away from Brewing. So we did what any parents would do, we went Christmas shopping for Sydney.

We were on a mission to find a store called Early Learning Center as Maureen had a catalog with some great toys in it. So we jumped the underground and headed out to Picadilly. We finally found what we were looking for in Hammersmith. It took numerous stops but it all worked out for us. The one bummer was that we had to purchase a duffle bag enabling us to bring home our haul for Sydney. Once we got all the toy shopping done, we then played tourists for a bit and did the 10 Downing Street part of London.

Post touristy stuff, we jumped off the underground in the theater district and found a pub that was serving Timothy Taylor’s Landlord Bitter. I’d been jonesing for a pint of this since we got to London and I was happy to find it in a great pub. We slumbered well from all the walking that day before heading to the airport on Saturday to fly home. It was a great trip back to the states. The only pisser of the trip back was that my gout flared up. It’s my birthday today. I have gout. Makes me feel old. Oh well. The UK was great. The brewing went well and I made some cool new friends. I even managed to start the Christmas shopping for Sydney in October. Who knew?

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Wrapping up

It’s been two weeks since I left for Denver and the Great American Beer Festival. And what a two weeks it’s been. When I blogged last, I discussed some of our beers and the competition itself. Here’s a recap of what happened. On Wednesday the 30th of September, Port Brewing won $5000 in the Lallemand Nottingham Dry Yeast contest. First place was $30,000 and while we didn’t win that, we were awarded 1st place in the American Ale category for SPA (Summer Pale Ale). We will be using this money to purchase an ink jet coding system for our bottling line. We expect this to be operational before the end of the year (Hoorray BEER!) This is something we feel very strongly will help us with quality control issues. It’s long overdue that’s for sure.

Thursday night, the festival opened and a long line of people ensued at our booth hoping to get a taste of our beers. Duck Duck Gooze proved to be a popular choice and by Friday night, we were out of the 15 Gallons that we sent! On Friday afternoon, we made the annual pilgrimage to Falling Rock Tap House for the Alpha King contest. Port Brewing and Hop 15 narrowly was defeated and finished 2nd out of about 70 beers. It’s been a long time since anyone has won back to back awards and while we were pleased with our second place finish, missing by one point sure wasn’t any fun. We’ll try again next year.

Saturday brought the awards ceremony and it was a very long but exciting day. We had high hopes for our Veritas 005 and Cuvee de Tomme. We felt one of these two beers would need to medal if we were going to make a run at the brewery of the year awards. They didn’t and as such, we came up one point short of the mark. However, we were thrilled when Carnevale and Duck Duck Gooze struck gold in back to back categories. These are two beers that we are extremely proud of here at the brewery and knew had excellent chances to succeed. With the World Beer Cup coming up in April, we’ll hope for more earnings on their coat tails.

The coolest part of the awards ceremony was watching our brothers from Pizza Port bring down the house. Once we got firmly anchored in Ale land, the awards just kept rolling in. Seemed like every other category was being won by a Pizza Port beer. All told, Pizza Port earned 6 Gold Medals and if you throw in the two that we won as a sister company, an astounding 8 Gold Medals were earned. With 78 Gold Medals being earned, this means that over 10% of the Gold Medals called went to Pizza Port or Port Brewing Company. And given that this was the largest commercial beer competition in the world, it makes it that more impressive.

Still, the most impressive part of the weekend was the performance by my good friend Jeff Bagby who managed to rake at this competition. His brewing talents (and those of his team) are likely to never be matched. They entered 15 beers. 7 of them earned medals including 4 Gold Medals! Pizza Port Carlsbad also was named Large Brewpub Brewery of the Year. Since 2006, a San Diego based brewery has earned a Brewery of the Year award 3 of the last 4 years at the Great American Beer Festival. This truly reinforces the overall quality of the beer being produced in this city.

Post GABF, I headed to England to do some brewing in Faversham. Stay tuned for adventures in Kentish Brewing and Wooden leg devices.

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The Nerves Have It

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.