Posted on

Typical Saturday at The Lost Abbey

It’s a Saturday in January which means there’s snow on the ground in most of the country, NFL playoffs on the TV and a bunch of people enjoying our tasting room at Port Brewing. In case you haven’t visited us in a while you may not know that Saturdays have turned into quite the place to be. Bus load after bus load of beer thirsty zymurgists(well, not all of them) have descended on our building yet again. It’s pretty cool. And they all seem to enjoy the changes we made to the tasting room to accommodate more patrons.

Across the bar from me, there’s a table of 8 discussing the merits of Bourbon Barrel Aged Santa’s Little Helper from this past Christmas in July. They’re wondering out loud (or loud enough that I can hear them), whether the next batch scheduled for July 24th of this year (announcement forthcoming) will be better. Off the record (and no I haven’t tasted it yet) I think it will be. Given how stupid good the current batch of Santa’s Little Helper on tap tastes, I can only imagine how naughty but nice that party is going to be.

This past week,Sage and I had lunch at Churchill’s to discuss the beer calendar and release schedule for the first half of 2010. It’s not my job to steal his thunder but I thought I would lay out what is in the works. Check back to the website for the exact schedule and bottle limits in the not so distant future. As many of you already know, next Saturday we’re releasing the latest installment of Brandy Angel’s Share. This will be the 2009 Vintage as there is another release slated for later this year.

The 2009 Vintage marks the transition to our new 375 ml bottle shape that was produced for us, Russian River and North Coast Brewing. It’s very cool and I for one am excited as it means for the first time we’ll be able to send more of this sized bottled beer out into the market. The first bottling run went very well as 800 cases were produced. Labels arrive on Monday and it heads out to market at the end of this week.

In February, we’re targeting the 2010 release of Red Poppy Ale. This years batch promises to be as great if not better than the one we released in 2009. As we get more familiar with this beer, we can make subtle changes in the blend allowing the different barrel flavors to shine through. On release day, we’re also going to preview a draft keg of Framboise de Amarosa. This is a barrel aged raspberry beer that has been aging in our distribution warehouse since last summer. In July, we had farm fresh raspberries delivered to our brewery and they went directly into all manners of barrels. And because it didn’t have enough Raspberry character, we added more fruit to the barrels in November.

Since we seem to be focusing on fruit beers, we should mention that sometime in the spring, we plan on releasing a batch of Veritas 005 (In Veritas Vino). I’m sure that some of you are probably in possession of bottles of Veritas 004 and Veritas 006. But what about batch 005 you’re wondering. Well, in the spirit of the Veritas series and experimentation, we only produced 6 cases of the original batch of Veritas 005 (featuring native Southern California Grapes as the fruit). That batch was a success so last fall, we sourced some Cabernet Franc grapes from Temecula in hopes of making Veritas 005 a reality on a larger scale. We can’t say when it will be ready or when it will be released but we know it will jump into the bottle in the next month or two.

Lastly we have a batch of Amazing Grace that has been slumbering away in French Oak barrels for almost a year now. Many of you might have missed the original batch of Amazing Grace as we didn’t produce a ton of it in 2007 for the initial release. Seemingly, we have 6-8 oak barrels worth of beer that we’ll get ready for sale at some point this spring so stay tuned.

A little housekeeping before I go as well. First, Santa heard my cries and decided to bring me a new hood and wire unit for our bottling line. This means that in March, we expect to be ready to increase the output of our Lost Abbey bottles. It’s been a long time coming. Currently the guys have to bust ass to make 18 bottles of beer an hour. The new unit will do 50 per minute. And they say I’m a slave driver…

They also finished our new cold box over the holiday break and next week I hear my new hot box will even be ready. This is a good thing. We’re getting ready to package Serpent’s Stout and it will be nice to be able to get that beer up to temp quickly. And given how much Serpent’s we made this year, it will be nice to see bottles everywhere. We’re also holding back a significant volume for Bourbon Barrel Aging. Look for this to be released later this year.

We’re opening the doors next Saturday for our first release since July of last year. It will be the first time that some of our patrons see the new tasting room. It also marks the 6th batch of Angel’s Share to be released since we opened. Sometimes, the more things change the more they stay the same. Given how much Angel’s Share I’ve been drinking lately, I thought I would share, this one reminds me of batch #1 and for that I am thankful.

Posted on

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.

Posted on

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.

Posted on

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!

Posted on

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…

Posted on

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.

Posted on

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.

Posted on

A High Tide has me dehydrated!

It’s the first week of September which means we’re hard at work in the brewery stuffing nearly all of our tanks full of High Tide Fresh Hop IPA. This is the 4th year we have produced High Tide at Port Brewing in San Marcos and it remains one of our best selling seasonal beers for the year. In our first year, we produced one 30 bbl batch of the beer. The next year, we tripled that number and kicked out 90 bbls of the beer. Last year, we jumped up to 210 bbls of production. This year has us scurrying around the brewery to produce 270 bbls of this resiny nectar.

I for one am exhausted as it’s been brutally hot in the brewery this week and my shift in the brewhouse has started at 6AM the last two days. To give you an idea of the production for this beer, we have to go back to August when we contacted Hop Union our purveyor and let them know that we would be needing 1000 lbs of Fresh Centennial hops for this week and another 600 lbs of Fresh Simcoe hops for next week and the dry hopping side of the brew. Most brewers choose to attack the fresh hop brewing schedule with Fresh Hops solely in the boil kettle. Not us. Nope, we choose to beat ourselves up and create scheduling nightmares with not one but two sets of hops and deliveries.

This hasn’t been an issue for us until this year. Typical crop schedules for picking generally allow us to harvest the Centennial Hops about one week sooner than the Simcoe hops and all is well in our world. Except, this year it has been unseasonably warm in Yakima, WA and the Centennial Hops were actually ready last week. This meant that we had to skip the Centennial Flowers this year and sub with Cascade Fresh Flowers. This isn’t a major bummer in my book as Centennial and Cascade share some of the closest properties of Domestic hops in my opinion. And since some of my favorite beers feature these two hops in tandem, something just seems okay about this substitution.

Our Fresh Cascades were picked on Tuesday in the AM and placed into garbage bags (30 lbs each) before being loaded into a refrigerated Semi Trailor and sent from Yakima, WA to San Marcos. The first brew was mashed in by Ryan (working his first of two overnight shifts) at 4 AM on Thursday morning. It’s now 1:30 PM on Friday and we have successfully knocked out (sent to the fermenter) the first 6 batches of beer while # 7 is boiling away under Mike’s watch. My shift ended at noon. Most likely, we’ll be brewing until about 4 AM Saturday morning to get all of these batches in the tanks as quickly as we can.

This is very important for two reasons. First, the fresh hops start degrading and losing moisture the moment they leave the farms. We’re trying to trap as much of this goodness as possible so we brew round the clock as fast as we can to keep them well, uh Fresh! Secondly, I just got an email from Hop Union that Buddy (our intrepid trailer hauling Fresh Hop dude) has left the dock and is scheduled to be here on Monday (yes Labor Day). This means that the beers we’re currently still brewing need to be done fermenting as close to Tuesday as possible so that we can dry hop them with the Fresh Simcoe hops that just recently left Yakima, WA.

So to recap, the Centennials aren’t here as we weren’t ready. The Cascades showed up a day later than we really wanted them too and the Simcoes are already on the road for Dry hopping even though three batches of beer remain and have yet to hit the tank. Well, that pretty much neatly sums it up. Fresh hop brewing is a pain in the ass. Sure, it’s one of our favorite beers around here and you can bet your ass that we’ll drink more than our fair share. But given that we’re making 270 bbls of this beer in less than 48 hours on a 30 bbl system, we won’t be looking for sympathy. More likely just a ride home in two fridays from now when we tap that first keg as we drink away our aches and pains.

(Special thanks to Maureen and Sydney for bringing me lunch today. It was the first time I sat down all day and it felt good- really good).

Posted on

Cooks Confab Wrap Up

Last night I had the great pleasure of attending the Cook’s Confab Beer event at Stingaree Restaurant and Bar in Downtown San Diego. The Cook’s Confab is a collection of local chefs (who happen to be incredibly talented) and work for some of the best restaurants in San Diego. They hold quarterly themed events and make outrageous food. The event last night featured each chef teaming up with a local brewer(y) to pair courses and beers. The beers were amazing. The food was exceptional and the ambiance of a rooftop in downtown San Diego at night in August couldn’t be beat.

Chef Andrew Spurgin (l) works and Tomme (r) tests the pork belly
Chef Andrew Spurgin (l) works while Tomme (r) tests the pork belly (again)

Lost Abbey was represented last night and we were flanked on either side by Brian Stinnott of 1500 Oceanaire and Andrew Spurgin of Water’s Fine Catering. Brian chose to pair a Duck Sausage with our Cuvee de Tomme while Andrew spent 4 days working on his Pork Belly to match the strength of the Cuvee. Both of these plates were home runs and it was a privilege to work with these guys.

Other participants last night included Stone, AleSmith, Ballast Point, Green Flash and Lightning Brewery. There were over 250 people in attendance and most seemed incredibly pleased by what they tasted. I was overwhelmed by the support of the cooking community and was pleased to meet some very influential owners and bar managers.

We at the Lost Abbey would very much like to make inroads on wine lists and finer dining establishments. Events like this go a long ways to showcase our beers to a wide range of consumers and potential markets. I spoke briefly with many of the chefs and asked them to consider an event with local beer to be added to the calendar once a year. It’s the sort of thing that we as brewers need to support and lend a helping hand to.

Last night was a permagrin night. There was so much to be thankful for. Considering the event took place about 4 blocks from where I got my start as a craft brewer, it was great to be back home. To me, last night was a seminal moment- a turn the page sort of place in time. We got the best chefs in San Diego to circle the wagons and fire up the grills. It was an all time night for our beers for sure.

Thanks to the Cook’s Confab and all the people at Stingaree who put on a great show last night. Too bad the Padres lost. Downtown would have been that much more electric.

Posted on

Christmas in July

Tomme & Santa
Tomme & Santa
Here in San Diego, even when it’s supposed to be Christmas time, it rarely truly feels like Christmas.  In December each year, other parts of the country, throw on their best Christmas sweaters and sing about how the “weather outside is frightful.”  Us, we head for the beach and roast Marshmallows (not Chestnuts) by a bonfire.  Yet, each year we at Port Brewing and The Lost Abbey do our part to support seasonal beers with the production of not one but two Christmas beers- Santa’s Little Helper and Gift of the Magi.

Last August when we produced the 2008 Santa’s Little Helper Imperial Stout, we put a plan in motion to age a portion of the batch in Bourbon Barrels for a Christmas in July promotion that I wanted to do at the brewery.  Last weekend, we had another kick ass event at the brewery (thanks to all of our volunteers who supported us)!  There were great new beers in bottles and on tap (including the first release of Duck Duck Gooze).  Chef Vince of course whipped up some amazing pizzas and The Professors sounded as tight as they could in a brewery environment.  Santa Claus even paid us a visit.  All told, it was a great event for the patrons of Lost Abbey.

But what truly made the event memorable was the overwhelming support that we received for Toys for Tots.  As part of our Christmas in July promotion, we asked attendees to bring one unwrapped toy (valued at $15) in exchange for entrance to the party.   I must say that I was blown away by the generosity of our people and clearly they understand that together we can make a difference.  We raised over $10,000 worth of new toys from this event.  Those who didn’t bring toys were asked for a cash donation and $1,500 was sent to the Toys For Tots Foundation as well.

It gave me goose bumps on Saturday night to stand next to all the great toys that we collected.  It meant an awful lot to me that we were able to take something (like beer with the associated stigmas) and do great work for kids.

Just a few of the bins of toys
Just a few of the bins of donated toys

I know that beer and children can be very taboo in our society but if you look at what we accomplished this weekend, I know this is not always the case.  Personally, this was an incredibly gratifying and rewarding day.  Many children will need help in order to celebrate Christmas this year.  Knowing that our beer brought so many people together for this cause is an exceptional feeling.

So, to everyone who was there on Saturday and gave a little bit to help brighten the Christmas morning of so many children, I say thank you!  Christmas in July has landed here at Port Brewing and The Lost Abbey and will remain on our calendars each year from here on out.