Brew Review - Boulevard Rye-on-Rye

I had hoped to wait for my partner in crime (Yum! Beer) to join me in this effort, but my wife was out of town. The environment of working on the laptop in front of the Olympics was too well suited for expansion of the taste spectrum. I work in IT, which can be quite monotonous. Flavorful libations and working late have a nasty habit of forming a symbiotic relationship with each other on the couch (ESPECIALLY when the wife is away). I guess I didn’t need someone to twist my arm, so I proceeded to the local beverage dealer. With tractor beam precision, I found myself standing before a stack of Boulevard Smokestack Series cases, not remembering how I had gotten there. Jedi mind trick or my survival instinct fighting to balance the work play ratio? Either way, I picked up two bottles and made a fast exit.

Upon opening, I was inundated with light, aromatic craft brew flavor. I pulled my favorite chardonnay glass from the rack and poured a handsome serving, cresting with a thick and creamy head. The perfume of the pour was light and lively; the brew seemed to flaunt its reddish amber and deeply opaque appearance. I couldn't decide if it was malt or hops giving off the enticing scent, so I moved in for a closer test. The aroma was light, easy on the nose, and malty more that hoppy, but only by a hair. I decided to dive in. Expecting a malty, sweet finish, I was happily introduced to fairer play on the tongue. The flavor was rich and energetic, with exceptional balance. Clean finish with minimal aftertaste (hint of hop), creating a thirst for more.

Making its way across the palate nicely, the Rye on Rye begs for another sip. At 11%, I definitely needed to slow my roll if I planned on performing my normal salary-based activities, soberly. I saw my hand making a slow, but deliberate movement away from the laptop and toward my music collection…and I let it. Immediately, I felt The Walkmen emanating my now brew riddled veins. I threw on their first album, Everyone Who Pretended to Like Me is Gone, frantically searching for “Wake Up.” Once satisfied with my lyrical surroundings, plowing through anything work related didn't seem so tough. The Rye on Rye could easily promote the ideal of working late on the couch more often.

Serving Type: Bottle (750 ml)

Glassware: Chardonnay Glass

Color (hue and head): Reddish Amber with creamy, ivory head

Clarity: full, deep, opaque, cloudy

Aroma: grainy, malty, semi sweet, lighter aroma than expected.

Taste: balanced, rich, energetic, light hop, slight malt, clean (whiskey) finish, minimal aftertaste.

Grade: 94/100 (A)

Musical pairing: The Walkmen - Wake Up

Surroundings: Couching it, working, listening to music, wife out of town.

Brewing Process 101 - Now you're a Brewmaster!

I'm completely kidding with the title, seriously. We understand how totally awesome, rigorous, educationally and apprenticeship-driven the Brewmaster's job is. We just wanted to grab your attention. Now that we have it...

For the purposes of making future posts cleaner when referencing specific pieces of the brewing process (and not having to rely on constantly annoying parentheses, like this one), we’ve decided that it would be a most excellent idea to quickly break down the beer brewing process into some simple steps, throw in some diagrams, and call it a day.

Let’s start with some basic lingo:

• Malt – aka Malted Barley; Barley (cereal grain) is germinated in water, then dried or heated with hot air
• Mash tun – a piece of equipment during the brewing process used for mashing, or the creation of wart
• Wort – A sugary liquid created when malt is mixed with hot water and the starches in the malt break down
• Hops – Bitter, flowery, citrusy flower clusters used to flavor beer (and to offset the malt)
• Hopback – Vat filled with hops used to add aromatic flavoring (think citrus/grass) to the hopped wort and act as a filter
• Yeast – a microorganism used in the brewing process to actually create beer. A strain called brewer’s yeast breaks apart hopped wort into CO2 and alcohol
• Fermentation – The metabolic act of yeast turning wort into carbon dioxide and alcohol

Brewing steps (fix your peepers on this section):

1. Malted Barley is mixed with hot water in a mash tun.
2. In the mash tun, upon heating of the malt, enzymes are released that break down the starch into sugars creating wort
3. The grain is washed and the wort is then separated from the grain
4. After separation the wort is transferred to a kettle where the wort is boiled and hops are added (various amounts can be added multiple times)
5. At this point, some breweries will pass the hopped wort thru a hopback
6. The hopped wort is cooled and yeast is added in a Fermenter
7. In the Fermenter, CO2 is removed from the beer
8. After a period of time (weeks to months usually) the solution is now beer and can be transferred to bottles or oak barrels (where it can continue to ferment), casks or kegs for storage and transport

What I’ve just described to you is your garden variety brewery, not necessarily your typical homebrew setup. However, many of these same steps apply - you just have to get creative to fulfill the requirements of each step before you move to the next step. For example, wort can be purchased directly so that you don’t have to do your own mashing. Second, you can recreate the effects of a hopback by just adding hops multiple times during the brewing process. Lastly, your fermenter can be a large, sealed bucket, with a glass carboy or two preferable for primary and secondary fermentation.

I know this seems complicated, but please don’t get freaked out - we aren’t talking String Theory. With that being said, we’re going to take our own advice, start with a $50 homebrew kit with everything included and just start “going to town”. Brew a basic lager or pilsner multiple times, then begin to upgrade styles. Graduate to harder recipes, experiment with extracts, and upgrade your equipment – if you weren’t planning to before, buy glass carboys, bigger stockpots, and try to automate pieces of the process, if at all possible. The only way you’ll learn is by experimentation, which you’ve probably been told at other points in your life about other things…illegal things, perhaps? Remember, as in robbing banks, “practice makes perfect".

"Sink the Bismarck!" - Beer or Booze?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/02/16/worlds-strongest-beer-sco_n_463975.html

I understand that we stated we were going to use this blog to introduce people to craft beer and to really "keep things simple" in the interest of actually getting said people interested in said craft beer. I also understand that beer in any form is delicious, no matter if it blurs the lines of what beer really is, which is why this post has materialized from my hops and barley laced brain onto your ‘puter screen.

According to Wikipedia, the gospel of all information, ever, in the world, beer is defined as:

"…an alcohol beverage (yum) that is produced by the brewing and fermentation of starches, mainly derived from cereal grains - most commonly malted barley (malt), although wheat, corn, and rice are widely used. Most beer is flavored with hops, which add bitterness and act as a natural preservative, though other such flavorings as herbs or fruit may occasionally be included."

Obviously, we could go into unlimited detail and build on that definition, but it has served its purpose for this post and we need to move on.

Why have I given you this info and what is the title of this post, you ask? It's simple, up until a week ago, Sam Adams Utopias claimed the esteemed title of "most potent beer in the world", checking in at 27% ABV for their latest collector's batch (technically, a German brewer called Schorschbrau had a beer at 30% for some time and a 40% for like two days, but it's German and I've never heard of it, so MOVING ON). On February 16th, BrewDog released a beer called "Sink the Bismarck!", which besides being a fantastically awesome ode to Churchill's famous command to sink the German battleship of the same name during WWII, it's actually advertised as a quadruple IPA containing four times the hops, four times the bitterness, and four times frozen to create a staggering 41% ABV "beer".




When reading that article for the first time and immediately after treating the hangover I received just thinking about “pounding” that beer on a Friday night, two things caught my attention – 1) the mind bottling (name that movie) ABV and 2) the beer is frozen four times to get to that crazy ABV. It got me thinking, when does a beer cease to be a beer and start to be something closer to resembling what you just used to clean the kitchen counter (I kiiiid, I kiiiid)? It’s time to go to the judge, jury, and executioner (me, go figure) to argue for/or against it being a beer – a decision I will make as I’m writing this blog because I’m wishy washy like that and haven’t made up my mind yet.

First, let’s understand what “four times frozen” really means.

I’m not a very smart man, but to me it sounds like the process used to brew ice wines or ice beers/Eisbocks (freezing of a doppelbock to raise its ABV and “clean” the taste). Instead of the normal process where yeast is added to wort during the process of primary and/or secondary fermentation (breakdown of sugars in the wort to create our friend, alcohol) and that being the “end all” to creating the alcohol in the beer, the beer is then freeze distilled and the ice removed to concentrate the alcohol (if you have questions about freeze distillation, look it up, I’m already in over my head here). In this case, this freeze distillation is being done a whopping four times, which increases the ABV each time!

My argument is this – while it seems to fulfill the technical specifications of being a beer, what beer do YOU sip two fingers of out of your brandy snifter, with your Hugh Hefner smoking jacket on, in your high-backed leather chair, circa 1960’s New York ad men? To me, because of the sole fact that you have to treat its consumption like that of a liquor, it isn’t a beer. I may be in the minority, but I feel like I’m right here. After all, right now you’re thinking about trying to locate a beer that is 80 proof.

What’s your opinion? We haven’t attempted yet because we’re poor, but if you’re interested in trying “Sink the Bismarck!” it’s available only on BrewDog’s website at http://www.brewdog.com/. If you do fit the profile of our heros and decide to give ‘er a go, please email us and let us know your thoughts. If it truly looks, acts, and tastes like a beer, we're very open to changing our opinions.

Founders Brew Schedule

Definitely one of the cooler websites for a craft brewer that we've ever taken five seconds to look at:

http://foundersbrewing.com/founders/beer/brand-calendar

The brand calendar actually lists when their beers are available and since they distribute to many states outside of Michigan, head down to your local brew pub/beer store and see what you can find. 

For March, the Kentucky Breakfast Stout is going to be available and being here in KC, we know exactly where we are headed to bong this beer - Blanc Burgers + Bottles (4710 Jefferson, KC, MO 64112), where Bryan always treats us with "mad love" and respect.  I have a feeling that if this beer is even only slightly better than the Founders seasonal beer Breakfast Stout, that we might end up as Pookie from "New Jack City" - cracked out and dead...I mean buzzed and enlightened.

One thing that we've both found interesting about Founders Breakfast Stouts is that despite the color and abundance of coffee, they aren't overbearing at all.  The original Breakfast Stout is 8.3% ABV, yet it goes down dangerously easily, to the point that you too might wake up with one shoe on/fully clothed, with the remnants of yet another late night trip to El Rancho next to you, and the stink of shame hanging in the air.  KBS checks in at over 10% with hints of bourbon/whiskey, so be sure to bring your fork, knife, and capacity for subtle "clearance burps".

Burger King = awesomeness

Well, it has happened. Our heads have exploded with the news that Burger King released a few weeks ago (leave us alone, we're late to the party). By now you may or may not have heard about Burger King's decision to start selling beer in its select Whopper Bar stores across the United States. Here, soak it all in:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2010/01/burger_king_adds_beer_to_menu.html

NPR doesn't lie, it just doesn't. Here's what we think is going to happen - despite our tiny hands, we're immediately headed over to BK to pound a Whopper and slam an Allagash White. In all seriousness, leave it to BK to go and sell macro beers of varying shitty quality (sans Bud Select), but how can we fault them when 1) they are the first fast food chain to offer beer with your meat, 2) the whole purpose of business in a capitalistic society is to turn a profit and appease your shareholders, and 3) now we can both nurture our hangovers while riding "the shampoo effect" at the same time at 10 am on a Saturday morning. Here's to us hoping that at least the latest attempts at micro brews by MillerCoors and Zombie Budweiser (an ode to Bill Simmons) will show up someplace on the menu. If not, we can always head over to Europe where the Wunderbars already in existence have a collection of probably, high-quality local beers.

Our one knock with the logic behind this decision has to do with dessert. Now, we have worked on the corporate side of the food service industry so one would believe we slightly know what we're talking about and that our "logic is undeniable", but the idea that offering beer as a direct link to desert and more money seems stupid. We don't know too many people that wash down their beer or six, with dessert. If you're going to make stupid bills off of what is certaintly going to be marked up beer prices, why does sub par dessert enter the equation?

Welcome, welcome, welcome

So at 3:15 am, the day of 1/2 of our birthdays and the 30th anniversary of "The Miracle on Ice", this blog actually came to fruition.  We have to say we're shocked due to all of the things we've talked about doing but have never followed thru on.  Let's revisit, shall we?

• Homebrewing - you'll see us start soon but we've been talking about this for a year now, FYI
• Going to the gym more than 3 days a week
• Signing up for a sanctioned, "fun run"
• Cleaning the car
• Starting our own dance crew (okay, that was made up, but we do own Nike Dunks, so we're half way there)

There is most likely no one reading this blog, even our moms and significant others, but it's still a good place for us to share some of our beer knowledge and hopefully introduce others to one of our true passions:  drinking and talking about beer...all the time...24-7...writing legislation thru our local congressman to make it into currency...attempting to bathe in it...and the list goes on.

You will see a lot of changes in the next couple of weeks as we add content in massive brain dumps, so please don't be alarmed.  As long as you read, you will become smarter and then maybe one day you can start your own blog, but not really...because it won't be as good as this one.

Enjoy!