Planet Brew

The Oregonian has a story about the Widmer Brothers Brewery working with home brewers to give them a chance to scale their home brews up to a commercial sized batch. This sound like a create idea to give home brewers a chance to have their own beers on tap at a few pub.

Joe Sixpack from the Philadelphia Daily News sums up his 6 favorite beers of the year.

1. Nøgne Ø Dark Horizon (Norway): An imperial stout with 16 percent alcohol (at $25 a bottle), this baby set the pace for a new wave of Scandinavian beers.

2. Goose Island Matilda (Illinois): A surprisingly authentic Orval Trappist ale knockoff.

3. Stoudt’s Smooth Hoperator (Downingtown): Maybe the best new Pennsylvania beer since Yards reformulated its Philadelphia Pale Ale: a hybrid, hoppy double bock.

4. Avery/Russian River Collaboration Not Litigation (Colorado/California): Two small brewers with the same brand name (Salvation) mixed their suds and produced a singularly outstanding Belgian-style strong ale.

5. Dogfish Head Red & White (Milton, Del.): Huge, fruity layers of flavor in a Belgian-style white beer that’s been doused with pinot noir juice and aged in wine barrels.

6. Schneider & Brooklyner Hopfen-Weisse (Germany/New York): Another collaboration, this one matching yeasty Bavarian wheat goodness with assertive American hops. *

Last night Bob Tupper let us know that the last batch of Tupper’s Hop Pocket Ale has just been brewed at Old Dominion. After the Fordham/Anheuser-Busch take over of Old Dominion, Dominion decided to drop their contact brewing business. This left Bob looking for a new location to brew his award winning Hop Pocket Ale. Earlier in the year the problem was finding a brewery with enough capacity now the problem is tracking down the needed hops. Bob said that they are going to release a Hop Pocket 2008 edition with a slightly different recipe and will keep doing that till they can return the recipe to its orginal form. He also said that with the price of hops the way they are at the moment he is going to have to pass that cost on to the buyer, so your bottle of Hop Pocket could be costing you significantly more in the future.

I had a brief discussion with Jim Wager from Duclaw last night. I was asking about about my perception that Venom’s taste has change over the years. Jim reassured me that the receipt has remained exactly the same. It could be other things like the brewery move or my tastes that have changed the taste slightly. He also mentioned that Venom is going on a hiatus due to the availability and cost of the hops there are using. Instead they are coming up with a replacement IPA using different hops. Thye have also just finished brewing a batch of my favorite Duclaw beer Naked Fish.

I didn’t see this coming, but Flying Dog Brewery is going to relocate all its beer brewing operations to Maryland. If you remember Flying dog bought the Frederick Brewing/Wild Goose Brewery in 2006.

Colorado’s No. 2 craft brewer plans to stop brewing beer in Denver next month and will relocate all of its beer-making operations to a larger, state-of-the-art brewery it recently acquired in Maryland.

Flying Dog Brewery will maintain its corporate headquarters in Denver, keeping administrative, sales and marketing staff here. The company’s beer also will continue to be distributed in Colorado.

I mentioned that I wanted to try some of Bells Winter White Ale, well we were out at the Lost Dog Cafe in Arlington VA and I found a six pack

So while there I had a pint of Bells Porter a print of Stone IPA and a six pack of Winter White Ale to go.

This week saw a couple of beer disasters, first Guinness loose 36,000 pints of beer now a 40 tonnes of beer is lost in a motor way accident. I just hope someone is enjoying some of that beer.

Interested in some winter bears, the Pittsburgh Tribune has a review of some winter seasonals. After reading

Going in a completely different direction, Bell’s Brewery Winter White Ale uses American wheat and classic German Hefe and Belgian yeasts for a spicy, fruity brew with a clean, frothy finish. “While winter is dark and bleak,” Bell says, “your beer doesn’t have to be.”

I need to find a bottle or even better find somewhere that has it on tap.

I picked up a six pack of Rogue’s Santa’s Private Reserve from World Market in Dulles. I wasn’t sure what to expect but thought it might be a winter warmer type beer. Overall disappointed in the beer, it is drinkable but in my opinion is on the bland side.

On a recent visit to Whole Foods in Reston I discovered that they were stocking Caledonian’s Golden Promise Ale. This is a very smooth season ale that I could drink all night. If you are not a fan of fizzy beers then I recommend trying this one out.

Out of the two beers the hands down winner is Caledonian’s Golden Promise Ale.

The San Jose Mercury News is running a story on beers that are going up market. John Alderete is opening Mayfield Brewing Co. in Palo Alto.

One is a pale beer that began its life as a traditional India Pale Ale but has been fermenting, first in a French oak barrel that formerly held zinfandel, now in an American oak cabernet barrel. When he puts it into corked, Champagne-style bottles just before Christmas, he expects it to be over the top: 10 percent alcohol by volume (a strength approaching that of table wine, which averages 12 percent), with notes of wine and oak and vanilla. Alderete wants it to be a beer to savor slowly, perhaps after dinner with chocolates or a cigar.

The other two beers in barrels are equally unusual: a 13 percent imperial stout that will be aged six months in a port wine barrel and a German amber aging in a French oak cabernet barrel. The amber is about 5 percent alcohol, the same as your basic Budweiser, but in a different world of flavor and intensity. Bud, for example, is aged less than 30 days in stainless steel on a layer of beechwood chips. Bud, like most beers, is meant to be consumed fresh. Alderete’s beers and others like them are the opposite. Aging blends the flavors and the beers mature just like good wine.

Those beer sound like they would be interesting to taste. On of my favorite more expensive beers is Brooklyn Breweries Local 1.