Brew Day: Wisconsin Belgian Red Clone (Fruit Beer)

Two years ago we traveled Jennie's native Wisconsin to visit her family. Her family lives in Chippewa County, about a twenty minute drive from the Leinenkugel's Brewery in Chippewa Falls. During our week in Wisconsin we did as much sight-seeing as we could. We visited the Leinie Lodge and toured the historic Leinenkugel's brewery, we drove across the state to Green Bay to take a tour of Lambeau Field. On another day we drove even farther to the tiny town of New Glarus to stop by the New Glarus brewery.

According the the Brewers Assoication latest Top 50 ranking of craft brewery sales, New Glarus is the 20th largest craft brewery in America. New Glarus ranked ahead of brewers like Abita, Anchor, Victory, Long Trail, Shipyard, Rogue, Left Hand, and Allagash. What makes this astounding is that New Glarus only distributes in the state of Wisconsin. The slogan on the main page of their website is literally "Only in Wisconsin"

Last year a bar in neighboring Minnesota bought several kegs of New Glarus' venerable Spotted Cow in Wisconsin, put it on tap at the bar, was caught doing so, and the owners are facing criminal charges.

The drive from Jennie's parents house to the brewery was around three hours. The massive and immaculate brewery is on top of a large hill. The town of New Glarus is named after the Swiss village of Glarus. Both the town and the brewery have a distinctive Alpine character. The brewery looks like a giant cuckoo clock.

We enjoyed a sample flight, went on the self-guided tour, and bought a ton of beer to take home. I carefully loaded 18 bottles into my checked bag. It felt like it was full of bricks. All of the beer made it home safely, and there was a nice note from the TSA that my back had been "randomly" checked.

Out of all of New Glarus' beers, my favorite might be Wisconsin Belgian Red. It is a crisp, super drinkable cherry beer that perfectly straddles the line between a cherry beer and a cherry wine. When I told Jennie I was going to brew Broken Fist IPA for my cousin Adam, she correctly pointed out that I would also need to brew a beer for Adam's wife Kristen. I know Kristen enjoys ciders and fruit beers. This is the perfect opportunity to brew a clone of Wisconsin Belgian Red.

Unlike BrewDog and Stone, New Glarus is notorious for carefully guarding their recipes, ingredients, and brewing processes. Co-owner Daniel Carey has in the past said he did not want to disclose any "trade secrets". The brewery's guarded nature, and stubbornness in only distributing in Wisconsin, has only enhanced their mystique.

Luckily for me Amahi Turczyn Scheppach published a clone recipe in the July/August 2007 issue of Zymurgy. Using the volume of cherries New Glarus uses in the commercial version would be quite expensive. Scheppach added cherry juice to his beer to avoid having to clean and pit ten pounds of fresh cherries. He played around with the ratio of cherry juice and beer to get a pronounced cherry flavor, aroma, and color, without spending a small fortune on cherry juice.

I brewed the beer the same day as Broken Fist IPA. To save time I brewed an extract batch. With all of the cherry juice that is going to be added, the beer would have been dark even if I brewed it with all-grain. I steeped my specialty grain for this beer, started mashing Broken Fist as the Belgian Red was starting to boil. I dumped my concentrated wort into the fermenter just in time to transfer Broken Fist into my boil kettle.

 

I chose a dry yeast, Safbrew T-58. I haven't any witbiers since last spring, or other Belgian styles since the previous summer. I didn't make time to build up any yeast from my yeast bank. I'm also interested to try the dry yeast and see what kind of yeast-derived flavors I get. The wort was fermenting within several hours. Dry yeasts can lag up to two days, so I'm impressed already. The quicker a beer starts fermenting, the better.

If I serve this on Memorial Day, I won't have time to lager the beer on oak like New Glarus. This beer was so easy to brew, I could easily make it again and age it on the oak. I did make a five gallon batch. I'm kegging three gallons for Memorial Day and saving two gallons for us.

To view the recipe in the July/August 2007 issue of Zymurgy, join the American Homebrewers Association for a free subscription to the magazine and online access to the Zymurgy archives going back to 2000.

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Brew Day: Broken Fist IPA (American IPA)

I came of age in the heyday of professional wrestling. This was the era of the Monday Night Wars as Vince McMahaon's World Wrestling Federation (now World Wrestling Entertainment or WWE) battled for TV viewers, and ultimately survival, with Ted Turner's World Championship Wrestling (WCW). Nothing pushes boundaries, innovation, and creativity more than competition. This competition fueled an era of popularity of professional wrestling that hasn't been approached since called The Attitude Era.

During The Attitude Era, the WWE got away from the cartoonish characters the company was known for in the 1980s, as a newer starts pushed the envelope. The biggest star of this era, (Sorry Rock) was Stone Cold Steve Austin. Stone Cold would climb up onto the second rope, someone would toss him cans of beer, and he would crush "Steveweisers".

During The Attitude Era, Stone Cold would usually crush a light American Lager. At a time when Stone Cold merchandise was everywhere, there were plans to develop a Stone Cold beer. Unfortunately, those plans never came to fruition.

Stone Cold's wrestling career was ultimately cut short due to a neck injury. After retiring from wrestling, Austin has pursued several interesting projects such as acting, hosting the reality show Redneck Island on CMT, creating and hosting reality competition series, The Broken Skull Challenge, and the excellent Steve Austin Show podcast on Podcast One. Also during his retirement, Austin began branching out as a beer drinker beyond the light lagers the Stone Cold character was known for. Over time Austin developed a love for craft beer, IPAs in particular, which gave him the itch again to create his own beer.

"The Texas Rattlesnake" as Austin was also known during his career, now goes back and forth between his Broken Skull Ranch in Texas, and a home in the Los Angeles area. After reaching out to breweries in both Texas and California, he collaborated with El Segundo Brewing on Broken Skull IPA. The beer has gotten positive reviews and currently has a 3.93 rating on Untappd. It is currently distributed in Southern California, and available for sale online in states where it is legal to ship beer. In Massachusetts it is not.

Right around time the beer came out, my cousin Adam who is also a huge wrestling fan, purchased his first home. He was disappointed he couldn't have Broken Skull IPA shipped to Massachusetts, but I thought if I made a version of Broken Skull IPA it would be a perfect beer to brew for his housewarming party. Adam was on board with the idea, but wanted to wait until Memorial Day weekend to have a lot of people over.

Austin had Rob Croxall, the owner of El Segundo brewing as a guest on his podcast. They talked about how they developed the beer, the ingredients used, and the flavor and aroma they were going for. Based on that, as well as comments and photos on Untappd, I put together a recipe.

I bought my ingredients locally after dropping off a couple of competition entries. The shop had a limit of 2oz per person of Citra hops due to their scarcity. I had make a couple of minor tweaks to the recipe to compensate.

Initially I was going to use Chico yeast, Safale S05, However, after reading one of my favorite brewing blogs, Brulosophy, rave about WLP090 San Diego Super Yeast, I thought this would be the perfect recipe to use it for the first time. The attenuation is as good, if not better than Chico which should help make sure the beer is dry enough to let the hops shine through. It also floccuates much better, which should make the finished beer clearer. I don't want this West Coast IPA to be hazy like Fort Dummer or Alan's Stepchild. I don't know if I will be able to match the brilliant clarity of the commercially produced version, but I want to be as close to it as I can.

I wouldn't call this a clone of Broken Skull IPA, it's hard to clone I beer you have never tasted, but it is certainly inspired by it. Will this be a tasty and refreshing beer to drink at a Memorial Day Cookout? Hell yeah! And that's the bottom line, because the (would-be) brewmaster says so!

See the full recipe here.

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Brew Day: Westbrook Gose Clone

I love German beers. When I think of German beer I think of the clean lagers, the reinheitsgebot, and maybe hefeweizen. Not all German beer is that regimented. One such style is Gose.

 
Gose (pronounced Goh-zuh) is a very light-colored, lightly sour beer that is lightly hopped and brewed with sea salt and coriander. Light and refreshing, Gose is a perfect summer beer. Not widely available until recently, examples available locally are Rising Tide Gose, Samuel Adams 26.2 which is a draught-only release along the Boston Marathon route, and Anderson Valley who also makes several Gose variants with different fruits. The best Gose I have had is not available in Massachusetts: Westbrook Gose from South Carolina.

Loading up on beer in Asheville to mule home. 

 
Westbrook Gose is highly sought after. We picked it up when we visited Asheville, North Carolina. The shop had a one six-pack per-person limit. One friend of mine traded for an entire case. I can only imagine how 24 cans were packaged in one box and shipped.

Beer Inspiration in our Backyard: Rhode Island

Boston is the home of two seminal craft brewers: Samuel Adams and Harpoon, while the greater Boston area boasts a burgeoning scene of newer craft brewers and cider houses like Night Shift, Jack's Abby, Far From the Tree, and Trillium. Portland, Maine is home to pioneers like DL Geary and Shipyard, as well as highly touted newcomers like Bissell Brothers, Foundation, and Rising Tide. Vermont has the most breweries per capita of any state as The Alchemist, Lawson's Finest Liquids, and Hill Farmstead brew some of the country's most sought-after beers. Sandwiched between Maine and Vermont, New Hampshire has several fine breweries. Portsmouth is an underrated beer city. Connecticut has a thriving beer scene even if many of the best beers brewed in the state don't make it to our corner of Massachusetts.

Of the six New England states, Rhode Island has been something of a craft beer backwater. The largest brewer in the state is Narragansett. Narragansett is my American Lager of choice, and Del's Shandy is a summer go-to. Although they have plans to open a brewery in Pawtucket, 'Gansett hasn't been brewed in the state for over thirty years. Everything you see in stores is contract-brewed out of New York state.

The site of the new Narragansett brewery is at a new facility called the Isle Brewers Guild. When completed the guild will in addition to partnering with established brewers to add brewing capacity, it will also assist their partner brewers in other business functions. Hopefully the facility will help the beer scene in Rhode Island grow.

I visited Rhode Island to judge at the Ocean State Homebrew Competition which was held at the guild. An old mill building, interior demolition was set to begin almost immediately after the competition was over.  I judged Pale European Lagers in the morning, and stouts in the afternoon. I was pleasantly surprised to have judged several Czech lagers in the morning as the Czech styles were only added recently. Most of the stouts I judged in the afternoon were solid as well. Noting I tried was mind-blowing, but there was only one beer that was undrinkable.

All the proceeds from the competition went to the Rhode Island food bank. The organizers did a great job assembling an impressive array of raffle prizes. All entrants and judges were invited to the final round of judging. For each food item donated to the food bank, a person was given a raffle ticket. Judges were given raffle tickets for volunteering his/her time. 

 
Jennie rode to Pawtucket with me and dropped me off at the competition. While I was judging she had more of a chance to check out the scene than I did. She visited Brewtopia Brewery and Kitchen where Revival Brewing is located. She gave both the Conga and Conga Imperial IPA a rating of 4.25 on Untappd. She also visited Tilted Barn brewery in Exeter. A very small, family-run brewfarm, she enjoyed the two beers she sampled, but was disappointed that The Chosen One DIPA keg kicked while she was there.

By the time I was done judging I was quite hungry. We stopped by a bar in Pawtucket called Doherty's. On the outside it looked like an unassuming neighborhood bar, but inside they had over 80 beers on tap and one of the most impressive bottle lists you will find. I tried some of the Rhode Island beers that I wasn't familiar with. The pale ales and IPAs tended to be maltier and more English-inspired. The standout beer was an Oatmeal Milk Stout by Proclamation Ale Company.

Proclimation has been vocal about the main culprit in limiting the growth of craft beer in the state: the state's arcane laws. In Rhode Island a brewery can only give a person three 4 oz samples at the brewery. Additionally they can only pour one sample at a time; flight paddles are illegal.  Breweries can only sell 72 oz of beer to go at the brewery. That works out to one six-pack, or one growler fill. Small breweries also can't self-distribute. None of the newer breweries in Massachusetts would have been able to survive with those restraints without radically changing their business model.

The one brewery I was able to visit with Jennie after dinner was Long Live Beerworks in Providence. I was so full I could only drink two of my three samples. Their 'Lil Sippy Pale Ale reminded me a lot of Peeper or Mo from Maine Beer Company. We made it there right as they were closing and had a chance to chat with the owners.

 
Long Live has only been in business for three months, and to make the business viable they need to sign with a distributor. Without an agreement, they can't even sell their beer at the restaurant next door. A brewer had to be very careful about who they sign a deal with to distribute their beer. The distributor invests time and money to market the beer, get it on store shelves, and on tap at bars. Since a distributor's job is to invest significant resources in a brand, laws and contracts are written in such a way that it is very difficult to back out of an agreement with a distributor. Finding the right partner is essential.

After the brewery closed we were both tired. We left Beverly at around 7:00 a.m. that morning. Originally we were going to stay the night and shop up for the raffle the next day, but we just wanted to go home. I was disappointed because the competition organizers put together as impressive a collection of raffle items as I have seen in the handful of competitions I've judged in. Next year I will have to plan our weekend ahead of time. Hopefully by then the laws governing breweries in Rhode Island will be as libertine as they are for other vices. 

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Back in the game!

In 2015 the only competitions I entered were the Ales for ALS competition in Essex, and the competition at the New England Homebrewer’s Jamboree. Neither of those were official Beer Judge Certification Program competitions, and I didn't get scorecards for either. Last year I paid entry fees for a few competitions, but never sent in my entries. I forgot to send in my entries for the National Homebrew Competition, the biggest competition in the country. That got me banned from the 2016 competition.

Competition entries ready to go!

My only excuse is laziness. To enter a competition you have to drive to a drop off location which is usually a homebrew shop. That means driving from Beverly to Woburn or Cambridge. The alternative is shipping entries which entails finding an appropriately sized box, packing your bottles carefully, and paying at least $20 to ship via UPS or FedEx (because Beer Mail is still illegal).