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The Champagne of Blogs (6 unread)

Midwestern Tour 2009

Posted: December 23rd, 2008, 8:27pm CET by Dave Selden

I’m here in Iowa visiting family for the holidays. I’ve been sampling quite a few new brews, with trips to El Bait Shop and a new (to me) bottle shop in Urbandale called “Beer Crazy.” I’ve not got the patience for a full post on the iPhone, but you can whet your appetite via our Twitter feed until I get back to my keyboard. Happy Holidays!
How to Survive Arctic Blast 2008

Posted: December 17th, 2008, 12:04am CET by Bruce

Passing along a little inspiration for surviving the cold and pending cabin fever here in the Northwest. Your backyard or porch makes a great refrigerator so dig out some of those beers in the basement you’ve been sitting on and enjoy.

A few ideas to stay warm this week. Widmer Brrr, Pelican Tsunami Stout and Goose Island Barrel Aged Imperial Stout
BS Brewing’s Last-Minute Online Gift Guide

Posted: December 14th, 2008, 9:44pm CET by Dave Selden

Holy shit, it’s the 14th of December! There are less than two weeks before Christmas/Hannunkah! We should have written this post weeks ago (apparently we were too busy twittering to look at the calendar)!

We bet there are a few folks out there with an uncrossed name on their list, and in the interest of helping your holiday productivity, we present our top quick-shipping picks for the beer/bacon-lover on your list this year:
Vintage Beer Commercials on DVD
Ahh, the 1950s. Every day we wish we could hop in our time machine and thank them for the magic they gave us: White Bread, Well-Defined Gender Roles, and of course, the Swilly Beer Monopoly. We can’t taste all the beers that the American Lager machine put out of business in the last 50 years, but we can at least watch their commercials, thanks to some obsessive compulsive AV club nerd.

$14.95. Order by December 17th at: BeerBooks.com
Rogue/Vosges Beer & Bacon & Chocolate Gift Pack
While we haven’t been Rogue’s biggest fans of late (join our Facebook petition!), we do admire some of their beers, and we love chocolate. And bacon. Oddly enough, this gift pack covers all three bases with an included bottle of Rogue’s Shakespeare Stout and a bacon chocolate bar. No, really. There’s delicious bacon IN the chocolate. Try it, you’ll like it. We did.

$42.00. Available at: Vosges.com
Vintage Beer Posters

It’s a dilemma. You love the look of vintage beer posters but you’re not a Guinness fan. We wouldn’t know, we actually like Guinness, but hey, it’s the holidays, and who are we to judge? Plaster your walls with a selection of nearly 100 non-Guinness beer posters dating from the 1900s to 1950s.

$22.95. Order by December 17th at: BeerBooks.com
40 Cozy
There are so many beer accessories out there … What can you get the beer lover who has everything? This year, we want you to think maltier. Think liquor-ier. Think malt liquor-ier. Enter the 40 Cozy, a very classy neoprene sleeve that keeps your hands warm while you’re chilling. It also keeps your “beer” cold while you drink it. We think this would be an especially great gift for the Edward 40 Hands afficianado in your life.

$8.99. Available at: 40cozy.com
Imbibe Magazine Subscription
In the interest of full disclosure, we should probably tell you that we know the Circulation Manager of this magazine. In fact, we taught her to homebrew. But our conflict of interest shouldn’t stop you from subscribing to this magazine dedicated to “Liquid Culture.” They cover beer, wine, spirits, coffee and tea in nearly equal parts, which we think is actually kind of nice. You see (and I know this is going to sound sacrilegious), life is about more than just beer. We drink coffee every day. And who doesn’t like a little scotch to close out the night? Get some perspective, and some bang-up reporting, from Imbibe.

$20.00 for 1-year Subscription. Available at: ImbibeMag.com
Good Beer Guide to the West Coast
This is the book we wish we’d written. Two British CAMRA members, Ben McFarland and Tom Sandham, compiled what is easily the best collection of Portland beer knowledge I’ve ever seen, and expanded the book to include the ENTIRE WEST COAST, including sections on Alaska, and even a section on the eerie beer wasteland that is Las Vegas. Essential for any West Coast beer trips.

$18.45. Available at: Amazon.com
Michael Jackson’s Great Beers of Belgium
Belgium is awesome. I mean, they serve Duvel on the trains. You can have the world’s greatest beer AND smoke a cigarette, in a monastery. They get it. You know who else gets it? Michael Jackson. Sure, he died in 2007, but his books live on, and Great Beers of Belgium, re-issued post-humously, deserves to be on your beery bookshelf. Each page is a revelation, be it an amazing photograph, lively personal narrative, or informative tidbit. I read about beer quite a bit. Other authors seem to be rewording the same factoids from book to book … I’ve learned more new things from 100 pages of this book than almost any other. Highly recommended.

$24.39. Available at: Amazon.com
Beervana Documentary
Portland is pretty awesome, too. We’ve got more breweries in our city limits than any other in the world (Suck it, Munich!). It might be the water. It could be the perfect hop-growing conditions that exist in the Willamette Valley. Whatever the cause, brewing’s been a big deal in Portland for more than 100 years, all of which are documented in this great, locally-produced documentary.

$19.95. Available at: OPB.org
Bacon Diagram T-Shirt
You didn’t think you would get through a BS Brewing post without a second bacon reference, did you? Until we get our “cuts of pork” tattoo, this t-shirt will have to do, serving two delicious purposes: educating the unwashed masses about where our favorite food comes from, and establishing us as bacon enthusiasts. We do find it ironic that the makers would choose an American Apparel fitted t-shirt as the canvas for a fatty meat-themed shirt.

$20. Available at: BaconShirts.com
Tastings just wrapped up at Holiday Ale Fest

Posted: December 4th, 2008, 2:25am CET by Bruce

The Champagne of Blogs was fortunate enough to secure a seat at the Holiday Ale Fest’s media preview. We sampled an amazing array of beers including Cascade’s sour red Sang Noir, 3 years of Hair of the Dog’s Jim, Deschutes 2005 Mirror Mirror barleywine, Firestone Walker’s Velvet Mirkin stout (well balanced and toasted malt notes) etc.

Check the Holiday Ale Fest Web site for the full beer list and pick out some favorites, many fine beer’s to be had, although Dave was not impressed with the New Beligium Grand Cru.

Here’s a couple guys from The Oregonian “working.”
Live from the Holiday Ale Fest

Posted: December 4th, 2008, 12:56am CET by Bruce

Testing, testing…. is this thing on? Trying out the WPtoGo app on the G1 phone. 1 failure so far. It’s about 3:45 and numerous beer geeks and chronic alcoholics have already arrived, but nowhere near tha capacity crowds that will be here in the evenings.

As soon as we start tasting we’ll have some more updates live freom the tent.
Root Beer: The Bacon of Beverages

Posted: December 1st, 2008, 9:52pm CET by Justin Garrity

Everyone likes root beer. Its distinctive taste is comforting yet entirely mysterious and unique. There are many kinds to purchase at the store. A&W, Dad’s, Hires, and my favorite, Virgil’s, are all unique and delicious. Buying root beer, like buying beer, is convenient. However, it just doesn’t seem right that this king of non-alcoholic beverages remain a commercial product. I, Justin Garrity and friend of Dave’s, decided to brew my own batch and tear down the wall that separates teetotaler mice from teetotaler men.
The Recipe
The first thing I did was search for the perfect Root Beer recipe. This sounded easier than it turned out to be. So many recipes included water, carbonation, and root beer extract. It seemed like a joke. Root beer from extract was not what I had in mind when I thought of making my own home brew. I heard from Dave that a brewing store close to my house, Main Street Homebrew, in downtown Hillsboro, Oregon may have some recipes. I found a great book there called, “Homemade Root Beer, Soda & Pop” by Stephen Cresswell. The book has numerous root beer recipes. The main ingredient called for is sassafras root bark. The problem is, sassafras root bark is very hard to find. So, while still in the store, I decided to purchase some extracts AND stop by New Seasons to purchase some herbs called for in the various recipes. I figured the beverage would have my own unique herb twist on it this way and I wouldn’t risk ending up with something undrinkable. So, I picked up some extracts and Main Street Homebrew and asked them if they sold any yeast for the carbonation process.

Making Bombs
When I asked them about the yeast, the man behind the counter gave me a dreadful warning that making root beer with yeast is like making bombs. He said it was too dangerous as the bottles have a high likelihood of exploding. He also said that they had a high likelihood of fermenting the root beer and so it was a very poor way to make root beer. The method he suggested instead was carbon dioxide infusion. This required a carbon dioxide tank and regulator (I borrowed this from Dave) and a cornelious keg, which I purchased from Main Street Homebrew. It was used and set me back about $45. With the extracts and the book, I spent about another $25. More on the carbonation technique later.

Herbs
I’ve always been mesmerized by the list of ingredients on the Virgil’s root beer packaging. I’ve tried to let the root beer slowly pour across my tongue to see if I could taste each of the many ingredients. I knew that I wanted my root beer to be just as adventurous and diverse. I stopped by New Seasons on the way home and they had almost everything I was looking for. I purchased dandelion root, licorice root, star anise, cloves, cinnamon sticks, juniper berries, and wintergreen. This set me back about another $20. Man, this better be some good root beer.

At home, I added all of the ingredients to a pot of water, brought it to a boil, and then let it simmer for an hour. It smelled really good! Even without the sassafras, it smelled like a rich, full bodied root beer. After it had simmered, I added in raw sugar to sweeten it. It tasted good. It was very herbal but needed that root beer flavor. I added in a half bottle of the Zataran’s extract, a quarter of the birch beer extract, and a quarter of the cream soda extract. The mixture was thick and tasted great. Now for the carbonating.

Rock and Roll
I poured the root beer brew into the keg and then added four more gallons of water. This filled up the keg. I closed it off and then set it in a cooler filled with ice and salt. I don’t have an extra refrigerator so this was the best way I could chill it down. Once the mixture was quite cold, I hooked up the carbon dioxide tank, set it to 30 psi, and bled out the oxygen from the keg. I closed up the keg and then set the regulator to 30 psi again, set the ice cold keg on my knees while sitting down, and rocked it back and forth. This process is what carbonates the root beer. After about 7 minutes, I tasted the root beer and it was PERFECT.
Rich, Creamy, and Frothy
My friends and I got together that weekend. I brought over the homemade root beer and it was a hit. The root beer poured great. It was rich and dark, and created the perfect amount of creamy froth. It tasted great as each herb could be tasted every so slightly while leaving a nice wintergreen finish. The root beer lasted another few weeks as the keg provided a never ending supply. I re-carbonated it a couple of times but it always had a nice pour. Even thought I did use some extract, as the sassafras root is a bit elusive, the beverage was great and I dare say even better than Virgils.