Brew Schedule Update

This week's post will be short and sweet. We recently bottled our Russian Imperial Stout 9*8*7 to continue conditioning for a few weeks prior to the Deep Ellum Labor of Love Homebrew Competition. Just so happens that the only crowns (bottle caps) that our homebrew store had were 'Murican flags! Boom. Freedom.

9*8*7 RIS

We also transferred our wheat beer onto some fresh peaches and apricots. We read that you get better peach flavor and character using apricots instead of peaches, but we didn't really want a cloying-each-sickly-sweet flavor in the beer. We pasteurized and smasherized 1 yellow peach, 1 white peach, and 3 apricots in our 3 gallon batch of wheat beer. We still aren't sure how it will turn out, but everything was tasting right when we were mixing it all together. If it turns out well, I'll post the recipe. If it sucks, we'll just pretend it never happened.

Millions of peaches. Peaches for me.

Into the secondary

I ran out of time and didn't get to brew the Tamarindo Gose early enough so that it would be ready for Labor of Love. Major bummer. I've emailed the event coordinator to see if I can substitute something else, but if not, the RIS will be flying solo into the judges glasses. Fear not, I will try to get it brewed this weekend in time for another competition we have our eyes on, Operation Bravo at the Shannon Brewery in Keller. The competition is Saturday, November 7, and it honors our veterans with great homebrewed beer. More on that at a later date.

Our Pale Ale, which I just realized we haven't named yet...

In the meantime, the Pale Ale we brewed for a friend's bachelor party went over very well! Many of the guys that drink the big 3 said they really enjoyed it, and we floated the 5 gallon keg in just a few hours. I really did enjoy that beer both times that I've brewed it, so I may keep that in rotation for spring and hop the hell out of it at harvest time in the fall. Sadly, my 3 healthy hop vines have been scorched by the ruthless and rainless July, so now we're down to just one little plant. Stay strong little hops! I'm still hoping against hope that I get to use some homegrown hops in one of my beers.

Last but not least, we brewed up 5 gallons of last year's fan favorite (from New Main, at least) Palo Alto Wit. Last year we brewed it with orange and lemon zest, rosemary from a friend's garden, and a small bundle of sage. This time around we tweaked the recipe with the intent of guiding the crazy recipe back towards the actual beer category of Witbier. We subbed the zest for a few hops that will exhibit similar citrus characteristics. We also scaled the rosemary back a little and added coriander. So no, this isn't a thanksgiving dinner beer anymore, not that it ever was, but the weird stuff has been exchanged for better stuff. We'll see how it fares at Labor of Love.

Until next time, keep drinking homebrew and I'll keep brewing it! Also, if there's anything you'd like to read about, leave us a suggestion in the comments below. Thanks for reading!

Today's Main Break: Craft Beer continues to grow in production here in America. Do you think we are headed for a bubble, or are we building the foundation for an expanded market?

Beer Tasting with Division Brewing

Do you ever just have one of those days? You know the one: you wake up with bed head, you realize the dog puked on your arm in the middle of the night, you decide to go ride bikes when it's 100 degrees at 10am, someone nearly runs your wife over while riding the bikes. Yeah just your average meh day.

Well this was the shape of our weekend until we got an invitation to a tasting party from Wade Wadlington, owner and brewer of the soon-to-open Division Brewing in Arlington. The clouds opened up, the planets aligned, baby Jesus set down his Les Paul and told Johnny Cash the jam session would have to wait a second while he turned to look down upon us with favor. Wadlington recently returned from California with the holy grail of craft beer enthusiasts: Pliny the Elder from Russian River Brewing Company. For those of you who are unfamiliar with this double IPA, it has ranked at or near the top of many reviewers' best beers in America lists for at least 6 years. Quite simply, it is widely considered to be the best beer available.

Pliny was highest on my wishlist, and now it
sits atop my all-time favorites list

The genius behind this beer isn't borderline irresponsible overuse of hops or even skull-splitting high ABV you've come to expect when someone slaps the word "Imperial" in front of their IPA. This beer was meticulously crafted to provide excellent hop character with a relatively dry finish for a balance that defies physics. You don't get your mouth coated in resin after each sip; instead, you perceive almost a crisp beginning and ending of each taste. By the brewer's own admission, its drinkability is both a blessing and a curse, given the 8% ABV. Russian River plasters the label with no less than 12 warnings for the consumer to drink Pliny fresh since hop character tends to degrade quickly with time. The date on our bottle was July 2, 2015, so yeah. Pretty dang fresh.

It is examples like Pliny that inspired Division Brewing's impressive complement of tasty IPAs. We had the distinct honor and olfactory pleasure of sampling several of the beers Division will soon be pouring in the heart of downtown Arlington: Clifton Clowers Blonde Ale, Carl Kolschak Kolsch, Hula Hopper IPA, FrankenFroth IIPA, Tres Craneo Triple IPA,  X-Mas Morning Porter, and Ben Stout.

The full line-up of offerings Division is planning!

We started the tasting off light with Clifton Clowers Blonde Ale and Carl Kolschak Kolsch. Both were very clean and clear, with the Kolsch yeast displaying the tell-tale slightly fruity character where the blonde ale allowed the simple malt to shine through. Both are excellent examples of their respective styles and perfect for a warm summer day. Okay, hot summer day. Okay, sweltering.

As with Pliny, balance is the name of Division's IPA game. Hula Hopper is a great refreshing hoppy beer. It does not feel too heavy for 7% ABV and showcases an excellent hop profile that you taste rather than feel. A step up to FrankenFroth adds 2% ABV to the Hula Hopper and tons more hop flavor while maintaining a solid malt backbone. Whirlpooling hops after flame out helps to wring every bit of flavor out of the nuggets of green gold in this outstanding IIPA. As you would imagine, Tres Craneo, the Triple IPA goes even further into the heart of dankness. Boasting 200 IBU's (according to their website) and double digit ABV, this beer is large but approachable. That many IBU's demand a big malt bill to keep the beer from tipping too far one way or the other-bitter or sweet. The hoppy side of the equation is loaded with pine, citrus, and some good tropical fruit flavor. On the malt side of the fulcrum is the taste of rock candy, slight biscuit/bread flavor, and a mouthfeel that tells you, "This right here is the good stuff!"

The X-Mas Morning Porter was a representation of a Wadlington family tradition of waffles, coffee, and chocolate syrup (not necessarily in that order. Or maybe so, I'm not a damn doctor). With a touch of toasted coconut, this delicious porter leaves one satisfied but not stuffed like a Christmas turkey. The Ben Stout, named after Wadlington's brother, boasts oats (say that five times fast) for mouthfeel, roasted malts for flavor and color, and plenty of hops to deliver a dry and earthy finish. Division bills this as "the stout for IPA lovers," and rightfully so. Some brewers' take on this relatively new sub-style is to create a roasty-tasting IPA and call it either a Black IPA or a Cascadian Dark, but I believe Division has captured what the style ought to be, the other way around: a boldly hopped well-made stout.

Aside from these great hop forward beers, Division will be pursuing an extensive sour beer and barrel program. Sean Cooley, Division's other brewer has long been developing great recipes and experiments for various sour styles. Cooley's years of experience with sour ales and his own impressive bank of various yeasts, blends, and bugs portend a bright and delicious future for the Texas sour market. Division's wide variety will allow them to focus on providing many different offerings as fresh as possible to the patrons of their tasting room and select few local bars and pubs. Though we didn't get to try any of their sours at the tasting, Cooley described several recipes as well as some advanced techniques he is working on perfecting for the pucker-lovers on opening day.

The tasting was complete with delicious beer, stimulating conversation, and a cheerful group of beer lovers all brimming with excitement for Division's launch, expected this Fall. Wadlington and Cooley have miles to go before they sleep, but with an ever expanding contingent of beer nerds and thirsty Arlingtonians, their journey will surely be rewarding for everyone involved. We here at New Main wish Wade, Sean, and all the fine folks at Division the very best luck and congratulate them for taking their outstanding passion for brewing great beer to the promised land of professional brewing. Cheers!

Today's Main Break: There are over 30 breweries and brewpubs in the DFW Metroplex and Denton! Many of these fantastic brewers started out homebrewing for friends and family, so drink local and support your favorite hometown heroes!

Keeping Busy

We have been very busy lately here at New Main. We brewed the final batch of our Pale Ale for a friend's bachelor party and it is almost ready to keg condition. We also knocked out a 2.5 gallon batch of wheat beer that will be finished with fresh apricots in secondary. We are rapidly running out of room in our fermentation chamber!

Our fermentation chamber is damnear full
of Pale Ale, Russian Imperial Stout, and the
recent small batch wheat beer
(not pictured here)

Not to worry, though. The Russian Imperial Stout has been conditioning for several months now, and we will bottle the base recipe in the 3 gallon carboy soon. We will keep the two smaller 1 gallon carboys going for a few more weeks and try treatments of chipotle pepper, Mexican vanilla extract, and cacao nibs. Yum!

Coming up on our busy brew schedule is the next incarnation of our Gose recipe that we brewed just before Christmas 2014. We will be changing the recipe slightly and pitching an actual lactobacillus starter this time instead of "cheating" with lactic acid. Hopefully, the beer will be sour, salty, and citrusy just like the many Goses we tried in Portland and Seattle last month. We are also going to split this batch down and try a variant finished with tamarindo (a small bean-like pod with sweet, tangy pulp commonly consumed in Mexico in candy or beverage form). We think it will give the beer an interesting twang and make it a great summer thirst quencher.

Tamarind fruit. It's tastier than it looks, trust me.

The RIS and the Gose are going to be entered into this year's 4th annual Labor of Love Homebrew Competition hosted by Deep Ellum Brewing in Dallas, Texas. Unlike last year, this year's competition will be a BJCP sanctioned event, meaning beer entries are judged against a set list of almost 30 main style categories, each with about 5 sub categories. Bet you didn't know there were that many kinds of beer out there! For your viewing pleasure...

As with last year, the overall winner of the competition will get to brew their beer alongside Deep Ellum's pros on their 30 barrel system, and the resulting beer will be distributed across the metroplex to thirsty patrons on draft only (I think). The winner will also be entered into the 2016 Great American Beer Festival Pro-Am Competition to go up against the nations best professional and amateur brewers.

Aside from the competition, entrants are encouraged to come pour up to 5 of their fine homebrews in a beer festival setting on Sunday, September 6 at the Deep Ellum brewery. We will be bringing the remainder of the Gose and RIS, as well as last year's crowd pleasing Palo Alto Wit. I would also like to brew up one last batch of the pale ale and dry hop with some of our homegrown Willamette hops if they are ready for harvest by then. If not, maybe one of the hops that seem to be popular right now like Mosaic or Galaxy. The last offering will be reserved for either of the special edition RIS batches, depending on how they turn out. Stay tuned for more information and a dedicated recap of the evening shortly after it all goes down!

One of our 3 Willamette hops growing right
in our front yard!

The next big event on our radar is the American Homebrewers Association Rally being held at Community Beer Company in Dallas, TX on Saturday, August 1st. AHA rallies are great because AHA members get to take home great swag, speak one-on-one with our favorite professional brewers, try special and limited release beer, and sometimes we even get to take home some professionally brewed wort for our own fermentation experiments! Not to mention, we get to hang out with our fellow homebrewers and learn about the many homebrewing clubs in the area. We will definitely dedicate a post to this event as well.

 If you are a homebrewer and you aren't a member of the AHA, what the hell are you waiting for?! You get all kinds of discounts to various pubs and restaurants, free entry to AHA Rallies across the nation, and of course free subscription to Zymurgy magazine, a great publication with how-to's, interviews, and brewing news. While you're at it, go ahead and sign up for the Deep Ellum Labor of Love Homebrew Competition as well. It's free, it's fun, and it guarantees honest feedback on your homebrew that will help you become a better brewer.

Today's Main Break: Aside from joining clubs and organizations, free podcasts are a great way to learn more in-depth techniques and general knowledge about brewing. You can listen in the car on the way to and from work like I do! Check out the Brewing Network and (locally in DFW) Stubby's Texas Brewing Inc. for more!

Portland & Seattle 2015

We celebrated five years of marriage last week in grand fashion by spending a week in the Pacific Northwest. We had an amazing time, ate great food, hiked some incredibly beautiful trails, and of course drank a lot of really good beer. I won't bore you with a critique of every single offering we tasted because there were over 70, and frankly I don't recall each one. I mean I was drinking at the time so...

However, I will say that the Pacific Northwest is a bucket list stop for any true craft beer enthusiast. There are so many great breweries churning out fantastic beers, and the consumer is well equipped to enjoy them all. Never mind that the region produces a large majority of the hops used in American craft beer. Never mind that consumers have enjoyed 30+ years of excellent craft beer. Never mind that most restaurants have a beer menu and pairing suggestion as complete as one might expect a wine menu to be in Napa Valley.

The Columbia River Gorge

All of that aside, the place is just amazing. The weather never got out of the high 80's. We heard most locals claiming the "heat wave" was unbearable, and many shopkeeps apologized for the brutal heat. We didn't have the heart to tell them the highs in Texas. The mornings were usually a dry 60 degrees and made walking to public transportation stops almost enjoyable. Almost. Did you know they have hills most places? We grew up on the extremely flat South Texas coast. Literally, the highest point in town was the pitcher's mound at the park. Seattle challenged us with 100 feet of gain from our the bus stop to our B&B. Needless to say, the terrain helped us work off our rich food and beer diet that week.

But on to what we know and love: the beer. 

In Portland, we visited the Cascade, Lucky Labrador, and Hair of the Dog breweries. We also managed to sample all of the rare local brews at the Deschutes Public House and the Rogue Public House. Both were a fun time, but as far as atmosphere, the Rogue taproom was awesome. Full wall with about 30 taps of nothing but Rogue beers. Sours, local ingredients, massive IPAs, and my personal favorite, the Marionberry Braggot - an ale brewed and finished with a special kind of raspberry/blackberry hybrid created in Portland. Definitely one of my favorites of the whole trip.

The Stoic 2015, Deschutes Public House

Amazing line-up of all Rogue's beers at the Rogue Brewery, Distillery, and Public House

Cascade Brewing is well known for their excellent sour ales, and we sampled a large chunk of their menu via flights. We enjoyed a 2011-2013 vertical tasting of The Vine, a blend of blonde ales soured and aged in wine barrels with actual wine grapes. Also, Sang Royal a sour red ale aged in wine barrels was a huge yes. We sampled their Gose, Kriek, and various other sour/wild ales as well. We tried all of their non-sour offerings too, but the sours stole the show.

Keepin' it real at Cascade Brewing & Barrell House

Lucky Labrador was a homey, fun, and of course dog-friendly taproom and brewery on the East side. Each of their canine-themed brews looked great, but we hit LL after our already epic session at Cascade. We ordered their Imperial IPA, Superdog and two versions of their Black Lab Stout-cask conditioned and nitro. Both were excellent, but the cask offering gave me the impression of graham crackers and chocolate. Yum! Pretty damn good chips and salsa for northerners, too!

Black Lab Stout at Lucky Labrador. Nitro on the left, cask on the right

Last brewery stop for Portland was Hair of the Dog. This brewery is well known for its strong, heavy-hitting beers. All of its offerings were great, but the crowning jewel was a 12oz bottle of Adam from the Wood (a wood aged Old ale). Holy moly. This was an experience all in itself, and it took a trip to Voodoo Donuts to sober up afterwards.

Fibonacci Spiral seen while waiting for the train in Portland. They must have known we were coming.

We also payed a visit to a Portland staple, Belmont Station. This bottle shop is a small but very well stocked repository of the finest beer America has to offer. I was able to grab beer from Ninkasi, Heretic, Fearless, Trinity, and a few other breweries I had never seen before. It was a very cool place.

After the Portland shenanigans, we headed more north still to Seattle. Our first stop was lunch at Mammoth for some immense sandwiches and amazing draft beer. We grabbed a few sours we'd never heard of (10 Barrel's Raspberry Crush and German Sparkle Party) and one I had (Abraxxxas smoked berlinerweisse, amazing). Then we headed over to Fremont, a weird/awesome suburb with a great brewery of the same name. We went and took our photos with the troll and then moseyed on down the hill to the brewery. This place just oozed fun. We sampled as much as we could (noticing a trend here?) including their stout, wheat, a few of their IPAs and their gose as well. We would have loved to stay longer, but the folks next to us at the picnic table brought a full 5 course dinner complete with a roast and casseroles, so we kind of got edged out. Amanda insisted we try to stay and make friends with the food people. She has good ideas.

Amanda bonding with the Fremont Troll

Sampling Fremont's finest

After trips to the Pike Place Market, Original Starbucks, and the EMP museum, we trekked over to Pike Brewing. This place was a little touristy, but they have all kinds of historical beer memorabilia covering their walls throughout. Their local and one-offs were interesting, but we think their year-round mainstays were pretty darn good. Our favorite was the Kilt Lifter scotch ale, with the Monks Uncle Belgian tripel a close second.

Right around the corner from Pike's Place Market

Our last beer stop on the trip was Chuck's Hop Shop. We sampled several California and Washington IPA's and determined Good Life's Descender IPA was just about as good as any we could remember. We also sampled 21st Amendment's famous Hell or High Watermelon and finished the night with the very tart and refreshing Raspberry Millie American sour from Wander Brewing.

Raspberry Millie American Sour at Chuck's Hop Shop

We had tons of fun on this trip, and there's no way it will be the last time we're in the Pacific Northwest. If you're thinking about taking a fun summer trip, I definitely recommend Portland and Seattle. If you've already planned a trip, and you're looking for advice, hit us up on facebook! We'd be glad to share with y'all. Now that we're back in Texas, I'll be brewing up a storm for various summer get-togethers. Stay tuned!

Today's Main Break: Many varieties of American hops are named after various features in the Pacific Northwest: Mt. Hood, Cascade, Chinook, Willamette, Yakima Gold, Mt. Ranier. Generally, West coast IPA's use these hops for their piney, resinous, and sometimes bright citrus characters.

What's on tap at New Main?

Well, we let pesky old life get in the way, and now nothing is on tap. Boo. However, we do have a few things in the works to remedy this situation.

Last week, I racked our Russian Imperial Stout, 9*8*7 into 3 separate fermenters for aging. I have a single 3 gallon carboy and two 1 gallon carboys set up to receive different treatments of this stout. I know I want to use some or all of the following: Mexican vanilla extract, roasted chipotle peppers, cacao nibs. The gravity sample tasted great, so I might keep the 3 gallons as the base beer for submission into competitions. That way if anything fouls up on the one-offs, I won't lose too much. Conversely, if those special editions turn out great, they will be something of a special release for anyone we may share them with.

We also made a trip down to Houston to see our great friends for Memorial Day. We spent all day Sunday cooking, eating, playing games, eating, catching up, reliving our glory days at A&M, eating, and... oh yeah! Brewing! My buddy got a brewing kit for Christmas and has been waiting for a chance to dive in, so we brewed up a simple-yet-satisfying 1-gallon batch of an American Wheat Ale. I made sure to check that nothing had gone bad sitting for 6 months, and to my knowledge all the smells and tastes were just right. Checking with our new brewing brother, there was a healthy krausen and some good airlock activity, so beer has been made! Congratulations, Adam and welcome to your new hobby obsession!

We tested a batch of American Pale Ale for our friend's bachelor party coming up in a few months. The test batch turned out great, and there really aren't all that many tweaks I want to make to it. It's brewed to be a crowd pleaser, so it's not crazy on hop flavor or aroma, and it's not even that high in alcohol-just 5.25%. Just a good all day drinker for the lake. When we brew this for ourselves later on down the road, we'll probably throw in some of our homegrown hops for aroma and flavor. Nothing beats fresh hops from the garden!

I do want to get our Rosemary Sage Wit back on tap because it's a great summer refresher, so I may brew that in very soon. I have also been contracted by friends and family to brew up some interesting beers: Peach Wheat, Cream Ale, and a Lager to name a few. The wheels are turning everybody, rest assured.

We are also working on a top secret WTF ingredient to put in our Gose. I'll be experimenting on the stove top next week to brew that one up. If it turns out well, we may submit it at this year's Labor of Love homebrew competition in the Weird S*** category. Yes, that's the name of the category.

We have a much needed vacation coming up soon, so I will probably not post much until the middle of June. We are heading to Portland and Seattle for a week to recharge the batteries and celebrate our 5th wedding anniversary. It's no coincidence that the Pacific Northwest is one of America's pilgrimage sites for brewers and beer lovers! I'll try to take some notes and report back on these Texans' experience in that corner of the world.

North Texas Firkin Fest 2015

On April 25th, New Main Brewing traveled a whopping 4.7 miles to the North Texas Firkin Festival a few weeks ago. Let me begin our review with a Public Service Announcement for the fine folks in charge of event scheduling in Arlington, Texas:

FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, WHY CAN’T WE HAVE MORE BEER FESTIVALS IN ARLINGTON?! Arlington is a great centrally located city with multiple large venues, a great downtown district that is only getting better, and parks coming out of their ears. Everyone and their mom knows where Six Flags and AT&T Stadium is! Why wouldn’t it make sense to have beer festivals here on at least a monthly basis?

Whew, that feels better. Sorry to yell, but this festival had to have been the most fun we have attended to date, and I cannot for the life of me figure out why most festivals choose their locations at polar ends of DFW. We used a ride sharing app and spent a grand total of $20 getting to and from the venue, being Arlington residents. The NTXFF had several things going for it: it was relatively small, it had amazing rare offerings, and many of the brewers were on hand to chat with.

Even though this festival was smaller than some well-known and well-loved annual celebrations, there were plenty of beer enthusiasts on hand to sample the bevy of brews. With most of DFW’s best loved breweries represented, a tourist passing through the Metroplex would have walked away from the event with an excellent sample of the leaps and bounds we have made as a brewing and craft beer loving community.

Each brewery brought two “firkins” to offer thirsty patrons. For those who are not familiar, a firkin is a rare version of a commercially available beer that usually has a unique flavoring or aging agent added for complexity. Firkins began primarily as real ale,and rather than being infused with CO2 for carbonation, the beer is allowed to naturally ferment in the serving vessel (a small keg or cask, about 10 gallons) without filtering. This does a few things. It makes the beer a little less carbonated than its normal version. Since it is served straight from the cask, it is also unfiltered and typically a little cloudy. These and a few other factors contribute a very smooth mouthfeel, almost a chewiness to the beer. Normally serving at or just below room temperature also allows more flavor to come through.

Most pubs and breweries add things like fruit, liquor, or coffee to their firkins to accentuate the flavors in the base beer. For example, Rahr & Sons brought one of their most popular firkins - Iron Joe, a coffee bean infused version of their Scottish Ale called Iron Thistle. It’s not uncommon to see vanilla, bourbon soaked oak chips, cherries, or even candy in a firkin.

Others also take the opportunity to go back to the roots of cask ale by offering a true English style real ale. Community Beer Co.’s already stellar Public Ale was placed in a firkin with a variety of UK hops for the true British drinking experience. With many folks screaming for the most extreme this or the hoppiest that, it is refreshing to return to a simple and eloquently executed example of the original cask offerings.

Not that we aren’t interested in the extreme or weird beers out there. On the extreme end, it’s tough to beat Peticolas Brewing’s Sledge Hammer. Let me tell you, it is aptly named. A big honkin’ version of their already potent crowd favorite Velvet Hammer, this TRIPLE Imperial Red Ale boasts 11.5% alcohol by volume and enough bitterness to balance out the massive amount of malt required to hit double digit ABV. This beer was amazing from start to finish. And then 3 more times.

Now, we are not here to tell you what you should or shouldn’t drink. We were fortunate enough to be gifted extra tasting tickets, so we were able to try nearly every one of the 30 offerings served up. While we didn’t care for some and others blew our socks off, our tastes are our own and I’m sure nothing like yours. This is why beer festivals are great. There is so much variety that you are bound to stumble upon something great that you would never have thought you would like. Enter the Collective Brewing Project from Fort Worth.

We visited The Collective several months ago, and we were charmed by their great old building, giant Jenga, contagious smiles, and great sour/funky ales. When we saw them on the list of breweries for NTFF, we thought we should definitely stop by and see what they brought. They had a Brett & Citra dry-hopped version of their tasty and refreshing Petite Golden Sour that was puckering enough to cleanse the palate after some other heavy hitters. But then we tasted what I’m certain is being served in heaven at this moment. Their American Sour Red is a special take on a Flanders Red that was aged in cabernet barrels and finished off in the firkin with Brett lambicus bacteria to further sour & funk the beer up. This…was…perfection. I will admit I’m not the biggest fan of sours, but weeks after drinking this beer I still find myself daydreaming about the perfect balance of wine-like flavors, subtle but solid malt backbone, tart and dry finish, and what I assume drinking silk would feel like.

As I mentioned before, we were able to grab many different beers to taste at this festival, but we kept coming back to this beer as our clear favorite. With Sledge Hammer a close second and many other great offerings ranking shortly thereafter, we have to tip our hats to the relative youngsters on the DFW beer scene. The Collective Brewing Project’s American Sour Red was the best-in-show in our minds. We will seek this beer out wherever we can find it. If well-balanced funky sours are up your alley, we think you should too.

Today's Main Break: Sours are becoming very popular here in the states. A common misconception is that brettanomyces is the bacteria souring the beers, but that honor belongs to lactobacillus, pediococcus, and a variety of other beer critters. Once you get comfortable with the idea of sour beer, a whole new and amazingly diverse world of beer is at your disposal!

Stewards of the Craft

I recently completed a brew session with a couple of first-timers. These guys were the caricature of the modern homebrewer. Their enthusiasm and vigor reminded my why I love making beer. What they lacked in knowledge was offset by the desire to experience this magical procedure in which one turns perfectly good food into even better beer.

I was pleasantly surprised and frankly encouraged when they showed up with notepads and laptops to record each step of the brew. As we entered each phase of the mash, boil, etc., one of them scratched off simple instructions and/or temperature observations while the other pressed the homebrew store manager and me for our opinions and thoughts. These guys recognized and seized a golden opportunity to pick up first-hand knowledge from actual homebrewers. And better yet, they wrote it all down!

It got me thinking back to my first brew on the stove of our rent house, kit recipe in one hand, plastic spoon in the other, and oh... the aroma! I glanced at a few YouTube videos, read an article or two, and came to the conclusion that if I was at a loss for what to do next, surely the recipe would guide me along the path to righteous beer. While it wasn't the worst thing I've ever made, it certainly wasn't award-winning. If I had taken better notes of that session, I could probably pinpoint at which stage(s) I strayed from ideal practices. However, my confidence arrogance yielded a typical first batch that only its creator could love, and that remains the simple truth about the origins of my brewing journey.

I did not know who these first-timers where before we began the batch. They mentioned to the shopkeepers earlier that week that they were interested in participating in a brew session that the store typically hosts every weekend that folks want to brew, and I happened to have a free Saturday. We decided to brew a clone of the ever-popular Fuller's ESB straight out of the Clone Brews book. We made minor hops substitutions based on the store's inventory and adjusted the quantities for a 9 gallon yield (no way I was walking away without some beer!). In a sense, this was session a first for me as well, having only done 5 gallon and smaller batches thus far.

We had a successful brew and walked away with right at 9 gallons of fermentable wort - I took 4 and left them a standard 5 gallon yield. They were remarkably upbeat throughout the experience, and their passion for craft beer and this new frontier of homebrewing drove them right through to the end.

Homebrewers are a tight-knit community. Anybody can enjoy a well-crafted beer, but those of us who take it upon ourselves to create this beer are a rare breed. We come from many different backgrounds, have very different opinions on brewing, and at times we don’t have a whole lot in common with one another. However, one bond that ties us all together is our love for the craft. No matter what we are making, it is our effort to make it the best we can that unifies us all.

I read an article recently on the very popular online resource homebrewtalk.com in which a homebrewer shared his origin in the craft and extolled the virtues of having a proper mentor. It's a short fun article, so go read it. I believe it is imperative for newcomers to find a seasoned brewer and learn all they can from them. Experience is a much better teacher than YouTube. There are whole libraries of books written on the science and art of brewing, but if I may go Texan on y'all for a moment, all that book-learnin' don't mean squat if you ain't actually doin' it!

Get your equipment dirty. Experience a boil-over. Miss your target gravity. Learn how to overcome the many adversities that sneak up on us once in a while. Some of the best Brewers out there aren't just good at coming up with recipes, but they are people who can think on their feet and turn a potentially disastrous brew day into a success.

Brewing good beer is much more than following a recipe. It means knowing the quirks of your setup, knowing and constantly testing your limits, good note-taking, and most importantly sharing this great craft with anyone who wants to know more about it. If anyone you know has expressed an interest in brewing, plan a brew day with them and share the gift.