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.

Brew in review

As a followup to our last post, I'm posting some photos of our Kind of Blue brew session. All went well, and we are looking forward to having our awesome blueberry beer ready in a few days!

Even our kegs were surprised that they are empty! Time to brew!

Nothing finer than early morning brewing.

Mashing in with our Brew In A Bag (BIAB) set up.

Once we get to the correct mash temperature, we have a highly sophisticated method of insulating the mash to keep the temperature constant for an hour: towels fresh from the dryer. 

Pre-boil sample lookin' good!

This is one of my favorite shots from brew day. The bag being suspended contains our hops additions. We have a cord that is tied to the garage door tracks that supports our BIAB bag while we rinse all the sugars out. It keeps us from having to hoist and hold 30+ pounds of soaked, hot grains.

Once everything is cooled to the right temperature, we begin transferring to our fermentation vessel. Today we got to break in our brand new Big Mouth Bubbler!

Mmmmmm...

5.5 happy gallons, ready to begin fermenting.

We had a very smooth brew day, and we finished in plenty of time to watch some Aggie Football!

We have since brewed again; this time we tried a new porter recipe. We are going to experiment with adding hatch chili peppers to this one. We decided to call it Rio Bravo Hatch Chile Porter after the river that runs through Hatch, New Mexico. Yes, we Americans call it the Rio Grande, but en Espanol, it is called Rio Bravo del Norte. Feel free to make any number of connections with Breaking Bad.

Today's Main Break: The Great American Beer Festival is taking place in Colorado this week. This is widely considered the largest American beer festival, and this year about 600 different breweries are sharing their beer!

Brewing Weather!

FALL BREWING WEATHER HAS ARRIVED!!!

The forecasted high for Saturday here in the Metroplex is 75F, which is perfect to get outside, run a few miles, toss a football around, or brew some fine beer! We will be firing up the kettle bright and early Saturday morning for an Amber Ale with a twist...

Blueberries. You read that right, blueberries. Some of you may be thinking, well it's finally happened. They've been messing with making their own alcohol so long that it's starting to affect them. Well, yes, but not like that. Berry and fruit beers are well respected, if not that well known in the US. In fact, this idea came from an awesome blueberry beer that Amanda had the chance to sample in Bar Harbor, Maine a few years ago.The French and Belgians use all sorts of fruits in their beers, and sometimes they even allow them to ferment in large open containers, exposing the fermenting beer to the air. We're not that crazy. Yet. 

Our fermentation is going to be in two steps: primary and secondary. Primary will be where we get most of our alcohol production, and the only thing the yeast will be eating is our grain sugars that come from our standard brewing process. Once the yeast have consumed all the sugar available to them (after about 7-10 days), we will move the beer to a brand new vessel and add some blueberries. There, the beer will be infused with the blueberry flavor, and for good measure we'll have Miles Davis' Kind of Blue playing on loop nearby.

When all of the magic is finished, we will keg it and let it carbonate up to the right level for a few days. All said and done, from grain to glass this beer will take about 3-4 weeks. Hopefully it's a winner, but if not, hey it's still beer. For those of you interested in the recipe, here it is:

Grain Bill

60% Pale 2-Row Malt

15% Munich Malt

8% Crystal 60L 

8% Dextrine Malt

8% Honey Malt

(1% Molasses, will be added to the boil later - do not mash!)

Mash @ 152 for 60 minutes

Hops (5gal batch)

.5oz Centennial @ 60 min

.25oz Centennial @ 20 min

.25oz Centennial @ 10 min

Other Items

1 tsp Irish Moss @ 10 min (fining agent - makes the beer less cloudy)

1% First Molasses @ 10 min (approx. 1 cup for a 5gal batch)

Yeast

US-05 Ale yeast

Primary Fermentation @65F for 7-10 days, or until complete

Secondary Fermentation @ 65F for 5 days - add fresh or frozen blueberries (5lb for 5gal batch)

The wonderful thing about beer recipes is that they are scalable. That is, any size batch can use the same percentage of each ingredient and create a very similar or nearly identical brew. For this batch, we will be brewing 5 gallons, but if you wanted to go bigger or smaller, just keep your percentages consistent.

We will hopefully be posting again either during or after this brew session with some photos. Thanks again for reading!

Today's Main Break: Blueberries may help you see in the dark! It was rumored that British pilots in World War II were given a daily ration of bilberries (a close relative to the blueberry) to keep their sight sharp for night time missions. Hopefully the beer we make this weekend will keep us from stubbing our toe in the middle of the night going to the bathroom.

Deep Ellum Labor of Lov3 Recap

Beautiful, beautiful trophies. We'll get you next time my pretties!

Well, we survived! Deep Ellum's Labor of Lov3 Homebrew Competition was a blast. We were in fine company Sunday night with all of DFW's most skilled and flat-out craziest home brewers. We arrived at about 3:45pm, well ahead of the 6pm start time, and set up our meager display. Once we were established, we cruised around the brewery to chat with and sample some of the other brewer's ales. We quickly learned that we're going to have to step it up next year!

Snazzy banner!

Deep Ellum should have the winners of each category announced this week, so check back if you're interested. While we walked away empty handed, we did get to try most of the category winners' beer. The overall best in show and the beer that will be brewed on Deep Ellum's 30 barrel system next summer comes from Intrinsic Brewing (check them out on Facebook). They made a honey basil hefeweizen that was just phenomenal. Congratulations guys, and we look forward to drinking it again next year!

Announcing the winners in each category

Aside from the camaraderie among the fine brewers of North Texas, the best thing about the festival was having complete strangers try my beer and tell me they liked it. As a homebrewer, most of the time I brew for myself and my wife. We brew what we like to drink, and every now and then we try something new just to see how it turns out.

Getting ready to pour some beer!

However, I felt a new pride on Sunday when I got to pour my beer into a person's glass, tell them all about it, and have them honestly say they loved it. Each guest Sunday evening was given a wooden coin to give to the brewer that made their favorite beer. While we were definitely one of the smaller entrants and only received 8 coins, I can tell you that those 8 people's opinion means worlds to us. That's 8 people who tried our beer and decided they liked it better than all the contest winners and all the folks who have been at this far longer. To you folks who gave us your vote of confidence, we sincerely thank you. You made our night unforgettable.

Well, now that our homebrew is all gone, it's time to start a new batch or three. This fall will be a busy brewing season, and we have a lot of ideas coming down the pipeline. We will be establishing our house pale ale recipe, a blueberry variant of that recipe, pumpkin ale, porters, stouts, and all the fall & winter favorites. I will post one of our brew sessions soon for those of you interested in the process.

Til next time,
David & Amanda

Today's Main Break: Over 1.2 Million Americans call themselves homebrewers according to the American Homebrewers Association! That's a lotta beer!