SF Beer Week 2014 - Part Three

Good Afternoon Ladies & Gentlemen,

 

Yes… SF Beer Week has NOW completed! Here’s part three of our EPIC week…

 

Saturday morning (yes, morning) we headed to the Haight-Ashbury district to the Toronado Bar to partake in their Barleywine Festival. For those who don’t know, Barleywine is basically a very strong, typically malty, aged concoction with a high alcohol content. Typically it involves a LOT of sugar taken from the barley, wheat, etc. and then is typically aged for about 8-12 months, very similar to a grape wine. Because of the aging, a lot of the hoppy notes mellow out (hence the maltier flavor) but there are a variety of recipes with varying levels & aging notes. For example, there were about 60 different Barleywines from well-established breweries at this “festival” (really just a bar with a lot of barleywines). We sampled a few… and made friends with a few people at the bar who were about two dozen samples deep by the time that we showed up… and we shot the sh*t & I was really pleased with the variety of beverages at our disposal… but it was pretty packed… and there was more to see… so after an hour or so, we headed off.

 

 

Next stop was  Magnolia Brewery since we’re out that way on Haight… but it was also a Saturday… and about lunch time, so we were told that there’d be “about an hour to an hour and half” wait… so we figured another time would be better to investigate. Coming soon…

 

After that, I bought my first pair of Doc Marten’s… we headed over to the East Bay… ate some T-Rex Barbecue… stopped by a vivarium (reptile shop) and yeah, just a pretty chill night after that. Of course sampling more of our bourbon barrel porter. I was a little under the weather this weekend so… no burning the midnight oil exactly. Some great movies to review in my other blog though.

 

Sunday was a Tribute to Grizz (legendary homebrewer who passed away recently) competition & a SF Homebrewer’s Guild Party at Pi Bar in La Mission. This was my first time going to the event, but it was pretty cool. Basically, you paid $15 and got all the pizza you could eat… and dozens of homebrewers bring in their finest brews to sample… so it’s basically all the pizza & beer you can muster. The competition was also for Barleywines as well as English Milds… so there were plenty of those on tap… but also a wide variety of others. I even brought a few samples (Dizzy had to work) to share with the people… and decent reviews for our Porter & Pumpkin Ale… but none of our BJCP judge buddies were available to test (a little too busy pitching their own beers). Basically it was a great group of guys & gals just having a good time, sharing beer, eating pizza & all that jazz on a Sunday early afternoon.

 

Another thing that came out of this… is that I got a little taste of how the competitions work, and after discussing with Dizzy, I think that we’ll be joining some of these competitions. Do we think we’ll win? Of course we’re optimistic… but worst-case, we’d get some valuable feedback on our own brews and processes. Also, we’ll probably be taking some of our samples to the next Guild Meeting when there’s… you know, only a handful of people offering instead of something like 70 different beverages to choose from. No joke. That’s a low ball estimate. Anyway, we’ll keep you posted.

 

Monday was President’s Day, so we were both off school & work… so we thought it’d be the perfect time to brew our next batch – Oktoberfest!!! This recipe is a traditional Maerzen recipe and is the traditional Fest Bier of many a German celebrations… and among my favorite kinds of beers. Just a fantastic all-day drinking kind of beer. It’s cold lagered (fermented at a lower temperature) so the process is a little slower than most of our previous batches. Typically fermentation is done around 60 degrees (maybe a little lower) but we drop it about ten degrees for this yeast. When the beer is finished, it won’t have a lot of hoppy bitterness, just rich malty golden kind of flavors that you can drink by the BOOT!!! Oh yes… it will be enjoyed by BOOT!!! It should be just about ready by the time my birthday rolls around in two months… almost perfectly timed. Here are some pictures of the process…

 

 

My "Chasing Ice" inspired photos of the wort cooling...

After it has cooled, put it in the primary fermenter...

Get it good & aerated... Shake it up...

 

We also used some of the spent grains to make loaves of bread & flatbreads for sandwiches. Dizzy is such an amazing cook in my humble opinion…

 

 

 

And she also made me a fantastic burger...

Bacon & cheddar infused burger patty...

Bagel thin, everything style with bacon jam...

...and bleu cheese...

Topped off with a bourbon barrel porter. Boom!

  

We also took the time to bottle our Winter Warmer which we sampled… and it’s pretty delicious for the stage that it’s in. It’s a bit of a shame that we only got about 2.5 gallons out of the batch… but we’ll see what a little bottle aging will do for it. Winter is almost over anyway, but we got some invaluable advice from our mistakes on this one… glad that we can still enjoy a little bit.

 

Tapping from the zwickel before final aging...

So that does it for SF Beer Week 2014!!! Join us next time when I’m sure that we’ll have a few updates on local establishments, our own adventures, future competitions, all that jazz. Have a great day everybody!!!