A Trip to The Bruery Provisions

After a long day at work that included some unscheduled furniture moving due to a small amount of unexplained flooding in the office, Robert and I were more than ready to make the short trek to downtown Orange and visit The Bruery Provisions store. As you may recall, Robert and I enjoyed our trip to the tasting room at the brewery itself in nearby Placentia a few weeks ago. That trip and my endless beer geek babbling has spurred Robert, normally a wine drinker, to seek out bottles from The Bruery to sample at his leisure at home. It is reported that a bottle of the Orchard White disappeared quite quickly around the table at Thanksgiving. Needless to say, a further exploration of what The Bruery has to offer was in order.

After a quick stroll around quaint downtown Orange and lamenting that the record store was closed, we settled on some Mexican fare for drinking fuel (what mere mortals refer to as dinner). While we had wandered somewhat aimlessly previous to eating, once our burritos and tacos were deployed to absorb the alcohol, we made a beeline to the Provisions shop.

Instantly making my ubiquitous “can you hear those angels singing too?” joke as we approached the cooler, the beautiful sight inside was truly awe inspiring: easily 400+ facings of bottled beer from around the world and a surprising amount of labels I had never seen before, making my earlier quip not much of a stretch. Overwhelmed for the time being, I wandered amongst the other offerings at the store including brewing books, Bruery merchandise, wine and all of its paraphernalia, and finally, lots of cheese.

While I stood gawking at the shelves of bottled beer on the wall opposite the coolers, one of the employees approached Robert and I to ask if we’d been in before and to explain how things work. Further prompting was not required and we all made our way to the area in the back of the store that is cordoned off as the tasting room.

Because of restrictions on the liquor license, they cannot pour full glasses of any one beer, but they do offer three different flights of beer (two Bruery-centric, the other celebrating seasonal offerings from a plethora of breweries), as well as flights of wine or cheese that, honestly, I didn’t pay much attention to. All of the flights were incredibly reasonable in price, so we chose the one with the most beers I hadn’t tried yet.

Choosing a seat in the tasting room was going to prove difficult for anyone entering after we did, seeing as how we took the last two chairs in a crowd that was gathering quickly. Our flights arrived and we began sipping contemplatively. As we shared our ruminations between us, I was delighted in the sophistication of Robert’s palate, although some translation to beer-speak was required at times.

The Humulus Lager had a wonderful hop aroma but was light and balanced on the tongue. The mash up (pun intended) that was the 7 Grain Saison did not allow for any of the distinct grain flavors to shine through, but maybe that was the point and either way; it was very enjoyable. I had the Loakal Red out of a bottle just two nights previous and was surprised at its subdued showing on tap, which I will attribute to a masking effect brought on by the previous two beers and my meal choice. The rye in the Rugbrød adds a wonderful nuance and was perfect for a winter night in Orange. The Workman’s Friend was a great way to round out the flight; the warm, roasty flavors of this imperial porter easily cut through the lingering effects of the first four beers and left me with a sizable grin beneath my beer moustache.

The evening was not over however, as I had yet to try the Orchard White and with it coming on such high recommendations, I would be remiss if I let the opportunity pass. I ordered a full flight of the Orchard White (rules) for Robert and a small flight for myself of the Mischief, a hoppy Belgian golden strong ale I remember being my favorite from our trip to the brewery proper. We then swapped out a glass each so I could sample the Orchard White. Not nearly as tangy as some witbiers that I have had, but wonderfully subtle notes of lavender and an amazing mouthfeel easily endear themselves much more than one-note puckering sourness would. I am sad to report I did not give the Mischief its due and the two glasses I had left disappeared quite quickly, with little time to contemplate the flavor. I will trust my previous evaluation that it is quite splendid.

Perusing the coolers after imbibing was probably not the wisest choice, but I restrained myself to three bottles, knowing that I would have to store them at Robert’s until I return to the OC in January. After much fussing over which beers to choose, I loaded up and snagged a Bruery goblet for good measure. Thankfully, Robert curtailed his intake much sooner than myself (and had generally lower alcohol beers than I) and was fine to drive us home after our reveries.

Downtown Orange has retained a feeling of small town community in an area of the world completely over run by strip malls and box stores and with the level of sophistication without snobbery that the Bruery have effortlessly employed in their beers and branding since their inception just a short three years ago, the Provisions store is a wonderful fit.

The Bruery and Cismontane Brewing Co.

There are few better ways to shed the worries of a long work day than heading to your local brewery’s tasting room to enjoy a pint or two and get a meal from the food truck parked outside. While I am far away from the Pacific Northwest working in Orange County, California, my definition of local brewery has to be a bit malleable, but the point is still valid. After putting in a full day at the office, my friend Robert and I headed over to Placentia to experience The Bruery firsthand.

I have only been able to find Hottenroth and Orchard White in bottles in Spokane, but I was happily impressed with each sample. When the opportunity arose to visit the location from which these great beers emanated whilst putting my lips to a pint (this case, goblet) of some of their rarer, tasting room-only selections, I jumped at the chance.

We arrived to a pretty full house, but a discussion with a local revealed that it was actually a tame night. A phenomenon unfamiliar to me but it is starting to catch on, even in Spokane: individual food trucks have a following. The Bruery never hurts for customers, but I was told that adding a first-rate food truck outside will get the place absolutely hopping. Robert and I shimmed our way through the queue while discussing the different styles on tap that evening and by the time we reached the bar, I had settled on the pilot batch of Iniquitous Belgian Golden Strong.

With nary a place to sit, we found a purchase of floor to stand on and I raised glass to mouth. Upon the heavenly liquid hitting my tongue, I was immediately overcome with euphoria and awe while being forced to admire this fine beverage at arm’s length. Being a few years into appreciating full and unique flavored craft beers, a reaction such as that is becoming exceedingly rare, so I am all the more appreciative when I am struck in such a way.

One aspect of the tasting room I really enjoyed was that it was situated essentially in the middle of the production floor of the brewery. Beer aging in barrels on one side and a full view of the brewing floor on the other made for an enjoyable evening. The Argentinean food truck with tofu tacos was fantastic as well, but in short order, I was in need of a second beer. I decided to compare oranges to oranges and tried the Mischief production run Belgian Golden Strong. Amazingly tasty, but the Iniquitous had stolen my heart. Just before 10pm (it is just a tasting room), the bartenders yelled out last call, so we decided to call it a night.

Saturday afternoon found me with a couple hours to kill, so I decided to head over to Cismontane Brewing just a couple of blocks from my sister’s house in Rancho Santa Margarita. Having just opened in April and being located in one of the countless strip malls in the OC, I had set my expectations slightly lower than The Bruery, but that cynical hedging of bets was not warranted. Although humble in their surroundings, Cismontane makes some solid brews. Highlights for me included Blacks Dawn, its little brother Small Palm Coconut Small Beer (brewed from the second runnings of the Blacks Dawn), the California Common brewed with German yeast and El Modena Mild, which I had to get a pint of after the flight of tasters.

Owner/brewer Ross was manning the taps behind the bar and with just a couple regulars on hand providing interspersed and only momentary distractions, we ended up having a lengthy, nerdy conversation about beer styles, trends, marketing, brewing techniques, etc. Ross was even kind enough to pour me tasters of a couple pilot batches and give me a short tour of the brew floor. Cismontane is utilizing open fermentation, so it was cool to climb the step ladder and lift the lid, even if it was empty.

After I finished the line of tasters, I needed a glass of water but all too soon I was heading back to my sister’s house and my Orange County beer adventures drew to a close. I purchased a shirt from both establishments and I will be excited to don them as I travel cross country to South Dakota over the next week. I have taken the time to write down every brewery between Spokane and South Dakota that we could possibly nip in for a pint, so my nation-wide local brewery exploration will continue soon.

Helping Out at Laughing Dog

I woke up very early last Friday morning so that I could make it from my girlfriend’s house in Newport to Ponderay, Idaho in time for mash-in for my first opportunity to assist with brewing at Laughing Dog. I arrived a few minutes early and Skip was already there getting started on cleaning kegs. Dave and Duane were soon to arrive and after some preliminary work with the hot liquor tank, Dave and I went upstairs to open up the bags of grain and start mashing in. I made sure to keep the hopper for the mill fed while Dave tended to some other things downstairs but we switched as the mash tun was nearing full so that I could hand-stir the last bit of grain as it hit the water. Fred had arrived as we were mashing away, but he was busy preparing for a visit from a group of representatives from the distribution company based in Virginia that is handling Laughing Dog’s East Coast accounts.

Dave and I began the transfer over to the kettle, adjusting the flow rates accordingly and then I assisted Duane in reclaiming yeast from a fermentation tank. Many commercial breweries reclaim and re-pitch their yeast for numerous generations before the little guys are worn out but it is not something that I have done whilst homebrewing. A pretty straight forward but important process, the reclaiming went quickly so I was next sent up a ladder to dry hop an earlier batch of Pale Ale. When I was finished with the task, Fred and Skip were getting the CO₂ line ready to bleed off the bourbon barrels they were opening that they had been aging their Imperial Stout in for nearly a year. Meant to impress the Virginia boys, we brewers and assistants were also allowed a taste. Being warm and un-carbonated, the resiny bourbon taste was intense and the heat of the alcohol hit my ears and cheeks quickly but you could tell that things were headed in the right direction and with just a little more tender care, that beer will be a beauty.

The transfer was completing, so Dave weighed out the boil hops but allowed me to add them to the kettle. With no hops to add until the end of the boil, it was time for lunch. The Virginia crew left after a tour of the new brew facility Laughing Dog is building and will be moving to by the end of summer and I got to share a few words with an exhausted Fred. Shortly thereafter, the rest of the crew returned from lunch and it was back to work.

Dave and I set to work cleaning out the mash tun, greatly aided by the paddles. As we filled large garbage cans dedicated to the purpose, Dave would then load them on the forklift and dump them into a trailer set out back for a local farmer to come pick up. The paddles could only the get the mash tun so clean, so I was set to work with the rake and hose. I didn’t get myself too wet and the mash tun was clean in no time, but due to a slight variance in the floor lay out, I then had to squeegee the grainy water that was surrounding the mash tun on the floor.

Clean up was nearing an end as the boil completed and Dave set to transferring the wort to the fermentation tank that already had a batch of the same beer from the day before in it, bringing it to a full 34 bbl. It was Friday, so extra cleaning was in order. Donning our protective glasses and gloves, Dave and I handled the caustics and cleaned the brew house, plate chiller and all of the hoses.

Some well-earned beers were in order, so a move to the tap room out front ensued. A family was visiting from Houston, so I accompanied Dave and Skip as they gave them a short tour of the brew facility in back and finished up my pint. A little bit more beer geek talk and then I got back on the road to return to my girlfriends house, smelling of wort and hops like a good man should.

If you are in the Spokane area (or on the East Coast) in about a month and see a Laughing Dog IPA on the shelf or on tap, I invite you to sample the product of our labor. Sláinte!

Brewing Mother Night ASIBA

There are many reasons why the craft beer renaissance in the United States has been a good thing. Now celebrating over a quarter-century of producing artisanal ales and lagers, small American breweries have had a tremendous impact on the beer industry the world over. Having carved out a relatively tiny but comfortable share of the marketplace, they are now even applying considerable pressure on the macroswill peddlers; evidenced by the big boys various attempts to appear more like craft breweries either by clever labeling and marketing or simply acquiring smaller breweries.

Setting the good fight aside, another measure of American craft breweries global impact is the growing influence they exhibit on other parts of the brewing world. Belgians are making West Coast IPA’s, Germans and Scotsmen battling to steal the highest ABV crown from an American brewery; the list goes on. I believe this influence has its seed in the exuberance American brewers across the board have shown for gaining knowledge on many varying brewing techniques, their penchant for creativity and for artfully breaking rules handed down from more traditional brewing cultures.

That creativity has most recently brought on a wave of what have been called Black IPA’s or Cascadian Dark Ales but have now been officially named American-style India Black Ales (ASIBA). Essentially they can be characterized as hop monster imperial IPA’s with a small amount of the grain bill being filled by black or chocolate malts to add considerable color and hints of roasty or smoky flavors. Widmer’s W-10 Pitch Black and Deschutes Hop in the Dark are the two examples I have tasted but there are many more entrants to the party such as Barley Brown’s Turmoil and Hopwork’s Secession.

My homebrewing partner and I decided to get on the bandwagon and brew up a batch of Mother Night ASIBA. I wrote the recipe after doing some research into clone recipes of the above commercial examples and thinking about how to interpret the style to my own liking. Specialty grains beyond the darker grains were in order, so I concocted a grain bill that was complex but with the purpose of adding some mouthfeel and to add sweetness for balance. Wanting to highlight rounded bitter instead of smoky tones from the grains, I used more chocolate malt than black for color. A considerable amount of dry hops will be utilized in order to up the aroma to the point that it isn’t overshadowed by the roasted grains. I chose a yeast strain that accentuates the malty flavors for balance and finishes dry to bring out the hop bitterness. Not that it will need help in that department as my calculations found the estimated IBUs to be well over 100. Overall, I was going for a huge hop monster emphasizing flavor over bitterness that is only partially reined in by the bready sweet and roasty malts with a nice solid mouthfeel.

Carl and I got started early, despite him feeling slightly under the weather. We decided to move the brewing operation onto Carl’s covered patio with a cast iron propane stove so we took some time setting up stations for cleaning, staging and brewing and then getting acquainted with the operation of the stove. We measured out the many hop additions, put the ones for dry hopping back in the freezer and then mashed in when we knew we could comfortably control the temperature. I stirred the grains more often than I would for other batches due to the sheer amount of grains I was trying to float in the brew bag, eventually just holding the bag to maximize contact surface for all the grain. A little bit of fidgeting with the stove to keep the temperature in check was required but otherwise the mashing went smoothly. A good sparge and then a bit of a time getting up to boil (understandable when there is that much dense fluid) but we were adding the first hops in no time. More cleaning filled our time between hop additions; myself with the brewing paraphernalia and Carl with his baby. The boil went well and we resorted to the ice bath technique again to cool our wort but without problem.

Once we topped off the carboy with water, the temperature was perfect to pitch the yeast. However, a gravity reading confirmed what I had expected – we were over 1.070 and required a second vial of yeast to reach the proper pitching rate. We pitched the first vial and set the blow off tube, then finished cleaning. Carl was relieved to finally get some time to lie down in bed to fight his illness (although I did most of the beer work, if only to protect our precious liquid from his germs), and I made a trip to the homebrew shop. At my behest, Carl asked them if we would need two vials of yeast when he picked up the rest of the ingredients but they said we would be fine. Without rubbing that in their faces, I asked about pitching two vials hours apart and got some tips.

After some other errands and a break for dinner, I returned to Carl’s to rack the beer, making sure to aerate well as we went along and then pitched the second vial of yeast. Carl went promptly to bed and I left to enjoy a Bagombo IPA at my house. Quite a bit of work involved in making this beer stuff, but always worth the reward that the product of your labors embodies.