Book Review: Beer School

After I got done reading Brewing Up a Business, I started reading Beer School, which was also published in 2005. Beer School is about “Bottling Success at the Brooklyn Brewery” and was written by founders Steven Hindy and Tom Potter, who take turns writing a chapter and having a little section at the end of each chapter to comment on the other person’s topic. A good portion of the book can be viewed on Google Books for free.

Hindy was a former journalist before he convinced Potter, an English major and banker, to help him establish Brooklyn Brewery in the 1980s. This book is more autobiographical than Brewing Up a Business. It talks about how they got into brewing, forming the partnership, making a business plan and money-raising, the mission statement, motivating employees, creating and expanding the distribution system, building the brewery, doing public relations work, hiring and firing employees, and one partner selling his shares. The last chapter is about entrepreneurship.

Beer School isn’t exactly in chronological order, though it tries to be by when issues came up in their business. It doesn’t try to talk to you about how you might use their lessons in your business. They just tell you what happened to them and what they learned from it. Beer School is more in depth about business practices, and talks about creating a business plan, different sources for finding investors, legal issues for starting and running a business, and much more. While Brewing Up a Business had me thinking about how I might run my cidery, Beer School has me thinking about how to start it. I actually started writing a business plan after reading this book.

Confluence Vineyard & Winery

My husband and I went out the Confluence Vineyards and Winery in Ridgefield, WA the other weekend.

The property is mostly pasture with white rail fences. The winery is a converted newer barn, where the production takes up a good portion, and the tasting room is a smaller space that was a bit crowded with three couples in it. Everything was windowless. Aparently, there are plans to build a new production building on the property, which would allow the tasting room to expand in the current building.

Confluence Vineyards and Winery does not grow their own grapes, so I’m not sure why they call themselves a vineyard. They buy the freshly picked grapes from the Yakima or Walla Walla areas. I can relate to this, as I don’t think I will be growing all of my fruit for my production. When they get the grapes, they then custom crush the grapes and make wine.

The tasting costs $5 a person, with the fee waved upon purchasing a bottle of wine. That day, they were tasting six different red wines. It was all very good wine, but honestly, my husband and I really could not note the difference between all of them them, as we had a hard time distinguishing that many red wines individually. I think this is a flaw on their part, as I probably would have had an easier time remembering each one if I had been served four reds and two whites.

One thing I really did like about the winery was that they had platters of food out to nibble on. That day, there were cheeses, cured meats, crackers, dark chocolate, and that day a special treat of meatballs in sauce made by the owner from a bottle of their wine.

Oregon to Fix Homebrew Laws?

Last week, I posted a review about attending MashFest, which was a beer festival where all the brewers were homebrewers. It was in Vancouver, WA, but if it has been held across the river in Portland, OR, the event would have been illegal because last year, the Oregon Liquor Control Commission decided to enforce a small amount of wording making it illegal to transport homebrew outside the home. The result was no amateur homebrew competition at the Oregon State Fair after 22 years.

The Oregon Home Brewers Alliance has been working with Sen. Floyd Prozanski to help draft a bill to fix this problem. In addition, there are also apparently five other proposed bills addressing transportation of homebrew, so something is bound to change.

The 2011 Oregon Legislation had a chance to look over the various bills, but are currently adjourned and will not meet again until February 1, so this will be an interesting topic to follow.

Further reading from the Oregon Home Brewers Alliance:

• Support SB 444
• Proposed Oregon Homebrewing Law Draft Bill and Admentments

Book Review: Brewing Up A Business

Brewing Up a Business was writen in 2005 by Dogfish Head Craft Brewery founder Sam Calagione. Most of this book, with the exception of the last chapter, can be read for free on Google Books.  I have reviewed another one of Calagione’s books, He Said Beer, She Said Wine, as he was a English major in college so he does a bit of writing.

This book is not an autobiography, though he does talk a little about how he decided to open a brewery and restaurant, the laws he had to change to allow brewpubs, and a bit on his first equipment. However, he leaves out things like how he raised the money to start the brewpub. Instead, this book is more about what Calagione believes are the hot topics for running a business. He will talk about an issue such as marking or finance, support it with a personal story, and even try to spin it off how his views could be applied to a non-beer businesses.

I will say that this book motivated me to push a little more about starting up my own place, though I later read Beer School and realized the holes in Brewing Up a Business. However, I was thinking about rereading this book and posting about some of the topics and how they have me thinking about how to apply it to my own business.

Today, Calagione is feeling pretty secure with the success of Dogfish Head Craft Brewery, which makes “Off-centered ales for off-centered people,” and recently aired on the Discovery Channel Brew Masters. The show follows him around as he is inspired to create a new beer, and shows a little bit of the brewing production successes and failures. One reoccurring thing that happened was that he would decide to take on a project and decide to have a tasting of it with very little time. This means that if his first attempt did not work out, there would be no second attempt to fix it. In fact, he did research for an Ancient Egyptian beer and took it to a event full of archeologists without letting anyone taste it first! He did a collaboration with Epic Beer, and they took that batch to a New Zealand competition. He was disappointed that he didn’t win, but I would have been disappointed if he had. I had been reading this book when I went to Pelican Brewpub, and inspired by this book, I asked their brew master how he came up with new recipes. I was basically told that after awhile of working with the beer making material, you know how the material is going to act, taste, and smell. So I get that Calagione is really comfortable brewing, but sometimes, with the tight deadlines and allowing no room for a possible improved second batch, it kind of left me rooting that one of these inital batches would fail because it is difficult for me to watch his poor planning.

I have to say though, Calagione is an interesting and entertaining guy to read and watch. I’ll be paying attention.

Winter MashFest 2011

Last Sunday, my husband and I went to Winter MashFest 2011 at Mint Tea in Vancouver, WA. MashFest is a little brew fest in which all of the brewers are armatures. Some of the brewers there are looking to get their license, while others have no intention of being anything more than just hobbyists. This gives them all the opportunity to get feedback on their beers.

There were a total of 14 beers there this time, two more than advertised. Organizers said that at the last minute, they had three brewers back out, but they were quickly able to find three more to fill their spots. We were given a glass and a program in which the brewer would check off that we had taken some of their beer. With this, their goal was to only give one sample per person so that their supply of beer would last the evening. The program also allowed us to vote for a overall favorite beer, and then a beer made by someone who had been brewing more than three years and a beer brewed by someone brewing less than three years. My favorite was actually a coconut porter in which I could really taste the coconut. As a result, my husband didn’t like it because he doesn’t like strong coconut, which is why he really likes Maui Brewing Company’s CoCoNut Porter.

The event was very crowded, and it was hard to find a specific beer from the program as brewer #1 was next to brewer #4. My husband went to the Summer MashFest 2010, and he said that with the nice weather, they do some of the tasting outside on the lawn, so it is much less crowded.

I think I will actually try to get a cider entered in the Summer MashFest, but I’m unsure about attending the Winter MashFest again since I am not really a beer person, let alone dark winter beers. However, at $10, it is one of the cheaper tastings, and it does support up and coming brewers, so I do feel it is a good thing to support.

Starting a Peach Wine

This past weekend, I thawed out 27 lbs worth of peaches make wine. They almost filled a four gallon bucket, and I’m hoping to get two gallons of wine. I did not add water to this batch. If I had, I could have probably gotten eight gallons. The peach juice is like a nice rich syrup or nectar. My husband is quite happy to have the freezer space back, as it took me two ice chests to thaw that much peaches.

Peach juice with bags of peaches. The bags will be removed after one week.

The peaches had decent sugar content at about 1.055 SG, which would be about 7% ABV as is. I will raise that to a more stable 12% by chaptilizing with sugar, but I decided to do that after I remove the fruit in a week. I decided this mostly because I’ll have a better idea of how much volume I have to make a more accurate calculation on how much sugar to add.

I did have to adjust the pH a bit since it was too high at approximately 3.8. I believe I got it pushed down to 3.6, but I’ll test again when I remove the fruit to see how it is doing. I would prefer it to be more at 3.5 pH to make it less prone to an infection.

Since peaches are natorious about making cloudy wine, I did add pectic enzyme to hopefuly help it clear later. I also added some tannin to help with mouthfeel, but not much. Of course, I added sulfites because I don’t want to take a risk of losing the batch, especially since the pH is a bit high. Yesterday, I pitched a Montrachet yeast, and I will add yeast nutrient once it gets going.

I’m hoping this batch will be ready by the end of summer, but realistically, it will probably be next fall.

Book Review: Easy to Make Wine

I was in my local Goodwill the other day, browsing though books, when I came across Easy to Make Wine by “Mrs. Gennery-Taylor.” The book says it was originally published in England as Easymade Wine and Country Drinks, but the American version had it’s name changed when it was published in 1963.

Admittedly, one has to wonder why I bother reviewing a book that one can only find on eBay. Sometimes, I do it because I’m tickled to see how things have changed over the years. For example, in the inside of the dust jacket, it says, “Less than 12¢ a bottle can be the cost of wines made from the recipes in this book.” I could only manage that with free produce, no sugar, recycled bottles, and I would still have paid more than 12¢ a bottle because I can’t find cork that cheap! She is claiming free wild fruits or flowers, cheap sugar, and recycling bottles with existing corks, which I’m not comfortable recycling corks.

There is the first general section in the book discussing how to make wine. Interestingly, she does not mention that air will hurt wine, and barely talks about airlocks but does not stress their use, though she does mention sometimes using bakers yeast and has a basic recipe similar to mine in case “you wish to make wine from some fruit, flower or vegetable not mentioned in this book.”

The section of wines talks about how wine used to be a way of preserving herbs to use as medication. She states, “Here are some wines which are, so I am told, safe and certain cures. Anyway a glass of wine at any time is a great morale lifter and my help on to forget one’s aches and pains. I must however warn those who suffer from rheumatism, they should never touch rhubarb wine.”

Cowslip wine will cure jaundice.
Dandelion is good for indigestion and kidney trouble.
Sloe wine is effective for diarrhoea.
Elderberry taken hot on a cold morning will ward off colds.
Raspberry wine is invaluable for sore throats.
Blackcurrent wine when mulled is excellent for colds and bronchitis.
Barely wine is good for kidney trouble.
And rhubarb wine is bad for rheumatism.

This book is similar to CJJ Berry’s First Steps in Winemaking book in that it has suggested wines to make in certain months, offering up 62 recipes that are alphabetical. The unusual ones to me: clove carnation, coltsfoot, cowslip, damson, unripe grape, greengage, haw, mangel, marigold, marrow, rose hip, sugar beet, and wheat wine. She does sometimes call for demerara sugar, which I guess is what the British call natural brown sugar.

The last section of the book is “Other drinks”, which includes blackberry cordial, ginger beer, mead, cider, beer, and some syrups. The cider “recipe” actually doesn’t fit the format of the book, as all the other pages have a list of ingredients, and this one doesn’t. She talks about getting others to crush and press the apples, stating that a ton of apples makes 150 gallons of cider, “therefor a cwt. Makes approximately 7 ½ gallons.” I’ve found that to be true. She then suggests putting the juice in a wooden cask, preferably an ex-brandy cask, and don’t bung it while fermentation is going on for the sake of the cask. She does add quite a bit of sugar once fermentation is going, suggesting 2-4 lbs per gallon. Looking at her apple wine recipe, she calls for 3 lbs per gallon, so there really isn’t any alcohol difference between the two recipes. She says that the “cider” can get up to 15%!

Interestingly, she states that one has to have a license to brew beer at home in England.

The last section is on children’s drinks, teas, and coffees, of which she talks a little bit about medical teas.

• Black current tea for colds
• Coltfoot tea for coughs
• Caraway seed tea for flatulency, and suggests that “gripe water for babies” is made from caraway sees.
• Carrot tea for gout
• Chamomile flower tea for clearing the blood and relieving headaches
• Celery stalk or seed tea for rheumatism
• Clove tea for flatulency
• Hop tea for indigestion, regain a lost appetite, and other things. “No wonder beer is so popular.”
• Marjoram tea to relieve a headache.
• Mint tea to relieve a headache and for flatulency.
• Raspberry leaf tea for sore throats
• Rosemarry tea to relieve headaches.
• Sage tea as a gargle or as a hairwash to dark hair and prevent greyness.
• Strawberry leaf tea to help with diarrhoea.
• Thyme tea to ease whooping cough and sore throats.

She adds that she has been told that you can roast dandelion roots in the oven slowly, and then grate it very finely and drink like coffee.

Because sanitation and the affects of air on wine are not even mentioned, I would not recommend this book for beginners unless this has been corrected in the most recent 6th edition published in 1996. Therefore, I’m not sure I would completely trust the recipe process, though I might use it as guidelines (interestingly, the apple wine and cider are both made without adding yeast). I find this book amusing, good for historical content, and a potential source of inspiration.

Maui Brewing Company, Maui, Hawaii

While we were in Maui, Hawaii for Christmas, we also visited Maui Brewing Company, Maui’s only brewery . Maui Brewing Company has two locations on the island. One is their production facility and brewpub located in Kahana, and the other is their cannery and distribution center located in Lahaina.

We started out at their cannery, which also has a small tasting room with the beers they can on tap. They explained to us that the state of Hawaii does not have a glass recycling center, so all glass must be shipped to and from the mainland. Therefore, to be more sustainable, Maui Brewing Company uses cans instead of bottles. Cans also have the added benefit of being beach friendly. That is to say, many places we visited, from swimming pools to beaches, had signs saying “No glass beyond this point.” If a glass bottle is dropped, it shatters, which is not good for wildlife or people walking barefoot. This can be avoided with a can.

We then traveled six miles up to Lahana to the brewpub, which had some additional beers on tap. Maui Brewing Company tends to make traditional beers and then flavoring it with a local ingredient. For example, their porter has smoked coconut, and a wheat beer might have mangos or pineapple juice made from Maui Gold pineapples. The brewpub is where they come up with new brewing recipes.

My husband, who loves porters, says that Maui Brewing Company’s CoCoNut Porter is in his top five favorite porters. We also had the Mana Wheat, made with pineapples. I initially had a hard time detecting the subtitle pineapple, but later I started burping up the pineapple flavor. I could only drink half a can before passing it off to my husband. My husband’s grandfather, who says he doesn’t usually like wheat beers due to the clove/banana flavors they tend to get due to temperature control during fermentation, said he really liked the Mana Wheat. We think that if those flavors had been present, the pineapple flavor would have been further lost, so they did a better job controlling the temperature to prevent that. This got us talking about brewing in Maui. We found the water to be a little bit sweet, which would affect beer flavor. Also, being so warm all the time, they would have to have temperature controls to keep fermentation in the 50-65 degree range for ales while the outside temperature is in the 70-85 range every day. In this respect, it takes more energy to brew on Maui, and not just something you could do in your garage without a converted refrigerator.

Wassailing in 2011

Once again, it is that time of year for wassailing, with most events happening this coming weekend. Simply put, wassailing is a kind of festival of sorts blessing apple trees. I wrote up a blog last winter on the topic, including some recipes. Strangely, for all the things poured on an apple tree for wassailing, none of them seem to be fertilizer.

• More on wassailing and events in the UK
• Maiden Rock Winery & Cidery, WI
• Sea Cider, BC

One musing I have about wassailing is that all the recipes tend to be for soft apple “cider” [juice]. If this is indeed an old tradition, apples would have had to have been put into storage and then freshly pressed to have juice on hand. Any other juice from that fall would have already fermented into cider because they wouldn’t have really had the means to prevent it.

Recycling to Make a Backyard Trellis

So the question posed last week when I got done pruning the grapes was, could I build a new trellis before the weather turned? Answer: No.

Let me back up: I bought a house over a year ago that had grapes that were in need of pruning. The previous owners had built a trellis and then proceeded to do a figure eight with the vines up over the top. The weight of the vines on such small wood over a large distance broke the trellis in the middle. The trellis system was actually upright because the vines went from one side to the other. In fact, when I removed one vine from the left hand side, that side fell over.

Grapevines after pruning, photograph taken January 4, 2011

The previous owners had installed a swing set, which we had removed but never got around to dealing with the metal. We actually decided to cut down some of the pieces and use them as the new trellis system. I think a true viticulturalist would look at my trellis system and cringe, because it be considered too high compared to what they do in vineyards. However, aside from the electricity it took to run a saw, this was totally and completely free and will last a few years. I like free. Sure, I could have cut it down further, and I might next winter, but for now, I can get in under the grapes without having to duck much.

New grape trellis made from recycling a swing set. Photographed January 5, 2010

We also made a trellis for the berry patch, but that bed needs some work later this winter.

New berry trellis made from recycling a swing set.

Further reading:

• Constructing a Vineyard Trellis, Paul Domoto, Iowa State University
• North Carolina Cooperative Extension Publication AG-401 Growing Blackberries