CHICKEN. A Decade of Winter Beer Festivals

Transcription

1 From the Prez The RUBBER CHICKEN NEXT MEETING: Studio 4, 2nd Floor 342 Market Ave SW Judging at 6:00, Meeting at 7:00 PM Wednesday, February 18, 2015 SPONSORS!! Thank you, Thank you, Thank you! During the club s Christmas party we auctioned off the items donated by our sponsors, and the club realized over $1400 for our treasury. A Decade of Winter Beer Festivals This is the tenth annual Michigan Brewers Guild Winter Beer Festival! This got me reminiscing And something to write about for the newsletter! The first WBF was held in a parking lot in Old Town Lansing! There were three long tents set up in a horseshoe. Both sides of the tents were lined with breweries, and you walked down the middle. Well, had there been enough space to walk. It was quite crowded. The only things I really remember was that Dark Horse had a bunch of TV s stacked up with their beers listed on them, and most of the breweries had vinyl signs hung up on the tents behind them advertising their beers. Except for Brewing Company. Back in those days, GRBC was still on 28 th St, and I think this was the first beer festival GRBC ever attended. So it seems they showed up with no fancy signage. Not to be deterred, John Svoboda scrounged up somebody s used pizza box and scrawled Brewing Company on it! If I remember correctly, he borrow some duct tape to tape it to the tent wall. Crooked for effect. They expected attendees that day, and the event sold out. In 2008 the event was moved to. Other fantastical things that took place in 10 years ago: The club did our first collaboration brew ever! We got together with Nate Walser at Founders (they were on Monroe at the time) and we brewed a Brown Ale on their pilot system. We ended up putting 8 kegs on tap on a Wednesday, and by the next Monday it was gone. The recipe is on page two. In February we had our meeting at the newly formed Schmohz Brewery, formerly Robert Thomas Brewing Company, and on the agenda was a cider tasting orchestrated by some molecular biologists from Michigan State University. It seems they had the idea that a good use for some of Michigan s bumper crops of apples would be to see if a local hard cider industry could use them. So they were doing a series of tasting events where they rolled out a couple of ciders made by MSU s Food Sciences and got input about the palatability and marketability of fermented apple cider. You know, that idea is

2 just crazy enough that it might take off! And if you were at that meeting, you are partially responsible for shaping the Michigan Hard Cider Industry! Some of us were already into the hard cider scene: December of 2005 saw the first Great Lakes Old World Syder competition, now the Great Lakes International Cider and Perry competition. in that competition, PTB did quite well! There were 68 noncommercial entries, and we won 12 medals! Jeff Carlson won 3, Dan Humphrey, John Applegarth and myself each won two, and three guys no longer in the club each won a medal. In May, we saw the announcement of a new brewpub opening up! Ken McPhail re-opened the old Hair of the Frog brewpub as what we now know as The Hideout! PTB started holding meetings there immediately, splitting our time between The Hideout, Schmohz and Founder s Founders Collaboration Brown 6 Gal. 5 lb lager malt 3.73 lbs Pale malt 1.09 lb Honey malt 1.09 lb Crystal 80 malt.54 lb Caramel Pils malt.54 lb wheat malt.27 lb Chocolate malt 350L Mash and sparge to collect enough to have 6 gal after boil Hops 60 min..82 oz Bullion Pellet 8.2 alpha 20 min oz Willametee Pellet 4.2 alpha 5 min..97 oz Willametee Pellet 4.2 alpha o.g Wyeast 1056 Dan Humphrey won the club s first medal in the old AHA Club Only Competitions, a gold medal for his Old Ale and PTB started ramping up its total domination of the Michigan State Fair Homebrew competitions! So, who s going to the 2015 Winter Beer Festival? I ll be there Friday and Saturday, pouring beers for Railtown Brewing Company. Unless I m sneaking around.. Dan Humphrey s Award Winning Old Ale Recipe Style: Old Ale Gallons: 5 Malt: 8 oz. 60 L. crystal malt 4 oz. Briess torrified wheat malt 10 oz. Carapils (USA) Crush grains and slowly heat with 1 1/2 gals. water to 160o F. Hold at 160o F 30 Min. Strain out grains and sparge with 1 gallon of water at 170o F. Add additional water to make 5 1/2 gallons in brew pot. Bring this to a boil and add: 13 lb. Muntons liquid plain amber malt Hops: 1 1/2 oz. Galena leaf (13%) at the start of the boil 1 oz. Willamette pellet 5% after 52 minutes Adjuncts: 1 tsp. Irish Moss (added at 50 minutes) Boil Time: 60 minutes Yeast: 2 quart slurry of 1332 Wyeast northwest ale yeast O.G.: F.G.: Primary: Glass Carboy 7 days Secondary: Glass Carboy 2 Months keg and force carbonate ~ Eric

3 Are You Genetically Programmed to Hate Hoppy Beer? By Andy Sparhawk I m always amazed that craft beer generates such polarizing opinions. No matter how many excited beer fans I meet, there are always a few people that love to tell me how much they hate beer, or a specific style of beer. It s Science, You Guys During a recent taste seminar at the Great American Beer Festival, Dr. Nicole Garneau, a geneticist at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, explained that human taste is a sophisticated sensor that is pre-wired to keep us safe and alive. Now, I m not a fan of crinkle-cut carrots, but I don t hate them. It s just a preference; not an allout hatred. I can understand if you prefer other beverages more than beer, or prefer certain beer styles over others, but to generalize and say that you just don t like it? I think that s very limiting. After all, beer is a very personal, multi-faceted experience that is dependent on many variables. I continue to learn that beer has as much to do with environmental conditioning as it does with your innate human makeup. Believe it or not, humans are not born with an inclination for hand-crafted, hoppy India pale ales, and some have never developed a taste for bitter -forward beers. If you re one of those people, I bet you ve gotten some grief at some point from your hop-head friends. Don t worry, you re not an inhuman monster (probably I don t know you), and here s why: distaste for hops is part of our human genetic heritage. To illustrate this, imagine early hunter-gathers. Early humans were driven by the most primal and basic instinct to survive. Picture one of our ancient ancestors (I m calling him Fred) wandering the wilderness, trying not to get eaten by whatever predators were around at that time, and searching for things that he could eat to survive. Fred comes across two berry bushes that he s never seen before. He tastes a berry from one bush, and it s sweet: He swallows happily. Then he tastes a berry from the second bush, and it s very bitter: His instinct is to immediately spit it out. Fred gathers up the sweet berries as hunter-gatherers were known to do when they weren t hunting gets a job at a rock quarry, raises a family and the rest is totally made-up history. So why was Fred immediately drawn to choose the sweet berries, having never tasted either before? The answer is in his genes. Scientists like Garneau believe that the sense of taste is hardwired into the brain to recognize whether something you ingest is going to help you or hurt you. A sweet taste is recognized by the brain as good, because sugar represents calories and calories are needed to sustain energy and outrun sabretoothed tigers. The taste of bitterness is an imme-

4 diate red flag to the brain that warns you something may be poisonous and should be rejected just in case. Other tastes provide similar alerts in the brain. For instance, salt is needed by the body (salty = good), while a sour taste might mean that the food is spoiled (sour = bad). A baby s yuck face when she tastes bitter vegetables is her brain s natural, instinctual reaction and is meant to protect her from ingesting anything harmful (also it s hilarious and adorable). Outside Influences Shape Taste So there you have it, IPA-haters: It s not your fault. Dr. Garneau said that humans were never supposed to like bitter beer in the first place, and we can t do anything about our genes, right? Not so fast! If humans are naturally averse to bitter tastes, why are coffee, tea and Brussels sprouts so popular? And why are so many people crazy about hops in craft beer? The answer Garneau revealed is that the environment is to blame. Outside influences can teach your brain to override its genetic predilection and aversions. In her own example, Garneau asked the audience what I ll ask you now: Have you ever had a bad experience with food, like getting sick from oysters? Chances are it was a while before you went back to slurping down the briny bivalves, if you re not still avoiding them to this day. Did your genes change? Nope you can t change your genes but you are now conditioned to avoid oysters. recognize that something which once was potentially adverse is now welcome. So does this mean you can force-feed someone who doesn t like beer in general, or hoppy beer specifically, 20 hop-heavy beers and expect them to be conditioned to enjoy an IPA with you? Fat chance! No one likes to be told what they should like. As hoppy beer fans, we need to respect our friends tastes. We like hoppy beers because we gave them a try, and then another and another, despite what our genes were telling us. We hop-heads are the ones technically going against human nature. The moral of the story is that you can change a negative to a positive with positive conditioning. We can all benefit from giving something a try or two (or 20) before we decide to love it or hate it. Andy Sparhawk, the Brewers Association's craft beer program coordinator, is a Certified Cicerone and BJCP Beer Judge. He lives in Arvada, Colorado where he is a homebrewer and avid craft beer enthusiast. On occasion, Andy is inspired to write on his experiences with craft beer, and if they are not too ridiculous, you might see the results here on Craft- Beer.com. Conditioning allows your brain to work around your genes, like when you were a kid and thought coffee was gross. Like most of us, you probably learned to love a cup of joe as you had more exposure to it, and you realized it had the positive effect of helping you stay alert and awake. That, Garneau said, is how we learn to like bitter beer. Exposure to foods you don t like will show your brain that bitter foods aren t going to kill you. It can take up to 20 instances of exposure to something until your brain re-conditions itself to 2015 KBS Week March 9-14

5 PRIMETIME BREWERS COMPETITION PAGE 2015 Club Competition Calendar January No Competition (Christmas Party) February SMASH (single malt and single hop) March Porter April Belgian Strong May Cider using the new guidelines June Beer pairing dinner July Best of Cellar August Wheat Beer September Octoberfest October IPA November Spiced Beer December Christmas Party Individual Competitions can be found at: Brewer of the Year (Through December, FINAL) Jason Zomerlei 52 Chad Zomerlei 52 Jeremy Gavin 48 Brent Zomerlei 28 Andy Gallagher 20 Jeff Coffee 20 Jeff Carlson 16 Eric Fouch 12 Steve VanderLaan 12 Neil Johnson 8 John Applegarth 8 Jim Verlinde 8 Rick Brown 8 Joe Feistritzer 4 SAVE THE DATE(S) Feb O Connor s HB comp. entries due. Mar 5 First Thursday GRBC Mar 23 Registration opens for Siciliano comp. Apr 2 First Thursday Perrin Apr 15 Deadline for Siciliano comp. entries Apr 25 Siciliano competition judging May 2 Siciliano s Calder Big Brew May 16 Siciliano Annual Homebrew Party Club Officers President: Eric Fouch ( fouch.eric@gmail.com) V. P.: Brent Zomerlei (brent@zomerlei.com) Treasurer: Jeff Carlson (carlsonj@gvsu.edu) Secretary & RC Editor: Jim Verlinde (jbverlinde@comcast.net) SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS THEY SUPPORT US!! December Christmas Beer Club Competition 1st Chad Zomerlei Imperial Stout Christmas Ale 2nd Ric Brown Milk Stout Christmas Ale 3rd Jeff Coffee Belgian Christmas Ale

6 O CONNOR S HOME BREW SUPPLY 619 Lyon St NE (616) VANDER MILL CIDER MILL & WINERY Cleveland St Spring Lake, MI (616) UNCLE JOHN S CIDER MILL 8614 North US 127 St Johns, MI (989) BREWERY VIVANT 925 Cherry SE (616) ROCKFORD BREWING COMPANY 12 E Bridge St Rockford, MI (616) HARMONY BREWING COMPANY 1551 Lake Drive SE (616) PERRIN BREWING COMPANY 5910 Comstock Park Dr Comstock Park (616) PIKE 51 BREWING CO Chicago Dr Hudsonville (616) MITTEN BREWING COMPANY 527 Leonard NW (616) GRAND RAPIDS BREWING CO. 1 Ionia SW (616) GRAVEL BOTTOM Craft Brewery & Supply 418 Ada Dr Ada (206) OSGOOD BREWING 4051 Chicago Dr SW Grandville (616)

7 ARCADIA ALES 103 W Michigan Battle Creek (269) FOUNDERS BREWING CO 235 Grandville Ave SW (616) B & B LIQUOR STORE th St SE (616) WHITE FLAME BREWING CO th Ave Hudsonville (616) B.O.B. S HOUSE OF BREWS 20 Monroe NW (616) HIDEOUT BREWING CO 3113 Plaza Dr NE (616) BREW GADGETS 328 S Lincoln Ave Lakeview (866) HONEY CREEK INN 8025 Cannonsburg Rd Cannonsburg (616) COTTAGE BAR & RESTAURANT 18 Lagrave SE (616) HOPCAT 25 Ionia SW (616)

8 RISHI S INTERNATIONAL BEVERAGE th St SE (616) and 6859 Cascade Rd SE (616) RED SALAMANDER 902 E Saginaw Hwy Grand Ledge (517) MARTHA S VINEYARD 200 Union NE (616) MICHIGAN HOP ALLIANCE PO Box 1843 Traverse City NEW HOLLAND BREWING 66 E 8th St Holland (616) SAUGATUCK BREWING CO 2948 Blue Star Hwy Douglas (269) SCHMOHZ BREWERY 2600 Patterson SE (616) SICILIANO S MARKET 2840 Lake Michigan Dr (616) PAULY S Fulton East Lowell (616) RAILTOWN BREWING Co th St SE Dutton (616) CELLAR BREWING COMPANY 500 E Division, Sparta (616) H & H Hobby Shop 3070 Broadmoor SE Suite B Kentwood (616)