Tag: competition

Posted on

SchwarzMas

Arts District Brewing is starting a new holiday tradition with their first-annual Schwarz-Mas Time Schwarz-Off!

Here are the details and the participating breweries – “Schwarzbiers will be tapped when we open at noon and available all day, all pints for $8 or half pours for $5. Work your way through and vote for the people’s choice! Come support these denizens of the dark:”


All Season Brewing
Angel City Brewing
Boomtown Brewery
Cervecería Del Pueblo
Eagle Rock Brewery
Enegren Brewing Company
Figueroa Mountain Brewing Company
Firestone Walker Propagator
Highland Park Brewery
Mumford Brewing
Ogopogo Brewing
Party Beer Co.
THERE DOES NOT EXIST
Three Weavers Brewing Company

Also, “judges will be evaluating and crowning the most Schwarziest Schwarzbier our winner.”

Posted on

The Longshot’s are In

samuel-adams-longshot-photo-575x464
One of the annual rites of GABF is the announcement of the Sam Adams Longshot winners. This year the chosen (2) homebrewers and (1) Sam Adams employee who will see their beers brewed on a super larger scale are:

David Cousino of Avon, OH, Saison – “Cousino began homebrewing 25 years ago in college and after a long break started brewing in earnest four years ago. He is a pharmacist and now the attention to detail in his profession shows in his homebrews. Koch says Cousino’s Saison has a soft malt character, delicate floral notes and a hint of pepper.”

Duane Wilson of Horseheads, NY, American Wild Ale – “Wilson and his co-brewer Mike Edwards have been brewing together for eight years and strive to improve on the styles they create. Wilson’s mixed-fermentation American wild ale is fruit forward with apricots and kumquats and finishes with a dry tartness.”

Graham Johnson of Marblehead, MA, Imperial Stout – “Johnson is the Samuel Adams employee home brew winner. The company opened up the competition to its employees because they are so passionate about beer and many of them brew at home. Johnson’s Imperial Stout uses whole coffee beans and chocolate and has decadent flavors of cocoa, espresso and hints of brandy and raisin. The taste finishes with touch of sweetness.”

It will be quite the task for a Wild Ale to be added to a mixed pack.

Now the waiting begins, the six-pack won’t arrive until spring of next year.

Posted on

The Next Longshot

longshot
Each year at the Great American Beer Festival, the new winners of the Sam Adams Longshot competition are unveiled. Below are the three beers that we will see and taste in 2015.

Greg Rasmussen’s Robust Porter: “This traditional robust porter is full of complex malt flavors. The variety of malts in this beer contribute flavors of cocoa, coffee, toffee, and slight vanilla to create a wonderful roasted yet balanced beer. This gorgeous mahogany porter has a roasty and chocolate aroma. The beer is complemented by slight citrus and earthy notes from the US and UK hops.”

Matthew Knott’s Classic Rauchbier: “This deep copper colored Rauchbier has all of the flavors you would expect in this traditional style: smoky, slightly savory with a malty sweetness and roastiness. The smoky flavors are balanced by a light toffee malt character and slight citrus from the hops. The brew finishes with a lingering smokiness, sweetness and subtle hop character.

John Marra’s Dunkelweiss: This beer is brewed with a traditional Bavarian yeast that contributes to the variety of aromas and flavors. The aroma is characterized with notes of tropical fruits and clove. The malted wheat contributes a bright clean cereal note, which complements the spicy flavors of clove, nutmeg, banana and a slight sweetness.”

The Dunkelweiss is the one of the three that I am most looking forward to but kudos for selecting a Rauchbier.

Posted on

GABF – 90 Categories

festmedals
Charlie Papazian, the head man at the Brewers Association must have a sore hand from all the fist bumps and be partially blind from the camera flashes due to a staggering 90 categories in competition at this year’s Great American Beer Festival.

From 20 entrants in the Gluten Free and Dopplebock styles to a mind (and palate blowing) 279 in the American IPA category, there is plenty of data to mine. With special attention to my home state of Oregon and my current state of California.

Here are my take-aways from the medalists:

California racked up double-digit tallys in each medal class and swept the Session and barleywine categories. But in the hoppy arena, lost the premier category of American IPA.

Speaking of, it is so cool to have Breakside win. They are literally down the street from my Mom’s house. It was strange and great to hear your hometown (Milwaukie, OR.) get called out.

Staying hoppy, will Hop 15 from Port become more sought after now that it edged out Pliny the Elder in the re-configured Imperial IPA category. Or will Russian River be considered a pils house with their Silver in the German Pilsener style? Kudos to Firestone Walker for the win with Pivo.

Congratulations also to Gabe and Julian at Beachwood for the gold, silver and more importantly Large Brewpub and Brewer of the year. They are cementing an already sterling reputation while previous GABF darling, Jeff Bagby also snared a medal for his just opened eponymous brewery in Oceanside.

No big LA wins this year since Beachwood is Long Beach and Pabst, is well, Pabst. Though, if I see their gold medal cream ale, Primo, I might give it a whirl.

The other surprise was the strong showing of New Mexico. If my count is correct, the turquoise state nabbed 5 Gold Medals and Marble Brewing of Albuquerque won Small Brewer of the year. Another SW state, Texas also did quite well.

Other strong California statements came from High Water, Figueroa Mountain and Bootlegger’s who all bagged two medals each. With Port Brewing picking up what has almost become a routine amount of medals from their various locations.

Let me finish by saying, that like a list, a competition in craft beer is more important for non-judges as a way to choose where next to go. Taste is subjective and the best Ordinary Bitter may not be to your fancy but if you find yourself in Austin, a Salt Lake City or Green Bay, you now know of three breweries that have wowed judges in that category and that they probably make some other fine beers that you should try.

Posted on

The Firkin for August 2013

header_firkin
There are many items that the craft beer world has on its to-do list.

My rant today is about distribution. Or as sometimes happens, kegs sitting around.

Some breweries self-distribute which takes time. On the plus side, you are dealing with only your beers. So “you” are educating your customers on your beers. “You” know can store your beers in the best conditions. “You” know how fresh your beers are.” But that it is a lot of time that can be used in many other areas of brewing life. Some of which may be more important.

The seemingly natural progression seems to be distribute yourself until you are big enough to “sign” with a distributor. You invariably then sign with more and more distributors as your territory grows.

Finding that right someone who loves your beer as much as you do, seems to be the harder task. And this is the link of the chain that needs to strengthened, especially as more and more breweries start reaching that tipping point between driving the truck and working the hand cart yourself and having someone else do it. More distributors of different sizes and in different towns will be needed.

And when I say size, I am talking about a distributor to brewery ratio that isn’t skewed to the point where a business is repping such a big binder of beers that they can’t possibly sell all of them with the same vigor and they can’t Quality Control the living conditions for kegs and bottles (or cans).

Both of those issues will impede the growth of craft beer than anything Miller/Coors/Budweiser does primarily because it is hidden from sight. Say a new customer tries Brewery A’s beer at their taproom and really likes their Belgian Pale Ale. Next week they see it on tap but it tastes different. Next week, they don’t see the beer at all. A few weeks later they see a bottle of it and it tastes different there too. Mind you, it may not taste bad in the subsequent tastings but it has lost that extra zing.

How does a customer determine (if they even decide to) why the beer is less than it was. Different batch? Recipe being tweaked? Most people don’t know beans about how a craft beer gets to a tap at a bar. Even less know who the distributor for each brewery is. I can tell you who a few local breweries work with but past a handful I don’t and I write a blog about craft beer.

In my example, the cause of intermittent availability could be caused by how much was brewed but it could be that because it is part of a huge book of beers that it is getting missed and therefore not out to people who would put it on tap or stock it on shelves. It could taste different because there was a glut of it and some didn’t get put into a cold box in a timely manner (or at all). That dry hopped IPA may have waited at a distributor for a while before making it to a bar who then waited for a tap to become free to put it on.

Now the brewery shouldn’t have to track kegs. That is why they got a distributor! Bars shouldn’t have to be in charge of quality control. They are busy on the front lines educating customers. What can change is competition.

The more distributors there are, the better chance that your favorite brewery can find one that has the employee and cold box capacity to carefully handle their precious beer. It may be that a smaller house has better staff training and can move the product faster because of it. A bigger company may be able to spread the wealth to a wider clientele. Either way, the fear of losing clients will cause the underperforming distributors to up their game or pay the price.

The goal is to have the beer presented in its best light for each and every customer.

Posted on

Great Quote from the NY Times

“But the enemy of good beer and good wine, and good food in general, is bad beer, bad wine and, yes, bad food.

What unites this team is the striving for real wine, real beer, and real food, as opposed to cynical product. That is the problem, and I think most people realize this no matter what they say or do. Craft beer’s battle is not against wine but against decades of cynical marketing from the giant breweries, which have done everything possible to portray beer drinkers as asinine fools. The enemy of good wine is the atrocious marketing that makes wine an aspirational commodity, just another luxury good to purchase for its status value. That has to offend the reverse snob in all of us.”
Eric Asimov