We’ve got a few fancy projects in the works from our Greenhouse series and you’ll have the opportunity to sample them very soon.  First and foremost, the second release of Enlargement Pils, our Imperial Pilsner.  The name is cool, we think.  The beer is tasty, we think.  So, pop into our tap room this weekend or get yourself out to the Austin Beer guide release party this Friday at Billy’s on Burnet and get yourself a glass of this pils.

We’ve also been working on a cool malt project.  We decided to brew two separate pale ales, same hopping schedule but Pale Ale #1 is using 100% Vienna malt and Pale Ale #2 is using 100% Munich malt.  And yes, in case you were wondering, they definitely taste different.  So, get yourself into the tap room next weekend and try this stuff out.  And let us know what you think.

This past weekend we released the first beer that we’ve made here at the brewery incorporating Rye into the grain bill.  We call it Roggen hop and it’s a Rye IPA.  This weekend in our tap room we’ll be releasing the second Rye beer, Red Rye.  This one is a big, hoppy, Imperial Red Rye Ale.  Once again, get yourself into our tap room and give em both a try.  And let us know what you think!

Last but not least, Brew Biscuits are back!  After a few weeks of down time and we shifted our production around to accommodate an expansion we are back in business and will have plenty of treats for your hairy best friend!

Head east on 6th St. and give us a visit!

The post Greenhouse Happenings appeared first on Hops & Grain.

For those that have been into the tap room you’ve likely had a beer or two from our Del Roble series.  All of the beers that come from this series are unique in that they undergo 100% of their fermentation in oak barrels.  It’s not until fermentation and aging are complete that these beers make it into a stainless tank for packaging.  So, we decided to brew 2 different batches of Half Nelson, each with the same recipe but one fermented in a stainless tank and the other fermented Del Roble style.

Starting today in the tap room we’ll have both beers on tap side by side so that you can experience the true contributions that the Del Roble style of fermentation delivers to the beer.  Both beers had the exact same malt bill, the exact same hop bill and the exact same variety and quantity of yeast.  The only factor that differed was the fermentation vessel.

Join us today at 2pm or tomorrow starting at noon, where 6th Street ends and Life begins, and try them both!  The Greenhouse beers never last long and we expect the same to hold true for these beers.

See you soon!

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One that I’m particularly excited about will be taking place tomorrow with the good folks at Pinthouse Pizza.  Our friend Joe Mohrfeld, who heads up the brewing operations over at Pinthouse is, like myself, a fan of the hop plant and all of its applications.  If you made it to our collaboration event for Bats & Beers you were exposed to this affinity.  So, in the spirit of hop expression we’ve put together a cool little experience taking place tomorrow night starting at 6pm at Pinthouse Pizza.

Here’s how it’s going to roll.  First thing, you must purchase a ticket in advance of each session and you can only purchase them at Pinthouse.  We will have 3 sessions, starting every hour on the hour from 6-8pm.  So, 6pm, 7pm and 8pm.  Sessions will include 5 samples with 5 oz. of beer per sample, a presentation from Joe and Josh followed by a Q&A, if you’re into that sort of thing.  Tickets are $10 and there are only 10 spots available for each session.

The details:

We have procured a large number of 32 oz. French Presses.  You know, the sort used by those who value their coffee drinking experience.  We will be using The One They Call Zoe as our control beer, meaning that each of the 5 samples that you will try will be using Zoe as the base beer.  We’ve also procured a large quantity of whole leaf hops.  5 samples, 4 hop varieties and French Presses, sweet.

Sample #1-  The Control- The One They Call Zoe

Sample #2- The One They Call Zoe, a French Press, whole leaf Chinook hops

Sample #3- The One They Call Zoe, a French Press, whole leaf Simcoe hops

Sample #4- The One They Call Zoe, a French Press, whole leaf Citra hops

Sample #5- The One They Call Zoe, a French Press, whole leaf Cascade hops

If you like experiencing the wonderful aromas and flavors that can be extracted from hops without having to muscle through a high level of bitterness, this event is right up your alley.

We are very stoked to be partnering up with our LoBurn friends at Pinthouse and look forward to seeing you there tomorrow.  We’ll also be bringing some special Greenhouse beers for the event.

Cheers!

The post Hop Experience for ACBW appeared first on Hops & Grain.

We’ve been brewing Pale Dog since day 1 and since that day it has gone through no less than 15 different changes.  Some to the malt bill, some to hop additions, plenty of changes throughout the wort production process but it’s fermentation where we have tweaked this beer more than anywhere else.  As far as I’m concerned, fermentation is the hardest element of the brewing process to both understand and manage.  Yeast is a fickle thing and on a good day you can only hope to manage it and you’ll likely never have full control over it.  So based on my friends analogy our Pale Dog has been very much like a snowflake, no two are alike.

As a devotee of hops and hopping processes we’ve tweaked hop varieties as well as dosing rates quite a few times with Pale Dog.  We’ve finally settled on the best blend of varieties for the beer and have found ourselves very pleased with the flavor and aroma.  Now here’s where the story makes a sad turn.  About 2 months ago we started picking up on a fairly noticeable presence of diacetyl in some of our quality control samples that were stored warm.  We keep a pretty deep collection of QC samples and we like to keep them both cold and warm to get a better idea of how our beer is holding shelf stability.  Unfortunately, not all of our beer is kept in a cold space when it reaches retail stores and it’s our responsibility to make sure that we put beer out there that can hold up to the environment that it’s being sold in.  The samples that we were noticing diacetyl were only about 2 months old, which was much sooner than we had ever seen degradation in our packaged beer.  For me, that’s cause for concern.  So I obsessively searched through every piece of information that I could find regarding vicinal diketones to try and pinpoint where this diacetyl was coming from.  A few sleepless nights later and I still hadn’t completely figured out where it was coming from.  We had QC samples that had been kept cold that had no detectable diacetyl but cans from the same batch of beer that were stored warm had a noticeable amount.

I won’t bore you with a detailed description of the rest of my research process but ultimately we were faced with a decision.  We had 160 cases of Pale Dog sitting in our distributors warehouse that, upon inspection, had the same diacetyl level that we were picking up in our QC samples.  I tested samples out on quite a few people and the results were almost split evenly between those that noticed “something different” vs. those that didn’t notice anything at all.   But, at the end of the day this particular batch of Pale Dog didn’t taste like what I intended it to taste like.  It was indeed a snowflake but more of the yellow variety..

And so we pulled it, all 160 cases of it.  We ate the cost, which was a lot.  But in the end, our industry deserves the best that all of us can make and this particular batch didn’t meet our standards.

I’m going to bypass the science behind why diacetyl does what it does because I’ve learned in my lifetime that most people don’t find interest in the science that I’m particularly interested in.  And that’s ok.  So, what to do next?  I definitely didn’t feel like going through that scene again.  So, we changed yeast strains.  We went to an incredibly neutral, excellently flocculent and attenuative yeast strain.  It’s clean, it’s hardy and in my opinion, it showcases the hop varieties in our Pale Dog better than the previous strain did.  And it just started hitting shelves this week.  You most likely won’t even notice a difference in this new batch but here at the brewery, where we try this beer daily, we’re digging it!

We are almost certain that no more of this batch of Pale Dog is out on the market but if you’ve encountered any of it we would love to hear from you.  Shoot us an email to info@hopsandgrain.com and let us know where you purchased it.

And thanks for supporting local craft beer!

The post Pale Dog updates appeared first on Hops & Grain.

The beautiful thing about business is that when orchestrated properly it can have far reaching effects that can brighten, enhance and bring much value to your immediate community.  We as individuals can do much the same thing but as a business and a brand that reaches far more people on a daily basis than you possibly could on your own, there is so much more opportunity.  But, opportunity isn’t much if your intentions are centered on enhancing only your personal existence rather than utilizing this potentially powerful profit engine to service something bigger than yourself.  Business can be the single greatest opportunity to fund the work that our world so desperately needs.  We as humans have focused too much on our immediate gratification without much concern for the potential detriment that our self serving actions can have.  Take capitalism for example.  At its core capitalism is a great concept.  By definition it is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production, with the ultimate goal of making a profit.  That’s fantastic.  I mean really, who wants the government to control our means of production.  I sure as hell don’t.  So, at the core of capitalism is private business ownership in order to create and offer “something” to the general public and sell it to make a profit.  That sounds pretty pure to me.  But, the final piece of the definition is the one that I’m currently most concerned with.  ”With the ultimate goal of making a profit”.  I’m not so much concerned with the desire to make a profit but rather the motivation behind that desire and what we as business owners do with said profit.  You know the old income statement scenario.  You have your sales, you subtract your expenses and you have, hopefully, a positive number at the end.  The Profit! If you are spending more money than you have coming in, you need to fix something.  If you have a lot more coming in than you are spending, well played.  Now that was a gross oversimplification but the purpose was to illustrate that businesses need to make money, otherwise they can’t really continue to operate as a business.

Way back in the 1990′s I discovered a company that would forever change my opinion on business.  That company is Patagonia.  You know, the company that makes those awesome fleece jackets that everyone and their dog has owned at one point or another.  Just for the record, I’ve never owned one of those.  I have owned plenty of other goods made by Patagonia and the quality of the gear that they put out is fantastic.  But what I value the most about Patagonia is the purpose for which they exist.  If you’ve never read Let My People Go Surfing by Yvon Chouinard, you should.  If you are a business owner, manager, director of something, executive with an acronym title or anyone really that has any concern with making both your workplace and your world a better place to be, then read it.  Yvon Chouinard is the founder of Patagonia and a self proclaimed “reluctant businessman”.  Patagonia exists for a bigger purpose than just creating outdoor clothing and gear.  They exist to impact everything around them in a positive, sustainable manner.  I won’t ramble about all of the reasons that I’m so enamored with Patagonia but let it be known, I’m a fanboy.

You see, I’m one of those types that is fairly opinionated.  When I believe in something I get behind it 120%.  Sometimes to the point of offending others, and for that I always apologize.  My brain is just wired that way and I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not always right, but at least I’m consistent. I also thoroughly enjoy a healthy argument and find myself gravitating towards individuals that are as opinionated as I am, as long as they can argue without getting their feelings hurt and know in the end that we are all probably wrong.  I mean hell, life would be boring if we all believed in the same thing.  One thing that I’ve found myself incredibly passionate about since my discovery of Patagonia is transparency in business and motivations to improve the natural world that we all exist in.  In my little brain I believe that businesses should strive for profitability because it gives them more money to invest in the vehicles that are working to make our natural world a better place.  Attempting to somehow rectify the years of destruction that have resulted because we as humans are greedy and self serving.  We use and use and use without any concern for resources running out or any concern for the environmental effects of our use.  First and foremost we need some awareness.  And I believe that we need education to bring about awareness.  We also need money because it’s not cheap to repair the damages that we’ve caused to the planet.  And that’s where businesses come in.  Or at least, that’s where they should come in.

Back to my love affair with Patagonia.  I followed and purchased gear made by Patagonia every chance that I could.  In early 2001 I read an interview with Yvon Chouinard in which he described something that he called an Earth Tax.  At the time Patagonia had been giving a good bit of money every year to environmental non-profits that they believed in.  Together with the owner and founder of Blue Ribbon Flies they launched 1% for the Planet, an organization consisting of like-minded businesses that pledge to give 1% of their annual revenue to non-profits that are working to improve our environmental situation.  After reading about 1% I remember thinking that if I ever owned a business I would make sure that we were members.  Over the course of the next 9 years I tried to convince every business that I worked for to join, but none of them did.  Fast forward to 2011 and I’m opening my own business.  And guess what, we became members of 1% for the Planet.  Not because it was cool.  Not because Patagonia did it and definitely not because it would make us more profitable.  We did it because I felt like it was the right thing to do.  I’ve never been a good manager of people.  I’m more of the “lead by example” type and this to me was a perfect way for a small start up brewery to lead by example.  Pledging from day 1 that we would give 1% of our annual revenue to the non-profit groups that I believe are doing some of the worlds most important work, environmental work!

Now let’s venture back to my earlier description of the ol income statement.  The first thing I mentioned was your sales or revenue.  The second piece were the expenses and the final piece is the net profit.  The 1% that we give as part of our commitment to 1% for the Planet comes from that first number.  So, before any of our expenses are figured in we are giving 1% to environmental non-profits in our community.  One of the greatest things about 1% FTP is that they take the guesswork out of non-profit giving.  As a business owner I find my time to be fairly limited.  Researching non-profit groups to try and determine which one to give is a time consuming task.  As a member of 1% FTP we have a database of environmental non-profits that have gone through an application process to be recognized as a 1% FTP non-profit.  Through this we can be sure that the money that we are giving is going to groups that are “practicing what they preach”.

Our brewery opened the doors back in late October of 2011.  During our first year of operations in 2012 we started to look around at the 1% FTP non-profits that were operating in Austin in order to get a better feel for the work that these groups were doing.  We are in no way a multi-million dollar operation but we did have a fairly size-able  revenue stream last year and we were very excited about our 1% contribution.  We ultimately decided on Urban Roots for our biggest contribution.  Urban Roots is an incredible organization in Austin with the mission to use sustainable agriculture to transform the lives of young people and increase the access to healthy food in Austin.  As a former educator I found myself very impacted by the work that they are doing for the Austin community.  Below is a description of some of the great things that Urban Roots offers.

Urban Roots provides paid internships to Austin youth, age 14-17, to work on the 3.5 acre urban sustainable farm in East Austin.  Each year, they have a goal of growing 30,000 pounds of produce with the Urban Roots community of youth, community volunteers, and staff.  They donate 40% of their harvest to local soup kitchens and food pantries and sell the other 60% at farmers’ markets, through the Community Supported Agriculture Program, and wholesale.  During the 25 week spring and summer youth program, youth Interns develop essential life and job skills while growing food for the Austin community.  Each fall they hire 24 youth Farm Interns, three youth Assistant Crew Leaders, and three youth Agriculture Interns to work for the upcoming program year.  Additionally, youth Interns receive variety of workshops on sustainable agriculture, healthy lifestyles, life and job skills, and food justice issues, including hands-on service at hunger relief organizations.  Through this dynamic and holistic program, Urban Roots youth Interns grow into some of Austin’s youngest leaders, advocating for a sustainable and healthy food system for all.

Hell yeah!

It’s a tough decision to make as a business owner, especially when your business is less than 2 years old.  The money that we gave last year through 1% FTP could have paid for a couple months of payroll, it could have paid for 4 batches of beer, a good amount of oak barrels for Casa del Roble and a whole other myriad of things.  But instead, it paid for work that is developing a culture that we believe in and is impacting our community in ways that we can’t even describe.  The world is a big ol place and as we continue to use and use and use, it’s incredibly refreshing to interact with organizations that are building and educating and impacting in ways that will make this place we call Earth a much, much better place.

Cheers to that!

The post Beyond the beer appeared first on Hops & Grain.

Fast forward some 19 months and we’ve accumulated a nice little array of oak barrels housing a nice little array of beers.  What I’ll be focusing on today is the series of beers that we’ll begin releasing over the next few months.  These beers, under the influence of wild yeast and bacteria, are affectionately known as the Volumes of Funk Series.  If you haven’t noticed, we have quite the affinity for different classifications within our beer offerings.  You know, the year round beers, the Greenhouse beers, the Del Roble series, the Volumes of Oak series and now the Volumes of Funk Series.  Some day we should create a graph to explain them all.  You know, like a skeleton.  The head would be Hops & Grain and from there each of our different series of beers would follow the skeletal structure all the way down to the toes.  Which of course would be used to represent our newest offering, a vegan inspired, wholistic, gluten free, free range, organic, paleo, certified salmon safe nutritional wafer that tastes like a blend between cardboard and stale saltines.  We had so many people eating Brew Biscuits in the tap room that we decided to create a human version, called Gullibilities!  Seriously though, I’ve gone way off topic.

Back to the Volumes of Funk.  Very early on we decided to dive into the interesting world of inoculation as it applies to the world of brewing organisms.  We regularly inoculate our beers with healthy and viable brewers yeast of the genus Saccharomyces cerevisiae but the aforementioned inoculation would involve a genus known as Brettanomyces coupled with some acid producing bacteria.  Exciting? Yes.  Nerve-racking? Absolutely.

But it’s like I always say…

So we started with a culture of Brettanomyces Bruxellensis and inoculated our OG Pale Dog.  Some of you may remember this one from our very first public tapping at the Draughthouse back in October of 2011.  Since then our Pale Dog has gone through many changes that we believe are for the better and as we speak it continues to go through changes.  And we still have 2 barrels full of OG Pale, Brett Brux and Lactobacillus that has been sitting, getting its funk on for 16 months now.  We’ve also got quite a few barrels of ALTeration, both French Oak Cabernet and American Oak Bourbon, aging with a wide variety of Brett strains.  Of the 55 barrels that we currently own, 22 of them have been inoculated with some form of wild yeast or bacteria cocktail.

Some of the more interesting projects that are in the works are the Funk del Roble, Funky Barleywine and our Sour Vienna Lager.  On to the details:

Funk del Roble- Back in the year of 2012 we started working on a project that we call Del Roble which translates to “of the Oak”.  By the name you can imagine that these beers have something to do with oak.  The method and equipment that we use to ferment the bulk of our beers are crafted from stainless steel but with the del Roble series of beers we utilize oak barrels for fermentation.  After the hot side of the brewing process is done and we’ve cooled our wort down to fermentation temperature we bypass our stainless steel fermenters and take the liquid directly into oak barrels and pitch our yeast.  Pictured below is what we generally see for the first 48 hours of fermentation.  The reason this happens is because we fill the barrels completely full before fermentation begins and the metabolic activity of those microscopic organisms creates this nice little foamy mess.  If you could peak inside of a stainless fermenter you would see the same thing happening and if you’ve ever made beer at home you know exactly what I’m talking about.  The unique feature of the Funk del Roble is that we’ve been utilizing Brettanomyces for 100% of the fermentation.  This little creature is wildly interesting and the flavors and aromas that are created when it is used as a primary fermenting agent are like nothing I’ve ever tasted.  Right now we have 8 barrels of Funk del Roble in the barrel room.  Most of them will be ready in the next couple months but for now, they’re still getting funky.

Funky Barleywine- This little project did not start out with the intention of becoming part of the Volumes of Funk.  But, sometimes “the best laid schemes of mice and men, often go awry.”  In the barrel room we try to maintain some separation between our clean barrels and our inoculated barrels.  It becomes much like a game of tetris trying to arrange them and every once in a while those little bugs cross over.  This little story was more a matter of numbering than it was cross contamination so follow along with me here.  Back some months ago we decided to brew a barleywine as part of the del Roble series.  So, we brewed it and knocked out into medium toast American Oak barrels.  The beer went in at 22 degrees Plato, nice and sweet, and commenced a healthy fermentation with our house Ale yeast strain.  The idea was to transfer this beer into freshly dumped bourbon barrels after fermentation was complete.  In our barrel room all of our barrels have a specific number written on the outside of them.  Once we had more than 10 barrels this numbering became necessary for us to be able to track them.  Turns out it’s also required by the good folks at the TTB.  The day that I was transferring the Barleywine into the aforementioned bourbon barrels was a long one.  I had been at the brewery for close to 12 hours and this was my last task of the day.  I was filling 6 other barrels as well, 2 of those being barrels that had been inoculated with Brett Brux and Lacto.  You can probably guess where this story is headed and you’re probably right.  I started the Barleywine transfer and realized about 2 minutes in that I was transferring into the bugged barrels instead of the clean ones.  And I was completely cool with it so I let it roll.  6 months later it is tasting fantastic.  Still needs a bit of rest before she’s ready for the big show but at this point, all signs are pointing to good.

Sour Vienna Lager- That’s right.  I mean really, why not? I’m a huge fan of the Vienna Lager style.  I’m a huge fan of nicely acidic sour beer.  Why not combine the two.  This was intentional.  The base beer is 75% Vienna malt and 25% Munich malt.  Mashed with plenty of fermentables in mind but taken through multiple steps in order to provide a solid beta-amylase conversion for the primary fermenting yeast as well as a solid amount of dextrins for the bugs to chew on. Fermentation was again carried out in medium toast American Oak barrels and after fermentation was complete the beer was transferred into bourbon barrels with Lactobacillus and Pediococcus.  We did not include any Brett strains with this secondary fermentation in order to develop a tartness and acidity without any of the funky flavors of Brett.  6 months later and this beer is developing beautifully.  We passed the diacytel production stage of Pedio and the bugs are beginning to clean themselves up nicely and the balance of lactic and acetic acid is very nice so far.  The trick with this will be making sure that we don’t let it go too long.  These specific bugs don’t really know how to stop once they’ve started so we are following them very closely to make sure we empty the barrels at the right time.  This is also one of the beers that we’ll be taking with us to SAVOR in June. They’ve just announced the food pairings as well so make sure to check that out if you are heading out to NYC for the event.

So, there you have it.  The first peek into the Volumes of Funk!

Stay tuned to our twitter and facebook feeds as we get closer to the release!

The post A peak into the Volumes of Funk appeared first on Hops & Grain.

You see, usually we gather in the tap room over beers and discuss a wide array of topics from philosophy, culture, beer, movies, jokes, beer, subtle nuances in bourbon, a few movie references, beer, farming, 18th century poetry and beer.  You know, standard conversation stuff.

This was indeed the first time that we had gathered in the brewery before 8am.  Our good friend Joe Mohrfeld, the master mind behind the beers brewed at Pinthouse Pizza, and I were hatching a plan to create a beer for the upcoming Bats & Beers event.  Now I love anyone that likes to use the ampersand so when the folks from Bats & Beers approached us about putting together a beer & pizza pairing (see what I did there) for the April edition of Bats & Beers (see there it was again) we were more than happy to take part.  I’ve been a fan of Joe’s beers for some time now and we’ve chatted on multiple occasions about creating a beer together so this event seemed like the perfect opportunity.

For those of you that have made it into our tap room recently you may have tried a new IPA that we’ve been playing around with called A Pale Mosaic.  This particular beer is showcasing a fairly new hop variety called Mosaic that was just released in 2012 from the Hop Breeding Company.  I have to admit that I’m pretty enamored by this hop and as Joe and I discussed what we were going to do for this collaboration I kept coming back to Mosaic.  So, after a few pints and some discussion on the 1990′s punk rock era we decided that we would create a beer that attempts to showcase the lineage of hop varieties that led to the creation of Mosaic.  Now I have no idea what it takes to create a new hop variety but my limited knowledge has led me to believe that a mother and father hop plant make a big wish to the hop gods and then this fancy stork comes swooping down and drops a new little baby hop out in the field.  Take it from me, I was once a science teacher.

Now, on a serious note I have an incredible amount of respect for the hop farmers in the northwest that are truly innovating in ways that few of us can comprehend.  They are first and foremost artists and secondly they are wildly committed to the crop that they’ve committed their lives to.  And for that, I am incredibly grateful.  Without the innovative and dedicated hop farmers in this country our industry would be nowhere near what it is today.

So Joe and I decided that we would incorporate 3 hop varieties into this collaboration beer.  Mosaic is the product of a breeding program and is bred from a Simcoe mother plant and a male derived Nugget plant.  You know that old story, Simcoe and Nugget go out for drinks one night, end up having too many glasses of scotch and next thing you know, BAM, Mosaic arrives.

The base beer for this collaboration is a lightly golden pale ale.  Nothing overly complicated, just enough of a malt backbone to play a supporting role to the myriad of flavors that we anticipated coming from a blend of these 3 hop varieties.  So the beer was brewed and sent on to the fermenter.  And this is where the story gets interesting.  We utilized all 3 varieties during the boil, mostly in the whirlpool but some small first wort hop additions as well and had the intention of dry-hopping the beer with a blend of all 3.  But, before we dry-hopped the beer we decided to fill 3 firkins and hop each firkin with one of the 3 hop varieties.  So firkin #1 was dry-hopped with Simcoe, #2 with Nugget and #3 with Mosaic.  We then created the dry-hopping blend for the base beer and added that into the fermenter.  So, if you’ve had trouble following that we know have 4 different beers.  All 4 of them were created out of the same base beer but each one will showcase a slightly different hop profile.  And if that wasn’t enough we decided to create a 5th beer by pulling some beer from our barrel room to blend with the dry-hopped base beer.  What is this barrel aged beer you may ask?  Well let me tell you.  It’s our ALTeration that has been aging in Chardonnay barrels with roughly 50 pounds of Oregon strawberries.  And it’s magical.  90 gallons of this blend utilizing 45 gallons of the dry-hopped base beer and 45 gallons of the strawberry Chardonnay barrel aged ALTeration.  5 beers, 3 hops, 1 family and 2 good friends makes for some good old fashioned hop fun.

We are very stoked about the upcoming Bats & Beers event and for those of you that got your tickets early we look forward to dorking out with you about hops!  For those that aren’t making it to Bats & Beers you should keep your eyes peeled at Pinthouse Pizza and in our tap room for a possible sighting next week.

And to those generations of hop farmers out there, keep up the good work, it is very much appreciated!

Cheers!

The post A celebration of hop lineage appeared first on Hops & Grain.

This creation has been in the works for many months now.  Starting as a Greenhouse beer brewed on our 3 bbl pilot system it quickly became a favorite in the tap room and after enough requests from our loyal tap room guests we’ve decided that it should be part of the permanent family, no longer like that strange cousin that you only see during the holidays.

On to the details and the background.

As most of you know we are huge fans of the canine.  Back some year and a half ago we released our very first beer, Pale Dog.  Pale Dog is named after my Golden Retriever, Suzy, pictured below.

Suzy was also the inspiration behind our line of up-cycled malted barley dog treats called Brew Biscuits.  Suzy has been my right hand dog for almost 10 years now, putting up with 6 years of a gypsy lifestyle, numerous bluegrass shows and lots of hopping from place to place comfortably seated in the back of a VW Jetta.  She has weathered many storms with grace and dignity and has never failed in providing endless smiles and a lifetime of loyalty.  Around 4 years ago my wife and I made a trek to the suburbs of Houston to get our 2nd furry friend, a fantastic little Papillon named Zoe.  Fast forward a few years and Suzy has been living in fame, forever immortalized on an aluminum can and she never misses the opportunity to let her younger sister know that she’s not, well, quite as famous.  Until now…

For those of you that have visited our tap room you’ve surely noticed the obnoxious length of some of the beer names that are harvested from our Greenhouse.  One such example is our latest release, a Belgian Tripel with the moniker, “In A Land Far Farnesene”.  Or how about “ItsForACop”.  The beers didn’t start out with such dignified names though.  They usually start out by the name of the style they most closely resemble and if our community likes it enough that they ask for more, then they get a name.

Back in August of last year we brewed a pale lager and called it, creatively, A Pale Lager.  To date, this has been the fastest consumed beer in our tap room.  So we brewed another batch and still called it A Pale Lager.  And again, consumed with voracious speed.

Disclaimer* This could be partly due to the fact that the H&G team was fairly fond of this beer as well and therefore consumed our fair share.

Well the name A Pale Lager was really boring.  And, as so often happens in our tap room, we gathered to have a few beers and some lively conversation with friends and in this came the subject of the name of this new lager.

Now, a little background on the dog Zoe.

If you’ve ever been around a Papillon you know that they have a very impressive ear wingspan.  Hence the name, which in French translates to butterfly. Our particular pooch was wild with energy but at the same time could stop and turn tame if you started to pet her.  She won’t miss an opportunity to plop down in your lap but can, at a moments notice, jump from that same lap to run circles around the house at a blistering pace.  Admittedly, she was a little weird and quirky at first.  And she still maintains that quirkiness while also being one of the most affectionate dogs I’ve met.  And let’s be honest, a personality like this deserves its own beer.

Back to the aforementioned tap room conversation.  After a few “samples” of beer I kept coming back to the idea of naming it “The One They Call ____”.  If merely for conversation purposes it felt like a good name.  You know, questions like, ” Have you tried The One They Call ___?” or “I’ll have The One They Call ____” or maybe “”Where can I get The One They Call ____?”.

I thoroughly enjoy ordering beer when I’m out and when there’s a good name to order by it makes my experience that much more enjoyable.  We left that conversation without a resolution to our naming problem.  So I went home and just like every other time I walk in the front door I am greeted by our two dogs, Suzy and Zoe.

And then it hit me.  The One They Call Zoe!  After all, this pale lager is not like most pale lagers.  It’s brewed with high quality German pale and vienna malts, lightly hopped in the kettle for a theoretical 18 IBUs and then lagered post fermentation to round out the flavors and provide our lager yeast time to clean itself up before the big show.  What make this lager unique is our complicated mashing schedule and the usage of Oregon Crystal hops for dry-hopping.  We dry-hop at a rate of 0.2 pounds per barrel compared to the 0.5 pounds per barrel used for our Pale Dog.  The base to this beer is wonderfully clear for being unfiltered and delivers a malt backbone full of toasted bread with a clean and smooth mouthfeel.  In the nose are layers of light citrus and floral aromatics and the flavor follows suit all ending in a crisp and dry finish that, if all goes as planned, should leave you immediately ready for another drink!

We are very excited and proud to have The One They Call Zoe sitting on shelves next to ALTeration and Pale Dog and look forward to feedback from our community!  We started distributing Zoe today and will continue to fill the shelves at all of our accounts throughout the week with deliveries to our Houston, San Antonio and DFW accounts next week.

Cheers everyone and many thanks for your support!

The post Can #3 The One They Call Zoe hitting shelves today! appeared first on Hops & Grain.

So I was in Dallas not long ago.  Been awhile since I visited that city.  I don’t go very often.  Maybe it’s because of the daunting task of following the crowded concrete pathway that is IH-35.  Maybe it’s just the prospect of being in a car for 3 hours that keeps me away.  I don’t know, but either way it prevents me from making the trek on a regular basis.  That coupled with the fact that owning a brewery is occupying quite a bit of my time as of late.  But this past weekend I found myself in the Big D, as someone once called it.  I was there for beer business and I was excited to be there.  Catching up with other folks in our industry is always a good time and catching up with folks in our industry that don’t live in Austin is a great way to spend a Sunday.

Second piece of background info:

The fine folks at ADT, who are tasked with the large job of supplying the brewery with a security system, have had what seems to be a wildly difficult time maintaining communication with our security system.  What does this mean you ask?  It means that they have connected our system to a far away dispatch center that can’t seem to maintain the connectivity that is required to communicate back and forth, and therefore provide some modicum of security to our brewery.  AND, when they lose the “connection” our touch panel starts beeping, every 5 seconds, until the connection is made again.  Which, over the past 3 weeks has taken days.  And if the beeping wasn’t annoying enough I get a phone call from ADT everytime they lose a connection.  Sometimes this is at 4AM, sometimes noon, and in one particular case I actually had an incoming call from ADT at the same time that I was speaking with a representative from ADT about the beeping.  Now that is service (insert heavy amounts of sarcasm).

Now that we’ve laid out the background it’s time to move on with the story so don’t trail off, this should get pretty interesting.

So I was in Dallas, had a great time, went back to my hotel, popped open a beer and made myself comfortable.  So comfortable that I fell asleep with a beer in my hand.  But thankfully I got a nice wake up call at 3:30 in the morning from my newfound friends from ADT to let me know that, once again, they were receiving a communication error from our security system.  I’ve stopped answering the phone at this point so the wake up call was more of an annoyance than anything.  But, I figured now that I was awake why not catch up on answering some emails.  What better time to have a beer and type on the computationer than 3:30 AM in a hotel in Dallas, TX.  I opened up the ‘ol Macbook Pro and dove into my emails.  After knocking out a few responses I got to this email from a gentleman who had visited our tap room the Saturday before and, coincidentally, is from Dallas and was visiting Austin for the weekend.  I’m going to paste below the email for you all to read.  Not exactly what I was looking forward to reading in the wee hours of the morning.  I, of course, will leave out the name of the sender, just in case any of you may know him.  Check it:

I read it a few times, just to make sure that I wasn’t missing anything.  I decided, at that hour of the morning, not to respond.  I felt it was better to let that soak in and formulate a response that was well thought out and not clouded by emotion.  I also contemplated not replying at all.

Now I’m not posting about this email to dive into some heated rant about this guys opinion about our beer.  What I would like to touch on is the approach with which some choose to provide feedback about the products they consume.  To be totally honest, I value everyones opinion of our beers.  The reviews and feedback mean a lot to us at Hops & Grain because we believe in what we make and we always want to make it better.  This is why we enjoy our tap room so much.  It provides us with a platform to be in front of our customers and hear their honest feedback, good or bad.  Our industry is full of passionate craftspeople who take pride in what they do and hope that their customers enjoy the experience they have consuming the products that we make.  Much like plenty of other industries, we are emotionally involved in our process and our product and I believe that emotional involvement can sometimes make it difficult to hear negative feedback.  Now I don’t have any human children but I can imagine what it would feel like if  you overheard someone talking negatively about your child.  Or going even further, having someone tell you directly.  The beers that I create are my children and I’m very proud of them.  I enjoy drinking them and I’m truly driven to provide our customers with the same level of enjoyment that I have when consuming our beer.  So naturally, this email got to me.  I immediately got defensive, then a little bit introspective, then I started to second guess the quality.  Maybe I have a terrible palate and what I believe to be of high quality is actually almost totally devoid of aroma/smell and literally no mouth feel.  I mean hell, I’ve never had a nurse and cough syrup expert review our beers and tell me that a few of them tasted like the very thing that they believe themselves to be an expert on.  But I’m no cough syrup expert so who the hell am I to say that our beer doesn’t taste like cough syrup.  I don’t taste cough syrup but that doesn’t mean that other people don’t.  And that is the root of my blog post.  That every beer consumer is entitled to an opinion and no one should tell them that their opinion is wrong.  That is the beauty in craft beer, that there is no right or wrong.  Those of us that chose beer making as a profession would never want to hear someone tell us that the way that we make beer is wrong.  We all  need improvement but that doesn’t make us wrong.  So for that, I appreciated the email and to be honest I was impressed with the candor.  

Now here’s where I dive into my philosophies on life so at this point, feel free to bail.  I’m very passionate about the craft beer industry.  I’m even more passionate about the culture that surrounds craft beer.  And I’m the most passionate about the community that exists within craft beer.  I try my hardest to bring a positive element to all of these passions.  Sometimes that makes me opinionated and sometimes those strong opinions may come across as intense.  But, without intensity and passion you have pacifism and complacency.  And as Walter Sobchak so eloquently put it

“You know, Dude, I myself dabbled in pacifism once. Not in ‘Nam of course.”

One of the best blog posts that I’ve read recently that speaks to some of my opinions on the methods of review for the beer industry came from our good friends at An Avenue.  Check out the specific post here and it just so happens to have some very kind words about H&G, which we greatly appreciate!  But more than that the post speaks to some of the issues that I believe the craft beer industry is facing as it gains broader appeal.  There is a reality that these review sites are dictating the purchasing decisions of not only customers but also retail store owners.  We’ve actually had retail stores hesitate to carry our beer because the ratebeer score of a particular beer was only 80, even though the buyer had never even tried our beer.  That is a reality, and an unfortunate one at that.  That being said, I still periodically check these sites to see what people are saying about our beer because I think it’s important to know these things.  It’s also very important not to obsess about them.

The worst thing that we as beer makers can do is to think that we’ve got it all figured out and shouldn’t worry about what beeradvocate and ratebeer have to say.  These are real people reviewing our beers and these sites have some pretty serious influence.  That being said, the worst thing that I believe you can do as a beer maker is formulate your model based on reviews from these sites.  First and foremost we must make beer that feeds our passions.  Then we must communicate those passions in an open and inviting manner and let the market decide if they like our product and agree with our passions.  And I truly believe, if your passions are sincere and aren’t just feeding your own desires and end goals but rather feeding the desires and end goals of our consumers, people will like your product.  Unless, of course, it tastes like cough syrup.  One of the greatest things about producing beer for a living is that we are also consuming beer for a living.  So, in essence, we produce what we consume and that’s pretty rad.

So, since I am a consumer of craft beer I’d like to finish with one final point.  And one that I am extremely passionate about.  We as consumers have a huge responsibility to ourselves, our community and our environment.  We must be deliberate in our purchases and we must be even more deliberate with our communications to the public.  Being an asshole gets you nowhere and in no way advances our industry.  You may feel good about yourself and feel like you’ve accomplished something by voicing your one-sided opinion but it’s ultimately a drag on the industry.  Craft beer is meant, and created, to be enjoyed.  If you don’t enjoy a beer that you tried, move on to another beer.  The beauty in our industry is that there are literally thousands of producers out there and I would venture to say that very few have the same philosophies on how and what to make.  So that should mean that all of us can surely find something that we like!  Constructive criticism is a beautiful thing but unfortunately is one of those things that few people have a strength in delivering.  Let’s educate ourselves on what we are drinking, learn about why the brewer chose to make it that way and respect the craft.  There are beers out there for all of us so find it, like it and let’s keep our negative opinions to ourselves, for the sake of craft beer!  Negativity is a drain on society, a drain on quality of life and a drain on the universe.  And really, who wants to be a drain on the universe…

The post Ramblings, and an email issue… appeared first on Hops & Grain.

Last year was a good year.  We had fun.  We made a lot of beer.  We had a lot of friends visit our tap room.  We had fun.  And we are ready to do it all over again this year.

I’ve never been one to make resolutions this time of year.  I won’t give the excuse that many give that sounds something like “I don’t make resolutions because we should be working on improving ourselves all year long, not just at the beginning of the year”.  While I do agree with this statement let’s face it, it’s overused and underwhelming at this point.  But, it is nice to reflect and in that reflection find some places that we could improve.  Which leads me to this blog post.

First off, turns out we need to make more beer.  Ok, we can work on that one.  Secondly, we need to offer our tap room patrons with a bigger space.  Cool, we can work on that as well.  I mean really, who would have thought that a 500 sq. ft. tasting room wouldn’t be big enough?  I should have predicted that, but oh well.  Thirdly, we need to release more barrel aged beer from our Volumes of Oak series.  Ok, patience grasshopper, there’s plenty of the goods on the way.  And fourthly, we need some legislative change in the TX beer industry.  More on that at a later time.

1- So, looking back on the year of 2012 we found some areas that we can improve and we feel fairly confident that we can achieve these improvements.  We brewed just over 1200 barrels of beer in our first year of operations and we are targeting 4,000 for this year.  That’s going to take some work, and a lot of cans, but we are up to the challenge.  And we’re very excited about this 3rd addition to our line-up.

2- We are also working on securing additional space for a new tap room.  I’m talking about a big space, with outdoor seating and a kick ass roll up glass garage door to let in the breeze.  We’re targeting April to begin construction and should have it finished out about the time Austin gives us some fancy outdoor sittin weather.

3- As for the barrel aged beers, we’re on that as well.  In a few short days we’ll be receiving a new shipment of barrels, a few of which have been aging rum for 17 years.  Yeah, that should put off a bit of flavor.  We are also releasing 2 new barrel aged beers in the tap room this weekend.  First is our shout out to our East Austin location.  We’re calling it “Ye Old Street St Ale”.  You see, we are conveniently located at the intersection of 6th St. and Calles St, our physical address is 507 Calles St.  If you speak spanish, or have the savvy to search the Google engine for translations, then you know that Calles translates into Street.  So, our address is 507 Street St.  So, we named a beer after it.  And that beer is an Old Ale that’s been aging in Wild Turkey barrels for a little over 2 months.  And it’s awesome.  We’re also tapping the first of our Del Roble series that has been fermented with Brettanomyces.  This particular beer is our Del Roble base fermented in French Oak Cabernet barrels with Brettanomyces Lambicus and then aged for 2 months.  Aging a beer with Brett and fermented a beer with Brett provide two drastically different results.  What we found with the Brett fermentation is a wild amount of tropical fruit and pineapple flavors with just a hint of background funk.  And we think it came out beautifully.  So drop on by and see  us this weekend and try them for yourself, I promise it is much more entertaining that reading about it.  Here’s a video teaser from our YouTube page

Mean Irene Barrel Transfer

And number 4- Well this one is going to take some work from all of us, you included.  I’ll be posting plenty more about this as we have just begun the 2013 legislative session here in our great city.  For now, check out Open The Taps for all the info that you need to get involved.

So, that’s a wrap for 2012, at least until I have some more sit down time with the ol computationer.

Thanks for all of your support friends and keep drinking local and craft!

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