Corner Lot, Please

Now here's a neighborhood that has its priorities straight. This beer lover's intersection is located in Colorado Springs, Colo., home of the Air Force Academy, U.S. Olympic Training Center and, barring a coincidence here, one very cool and lupulin-inspired developer.


© jimaamot.com; used with permission

"Honey, I'm Off to the Pub. Yell if You Need Me."

What do you get the lush who thinks he has everything? How about his very own bar?

The folks at clothing retailer home-improvement center Neiman Marcus are advertising what is sure to be the hottest holiday gift since Tickle Me Elmo: an Authentic Guinness Home Pub, also sometimes known by its alternate names: the Most-Popular-Guy-in-the-Neighborhood Room; the Where-Did-My-Husband-Go? Black Hole; the Jobkiller; the Brawling Grounds; and of course, the Where's-All-This-Black-Vomit-Coming-From? Chamber.

Imagine – it's a rainy Sunday morning and you're wide awake, stuck with nothing to do during that unfortunate time between sunrise and NFL kickoff. Worse, your favorite watering holes have all yet to open! Well, how about heading downstairs (heck, have it installed in your bedroom) to your own personal Irish pub for some liquid breakfast?

"Pull me some of that black stuff, Seamus," you say. But wait – there is nary a mutton-chopped, rosy-cheeked barman to be found. Oops! Lost in the moment, you forgot that at (Insert Your Name Here)'s Pub, you are the bartender! And the customer, and the owner, and the creepy drunk who mutters to himself at the bar and leers inappropriately at your wife. Anything goes, and "last call" is unheard of.

It gets better. To become properly oriented as an official Guinness bar owner, you and a friend will be shuttled to Dublin for a VIP tour (and, we can presume, overindulgent tasting binge) at the St. James's Gate Brewery, home of Guinness for nearly 250 years. But save some of that thirst, because waiting for you at home will be your own supply of fresh Guinness Stout. One year's worth.

If you think this little slice of personal heaven on earth doesn't come cheaply ... you're right. The price tag? Try a quarter million. Powerball tickets, anyone?

Blonde Ale

Simple, gorgeous and satisfying. Who doesn't love a blonde?

Blonde Ale, that is – what did you think I meant??

This easy style makes for a nice, uncomplicated quaffer, which also makes it a good tool for initiating those who consider "Bud Heavy" branching out. At the same time, there's enough going on here to keep beer geeks from turning up their noses. Better still, of course, the homebrewer is free to do as he pleases in concocting the Blonde of his dreams.

In my case, this golden beauty was conceived with a number of purposes in mind. First, of course, was to have something light and drinkable on hand. Second was to get some yeast going from a Wyeast smack pack I had just purchased. Third was to use up some hop leftovers I had on hand. And fourth, an ancillary objective, was to do a little experiment of sorts with some other yeast I had on hand – more on that in a second.

The stats:

OG 1.046 FG 1.011
ABV 4.6% AA 75.4%
IBUs 30 SRM 3

100% Canadian two-row
0.28 lbs light dry malt extract*

11 IBUs Simcoe – 55 mins
9 IBUs Newport – 55 mins
5 IBUs Cascade – 55 mins
0.4 oz Mt. Hood – 20 mins
0.4 oz Mt. Hood – flameout

Wyeast 2450 "Denny's Favorite 50"

* for starter; pitched along with yeast

I fermented this at about 65°. It was around 18 days from brew day to keg, with several days' worth of crash-cooling in there. About two weeks of carbonating/cold conditioning was all I had the patience for before tapping.

This beer is a pale golden color with a nice white head. The clarity has continued to improve with time; it's now just about crystal clear. There's not too much on the nose except a light floral note and some fruitiness that I take to be yeast-derived. (This was my first time working with this yeast, a strain noted in homebrew circles for its association with the even-more-famed Denny Conn, who donated some of his club's stash to Wyeast for this limited release.)

Flavor-wise, this beer is light and uncomplicated, with a touch of fruitiness as previewed by the nose. The mouthfeel is soft and smooth, the finish increasingly bitter from the above-style 30 IBUs.

In general, I do not care for much fruitiness in my beers, and this is particularly so in lighter styles, where there is less to hide behind. As such, I'm guessing I'd prefer this beer more with a cleaner yeast, like US-o5. But that's OK – as I said, this beer was as much about growing some yeast for larger subsequent batches as anything else.

This Blonde Ale was actually only half of a double batch. Into the other half I pitched White Labs 400, a Witbier yeast. I had some slurry on hand and I wanted to see how this yeast would perform in a "naked" beer like this. I had already brewed a pretty good Belgian Pale Ale with this strain; at any rate I can only control my fermentation temperature for one batch at a time, so a second batch has to ferment at room temperature. That made WL 400 a good candidate, being that it has a fairly high temperature tolerance. I may devote a post to the outcome of that little experiment, but in the mean time suffice it to say I'm not blown away by the results. Oh well, guess I'm stuck with five more gallons of beer I have to drink...

How About Now

I have a couple bottles of North Coast Old Stock Ale 2004. I've had them for over three years. I've increasingly wrestled over when to crack one open, and increasingly it's seemed only a big moment would warrant consumption.

Damn, it's tasty.

At Capacity

In case anyone's wondering, this is what 13 gallons of hot-breaking wort looks like in a half-barrel brew kettle:


That's a double batch of Smoked Porter in progress. Semi-coincidentally*, this batch also pretty much maxed out my mash tun with its 24 pounds of grain. I only had room for about 1.5 gallons of mash-out water, meaning I actually had to supplement my two batch runoffs with a one-gallon mini fly sparge during the second batch.

Not complaining, mind you. Two batches of Smoked Porter are now bubbling away happily with the aid of two different yeasts, and one of 'em will probably get dosed with bourbon. Oh, blessed be the fruits of our labor...

* I say "semi-coincidentally" because O.G. has a lot to do with that.

Zat's All Folks

And so disappears what could be considered the paradigm of a controversial era in the history of American brewing.

Zima, the much-maligned but for a time much-consumed standard-bearer of the "malternative" craze of the late 90s-early 2000s, is no longer in production and will start disappearing from store shelves as this year turns into next, MillerCoors has announced.

How many high schoolers furtively cut their teeth (especially their sweet teeth) on un-beers like Zima and Mike's Hard Lemonade? (I always had trouble excusing the sickly sweetness of these beverages just for the sake of a buzz. And drinking enough to actually achieve your goal? The nausea rises just thinking about it. Make mine Southpaw, if it comes to that.)

No word from MillerCoors if carb-watching among American teens is to blame for Zima's demise.

The Flared Pilsner

As mentioned in this space already, the Pilsner glass is a rather broadly defined category of beer-drinking equipment. (Just click here and you'll see.)

What we have here is a Pilsner glass that, while not especially common, should not strike experienced beer folk with its novelty, either.

Like other Pilsner glasses, this one is tall and slender – a good shape for showing off the golden, sparkling aesthetics of its namesake brew. But from a functional standpoint, this piece of glassware falls short of other options due to its pronounced flare at the top. Good for capturing neither head nor aroma for any length of time, the out-turned lip ill-serves the well-poured Pilsner in that regard, although it does, at least, deliver the gilded brew easily and gently into a waiting, salivating mouth.

No surprises here as to which beers are best offered up to the flared Pilsner glass: German and Czech Pils; plus other light fare like Helles, Dortmunder and Kölsch – though be aware you may be breaking convention here. (And since head retention and aroma are nonexistant anyway, why not an American Lager?)

But let it be said: There are better places to put your Pilsner.