Spring House Planet Bean

Today I find myself wondering if I like coffee or not. It would seem to the unwary reader that I must, since I often use words like "roasty" and "bitter" and even direct comparisons to coffee in favorable descriptions of beers. However, it's quite rare that I actually ever drink a cup of coffee, generally reserving it for days when I am dangerously sleepy, or feeling particularly adventurous. I suppose if I ever find a coffee shop that serves an alcoholic and mildly carbonated adaptation of the standard beverage, I'll be all-in.

Yesterday saw a second trip to Spring House Brewery in Conestoga, PA. They were hosting a pig roast, with pulled pork sandwiches and plenty of beer for all. The featured beers on tap for the night were their "Cosmic Monster" Belgian Quad, "Braaaiins!" Pumpkin Ale (for zombies), and "Planet Bean" coffee stout. While I was rather fond of the Pumpkin Ale and the Quad (although in the latter I detected an effluvium of bubble gum), I opted to bring a growler of the Planet Bean home with me.

Dan lists the Planet Bean among his favorite coffee-stouts. It can occasionally be found in bottles (bottled by hand), but it's quite an unusual occurrence. I can say from the glass I'm currently having the pleasure of imbibing, it does have the qualities of greatness in it. With the appearance of used motor oil, and a vaguely similar viscosity, this ale has some serious substance. I imagine the flavor is similar to sucking down a glass of espresso, except for the smoothness with which this goes down. The essence of the beer remains lingering on the tongue seemingly indefinitely.

I've continued to be impressed by the quality of Spring House as a brewery. Yesterday allowed us a chance to daydream to some extent about opening a brewery of our own, and Spring House seems to be a decent model for us. The refurbished barn housing the boil kettle and fermenters, along with the small tap room upstairs provides a rustic ambiance invoking the feeling of simpler times. I do question whether the remote location has held them back from growth at all, but I suppose they may also not have the desire to give up this lifestyle. Whatever the case, we are fortunate to have yet another world-class brewery within a reasonable driving distance.

- Adam

Fisherman's Imperial Pumpkin Stout

I actually have not had anything from Fisherman's (aka Cape Ann Brewing) brewery before. I'm not entirely sure why, I've seen it around State Line before and just haven't bothered to pick any up. However, fall seasonals are in full swing, and what that generally means in the brewing world is tons of beers loaded with pumpkin and spices. An Imperial Pumpkin Stout sounded a little bit more out of the ordinary and intriguing, so I decided to give it a shot.

This beer poured a dark, almost black color with a deep tan head. I had about 2 fingers of pillowy foam in my glass, which left a nice coating of lace on the glass.

The aroma that hit me initially was sweet with caramel malt, nutmeg, and pumpkin forming a nice balance. There wasn't nearly the roasted quality I expected from such a dark beer, and I couldn't distinguish any noticeable hop quality on the nose. I thought this was either because it was masked by the other smells, or simply because it wasn't present. I noted there may have been a trace of fruity hop quality, but that it easily could have also been from the yeast or other ingredients, and certainly wasn't very strong.

The taste initially struck me as smooth and creamy, with an up-front but not overwhelming nutmeg quality. The roast and bitterness came through somewhat subdued at first in the back of the mouth, but as I continued the glass it became more pronounced. There's definitely a strong malt backbone to this beer, but it's flavorful without being either cloying or overly bitter. The pumpkin is mixed nicely in without being showy, adding to the beer rather than being there just to be different.

In the mouth I found it to have a medium-heavy body with fairly light carbonation. It's actually a pretty pleasant change to beers from so many other breweries that tend to be fairly highly carbonated, whereas this evokes more of a "cask" feel. The carbonation had the quality of tiny sharp bubbles prickling the tongue. The beer also left a slick coating in the mouth and just a touch of warmth in the throat, the only indication of it's 11% ABV.

I enjoyed this beer thoroughly. It had a quality to me that I've found missing in so many other pumpkin and spiced fall seasonals, which is the elusive drinkability factor. Unlike beers like Dogfish Head Punk and others, I didn't feel like I would get sick of it after 1 bottle. I think the reason it worked well in this beer is that the pumpkin wasn't in your face or unbalanced, but rather blended nicely with the darker malt flavors found in the stout base. I could definitely see myself going back to this one again.

- Adam

Straub's Special Dark

The final leg of my vacation last week was spent at my cousin's wedding up in middle-of-nowhere Pennsylvania. Specifically we were up in Clearfield. One of the major challenges we had was finding a decent beer to drink. Unfortunately, due to the remote location we were in, this proved more difficult that we anticipated. The nearest place we could find that sells alcohol was a small bar with a bottle shop, and for the most part they only carried macro brews. They did have a couple six packs from a local brewery called Straub Beer. The next best option was Guinness, so figuring it was worth a shot, I picked up a six pack of "Special Dark" and my cousin got "All Grain Beer".

I knew it wasn't a good sign when the store clerk only charged us $5.50 for the six pack. When we got back to our hotel and I took a closer look at the "Special Dark" and discovered it wasn't very dark at all. It turned out that it was a simple amber lager.

We didn't have glasses available to us, so we were resigned to drinking these beers out of the bottle. It's hard to judge, but from the look of it I would say that this "dark" beer was lighter in color than my own pale ale. It was completely devoid of any hop aroma, and instead smelled of grain husk and a faint bit of "beer". It's hard to really describe the smell I'm talking about, sufficed to say that it's the smell associated with beer by everyone who has only ever had macrobrewed light lagers. There was no hop quality at all to speak of in the aroma.

The taste wasn't much better. While it wasn't terrible, it lacked any sort of flavor that would make it intriguing or unique. Once again the grain came through strongly in the flavor, predominantly this beer tasted like the dry malted 2-row barley that I've occasionally chewed on during a brew day. The only thing I really had to say about this beer was that it was what Bud American Ale was trying to be if it wasn't completely terrible. While there was nothing to enjoy about my bottle, it was at least serviceable. My cousin was not so lucky. Apparently his all-grain beer was straight macrobrewed flavor and aroma.

Of course my beer had just as little going on for it in the mouth. With a standard level of carbonation, and clocking in at 4.1% ABV, nothing made this stand out at all.

Overall, I wouldn't recommend this brewery to anyone unless their options were equally limited. It's certainly not something I would ever go back to again. Under all circumstances I would suggest avoiding any of their beers but the Special Dark. My thoughts are that this brewery fills a very specific niche market for individuals who want a more local version of their favorite macro-brewed beers. One note about this brewery - apparently they consider corn a grain rather than an adjunct, as they say they use flaked corn in all their beers, obviously including the all-grain. I'm glad I managed to finish off my vacation with the remainder of my growler of Pig Iron Porter from Iron Hill in Newark, because the Special Dark would have been a very disappointing ending.

- Adam

Barlewine

One of the things I wanted to do this year while I was on vacation was brew up a barleywine to celebrate myself and Julia's anniversary. The idea is that I'll be able to ferment it for a couple months, bottle it, and store it away so that we can open a bottle every year on our anniversary. Since this beer is being made to age, I hopped it up pretty aggressively, and made it out to be a high alcohol content. Since I have my cooler now and can do all-grain, I wanted the beer to be (mostly) all-grain. Of course, there are limits to how much my cooler can handle, so I made my recipe 18 lbs of grain, and 2 lbs of malt extract. I'm also thinking I'll put some maple syrup in there after the initial fermentation calms down to boost it a bit more. The original gravity was supposed to be 1.119, but I ended up at 1.108, so with some of the things that happened today I lost about 2% of my final ABV that I'd like to make up. As it is without any further adjustments, I should end up around 10.5%, but I'm shooting more for 12%. This will make it the strongest beer I've done yet.

Because this is such a big beer, I knew I needed a good yeast and a lot of it. I chose to use WLP001 (California Ale) for it's clean flavors and high alcohol tolerance. Rather than spending a lot of time and effort building up a big starter for the beer, I decided to make a stout for my starter and wash the yeast. The idea was that I would bottle the stout the day before brewing the barleywine, boil and cool some water to sterilize it, mix the water in, and pour the yeast left on the bottom of the fermenter into jars. After sitting a bit, the trub in the jars would settle to the bottom, and I could pour the yeast off the top into a second sterilized jar. I'm not sure how good of a job I really did, but I ended up with a few very full pint jars of yeast, and one not so full jar. You can see two jars in the picture. Using the Mr. Malty pitching rate calculator, I determined that I needed about half a pint jar to properly ferment the beer. Since the jars are just a bit over half full of yeast, I decided to use an entire jar's worth after pouring the clear liquid off the top.

There were a few things that I took away from today since it was my first really big brew. First is to be prepared for my mash. I have some PH strips that I use to measure my mash PH and make sure it's in acceptable ranges. Today my mash was very low, and I found out that one way to raise the PH is with baking soda. Of course, we didn't have any, so 5 minutes into the mash I had to run to the grocery store and buy some. I added a half a teaspoon, mixed up the mash really well, and it took it to a more normal range.

The second thing I discovered is that my pot just isn't big enough to handle that much liquid. One of the reasons I got so much less of an original gravity than I anticipated was that I didn't get nearly the efficiency I was anticipating from my mash. The other was that the pot foamed over when it started boiling, and I ended up getting sugar-concentrated foam all over my stove. My pot was near full when I started the boil, so I'm attributing that to the boil-over. The reason the pot was so full was that I mashed with a full 5 gallons of water, and then had almost another 4 gallons to sparge with (I still think I didn't sparge with enough water to really get most of the fermentable sugars out either.) I got slightly over 2.5 gallons of first runnings out of my mash tun, and with the other 4 gallons that left me with near 7 gallons to boil. My pot's capacity is only 7 gallons, so I ended up having to put one gallon in a separate pot, and slowly feed the extra wort into the boil kettle as I boiled off liquid. I don't know if this is even an acceptable technique, but it's the best I could think of.

Finally I learned that all-grain brewing takes a lot longer than extract or partial mash. In order to boil off enough liquid to end up with about 5 gallons in the fermenter, I ended up boiling for close to 3 hours. Of course, I didn't have enough time to do all of my boil and cool down the beer before the class I had to teach today, so once again improvising, I boiled down to a little over 6 gallons before I had to leave, turned off the heat and covered the pot, and left to go teach my class. When I came back, I brought the pot back to a boil, and started my normal hop additions. Fortunately I wasn't planning on adding even the bittering hops for more than 60 minutes, so I think I was able to do this with minimal impact on the final beer.

We'll have to see how this one turns out, but if all goes well I won't even know for another year or so. If I get to 12%, at roughly 120 IBUs, this is going to be a big, hoppy monster.

- Adam

Alehouses & Pubs

Julia and I have been on vacation in Dewey Beach this week, and it's given us the opportunity to try a few local establishments. Normally when I'm down here I just want to eat at Dogfish Head all the time, since there's amazing beer and food guaranteed. However, Julia for some reason didn't want to eat lunch and dinner at the same place every day. Weird. Anyway, so far we've had the opportunity to try out two other places in the area that sounded promising. There seems to be a good number of establishments advertising the large amounts of beer they carry in an attempt to bring in the craft beer drinkers in the vicinity. The two places we've visited so far were the Pickled Pig Pub, and Rehoboth Ale House.

The Pickled Pig Pub is advertised on their website as a "gastro pub" which is a British term for a pub that has a higher quality of food than the average pub fare. They feature 14 taps of mostly craft & import beer, along with Miller Lite. I take it as a pretty good sign that under Miller Lite on the tap list, they say "A lot of us cut our teeth on this one. Don't act like you've never ordered it." I think it shows a decent sense of humor while allowing them to pander to the unwashed masses. They also have an impressive bottle list with offerings from larger craft brewers like Dogfish and Stone, to local smaller breweries like Evolution and Dominion. The prices can be a little steep when you compare it to picking them up at a bottle shop, but that's just to be expected when eating out.

The food menu was good, with a decent selection of mostly normal pub food, many with interesting spins, like the Bacon Jam and Blue Burger which features blue cheese and bacon shallot jam (whatever that is). They also have a "Build Your Own Cheese Board" option, where you can select 2 cheeses from a pretty interesting sounding list, served with jam, pears, sliced meats, and bread. I really wanted to try it, but we were so stuffed after our meal that we just couldn't. The service here was great, with a staff that seemed very knowledgeable about the beer. I was especially impressed that when Julia ordered a Southern Tier Creme Brulee Stout and they kicked they keg halfway through the pour, they brought the half-glass of beer out to her free of charge so that she could still try it if she wanted to. I started off with a glass of Evolution Menagerie #2, a limited mix offering from a local craft brewer that is a blend of their flagship porter and a brown ale. It was a smokey, roasted, coffee-flavored drink that I enjoyed quite a lot. We also got an Epic Mayhem to split, which at $10 for a 1 pint .9 oz bottle was cheaper than I remember it being at State Line. I guess that's one of the few exceptions to the pub beer is more expensive rule.

Overall, we thoroughly enjoyed the Pickled Pig, and definitely plan on going back again and recommending it to other people.

The flip side of this coin was the Rehoboth Ale House. With "Ale House" in the name, I expected it to be an establishment that has a variety of good craft beer, and at least a semi-knowledgeable staff. When we got there, we were greeted by a somewhat small sports-bar, complete with Coors Light banners and a plethora of televisions around the room. I wasn't too daunted at first, after all their website had a rather extensive list of beers available. Even though none of the beers listed were particularly exciting or adventurous to me, I figured I would at least be able to get a serviceable beer on tap. After we were seated, the same person who seated us came back to take our order. From the look of it, he was the only person running the bar, hosting, and taking orders. I looked over their tap list, and was somewhat shocked to find out that of their 11 taps, most were occupied by domestic and foreign light lagers, and their "craft beer" selection was rounded out by Sam Adams Oktoberfest, and a rather unadventurous amber ale from 16 Mile. The bottle list was equally unimpressive, with a large number of wheat beers, pale, and amber ales from various craft brewers, a few Belgian blondes, and some imported pilsners and lagers. I ended up retrying Victory Hop Devil since it was the only IPA I saw on the list, along with a North Coast Red Seal Pale Ale, since I hadn't tried it and know I generally like North Coast's beers. Still, it wasn't anything I couldn't just pick up from ANY local liquor store with a halfway decent selection. Julia had an Allagash White. To whoever selects the beers at the Alehouse I would say "Come on." If you're going to bother with a 90+ beer list to entice the craft beer drinker, at least put some variety on it. We don't want 15 renditions of the same style of beer from different brewers. And at least throw something special on tap. I couldn't believe when I asked what the 3 "featured kegs" that weren't listed on their normal list were, and one of them was Labatt Blue! You seriously didn't have enough adjunct lagers with Bud, Bud Light, Miller Lite, Coors Light, and Michelob Ultra on tap? I'm making myself mad just thinking about it.

On to the food. They had a normal variety of pub food, Julia ordered their chicken & shrimp over rice, while I had a chicken cheese steak. They had decently large portions, so that neither of us could finish it all, but at best it was just average quality. Julia said that her dish was one dimensional, with the pineapple sauce completely overpowering all the other flavors in the dish. My cheese steak was normally flavored if a little bland, the fries were not great. It was certainly edible but underwhelming.

So if you're in the Rehoboth area and looking for a good place to eat and have a beer, go to Dogfish Head or the Pickled Pig, but stay far, far away from the Rehoboth Ale House.

- Adam