Barlow Brewing

This is my very belated post about this year’s Dark Lord Day.

I had tickets for Dark Lord Day in 2010, but a family commitment kept me from going. So I was prepared to go this year and, although I struck out in getting a ticket, a friend had me covered.

This was my first time attending and I was excited to take in the Dark Lord experience. For those who have never heard of Dark Lord Day, it is big event put on by Three Floyds which is filled with beer lovers and an orgy of all things beer. People come from hundreds of miles around to get their allotted Dark Lord bottles, and to trade unusual and rare beers with others. That is what sold me on the event.

But it is easy to forget that the bulk of the day is spent waiting in lines.

Lines.

It is a day of lines. Lines to get in. Lines to get your Dark Lord bottles. Lines to get your Three Floyds swag. Lines to try the guest taps. Lines to get into the 3F Brewpub (I didn’t even try). Lines to get food. Lines to……well, you get the idea.

No lines for the porta-johns, though. Seriously, that was well played, guys.

Three Floyds has gotten a lot of flack in the beer world for Dark Lord Day and how it is has been run the last couple of years. The process of selling the tickets is still a mess and, as someone who has been in the hunt to acquire tickets the last two years, the scrutiny they’ve gotten for that is well-deserved.

So how was Dark Lord Day 2011? I know you are on the edge of your seat and I don’t want to spoil it for you, but I thought it went smoothly. As smooth as you can expect considering the nature of the event.

The photo is full of a bunch of shifty motherfuckers, isn’t it?

Inside the gates was a mass of humanity, but not an insane one. People were polite, but it was like being in a giant, vibrating ant heap. It is always clear in events like this that beer people are good people.

The tickets were sold in “A”, “B”, and “C” versions, so Group A could pick up their bottles between 10am and noon, Group B was 1pm to 3pm, and C was between 5pm and 7pm. Fortunately a few of us had “A” tickets which allowed us to get directly in line for Dark Lord bottles once we arrived. The line was long, but it moved steadily.

This year, the Golden Tickets also had a scratch-off area that let you know whether you would have the ability, nay honor, of purchasing a bottle of the limited run barrel-aged Dark Lords for $50 each. Lots of us got lucky and, when all was said and done, our group got one of each bottle variant: a DL aged in Pappy Van Winkle barrels, a DL aged in brandy barrels, a DL aged in brandy barrels with vanilla beans, and a DL, aka. Dark Lord de Muerte, aged in bourbon barrels with ancho and guajillo peppers.)

One of the cooler surprises was getting to meet Randy Mosher at Dark Lord Day. Randy is the author of the books Radical Brewing and Tasting Beer. Both are really great, and I find myself returning to Radical Brewing whenever I get in a homebrew rut. His understanding and explanation of unusual ingredients in brewing (i.e. atypical sugars, exotic spices, fruit, etc.) in that book are inspiring, and it has pushed me, personally, in new and exciting brewing directions. Highly recommended. At his table he had several types of coriander, plus cassia buds and I bunch of other spices I had never heard of. And he was very patient with might-have-had-a-couple-of-beers me, too. Thanks, Randy.

The only thing I had to say negatively about the day was that the Guest Tap line was absurd and badly run.

That line could be measured in hours, rather than minutes, and once you got up the front it all became clear. Lots of people standing around *wanting* to pour beers, but they were bottle-necked by some expediter/joker who brought things to a crawl. I grabbed two beers in the line, the Stone Double Bastard with chipotle peppers and Cigar City’s Big Sound scotch ale. The Stone was solid and very balanced. The Big Sound was amazing.

Isn’t there always 5 or 6 of these tragedies during each DLD?

All and all, it is was a great day and the weather even cooperated for a few minutes and let the sun shine through. And it didn’t hurt that there was jockey box next to us that was pouring Zombie Dust and Gumballhead. All. Day. Long.

Takeaways:

The Good:
• The Dark Lord bottle and the bathroom lines moved quickly.
• All of the Dark Lord attendees were cool and unobnoxious
• All of the police and 3F event workers were cool and, I dare say, downright friendly
• It bears repeating: Beer people are good people

The Not So Good:
• The Merchandise, Guest Tap and 3F Brewpub lines we absurd and not worth getting in.
• This is the wrong location for this kind of event. No space, spent most of the day in an ant farm.

In the end, this event is about coming to the Three Floyds Brewery and getting in line to get your Dark Lord bottles. The rest is cake. I had a great time, and Three Floyds and the town of Munster, Indiana were great hosts.

Will I go to Dark Lord Day again? Maybe, but likely not anytime soon since getting to the Chicago area in April is never a great time for a trip.

But you never know.

This could be a very, very long blog post, but I’m going to try to keep it short and sweet.

In August of this year, I was asked by Brewmaster Mark Thompson of Starr Hill Brewing Company to do the Pro-Am entry with them for the Great American Beer Festival (GABF). The Pro-Am is where a brewery partners up with a homebrewer and makes a batch of the homebrewer’s award winning beer in their brewery. The homebrew recipe is scaled up and put into the competition during the GABF in Denver.

Of course, I jumped at the chance.

Starr Hill has done this for more than few years and they even won a Pro-Am silver medal at the GABF in 2008.

The beer that Mark was most interested in was my California Common, or “Steam” beer. I jokingly called it “McSteamy” not long after it had been brewed and the name, making fun of the steam name and Grey’s Anatomy, simply stuck.

Every homebrewer, at some point, dreams of brewing with professional equipment and making a huge batch of their beer. In this case, instead of making my normal 5 gallon batch, I worked with Starr Hill to make 360 gallons of beer.  This means that instead of using 14 pounds of grain, we used 875 pounds. Instead of 5 ounces of hops, we used 10 pounds of hops. Upconverting that recipe was stressful for me, but it all worked out in the end.

On the brew day in August, I showed up at the brewery with my friends Will and Jon. Will has there to help out and enjoy the brew day, and Jon was there to do the same, AND he brought along his video camera to record the brew day.  More on that later.

Walk into any big, craft brewery (a bit of an oxymoron, but bear with me), and you will be overwhelmed with the scale and the amount of steel that surrounds you. It is complicated, but glorious, steampunk dream.

On the brew deck I met Levi, who was my Starr Hill brew partner for the day. Levi was amazing, and he truly made the brew day collaborative.  His constant narration of the process of brewing beer on their system was as educational as it was reassuring. I wasn’t a by-stander to my own beer. I was actively working with him on the control panel and transferring the beer from here to there.

Then it was brewing as usual. Well, except for the giant equipment with scientific accuracy.

Just like my equipment at home. Or not.

Once it was all over, McSteamy was transferred to its fermenter, dropped down to 60 degrees F° and it was ready to go.

This is me trying to act cool and pretending that I did it alone (I’m not and I didn’t):

A dry-hopping and a month later, McSteamy was kegged up for the Starr Hill tasting room, the GABF and a few watering holes around Virginia. There were a few bomber bottles, too, that were for the actual GABF competition, and I got a few of those to share with friends and the homebrew club.

The Charlottesville unveiling of McSteamy happened at Beer Run, and that was an amazing evening. It was truly humbling to see so many friends and extended family show up to the event. I’m still stunned that so many support my hobby/addiction. I’m blessed to be surrounded by such good people.

In September, I flew out to Denver for the Great American Beer Festival. If you ever get the opportunity to go to the GABF, do it. It is awe-inspiring festival of excess, but worth every moment. And a few of the days it, later, takes to recover from it.

McSteamy did not when a medal, but it turned out great and very drinkable. The whole experience was remarkable.

If reading this wasn’t enough, please click on the video below and check out the amazing job Jon did in capturing the experience. It eloquently captures the brew day more than my mere words do.

Thanks, again, Jon.

Check out McSteamy:

It seems the real key to becoming a good homebrewer is practice and the ability to improve your process batch after batch. A big piece of that is being able to honestly evaluate and diagnose defects in your own beers.

I’d heard about off flavor beer tasting kits and courses that you can take to better identify the flaws in beers, but the cost had always been prohibitive. Yet it was such a cool idea, and a worthy educational event, that my homebrew club decided we had to find a way to do one ourselves.  In the end, the actual act of creating these flawed samples was as simple as adding a few drops of butter extract or lactic acid to some macro beer. The real learnings came from the additional research that needs to be done to explain what causes these off flavors and what we can do, as brewers, to avoid them.

How to Do Your Own Off Flavor Beer Tasting

Making these flawed beers was relatively easy. You start with an American Light Lager that has almost no flavor (I was redundant just then. Did you catch it?) and make sure you have at least 1 oz of beer for each person AND off flavor you are replicating. So, if you were trying 6 off flavors and you have 6 people at the tasting, you would need at least 36 ounces of beer. I’ve heard that Coors Light is often used for these tastings, but we used Bud Light.

What You’ll Need

A Pitcher (with measurement lines)

Macro Light Lager Beer

Small Tasting Cups (3oz ramekin-style plastic cups will work)

A Dump Bucket

The Additives

Teaspoons and a Dropper (for measuring)

A Big Spoon (to stir together the beer and additives)

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You’ll need a measuring container of some sort to determine the right amount of ounces for that bad flavor flight, and then you need to put in the additive. This is where you probably want a couple of tasting bartenders with pretty good palates.  You’ll need to mix in just enough of the additive to make the right aromas and flavors apparent to the tasters, but not so much that it overwhelms. (The additives that we used are at the bottom of this post.) Once you have the right mix, you can pour little 1 oz samples for all the attendees and then give them some time to smell and taste the beer.

How to Run the Tasting

We ended up doing our tasting blind, save for the bartenders of bad beer, and I think that enhanced the experience. It gave the tasters a chance to savor (perhaps that is the wrong word) and work through the off flavor before being given any expectations. After everyone had a chance to think about the beer, we had the tasters raise their hands to offer up what flavors and aromas they were tasting. I think saying these things out loud helped, as we all taste things in our own way and with our own abilities. It is important to understand how you perceive the taste and aroma.

And don’t feel like you have to try every off flavor in one tasting. We ended up breaking ours into two sessions. We might need that time to let our tongues recover.

The Key Learnings

For us, getting in touch with these off flavors was very important, but just as important was discussing what makes these off flavors happen and how we could, as brewers, avoid them in the future. That is the practical insight, and there are a few sites out there that do a good job of explaining the why and how to prevent them. (John Palmer’s Guide will do.) Identifying the rotten egg smell of sulfur is great, but knowing that it is a natural by-product of some yeast strains that will dissipate over time, or that could be a result of poor sanitation, or perhaps it can come from racking to a secondary, and taking it off the yeast, too soon is invaluable.

From this exercise, the most reoccurring preventative measures a brewer can make to improve their beers were:

Sanitation

Temperature Control

Aeration

Letting Your Beer Sit on the Yeast Long Enough to Clean Itself Up

The key is to have fun, and laugh, and wince, and have a big bucket to pour the leftover samples into. And be honest. Tell a story about the beer that you made that tasted just like THIS one. I don’t trust brewers who claim they haven’t made a batch that smelled like movie theater popcorn or wet cardboard. Those are great stories and great inspiration to keep your process tight and not do make that mistake again.

As a side note, if you see a course being taught about off flavors, I’d still try to attend it. What we did here was lo-fi and very educational, but it wasn’t perfectly scientific and I’m sure the pros could pull this off more elegantly.  But this is an easy and quick way to up your game and it is a very cool thing to do with friends.

The Additives We Used for Off Flavors:

Acetobacter – Vinegar

Astringency – Grape Tannins

Cidery – Apple Cider

Diacetyl – Butter Extract

Esters – Banana Extract

Fusel Alcohol – Ethyl Acetate

Phenols – Chloraseptic Throat Spray

Sour – Lactic Acid

Off Flavors We Will Do Another Time and Possible Additives:

Acetaldehyde – Green Apple Flavoring

DMS – Cooked Corn

Oxidation – Sherry

Skunky – We will probably just leave a few light beers out in the sun in their clear bottles

Sulfur – Some sort of Sulfur

Beer People are Amazing – It has been said before, but it bears repeating. Beer lovers are just good people. They have a zest for life and they want to experience everything that can with the limited time we have on the planet.

Next time: Do more crowd-sourcing – Talk to the people in the beer line with you. What beers have they enjoyed? Use the friendliness and expertise around you to your advantage.

Me and (In All Likelihood Harassing) Ron Jeffries From Jolly Pumpkin

The GABF does not favor modest, well-crafted beers – Like in a big family, the loudest voice is the one that gets heard at the dinner table. The GABF is no different. The convention center is filled with dozens and dozens of well-crafted pale ales and German lagers, but they get overshadowed by double IPAs, Russian imperial stouts and sour ales.

Next time: Consciously seek out these less extreme beers – They take just as much artistry to make, they are a great way to reset your palate, and they are lower in alcohol, which will extend your tasting day.

You’ll Want to Make Every Beer Like Saboteur

Food and Water is a chore at GABF - Keeping hydrated is a common and smart tip. I didn’t have a problem with this one in that I’ve done some judging and I realize the importance of water and crackers between beers to get you ready for the next. Water was easy. Food was my big problem. I guess I was in a permanent state of fullness with the absurd amounts of water and beer I was drinking.  It was hard work eating bready meals, but if I hadn’t I would have been in serious trouble.

Next time: Plan out your meals as well as you did your bars – Palate fatigue can hit you in a variety of ways.  Falling Rock, Cheeky Monk, etc. are mandatory beer stops, but make sure you know which restaurants you want to hit, as well.  Make your meals worth looking for to.

Break up the monotony – Wandering around the hall and getting samples of beers you can’t get at home from breweries you haven’t heard of is amazing, but you can only do that for so many hours. Running into amazing people at the bars around town, too, is great, but it is good to mix some quality in with the quantity.

Next time: Try to find key events to attend inside and outside of the convention hall – Seek out a food demonstration from Sean Paxton, or sit down for a minute and listen to some of the speakers. My favorite event during the GABF was the Pints for Prostates Denver Rare Beer Tasting (followed closely by the Ladies of Craft Beer Beer4Boobs charity event). This was quality time, with the actual brewers (!?!) and access to some extraordinary and experimental beer.

Falling Rock – Busy Day and Night

There are (almost) too many breweries at GABF– The number of breweries that attend the GABF is over whelming. There are too many to see and try even if you attended all 4 sessions.

Next time: Have a game plan of which breweries to visit – Obviously you should avoid any beers that you can get at home.  And you should plan to stand in line for a few minutes for the rockstar breweries like Dogfish Head, Russian River, Lost Abbey, etc. But watch out for smaller breweries that might run out of their beers quickly (New Glarus, Shorts, etc.)

The New Glarus Line BEFORE the Session Began

Extra Credit:

Memorable (New to Me) Breweries – Shorts, Cascade, New Glarus, Cigar City, Copper Canyon, Odell, Boulevard and Alaskan.

Memorable (New to Me) Beers – Many of my memorable beers were from the Pints for Prostates tasting. Brooklyn’s Reinschweinsgebot, Avery Quinquepartie, Sam Adam’s Kosmic Mother Funk, Upstream’s Farmhouse Surprise, Cascade Noyeaux Sour Ale, Cigar City White Oak-Aged Jai Alai IPA, Jolly Pumpkin Biere de Goord, and many others. In the Convention Center, New Belgium’s Eric’s Ale and Imperial Berliner Weisse, New Glarus’ Raspberry Tart and Moon Man, Odell’s Saboteur and DeConstruction, Boulevard’s Two Jokers Double-Wit, Flossmoor’s Pullman Brown, Shorts’ Key Lime Pie and Anniversary Ale, and a bunch of other beers I’m embarrassed to be forgetting right now.

Proud to be an “Amercian”

Well, if you are reading this, I guess so.

I’m living up to my self-proclaimed moniker of the Lazy Blogger.

But no excuses.  

I took the family on a trip to Europe, and we visited Orval ruins and as well as the Cantillon brewery. 

I’ve been homebrewing, and I even had a beer and a cider make it to the final round of the Nation Homebrew Competition.

I got to use one of my recipes to brew a batch of beer at Starr Hill for our entry into the Great American Beer Festival’s Pro-Am competition.  As I type this post, it should almost be done fermenting and ready for some dry-hopping.  Let’s just say the same brewing principles apply, but there’s a big difference between brewing 6 gallons of beer and brewing 360 gallons of beer.

I’m in the IronBrewer competition, where a bunch of amazing homebrewers get together and test their brewing prowess and creativity by make beers with three assigned and disparate ingredients. (My round requires the use of centennial hops, vanilla beans and smoked malt.)

I’ve been tackling the new Citra hop, and a Black IPA, and the Leuven yeast strain with my homebrews. And let’s not talk about my continued obsession with making sour beers.

Those things ought to be great fodder for a few blog posts, huh?

I promise they will come.

After the Dominion Cup BJCP competition this weekend, I’ll get back on the horse.

So the New Year begins and so must the business of the, newly named, Emperor Norton Memorial Tasting Society.

This learned group is dedicated to tasting beers that are difficult to obtain in Central Virginia, or have been cellared into rarity.

The first meeting of the year will delve heavily into the works of Boulevard Brewery Company. The next meeting will probably return to one of the Tasting Society’s favorite breweries: Jolly Pumpkin Artisan Ales.

At this time, coherent notes are not expected to arise from these scholarly sessions.

The January 11, 2010 docket includes (but is not limited to):

Surly Bender (Oatmeal Brown)

Boulevard Saison (Saison)

New Glarus Wisconsin Belgian Red (Fruit Beer)

Boulevard Saison – Brett (Sour Saison)

Boulevard Long Strange Tripel (Tripel)

Goose Island Matilda (Belgian Strong Pale Ale)

Russian River Damnation (Belgian Strong Pale Ale)

Boulevard Harvest Dance (Wheatwine)

Boulevard The Sixth Glass (Quadrupel)

Surly Darkness (Russian Imperial Stout)

Brooklyn Black Ops 2008 (Bourbon Barrel Russian Imperial Stout)

BarlowBrewing’s Homebrewed Drunken Wendigo (Bourbon Barrel American Barleywine)

Three Floyds Behemoth (American Barleywine)

I went down to the Dominion Cup BJCP competition on August 29th with a few of my fellow homebrewers from the CAMRA club in Charlottesville, Va.  The Dominion Cup is the largest homebrew competition in Virginia, and it is run by the James River Homebrewers, which is the Richmond homebrew club.  The three of us were going to help out during the competition in three different roles, and it was my first real chance to see a BJCP judging in person.

The Cup happened at the Capital Ale House Downtown and took place in the Music Hall room behind beside the restaurant and bar.  It was intimate place to see a band, but it was big and roomy venue for a beer judging to go down.  It was a long and dark room with exposed brick walls and dark wood, but the judges were ready with flash lights in hand.

I was assigned to be a steward which basically entails making sure that the judges have everything they need to score and judge their assigned beers.  That means getting the table ready with a pitcher of water, crackers, cups, pens, a dump bucket, the appropriate forms, and any other items they might need.  That’s the easy part.  The interesting, and more challenging part, is keeping the paperwork orderly.  The judges are filling out Beer Scoresheets, and you are trying to keep those straight while juggling the Cover Sheets (to organize all the related papers with each entry) and the flight sheets which track the individual and agreed upon scores for each beer in that category.

The great thing about these competitions is that the beers are judged without knowing the brewer for each beer.  That’s important if you want real and honest feedback from the judges.  Now none of the judges that I met would have been anything less than honest in their reviews of the beers, but it really is hard to say that any among us wouldn’t be unconsciously influenced by knowing the brewer and our perceived notion of their brewing skills and reputation.  To avoid that, beers are separated into the appropriate BJCP guidelines, and they were all in 12 ounce, brown bottles without labels or marks on their caps.  Each bottle then gets a competition label conveying which style of beer it has been submitted to and its cryptic number, which is only linked back to the brewer info’s on a computer held by organizer of the competition.

So part job of the steward job is keeping all of the information together and organized so the right scores and feedback get to back the organizer and the homebrewer who made it.  That is the real bottom line in these competitions: getting quality feedback from experienced judges so you can make better beer and hone your craft.

Of course, the cool part for a steward is being able to listen in to the judges as they talk about each beer after they have thoughtfully filled out their sheets.  It is beer geeking at its best.  You can also taste along with them and compare your mental notes with the experts.  I worked the morning and afternoon sessions, and in the first I was assigned to one of the American Pale Ale tables and, being a popular category, that is all that those judges scored.  For the afternoon, I was assigned to the Porters table and that encompassed Brown Porters, Robust Porters and Baltic Porters, which can vary from each other in significant ways, but they are all still competing against each other in the Porter category.

I was very impressed by palates on the judges and their ability to pick out nuances out of the beers.  One of the huge obstacles in judging can just be taste fatigue.  Realistically, they are only having a few ounces of each beer, but after having a few ounces of 9 beers, my mouth started to get a little tired.  I could certainly drink more than that, and did afterwards, but it a challenge to keep your taste buds focused after wave after wave of beer.  I respect their ability to do so, because I don’t think I’m there yet.

Yeah, this is pretty much my only look.  It is all I have to work with.

Greg did some judging, so he got to see the competition from the other side of the table. 

Tom was a cellarman with Mark from the James River Club.  They had a good but, probably, an occasionally frantic time.   

After the second session was over, it was time for the Best of Show judging.  That was composed of the best beers from each category.  I’m not quite sure how the BOS judging works because it must be hard to compare a Flanders Red with an Oatmeal Stout with a Bohemian Pilsner, etc.  It must just be one of those blink moments where the heavens open up and a few beers just shine through.  

As you can tell from the picture above, it was show of colors and flavors.

In the end, it was a very successful trip for the CAMRA guys.  We got to see how a BJCP competition works, and the club walked away with 15 medals in the competition.  I was very happy to receive the inaugural Plato award, which is a “Brewer of the Year” award, for the most 1^st, 2^nd, and 3^rd place finishes.

Final results from the 2009 Dominion Cup: http://dominioncup.jrhb.org/DomCupWinners2009.php

Some takeaways:

It looks like putting on a competition of this size is a ton of work.  The Dominion Cup had 366 entries which is very impressive and a big jump from the previous year.  One of the things my club wanted to check out was the feasibility of putting on a competition of our own in the coming years.  We now know that it will be just as difficult as we had imagined.  I have to give lots of credit to the James River Homebrewers for making it all look so seemless and easy.  We know it couldn’t have been, but they did a great job.

The feedback  sheets were good, illuminating and I’m honestly still plowing through those.  Often, the hardest part about feedback is deciphering the handwriting of the judges. (Hint: Cursive = bad.)  Overall, the beers I thought would do well did, and the beers I thought were average, or off style, did just ok.  My highest scores were for my “Fritz the Cat” (Gumballhead clone) American Wheat beer, which scored a 43, and my “Cleopatra Jones” American Brown Ale, which scored a 39.  My lowest were my 27 for “Up on Cripple Kriek” (Kriek Fruit Lambic) which was one of my first sour beers and it really didn’t get sour enough, and my Cherry Waterloo, which scored a 28.5 and it was the subpar side of a split batch of Berliner Weisse.

And it was interesting to see how my younger beers fared.  I submitted an American Barleywine that was only 9 months old, and it took 3^rd place.  And that same 9-month old barleywine, that I aged a little longer on bourbon and oak cubes, took 2^nd place.  Also, my Flanders Red, which is a beer that often doesn’t find its stride until about 18 months, got a 2^nd place medal and it was only about 4 months old.  I’m pretty geeked to see how these beers will taste when they start to hit their peak.

The big surprise, for me, was seeing my entries in the Spice/Herb/Vegetable Beer category do so well.  My Chai Milk Stout (no clever name) got a 1^st place medal, and my Bombay the Hard Way Coconut Curry Hefeweizen got 3^rd place.  (Which is very surprising because I thought that was a failed experiment, but it just need time to age and mellow.) That was very cool, and further fuels my mad scientist method to brewing.  (I should be posting something soon about my Sweet Potato Ale brew day, too.)

Once again, it was a great time, and we look forward to competing again next year.  The club is now more determined than ever to get some of our members BJCP certified.

August 22^nd, 2009 was the date of the Brew Ridge Trail Music Festival, and I wasn’t quite sure if I was going.  Clouds and rain were all over the weather maps, and there was some sideways rain hitting my house making me rethink a day outside with music and beer.

Despite common sense, I packed up the family and drove down to the Brew Ridge Trail Music Festival which was being hosted by the Devil’s Backbone Brewery in Nelson County, Va.   Central Virginia is wine country, but the brewers are quickly catching up.  The “Brew Ridge Trail” refers a group  of breweries, and now a cider maker, that are mostly west and south of Charlottesville that could be toured in one day. (a map of the trail)  The Devil’s Backbone physically hosted the festival behind their brewpub and Starr Hill, South Street, Blue Mountain and Albemarle Ciderworks brought their brews and ciders along, too.

Despite some ugly rain during most of the trip out to DB, it cleared up and slowly turned into a pretty day.

The admission tickets was pretty reasonable with the cost being $15 in advance, or $20 at the gate, for adults, $10 for kids 3-14, and kids under 3 were free.  Where the cost of the gig could have really piled up was the $5 per ticket price for beers.  But, for some reason, the cider was cash only.

The breweries rolled out their year-round brews, and there weren’t any surprises in their line-ups.  Since I was familiar with all of the great beers by Starr Hill and South Street, I mostly concentrated on the beers I had not tried from the others.  Stand outs, for me, were Blue Mountain’s ÜberPils Imperial Pilsener (smooth and slightly grainy) and the Devil’s Backbone’s Fresh Hop ale (which I could only get by going inside the actual brewpub, but it gave me the hop fix that I wasn’t going to get anywhere else that day.)

I wish I could tell you a little bit about Albemarle Ciderworks, I only had a sip of my wife’s cider and I’m not well versed in that beverage.  It seemed dry and refreshing, and there was definitely still some apple lingering in the taste.

I can tell you the line for beers was barely existent and the beers were cool and poured to order.

The bands, mostly of the alt-country and nouveau bluegrass variety, were great and the Infamous Stringdusters put on a long and high energy set.

The Sons of Bill began to rock the crowd as night fell and taps were turned off.

All and all it was a fun gig, but it definitely felt more focused on the music than the beers.  There were families in attendance (I brought mine), and there was nice tent set up for kid crafts, but the focus was the stage and the bands planning.

I will be really interested to see how this gig evolves next year.  The bands were great, but it there was a lot of space for more adult and kid activities, and perhaps even more vendors.  I imagine this is typical for first year festivals.

I’d also love to see some of the breweries bring there more unusual and seasonal beers to the gig.  Starr Hill brought their Festie Oktoberfest beer, but it would have been cool to see some more seasonal, one-offs or pilot batches on tap.  It might be a great place to test these beers outside the madness of larger brewfests with the actual brewers on hand for feedback and praise.

It was a fun first year gig, and I’m glad the weather cooperated.  I am looking forward to the Brew Ridge Trail Music Festival becoming bigger and better.

And so Beergate is upon us.  And why should be care is a natural question.

Much has been made about the invitation from President Obama to Henry Louis Gates and Sgt. James Crowley to meet over a beer.  And just as much hype has been heaped upon the beer choices that these men have made.

The choices for this historical summit are:

President Obama: Bud Light

Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. : Red Stripe

Sgt. James Crowley: Blue Moon.

As a craft beer fan, none of these beers stand out stand out as particularly good beers.  Well, in the case of Red Stripe and BL, the choices are downright bad.

But what is important about beer for this conversation?  Beer is still considered the beverage of the common man.  Metaphorically, we still call blue-collar workers “Joe Six-Pack”, although the Republicans may have ruined that for all of us. 

Beer is still the drink you reach for at a backyard barbeque, or at a baseball game.  Wine and liquor are a bit more formal.  You break those out for special occasions or structured events.  Beer, in this context, is about three men sitting around a table and working through differences.  Stepping beyond ceremony and just hashing things out like neighbors.

I think beer is the perfect choice for this situation and the environment that Obama is trying to create.  Obliviously, he could have chosen a much better beer than Bud Light, and frankly it behooves his images to move up to a Dale’s Pale (in a red, white and blue can no less) or a Sam Adams (brewer AND patriot) beer.

During the presidential race between Bush and Gore, polls pointed to George W. as the candidate that the typical voter would like to have a beer with.  I imagine that Bush would pick something as disappointing as an AB product, too.  I know they are human beings, but I think we all have to right to expect a little more of our presidents.  Certainly one of Obama’s advisors could have suggested something from his hometown of Chicago.  Maybe a nice beer from Goose Island.

I think Obama is a smart guy, but he isn’t the common man.  And, to be clear, I don’t really want him to be.   

It is common is for candidates running for office to be sorted into the “wine track” for upscale voters and a “beer track” for the blue-collar voters.  I’m naïve enough to hope that there is a common space between those two tracks that lends itself to some great craft beer. 

You want someone smarter than yourself to run the country, but the wine track guy is not someone I would immediately understand.  Seeing Obama at a White Sox game drinking something that actually deserves to be savored would actually speak to me.

Word is from Musings Over a Pint, that the World Beer Festival in Richmond has been postponed until the Spring of 2010.  That is disappointing, but it didn’t sound like things were coming together the way they had hoped.

In the meantime, Durham is still on for October.