Proper Brewing's Géol Barleywine

First off, Congratulations go out to our friends over at Wasatch Beers for bringing home a bronze medal for their Apricot Hefeweizen at the Great American beer Festival last weekend. That's no small feat now a days considering that this year's festival set a record breaking 7,227 competition entries. That's nearly 9% more than the 6,647 entries in 2015- surpassing all previous participation records from 1,752 breweries hailing from 50 states plus Washington, D.C. Cheers to everyone at the Utah Brewers Cooperative!

I got my hands on a preview of what's coming from SLC's Proper Brewing Co. This is your first peak at their upcoming holiday barleywine. Called Géol (old English for Yule), This beer will be a big malt driven winter warmer that will be full of toffee, tobacco and and dark fruit flavors. Look for the ABV to upwards of 9.5% and to hit Proper's bottleshop in the next couple of months. Who knows, maybe we'll be seeing this one in future GABF Competitions?.

Cheers!

Label found at Shipcomplient.com

Epic's First 50 Firkin Fiasco List

I generally try to keep the news and discussions here to only those things that benefit the beer lovers of Utah, but I got my hands on the firkin list for Epic's big - First 50 Firkin Fiasco that takes place this Thursday (October 10^th) at Epic's new Denver brewery, during the Great American Beer Festival.

Though I'm not permitted to publish the exact ingredients, I'm sure you can figure out what many of the firkins contain from the names listed. The modifications to each beer will be listed on each firkin at the big party.

The event will begin at 3:00pm and conclude by 11:00pm. The taproom will be open to the general public and will have 10 firkins available. A VIP pass will be offered for $55.00 which includes an event T-shirt, gift bag (glassware and logo goods) and access to the full brewery and all 50 firkins. The brewing staff from Salt Lake City and Denver will be on hand to discuss the beers, as VIP’s explore the brewery. Food vendors will be onsite during the event and passes will include a food voucher. The VIP passes are very limited, and are available for purchase from:  http://50firkins.eventbrite.com/

Epic is looking for 5 volunteers to help out at our First 50 Firkin Fiasco on Thursday, 10 from 2:30 - 10:00pm. They will hook you up with a custom event shirt and some sweet swag. You may even have a beer or fifty at some point. Email phil@epicbrewing.com if you're in Denver on Oct, 10th and have time to help.

We'd love to hook up with other "Utards" headed to GABF. Message us via the Utah Beer Facebook Page so we can "geek-out" together. Here's the list - these beers are "as is" a may or may not ever be duplicated again.

Clam Stout
825 w/ Coconut
825 Ice Cream Float
Big Bad Cherry
Spiced Cherry
After the Fact Brainless Pale Ale
Brainless on Curry
Chocolate Covered Raspberries
Big Bad Raspberries
Captain Crompton’s w/ Chinook
Apricot Cap’n
A(mber) B(eer au) L(apsang) S(ouchong)
Amber Chai
Black Pepper Double Skull
Cocoa Skulls
Orange Cow
Mint Cow
Imperial IPA w/ Coconut
Pumpkin Bread
Pumpkin Mole
Chipotle Pumpkin
Imperial Red w/ Fig and Grapefruit
Imperial Red w/ Cacao Nibs
Black Bark
Hibiscus Wheat
Lemon Fennel Wheat
Apple Pie à la Mild
PB&J Mild
Earl Grey Mild
Lavender Lager
South of the Border Pfeifferhorn
East of the Border Pfeifferhorn
Pepper Sage Rosemary and Thyme
Chipotle Jetty
Guayava Jetty
Bitter Date Jetty
Southern Spiral
Blue Hopu-berry
Hopu-cot
Oaked Mosaic
Ginger Citrus Mosaic
Imperial Kiwi IPA
Imperial Oaked IPA
Imperial Spiced Orange IPA
Fleeing the Elders
Witty Escape
Eastern Escape
BIPA w/ CTZ
Hopfenfestbier

Squatters Emerson Avenue Pale Ale

Today, Squatters is releasing this year's entry for the the Great American Beer Festival's Pro/Am Competition. Emerson Avenue American Pale Ale is the Gold medal winning entry from the 2012 Beehive Brew-Off, brewed by home brewers Tommy and Gabi Lopresto.

Pours a murky deep amber color with a sturdy two & a half fingers of beige foam. The nose is floral with light citrus and berry notes - clean toasty malts also present. The taste starts bitter with grapefruit/citrus rind notes. The toasty malts pop through for just a bit, but then the bitterness comes back to linger in the finish atop biscuity malts. 6% abv. Available at Squatters locations. Good luck in the competition!

Cheers!

New Beer Friday 8/19/11

Today we have just one, special new beer. It's newness isn't what makes this beer special it's special because it's a Pro/Am beer.

For quite a few years the Great American Beer Festival has held a Pro/Am competition as part of the yearly, three day beer event. Utahans were never able to participate for the longest time because homebrewing was technically illegal.
Now that it's legal homebrewers can finally team up with the Pros and participate on a national stage.

Local Homebrewer, Travis Grimm teamed up with Uinta brewing to reproduce his 2010 Beehive Brew-off winning Grimmbrau Schwarzherz for the Pro/Am. The beer, now called Schwarzherz Black Heart is available for a limited time - only at Uinta's taphouse and The Bayou.

I've not had it yet, I'll be fixing that tonight, but I suspect it wouldn't have been made had it not been wonderful.

That's not the only Pro/Am going into the national competition. Another award winning home-brewer, Mike Hahn Teamed up with Epic Brewing to produce one of Mike's beers. It's a Scotch style beer that will likely be released in the next few weeks under the Festdevious label.

Is there another Pro/Am beer out there that I'm missing? Please let us know if there is.

Cheers!

Chubbies for Sale!

The Wasatch/Squatters Chubbies are now on sale at the Utah Brewers Co-op Beer Store. Squatters IPA is available right now and the new Wasatch Golden Ale should be out this week (if not already out). There are four labels set to be released in the 5 liter mini kegs. The Chubbies sell for $23.95 and will soon be available in many Utah Liquor Stores.

The Great American Beer Festival is this week and many of the local brewers will be out of town representing. This means many of the smaller brewery beer stores will be closed or have limited hours, so check before heading out.

Also, Jenny and Jason over at Squatters have brewed-up the second release of last years hit, Outer Darkness Imperial Stout. It's scheduled for release on or near Halloween. Rumors are Outer Darkness may become a year round offering. Stay tuned.

Cheers!

The 60 Second Beer Festival

If you couldn't make it to the Great American Beer festival the fine folks at the Brewers Association have created a video showing the three day fest in 60 seconds.

If you look carefully you can see me at 23 seconds into the video. I'm the one with the beer in my hand.

Cheers!

The Great American Beer Festival from Brewers Association on Vimeo.

Utah's 2009 GABF Winners

Sorry this has taken so long, but I'm still in vacation mode. Here is a list of the breweries that came home with medals at this years Great American beer Festival.

The showing was not as strong as past years, even though there's been some incredibly delicious stuff coming out of Utah these past few years.

More GABF news coming. Cheers!

Bronze Red Rock Organic Zwickel Bier
Bronze Red Rock Blonde Ale
Silver Cutthroat Pale Ale
Bronze Winterfest 2008

Photo: Chris and Kevin from RedRock Brewing "sport'n" their medals.

Hops and Hoppers

A lot of you were able to purchase hops from High Desert Hop Farms last week, but didn't know the specific Alpha Acid content of the hops that you bought. Well the alpha report on those hops is in from Univ. Oregon in Corvallis. Here you go.

Cascade 5.37
Columbus 12.12
Galena 8.19

The Alphas are slightly below average so adjust your recipes accordingly.

Also Donovan Steele, Secret Agent and Brewmaster at Hoppers has decided that his debut bottled beers are looking to be a Pils around 5.2% abv and a Black Lager at or a round 6% abv. Dono seens to be really geeked about the Black Lager at near bock strength... perhaps a Schwarzbock? Okay... now you've got my attention!

Posts will be sporadic for the rest of the week, I'm headed for Denver to attend The Great American Beer Festival for "research" purposes.... yeah, I almost chuckled myself. Anyone else going? I'd love to hook up.

Prost!

It's like Disney Land... with Beer!

If your planning on attending this years Great American Beer Festival you'd better get on it. Its only a short seven weeks away! It's kinda-like the Disney Land of beer... except for the rides... and the kids. Other than that it's truly a "magical kingdom" for three days. People don their festive head-gear,(aka mouse ears) are greeted by colorful characters(just don't hug 'em) and just have kid-like fun... only with beer.

There will also be many opportunities to learn more about your favorite brews and styles as well as book signings, food & beer pairing seminars featuring an A-list of America's brewers and national celebrity chefs and of course the world's largest and most prestigious beer tasting competition featuring 400+ breweries, sampling nearly 1900 beers.

GABF runs from Oct 9-11 with a total of four public tastings. Get your tickets soon. Or you'll be shit-out-of-luck. Trust me.

Uinta Represents at The Great British Beer Festival

If you love beer and have never attended North America's largest beer fest, the Great American Beer festival... well... damn it, you should! Three days of all things beer, in city (Denver) that loves it's suds. Like GABF, The Great British Beer Festival is Britain's largest beer festival and brings together a wide range of real British ales, including a large contingent of American and international craft beers. There are at least 450 beers available throughout the festival. Golden ales, fruit beers, stouts, bitters etc. This fest is mostly about proper British ales, but this year brings a slew of some of the most popular and well respected labels of some of America's craft breweries.

Utah's Uinta Brewery is one of the few breweries chosen to represent this year. They're sampling a limited amount of Anglers Pale Ale, King's Peak Porter and Uinta 14th Anniversary Barleywine. Uinta is in good company, I'm sure they'll represent Utah well. Congrats to the Uinta crew!