Another 3.2 Rumor

Ok guys and gals, Here comes yet an other 3.2 beer rumor.

So... rumor is that a group in Oklahoma called Oklamomans for Modern Law is working to eliminate it's states 3.2 laws, just as we tried to last legislative session.

But here's the rub. There are only five states that currently buy 3.2 beer from the big breweries. If one of these five were to stop buying; then the brewers may find that it's not cost effective to make the 3.2 stuff and only make their standard recipes. Thus forceing the remaing states to buy or go semi-dry.

What are your thoughts? Is this even a slight possibility?

Cheers!

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

God, Beer, Porn & Wheat Wine?

What do you get when when you mix Craft beer enthusiast - Women of Faith and the Porn Industry?
I don't know but I assume it would tend to look a little like this photo here.

Believe it or not that was all going on this past weekend in Denver. Less The Women in Faith conference I doubt you'd see such a sight in SLC.

Anyway Utah represented well at GABF this year, there were a lot of great discoveries and some promising deals being made. Nothing is set in stone mind you, but look at Jolly Pumpkin and Cascade Brewing as two big possible gets for the SLC market.

On the local front we did make one new discovery that I can't believe we missed. Apparently Wasatch Brewpub head brewer Matt Beamer has put together a tasty Wheat Wine and slipped it in compleatly under the radar. Simply named Wasatch Wheat Wine.

These are a somewhat new American concoction akin to Barleywines in strength, but they contain a large portion of wheat malt; upwards of 50%. The wheat provides a soft and fluffy mouthfeel. Color and bitterness varies. Matt's was a cloudy golden-amber color with a very small sized off white head. The nose wheaty and toasty with a hint of floral hops. The Tastes was the same starting with floral bitterness, wheat and toast, The end was light with citrus. The 8.5% ABV was well hidden.

No release date has been set for Wasatch Wheat Wine but it should be a couple of months away. Matt Said it may spend some time againg in oak before it's bottled. And as of now; when it is released it may only be available at the Wasatch Brewpub in Park City. Cheers!

Top Photo: Beer Missionaries - Jon, Heather, Dave, Matt(Beamer) & Adam From Utah Brewers Coop & Wasatch Brewpub.

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!

This Week at Desert Edge

Desert Edge is offering up some very yummy stuff right now. Chris has brewed up his English Mild. It is served on the nitro tap so it has that nice creaminess to it. The British Mild is an English beer, brown in color with a subtle roastiness.

Chris is also now serving the Backcountry Cream Ale. This is a light, malty beer with low, but defined hop character. Cream ales have lactose sugar added to give them a slight sweetness. Lactose sugars don't ferment, so they add sweetness without adding alcohol during fermentation.

Chris also has his Summertime Kristalweizen, Munich Lager, and the Road Rage Rye as well as his standards. Utah Pale Ale, Pub Pils, Happy Valley Hefe, and the Ladder Days Stout. That's nine beers! Chris is our friend...

Cheers!

Squatters Oktoberfest

I love this part of the beer year, autumn beers are amongst my favorites. The Märzen/Oktoberfest is at the top of my list.

Märzenbiers are full-bodied, rich, toasty, typically dark copper in color with a medium to high alcohol content. There are quite a few good options out there right now for Utah beer drinkers and all are outstanding examples of the style.
Samuel Adams Octoberfest - Paulaner Oktoberfest-Märzen - Spaten Oktoberfestbier Ur-Märzen - Ayinger Oktober Fest-Märzen & Hoppers Märzen are all available right now.

But the one I want to talk about is Squatters Oktoberfest. This is the beer Squatters created to help celebrate their 20th Annibrewsary and man did they nail it!

Pours a warm orange brown color with a firm, creamy white head. The nose is full of clean toasty malts with a bit of subtle nutty character. The taste starts with lots of crisp, smokey malts, biscuit tones and a good citrusy hop twang. Vanilla, orange peel and a spices lingering towards the finish. The bitter hops meld with a slight malt smokiness into the after taste. Very well balanced and highly drinkable with an ABV of 5.5%. This is a great example of what Oktoberfest biers are all about.

Squatters Oktoberfest is available in 18oz bottles at Park City and the Downtown SLC Squatters locations. It is also available in a beautiful 1 liter flip top jug (shown above) for out the door sales. They'll be releasing 50 a week until they are gone(about 4 weeks worth). Please grab one! You'll be sad if you don't.

If there's a Märzen out there that I missed, please tell us about it!

Prost!

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

Organic Hops For Sale

Last week I told you about High Desert, Utah's first certified organic Hop Farm. This week I get to tell you that they're open for business and they're ready to sell you their inaugural crop of Cascade - Galina and Columbus hops.

Co-owners Tim Begue and Joe Nangle are opening up the doors and the fields starting today 9/14 at 9am and going to 6pm. The Galena are down and half the Cascade is down and next are the Columbus CTZ's. You can buy fresh hops off the vine or dried and bagged ones. The prices are are based on weight so their will be a price adjustment for the wet weight vs. the dry.

If you can't make it during the week Tim & Joe will also be selling their hops on Saturday the 19th at the downtown SLC Farmers Market in a booth with big sign that reads ORGANIC GARLIC. It's on the 300 south side of Pioneer Park. And if that's not enough their currently making deals to sell them to local home brew shops.

High Desert Hops is located at 632 S. Gladiola St.(3400 W.) in Salt Lake City and will be selling hops 'till they're gone.

Cheers!

The World's First Ski-In Gastro-Distillery.

This isn't really beer related but it's close... and pretty damn cool.

David Perkins' dream of a destination whiskey distillery is almost a reality. The High West Distillery and Saloon is just weeks away from from opening the world's first ski-in gastro-distillery.

Located in the historic National Garage and the Watts property at 703 Park Ave. near Park City's Town Lift. Perkins and his partner James Dumas have spared no expense in bringing the Park City treasure into the 21st century, while retaining 80 percent of its original materials - enough to keep it on the National Historic Registry.

The house which is adjacent to the garage now features several dining rooms and a bar. The historic garage or livery is large enough to host business and social groups and of course the 18-foot-tall German-made brass still.

High West actually has been distilling whiskey in a Salt Lake City warehouse for four years. High West rye and vodka has been for sale at Utah State Liquor Stores for a number of years and High West's Rendezvous Rye came home with Top Ten honors at the 2008 San Francisco World Spirits competition.

The High West Distillery and Saloon will be open to the public for tours, dining and sipping. It also will cater to private parties.

I can't wait to check out David's new place.

Cheers!

Pick'n & Grin'n

It's harvest time! And with that comes harvest beers. And there's no better way to ensure the freshest possible taste in your harvest beers, then to pick your ingredients yourself.

That's what the RedRock crew got the opportunity to do this past weekend at Utah's newest hop farm High Desert Hops. Head brewer Kevin Templin his crew and some family members spent the afternoon picking High Desert's inaugural batch of hop cones for some of their yet undisclosed fall beers.
High Desert is growing three varieties right now. Cascade - Galina and Columbus. For a first year crop these hops are huge, fat and full of resiny goodness. The RedRock guys were picking the Galina, as you can see from the pics their damn near perfect.

At some point High Desert may open up their organic certified farm to the public and even "pick your own" sales. How cool would that be homebewers?

As soon as their ready, they'll let me know and I'll post all the details.
Cheers!

Another Oktoberfest

Yes that's right, another Oktoberfest. This one is a little bit different from the one at Snowbird. It's smaller and instead of mountain views you'll get canyons of buildings. But hey, there's still beer.

Del Vance from the Beerhive and Chef Frodie from the Vienna Bistro are teaming up to offer people a taste of Oktoberfest downtown. The two main street businesses will close down the wide sidewalks on Sept 25th to serve up beer food and authentic Alpine music.

Besides the Beerhive's great beer, Chef Frodie has made tons of his special recipe sausages. If you haven't tried his authentic Alpine Cuisine your really missing out. We're talking Veal Bratwurst - Swiss Bratwurst - Kielbasa Sausage - Jagdwurst - Leberkäse - Weinerschnitzel - Ham Hock - Schinken Speck & Currywurst, yes I said Currywurst. It's the shnitzel!!!

There's no charge except for the food and drink, not a bad way to spend the afternoon. More info as it comes my way. Prost!

The Place for Beer in Park City

Park City is a bit of an anomaly in Utah. With it's high number bars and restaurants it's a town built for adults who have a penchant for enjoying nightlife. For the most part Park City is a cocktail town; there's nothing wrong with that, it's a resort town. If you wanted a good beer you most likely went to the Wasatch brewpub. Why not? they make some of the best beer in the state.

But if you want a little more variety or something more familiar many bars in PC offered limited options. Until recently. Like most places Lindsay O Michaels is a cocktail place, with one exception. They want to also be know as PC's beer place.

Every month since opening LOM's Beer guy Scott Kirkwood has been working on expanding the bars beer selection to where it's now the the largest and most varied in Park City.

Here's LOM's new arrivals
Bards Tale Dragons Gold (Gluten Free)
Big Sky Moose Drool Brown Ale
Delirium Tremens
Deschutes Black Butte Porter
Deschutes Mirror Pond Pale Ale
Mendocino Red Tail Ale
Moab Brewery Dead Horse Amber Ale
Moab Brewery Scorpion Pale Ale
Rogue Dead Guy Ale
Rogue Mocha Porter
Uinta Anniversary Barley Wine
Wasatch Devastator Double Bock.

Cheers!

Abyss is On It's Way

On the heels of yesterdays Deschutes-gasm comes word from Del Vance over at the Beerhive that he has ordered 50 cases of Deschutes' Abyss Imperial Stout. This 11% a.b.v. impy stout is wood aged and pours roasty, woody and sweet.

It is without a doubt one of the most sought after craft beers in the nation. If you've had it you know why. Del isn't sure if his order is what's left of last Novembers '08 batch or this new batch that's due out in the next month or two.

I guess we'll just have to wait and see. Cheers!

A Deschutes-gasm

When the state decided to start carrying Descutes beer a couple of months ago they only planned on buying two of their labels. Mirror Pond Pale Ale and Black Butte Porter.

Well frankly that just wasn't good enough for those of us who wanted more from this outstanding northwest brewery. So bars like Bayou and the Beerhive started placing special orders for some of their seasonal and more in demand beers.

The Bayou recently got in a huge order of Deschutes that'll satisfy any range of taste and help you get your Deschutes-gasm on. Here's what they got.

Black Butte Porter
Mirror Pond Pale Ale
Inversion IPA
Green Lakes Organic
Obsidian Stout
Bachelor ESB
Cascade Ale
Twilight Ale
Jubelale
Red Chair
Black Butte XXI
Mirror Mirror

I was quite fond of the Twilight Ale. It's low in abv's, about 5.0%. But full bodied and nicely hopped with a combo of four hops. Most noticeably Amarillo. Many of these are only seasonals and won't be around long.

Also returning from back-order-limbo are Anchor Brewing's Liberty Ale, Anchor Porter and Old Foghorn Barleywine. As well as Boulevard's Double Wide IPA and Saison-Brett.
Cheers!

Hoppers is out of Midvale

Not too long ago if you wanted a craft beer from a specific brewpub you could only get it from that brewpub. Oh how the time they is a chang'n. RedRock & Bohemian are building/built new breweries, Roosters and Squatters have multiple locations, Epic Brewing is on deck and the list goes on.

Now entering the off premises beer market comes Hoppers. Last week for the first time since opening their doors, the Midvale brewpub has it's beer in an outside establishment.

The Beerhive is Debuting Hoppers "This is the Pilsener". It's made with all German grains, hops, and and a Kloster yeast strain. This is a great German style Pils. It won it's third gold medal in a row last June at NABA in Idaho Falls.

Brewmaster Donovan Steele will be rotating his seasonals on this tap at the Beerhive. Once the Pils is gone the Double Black Lager will slide in followed by Hoppers Oktoberfest and McGee's Red Ale. Donovan said "I'm only going to put on tap the best beers I have to offer. Because Hoppers doesn't have a bulk base grain silo, all of our grain comes in bags, allowing me to bring in only premium malts for 100% of the grains used in every batch; more work for me but a great excuse to use only the best. This lack of convenience has become a blessing".

Besides getting his beer out of the brewpub Donovan got some other good news. Hoppers just purchased a brand new bottling and filler cap system. This means Dono will now have the ability to get Hoppers into the high gravity beer game.

Donovan is still undecided what his first bottle conditioned beer will be, but should have it figured out by next week. And if all goes well he'll likely be
bottling in a little over a month, maybe two. I know a lot of people will be looking forward to these beers.

Damn, this is turning out to be one helluva year for beer in Utah. Prost!