Second Floor Brewing

The other Wednesday, for the second straight year, I competed in the Homebrewing Showcase at Little Havanas as a part of Baltimore Beer Week.  I am sad to say that this was the only event that I visited during BBW 2011 but, I think, if you are going to go to just one event, this is not the worst you could do.

The event works like this:  a bunch of homebrewers bring kegs (or bottles) of their beer to Little Havanas and anyone who is feeling adventurous comes and donates $5 to BARCS to try as many of the beers as they would like.  Last year I entered two beers,  a hoppy red and a coffee stout.  Those beers placed last and third to last in voting.  This year the event seemed to be a little bigger.  There were more beers and more people there to taste them.

As you may know, I was planning on bringing a chai-flavored beer to this event but none of my trials went that well.  Instead, I brewed the last beer I made that turned out good: the green pepper pale ale.  Although I brewed and kegged on a procrastinators schedule, the beer turned out great.  More importantly, people at the event seemed to really like it.  Responses ranged from disbelief that you could but bell peppers in a beer to astonishment at the aroma and taste of the beer.  As the night went on, more and more people came up to try the beer or tell me that they had heard good things about it or that they were planning on voting on it.  A friend in the crowd even told me that she heard from Reagan of Jojo & Reagan (never heard of them) who was in attendance that night, that my beer was one of the most “buzzed about” beers of the evening.  I was pleased by all of this and even more pleased when, at the end of the night, my beer won fourth place (out of 30 or so beers).  As my prize I selected a $50 gift certificate to Maryland Homebrew.

I think I can say that I have learned a few things from my two years doing this competition.  This is one of those things.  In the crowd you have those who are into it, i.e. brewers, enthusiasts, or others who can more or less distinguish between well and poorly brewed classic styles of beer, those who are there to have a good time, i.e. people who like the event or trying new things or just happened to be at Little Havanas, and those who are in your pocket, i.e. the people who you invited who will most likely vote for your beer no mater how bad it tastes.  To have the best chance of winning you need to brew something that will impress the most people.  I found that the second group contains the largest number of people, followed by the first group and (unless you are very popular) then the third group.  In this type of competition you should try to impress those groups in that order.  If you can impress the first two groups equally, you will probably win.  I think the winner, a super-delicious saison brewed by the guy next to me was able to impress the first two groups because a good saison is a good beer.  Anyone can tell that.  On the other hand, you shouldn’t underestimate group three.  I won fourth place by one point.  I invited three people who voted for my beer as a first place beer.  If they weren’t there, I would have gotten sixth or seventh.  Although you have to assume that every brewer there had at least one person voting for them regardless so it kind of evens out.

They are already talking about next Baltimore Beer Week and I am already thinking about what I can bring to Havanas that will be able to impress the critical and intrigue the skeptics and what I can do get more people that I know to come to the event.  See you next year.

Yassas!

My girlfriend and I just got back from Greece.  It was great.  There were columns, feta, goats, boats, mountains, pistachios,  churches, ouzo, massive strikes, etc…  To drink I had good and bad wine, good grappa, good raki. They have beer there too.  Most of it is macro-lager super crapola.  Mythos. Fix. Alfa.  They all taste more or less like Bud Light.

But don’t worry, there is also craft beer!  Its called “Craft.”  Check it out.  You couldn’t get it everywhere but where I did, it was a welcome change.  I liked the Hefeweisen.  It was sunny and full of bread and citrus.  I didn’t like the Pilsner.  It was a little too close to the rest of the Greek beer peloton, if you will.

I wish that there was more for me to say about the beer in Greece.  If there is, I would love to hear about it.  Instead, enjoy this little peeing child Dionysus image.  Does it bug you like it bugs me that the barrel and the baby are peeing at the same time and at about the same rate?  There is something unnatural about that.

My girlfriend and I recently returned from a trip to South America, specifically Patagonian Chile and Argentina.  The views and the hiking were wonderful.  Although it is practically a sin to summarize the majesty of the views and the hiking in one short sentence, it has become such that when I go on any vacation, I am wondering about where I will be able to try some new, hopefully local, and well-made beer.  This is a homebrewing blog after all.  Before leaving I found out about Jerome (“Herome”?) Brewing in Mendoza but did not find this Midnight Sun post about beer bars in Buenos Aires from when Sam Sessa went to BA last January.

So I went with an open eye but not expecting too much beyond Quilmes.  I was especially surprised and delighed to find a very small cerveceria  in a very small town in Patagonia.  The food here was great and while they only had two styles of beer, a bock and a pilsner, they were both well made and served quickly.  I have included a map of Argentina with this post to illustrate the location of this cerveceria.  The red “X” marks its location.  It is in the town of El Chalten at the base of Mt Fitz Roy and if I didn’t search for it and find this website, I wouldn’t belive that it has an address or a name other than “the Cerveceria.”  Check out the Galeria de Fotos on their webiste for a nice little tour.   The interior and exterior of the building are wood.  There is room for 30 people sitting at the dozen or so tables and room for a few more at the small bar.  You can see the grain mill and an unidentified tun if you look beyond the door behind the bar.  Everything on the menu that we had — we visited four times in three days — was delicious.  The staff is courteous and it is always full of trekkers just off the mountain.  If you are in the area, you need to stop there.

Another one of my favorite beers of the trip was Austral’s Calafate beer.  This ale is flavored with the Calafate berry, a local berry that looks like a blueberry but has many more seeds than a blueberry and not as strong a taste.  In the beer, however, the Calafate berry’s flavor is brought out brilliantly.

While it seemed to me that southern South America does not have the brewing roots, especially among its native peoples, that northern South America has, Patagonia is far from a beer wasteland.  Chile in particular has some breweries worth discovering.  Frankly, the entire region is beautiful enough that you should go there at least once no matter your drink of choice.

This was a tough call.  In the 10 minutes it took me to come up with the top eight Greatest Things of 2010, two of those minutes were spent deciding between number one and number two.  Both are great moments in the history of SFB.

The number two Greatest Thing of 2010 was Baltimore Beer Week in general but specifically SFB’s participation in the Homebrew Competion at Little Havana.  This was our first in-person competition and our beers placed like this was our first in-person competition (almost last).

It was fun to be on the other side of the table for once, serving instead of consuming.  I learned a lot about how my home brewing skills stack up against others in the area and a little more about the home brewing community that I pretend doesn’t exist.

I am already looking forward to next year’s Baltimore Beer Week and another shot at the homebrew competion.

A visit to Brussels, specifically to Brasserie / Brouwerij Cantillion, is our number four Greatest Thing of 2010.

Early this year, when it was cold and snowy here, my girlfriend and I visited the famed brewery (in the cold and snow of Belgium).  Having visited a few breweries in the US, it was interesting to notice the differences both in process and equipment.  The link above contains my comments about the brewery when we returned to the US as well as a slideshow containing the picture to the right, of me enjoying a sample gueuze.

Whether it was climbing to the upper levels of the brewery to see the open air cooling tub, looking down into the cellar at thousands of barrels full of beer, or trying to catch wild yeast on your tongue we had fun exploring this one of a kind brewery.

Next time you are in Brussels, check it out.