Craft Beer Bottle Sizes (Rant)

Can craft brewers please stop with the bombers and 750s of strong beers? Why is it that the same brewery will put their pale ale in 12 oz bottles while their barleywine goes into bombers? Why would I want a beer with a higher alcohol content to come in a larger serving size? When I’m bottling I use the big bottles for session beers, while I save my 12 oz bottles for strong beers with just a handful of bigger bottles for sharing. I know that some people like bigger bottles for homebrewing because it means fewer bottles to clean, sanitize, fill, and cap. If breweries passed on the savings they got from using fewer bottles/labels/caps etc… I would have less of a complaint.

Instead of seeing a per ounce savings the large format bottles are often more than twice as expensive as their smaller counterparts. Here are some examples of 12 oz versus 22 oz bottle prices from one of the local beercentric stores: Hop Rod Rye $2.59 ($.22/oz) vs. $5.49 ($.25/oz), Lagunitas Maximus $2.39 ($.20/oz) vs. $5.99 ($.27/oz), and shockingly Rogue Dead Guy is $2.99 ($.25/oz) vs. $7.99 ($.36/oz)... almost a 50% premium on the beer in the bomber! I think some of it is psychological, for some reason I think a $4 bomber is a good deal, even though that works out to a $13 six-pack (and a somewhat pricey $10 bomber is the equivalent of an outrageous sounding $32.72 six-pack).

The weird thing is that this seems to be a craft beer issue that doesn’t happen with the big breweries. For example Kirin also comes in 12 oz and 22 oz bottles, for $1.99 ($.17/oz) vs. $2.99 ($.14/oz). Same goes for Budweiser: 12 oz $1.39 ($.12/oz), 24 oz $2.29 ($.10/oz), 32 oz $2.69 ($.08/oz). That is the way the price structure should work, you should get a discount for buying beer in bigger bottles not a penalty. I understand that this is not necessarily the case when buying special release larger packaging (magnum or larger) since they require more labor, but if they have a bottling line there shouldn’t be any difference.

Even the six-pack is no longer safe, with breweries like Founder’s moving many of their beers to four-packs. Again despite the smaller amount of beer the price seems to have stayed about the same or even gone up from what the six-packs used to sell for.

What does it come down to? Marketing pure and simple. People are willing to pay more for a beer they perceive as special, big bottles call out to us, corked and caged bottles doubly so. Nice labels, waxed tops, bags, boxes, metal tubes, tissue paper, hand signed, you name it a craft brewer has tried it. As craft beer consumers we need to stop rewarding breweries that try to dupe us with this added packaging that boosts the price, but doesn’t make the beer taste any better.

It seems like more and more beers are only being released in larger bottles, especially limited release and collaboration beers. When I am buying a beer I haven’t had before, or one that sounds weird/experimental I’d rather buy as little of it as possible (which is why it is great that some beer bars sell sampler sizes). I’d love to see more breweries putting their weird beer into smaller bottles (7 oz nips would be perfect), but I’d be thrilled just to see more 12 oz bottles.

How many batches do you have in fermenters right now?

0 - 9%
1 - 17%
2 - 22%
3-4 - 28%
5-6 - 11%
7-10 - 6%
10-15 - 1%
16+ - 2%

It is terrific to see how many people have a lot of batches going, 21 people who responded had 10 or more fermentations going? Glad so many people brewing!  It probably helps that it is peak brewing season with beautiful weather for brew days, and good ambient fermentation temperatures for most ales. It's also the right season for making ciders, pumpkin beers, wines, and using fresh hops.

At the moment I have beer in four barrels and 12 Better Bottles (and carboys and jugs).  Although that number just dropped a bit as Nathan and I bottled two beers tonight (five gallons of our wine barrel solera on both Hallertau Tradition and elderflowers), and about to fall precipitously as next weekend I'm having a few friends over to help me blend and bottle another five or six batches. I've already stockpiled several cases of clean delabeled bottles, but I'm worried that it is still a few short of what I'll need.

Not sure what I'll be brewing to refill all of those emptied carboys.  The next few batches for me are going to be lagers, a Vienna and a Tmave (the Czech version of a schwarzbier).  I'll have to get some sours going as well, it may finally be time to get moving on the Great Souring Experiment...

Booze for Free: Book Review

A few months ago the publisher of Booze for Free: The Definitive Guide to Making Beer, Wines, Cocktail Bases, Ciders, and Other Drinks at Home emailed me to ask if I’d be interested in a free copy of the book, I couldn’t turn down the irony. Andy Hamilton's focus in this book is on making beer, country wines, infusions, and other alcoholic beverages with ingredients that can be foraged. Despite the title, most of the recipes call for buying malt, sugar, yeast, etc… although there are a couple truly free recipes (like one based on corn stalks).

I found the book to be a bit of a mish-mash as it tries to cover a wide range of topics without doing any of them justice. It starts out with a brief overview of the brewing process and equipment. These sections are pretty basic, and would probably not be enough to adequately guide someone who had never brewed before. For example I didn’t see any discussion about fermentation temperatures, pitching rate, aeration etc… There is a brief mention of starters... made with refined sugar right before pitching.  I’d rather see this section skipped than done so poorly (especially as the author points out in the intro, how frequently peoples’ first attempt at fermentation go awry).

The remainder of the book is divided into four sections, each with recipes based on what is available during a season. This is a really cool way to organize a book, and it lends itself to flipping through the pages for inspiration. Each two to three page section is centered on an ingredient with information on where to find it, a bit of history/lore, and usually a couple recipes. Luckily the book mainly stays clear of the medicinal claims that turned me off of Sacred and Herbal Healing Beers.

Foraging is something that I’m interested in trying, but the instructions/descriptions aren't detailed enough to make me confident about eating something I find in the woods. In many cases the descriptions are on the vague side and lacking a way to positively identify a plant you’ve encountered. For example on the section on yarrow he mentions it is easy to confuse with hemlock, but doesn't provide any positive identifiers for picking it out.  I also can’t tell how many of the plants are available in my area (the author is English). To have a great book on foraging you’d need maps, detailed descriptions, pictures etc… The same goes for the gardening suggestions, they would only be adequate if you were already knew how to garden. Luckily many of these items are available for purchase, but that defeats much of the point of the book.

Most of the recipes seem to rely too heavily on sugar for me, which is one of the same problem I had with Sacred and Herbal Healing Beers. It doesn’t help readability that the batch sizes vary wildly, swinging from a couple pints to 50 gallons. Standardizing recipes makes them easier to quickly compare and adjust. Maybe some of my issues are in the terminology differences between English and American homebrewers. For example in his Nettle Ale #2 recipe (which incidentally calls for no malt whatsoever) he suggests that the person who gave him the recipe uses brewer’s yeast, but that he has had better luck with ale yeast… what does that mean? In that recipe he also suggests pitching the yeast when the wort has cooled to “blood temperature” and adding ½ lb of sugar to the keg for conditioning, what terrible advice!

There are some interesting tidbits to be found for sure, but when I don't like an author's basic brewing instructions I have a hard time taking their advice on other topics.

Wet Hopped Peach Amber Tasting

Brewing a “local” beer for the homebrewing class I taught was a lot of fun. It gave me an excuse to try a couple techniques that I might not have otherwise (bittering with homegrown hops and adding peaches to the end of the boil). I really didn't have a perfect vision of what I was trying to brew, I just adapted to the ingredients and situation I was given. This was also my first time dry hopping with wet hops.

Mid-Atlantic Harvest Ale

Appearance – Pours amber-brown with significant haze. The head is dense, off-white, and long lasting. It certainly gives off that “local” vibe, even if the amber color comes from an English malt...

Smell – Fruit (although not peach specifically), earthy hops, and a nice toasty malt character all come through. I'm surprised that it isn't hoppier given the dry hopping, but as it warms some of the Cascade citrus does start to come out.

Taste – Similar to the aroma the flavor is a complex blend of malt, hops, and peach (stronger than in the nose). Enough bitterness to balance the malt, but not enough to make the beer actually taste bitter. I like the balance of the flavors for a harvest-time beer, a bit more substantial than most fresh hopped beers.

Mouthfeel – Medium body with slightly stronger carbonation that I usually aim for (which puts it about average for an American ale).

Drinkability & Notes – Not far from a rustic version of Magic Hat #9. The fruit adds a layer of complexity onto the malt and hops without stealing the show.  I wish the Cascade was a bit more prominent, but otherwise I'm really happy with the way it turned out.

Brewing Fire-Pit Gruit

While the basic steps that go into brewing haven't changed much over the 6,000+ year history of the beverage, the ingredients and equipment certainly have. As a result, the beverage we call beer today doesn't share much in common with what was being brewed and drank 1,000 years ago. The most significant change to the ingredients over that time has been the dominance of hops over all other brewing herbs. Hops are the perfect spice for beer, they add bitterness, aromatics, boost head retention, inhibit Lactobacillus, and grow like weeds in northern climes (the same places where barley thrives and grapes do not). Even so, it is nice to try the alternatives sometimes to see what the other options are (even if just to affirm your choice).

Over Labor Day weekend I drove from DC out close to the border between Virginia and West Virginia to brew with one of the homebrewers who attended Brewing Locally. When Marty mentioned that he and his friend Martin brew gruit over an open fire, it sounded like an event that I couldn't pass up witnessing for myself. The combination of an arcane beer style, and an crazy brewing technique was something that seemed right up my alley.

Traditionally blends of herbs called gruit were used to balance the sweetness of the malt as well as their supposed medicinal benefits. I have brewed a couple non-hopped beers (Heather Ale, and the Winter Kvass), but I have yet to brew one with the classic combination of herbs that make up gruit.  Martin and Marty both seem confident that these herbs (yarrow, sweet gale, wormwood, marsh rosemary etc...) have a stimulative effect compared to drinking a couple hopped beers (hops being a sedative). I haven't noticed much difference, but for more information of these herbs and their supposed effects you can read Stephen Harrod Buhner's Sacred and Herbal Healing Beers.

Martin and Marty buy their herbs in bulk from an online spice/herb shop for the most part. The only one of the mainstay herbs that is hard to come by is marsh rosemary, which they buy for $10 a jar from a Canadian who forages for it (Labrador tea was suggested as the best easily accessible alternative). They have also started to grow some of their own and forage for local equivalents.  The most important aspect of brewing a good gruit is avoiding over-spicing (as most of the handful of commercial examples I've tried have been), which is something that the various gruits they served (classic, sage, burdock root etc...) avoided. They are still tinkering with the timing, sometimes adding all of the herbs near the start of the boil, others saving the more aromatics herbs for a later addition.

Propane is so popular with brewers because it is clean, easy to control, and compact, but it also adds ~$4 a batch onto my cost. Brewing over a fire has a romantic appeal, it makes brewing seem more like an event and less like a chore. If you want to brew over a fire you'll need something to suspend the kettle over the fire and a way to adjust the heat. A more complex rig could have a winch to raise and lower the fire, but in Marty's case he simply pulls the kettles partway off the fire when they threaten to boil-over. Another advantage of brewing over a fire is that it is easy to brew a couple batches at once over a single fire (we brewed three 10 gallon batches). Building guitars for a living and having a house out in the woods Marty has a lot of extra scrap wood to burn, but if you didn't you'd probably lose most of your savings from not buying propane by buying wood.  Martin has a web page with details of his slightly more elaborate fire-brewing rig.

They do not get a smoky flavor from boiling over the fire, or any additional caramelization (or melanodins) from the intense heat as far as I tasted.  The soot from the fire does blacken the kettles, but this isn't a big deal.  The biggest disadvantage is that tending the fire to ensure that it is hot enough to boil the wort is one more thing to worry about.

To cool the beers they simply leave the kettles covered overnight before transferring the cool wort to carboys and pitching yeast the next morning. The wooden lids are not tight fitting, which allows ambient air to be sucked in as the wort cools and contracts.  As a result of this (and the lack of preservative hops) all of the beers I tried had a wonderful refreshing tartness that mingled surprisingly well with the herbal bitterness. Sour and bitter and not normally flavors that combine pleasantly, but it this case the bitterness comes through in the front with the sourness holding off until the finish.

It was a terrific way to spend a day, capped off with a delicious dinner of venison (which Marty had hunted) roasted in a pot over the same fire we were using to brew. Not sure that I'll be building a fire in my small backyard to brew anytime soon, but it certainly inspired me to try my hand at a traditional gruit.

Martin's Classic Gruit
10 gallons:
Mash 1/2 a bag (25 lbs) of American pale malt in the low 150s F (strike water ~165 F).

After 60 minutes of conversion, run-off, batch sparge, then bring wort to a boil.  They do not recirculate which leaves the beer hazy, and looking like a medieval beverage.

3 oz yarrow and 1 oz wormwood for bittering near the start of the boil.
1/2 oz each of myrica gale (sweet gale) and marsh rosemary (or Labrador tea) as finishing in the last 10 minutes of the boil.

Allow to cool naturally overnight.  In the morning rack to fermenters, pitch US-05, and allow to ferment.  When fermentation is complete prime and bottle.

Golden American Wheat Tasting

After two years of kegging, the biggest complaint I have about having beers on tap is that I tend to drink them rather than opening up bottles.  This is a result of how easy it is to pour a glass of beer, and that I am often waiting for a tap to open up for a beer that is ready to force carbonate.  Having more taps might help the situation, but that will have to wait.

Audrey and I bottled our most recent collaboration (a golden American wheat) six weeks ago and this is only the second bottle I've opened.  It may simply need more time, but the flavors still haven't come together for me.  It has some earthy/spicy components that I'm struggling to identify; at first I worried that some Brett snuck into the beer, but it isn't developing that way. 

I think everyone has some ingredients that always work and others that just never seem to taste right to them.  For example, The Henley of Thames strain (WLP023/WY1275) has always given too much mineral from my tastes in an English ale.  With this as my first try at a 100% Willamette beer, I'm suspecting that it may be a hop that doesn't mesh well with my taste buds solo.

Audrey's Golden American Wheat

Appearance – Pours slightly hazy, not surprising for a beer with 50% wheat malt. The color is about what we were aiming for, deep gold headed towards light amber. The head is thin, but dense and long lasting.

Smell – The aroma is odd at first with some assertive yeastiness. That quickly evaporates leaving a slightly spicy, bready aroma. The aromatics continue to change as the beer warms, gaining subtle floral and citrus notes.

Taste – It is confusing where the clove/pepper character came from considering we fermented with US-05 in the mid-high 60s F. The malt character is nice, crackery, doughy, with some light caramel. More bitterness than most American wheat beers, but that is the balance we were looking for.

Mouthfeel – Medium body, somewhat thicker than most moderate gravity wheat beers.  Middle-of-the-road carbonation, especially compared to the many gassy wheat beers.

Drinkability & Notes – An interesting beer, not as clean as I was expecting, but more layers to the flavor and aroma than I anticipated. I think the spice character can be attributed to the "spicy woody" Willamette hops, although I'm reluctant to say for sure as this was the first beer I brewed with them and nothing else. Not one of my favorite batches, but there really isn't anything really wrong with it.