Beer Club Volume 12 - Altbier, Kölsch, a little of this & a little of that

Beer Club Volume 12... it's hard to believe even as I type it. Not only did we not fall apart after a few months but we've grown to be a pretty strong club. We've added people and the only ones we lost are one who moved away and a couple that realized it just wasn't for them. We did have a prodigal son but like in the original story we were all glad to have him back.

Brent being welcomed back to Beer Club in July

I think the line up for this edition, hell even the style for this edition, changed several times before I settled on something. I thought about continuing the summer beer theme with Kölsch or some other easy-to-drink lawnmower beer. I thought about dipping into the sour category. Then I thought it would be a good opportunity to do a potpourri of beers that could serve as a gauge for me to see what others would like to devote a month to.

Then one day I was listening to a podcast with Todd Parker, brewer at Copper Canyon Brewery in Southfield, MI and he was discussing the altbier and/or kölsch and I thought of an idea that Josh had to do both of these beers in the same month. He was telling me how there was a rivalry between the two towns in Germany that make these styles of beer. I did a little Googling and was very intrigued at the bitterness between Düsseldorf and Cologne.

So I made it a mission to track down four of each style and make them a lineup. I knew kölsch wouldn't be a problem with Schell's and Goose Island each putting one out as a summer seasonal and Lake Superior Brewing and plenty of others to fill out the last two.

Then I hit my brick wall. I realized as I talked/emailed/tweeted with people that altbiers were going to be tough to track down. In fact, most people couldn't even tell me what to look for let alone where to look for them. The first one was easy, I got word that Princeton's was carrying the Tyranena Headless Man so I grabbed a sixer of that.

At US Liquors in Hopkins I found something called Pinkus Münstersch Alt. I wasn't sure what the hell it was but I grabbed a couple bottles since it had Alt in the name. That my friends, was it. No more of it was to be found at this time of the year.

So, I decided to go with a hybrid of a hybrid of an idea. We'd do two kölsch and two altbiers and then throw in another four beers styles that would never be its own month of Beer Club (at least not in the foreseeable future).

I went with the Schell's Zommerfest & Reissdorf Kölsch to go along with the two altbiers that I had and decided to go with a HeBrew Bittersweet Lenny's R.I.P.A (to give a taste of a rye beer), Founders Dirty Bastard (for a Scotch Ale experience), Brau Brothers Rubus Black (a blackberry imperial porter) and a Goose Island Fleur (which had just enough sour notes to it to allow me to test the waters for a potential sour lineup down the road).

Another reason I went with the Rubus was because Dan from the Four Firkins had taken a job as an assistant brewer at Brau Brothers and we were going to drink the Rubus and then ceremoniously change the Brau Brothers sign in my bar from "Population: 220" to "222" in honor of Dan and his wife.

Even had a first time guest at Beer Club

The beers went over pretty well I thought. Kölsch is one of those styles that's very close to the yellow fizzy beers, but only made well. I think it would be a solid style to get macro fans to drink but I'm afraid they wouldn't appreciate why they're paying $13 for 12 pack of Zommerfest instead of $17 for a case of Miller Lite. Luckily, we all did.

I thought the altbiers were surprisingly closer to the kölsches than I thought they'd be. Trying them side by side makes you realize why they're a rival beer even though they look nothing alike (the alts being dark brown and the kölsches being very light yellow).

My favorite part of these beers was talking about the history between the two, it's one of the things I always enjoy about Beer Club. It was also cool to hear Brent and Josh talk about their time in Germany drinking these beers. The highlight of the night for me was when Brent took a sip of the Reissdorf and then said he felt like he was in Cologne again.

The rest of the beers went over pretty well too. I was shocked at the unanimous decision to put together a sour month after everybody tried the Fleur. They might be regretting it when every part of them is puckering from something like a La Folie but at least we'll say we give it a go.

The Lenny was probably the most brutally bitter beer that I've ever had... and I really liked it. Obviously I didn't expect any citrus notes in the beer being that it was a rye IPA but damn, this stuff was an assault on the tongue. Not everybody liked it a ton but it was acknowledged for what it was.

Brent trying to decide if he wants another go at Lenny

The Dirty Bastard was the low light of the night for the group as a whole and that surprised me. It's a pretty big beer but I expected everybody to be able to handle it better. I'm not sure if it was the size of the flavor (I doubt it because we've gone much bigger than that before) or the flavor itself but I'm sure it was the worst reception yet for a Founders beer.

The Rubus went over great as was to be expected. It's a great beer and fair or not, when you'd got to meet the guys who make a beer it always seems to taste better and nobody forgot how much fun we had in Lucan last spring. As planned, we had a ceremonious changing of the Brau Brothers sign in the bar and even made sure the letter was a little cockeyed so everyone noticed it was changed.

Before and after

The mix and match of the night was kind of fun for a change of pace but when we were done I was really looking forward to getting back to a theme for the night and of course, that next theme was not only Oktoberfest but it was the one year anniversary of Beer Club!

The Great Minnesota Beer Get Together

As you may or may not know, the 2010 National Homebrewers Conference was in Minneapolis (technically Bloomington) last month. Homebrewing wasn't really on my radar when tickets went on sale for all the events so the seminars and everything else really didn't mean too much to me.

What did mean a ton to me though, was that a lot of my out-of-town friends were going to be in the Twin Cities for the conference and I was going to get to meet some of them for the first time.

Twitter was something that started slow for me, something I did just to see what it was all about. It also coincided with the explosion of my craft beer hobby and I soon found out that the two went hand in hand. I tweet about plenty more than beer but the majority of my interaction is about beer and most of it is with friends I met because of beer.

My biggest problem about social media is that too many people use it as a substitute for real friends. "I have 258 friends on Facebook" "Oh yeah? How many would meet you at the bar for a beer?" "Ummmmmm" Exactly.

I understand it's not always feasible to have a beer with a Twitter (or Facebook or whatever) "friend" when you live in Minneapolis and said friend lives in Texas. But that's what made last week so cool, I got to meet several Twitter friends in person for the first time and got to drink beer with them and friends that I met on Twitter but have had the fortune to hang out with before.

Here's the quick recap. Melanie from Atlanta (aka @mstrachan on the Twitter) was the first in town, she arrived with her friend Eric on Sunday night. I had volleyball league that night though so we didn't meet up till Monday night when we had a few beers at Town Hall. Josh (aka @joshareed on the Twitter) and his wife Elizabeth joined Melanie, Eric, Allison, Marie and me for a pretty fun get-to-know-ya Monday night.

Wednesday afternoon is when it all took off. Brett (aka @BrettGlenna on the Twitter) got tickets for a bunch of us to go to the Twins game that night and I decided to invite everybody over to Isenberg's Neighborhood Bar that afternoon so I could showcase some of Minnesota's finest beers before the game.

Josh was first to show up and eventually the rest of the crew showed up - Brett with Frank (@fnbarrett on the Twitter), Maggie (@SudsyMaggie on the Twitter) and Norm (@NormskiBrewer on the Twitter) in tow and Allison with Melanie and Eric. Norm and Maggie are from Washington and Frank is from Iowa (but don't hold that against him).

I spent the days leading up to Wednesday assembling as many Minnesota beers as I could find and the final count ended up being around forty available for us to try. We got through just over two dozen of them (give or take) before it was time to leave for the Twins game. Everybody got a taste of beer ranging from Schell's to Brau Brothers to Summit to Surly to Lake Superior to Lift Bridge. Not everybody tried every beer, but everybody got their fair share of a taste of Minnesota.

It was also the largest gathering of "Getting Tanked with Frank" panel members in history. OK, it was the first gathering in the short history of the hottest new podcast on the internet but that's what made it so significant. I had met Frank once before and Brett several times but this was our first group gathering (minus Mar, Ben & Laz).

The Getting Tanked with Frank logo was also born that day:

Allison and I met up with Frank and his wife and kids and with Brett and his wife and Maggie down at Target Field where we got to hang with Norm for a bit too. It was a beautiful evening and we got to see a fantastic game from Scott Baker, 12 strikeouts in a 2-1 Twins victory.

The next night, I got off work and stopped by home to grab some of the beers that we didn't get to the night before and headed down to Bloomington were the gang was hanging out (sans Frank & family and Melanie & Friend who headed home).

I brought some of the beers that we didn't get time to try from the night before including Surly Furious, Surly Abrasive Ale and a growler of Town Hall's Masala Mama. Didn't get a chance to stay too long since everybody had to return to the fun of the conference.

The next night Allison and I again headed down to the hotel after work, this time with a growler of Barley John's Wild Brunette and the just-released-that-very-day Lift Bridge Minnesota Tan and Brau Brothers Rubus (an imperial blackberry porter). Also included for the west coasters was a bottle of Bells Hopslam, past its prime but still worth trying for those who never have before.

After having dinner at the hotel with the gang, Allison and I left them to their fun again and headed back home since we were leaving for New Ulm the next morning.

While I was in New Ulm, I wanted to try a Schell's Hefeweizen on tap since it was in season and I had a hot tip that it was at the B&L Bar downtown. I ordered a hefe for me and a Schell's Stout for Allison and posted on Twitter that we were there. Not long after, I felt a pat on my back and saw yet another Twitter connection sit down on the barstool next to me. It was David Berg from Schell's (aka @schellbrewer on the Twitter).

Dave and I have been conversing on Twitter for awhile and I've wanted to meet up with him for awhile so it was great to finally have the chance to get to do that. We had a couple beers and shot the shit for awhile and had a great time. If my parents weren't waiting for their Happy Joe's chicken, I have the feeling we could have had a few more than we did. At least we finally got to have that first one and I look forward to having more in the near future.

The next morning after making a Father's Day breakfast for my parents, we took off for the Cities to pick up Norm & Maggie from the hotel so we could head to the St Paul Summer Beer Festival. Allison dropped us off and we soon met up with the rest of the crew and began sampling.

I was a little disappointed that some breweries only showed up with one or two beers and that some only showed up with regular stuff that I could drink whenever I wanted but I did find enough to sample about 24 different beers.

I was surprised that I didn't run into more people that I knew but I did run into a couple of very important cogs in the Twin Cities beer community, Dan and Bryan from the Four Firkins. Always good to see those guys, especially outside of work.

Eventually the day was wrapping up and Maggie, Norm and I had to figure out what we wanted for our last beer before Allison picked us up so that we could get Maggie and Norm to the airport on time.

We decided that it was fitting to end the day with a Surly. I hadn't been there all day since the program only listed beers that were already in my fridge at home. Maggie went up to grab a sample for both of us because I was busy BS'ing again and returned with the surprise of the day - Surly Brown Eye. Oops, I meant Surly IMPERIAL Brown Eye (sorry Todd!). I forgot the exact style that it was but it was a great way to end the day because it was easily my favorite beer of the day.

Thus ended an epic week of beer drinking with awesome people. Epic is a term that gets tossed around too much these days but I can't think of a word to better describe it. I was sad to see Norm and Maggie go, I had such a great time hanging out with them. I felt a lot better though because I knew we'd get to drink again hopefully very soon!

*Editor's note - Yeah, I'm a couple weeks late posting this son of a bitch. Sorry about that. I got writer's block for the events of the last day. OK, that's a lie. I just got lazy and then forgot about it. But better late then never. Now go drink a beer that was made close to where sleep at night.

BrauFest!

A couple Saturdays ago I attended my first ever BrauFest. As you may or may not know, Brau Brothers Brewing Company in Lucan, MN was the location of our beer club's first ever field trip (we even got our picture on the slideshow on their home page). The day we went included an open house at the brewery which included a self guided tour of the hop fields followed by a street dance outside the Brauhaus restaurant and bar (with supper in between at the Brauhaus for us).

I was hoping to get a good sized group of us down there again because it was the perfect set up for us. It's not too often that you can pitch a tent (or in our case, camper) right next to a brewery and drink beer until sleepy time and then sleep off all that beer until morning. Alas, a big group was not in the cards but we were not deterred.

I talked my sister Cheryl and her husband Bruce into coming and they met Allison and me at the brewery around 4:00 on Saturday afternoon with their camper in tow. What's better than owning a camper? Knowing someone who does! I was ready to sleep in a tent but glad that I didn't have to.

When we hit the brewery, I found out that rumors of the appearance of Rubus were true. Rubus is the newest Brau beer, a big ass imperial blackberry porter. Ignoring all rules about what order to drink beers in, I immediately requested one as my first beer. It was damn good too. Not too overwhelming with the blackberry, but just enough to give it a nice flavor. The 9.something% ABV was nicely hidden too. All that for only $5 in a Brau Brothers pint glass that you got to keep (and refill for only $3).

Now Cheryl and Bruce are pretty loyal to Michelob Golden Draft Light (no, I haven't disowned them yet) so I knew Rubus and Sheephead (7.7% ABV pale ale) were out. So we started Bruce off with their version of a light(er) beer, Old 56 and Cheryl had a Strawberry Wheat (and eventually switched to Old 56 as well.

Allison & Cheryl wouldn't hijack the van for me

I switched to Sheephead after a pilsner and soon realized that it was really growing on me. It's a big flavorful pale ale that, if you didn't know better, could easily be mistaken for an IPA. If you like big hops with big flavor, give it a try sometime. They went down way to easily and after a few of those and another Rubus, it was a wobbly walk up to the Brauhaus for me.

When we moved on to the restaurant to eat, we all ordered Brau beers again except Cheryl, who reverted back to Mich Golden form and ordered one. After I gave her crap and Bruce glared at her long enough, she changed her order to an Old 56 and stuck with it for the rest of the night. I'm not sure if they'll ever drink another Brau Beer (or craft beer for that matter) again, but I think I did my part to show them that their perception of craft beer is a little off (like most people's) and that there are some good starter beers for them in the better beer world.

I also bought Bruce an Old 56 t shirt and like I told him that the Brau Brothers might not be able to afford a Super Bowl commercial, but they can put a t shirt on a guy walking around Atwater, MN!

Bruce enjoying one of many Old 56's

After eating way too much good food, my stomach wasn't exactly ready to start drinking a ton of beer again so I decided to switch to the Brau Cream Stout. In spite of me being stuffed, it was still delicious to sip on which is a testament to how smooth that beer is. It was the perfect dessert/after dinner drink.

The street dance was pretty cool, not a lot of dancing going on except for the two little kids having a blast in front of the stage but the band (Hicktown Mafia)was pretty good and played a good mix of stuff from the 70's through the 00's and we had a pretty good time.

I read a comment online from somebody who went last year that said something along the lines of "it was mainly a bunch of locals drinking Bud Lights". For the most part, that's what it was again this year but I don't think you need to have a Mecca like Dark Lord Day with beer geeks crawling out of the wood works to be a good craft beer festival.

I actually appreciated the smaller crowd because you don't often get that kind of face time with the guys who run a brewery and as long as you have good beer to drink, having a good time is all up to you. I got to meet someone I've chatted with on Twitter at the brewery too and had some good conversation with her and her boyfriend. There's always an opportunity to meet someone new and talk about beer with them. Even if they're not big craft beer fans, you can still talk about it with them at an event like this one.

Hanging with Dustin & Trevor Brau

My goal is to get that good sized group to hit this thing next year and we can turn it into our own private beer festival (with a few locals thrown in the mix for fun). Or maybe word will start getting out and it'll get way bigger next year. Either way, I'm going to have fun and who knows, maybe my name will finally get on the plaque at the Brauhaus by then for eating those damn wings last spring!

Beer Club's First Field Trip

One of the things I had envisioned when I was coming up with the idea of Beer Club was that we'd do some field trips as a group. While some very loose versions of "group outings" had occurred (Josh & I going to Surlyfest, Paul & Paul & I going to Winterfest), a true group outing had yet to happen.

Surly was very high on my list because of its closeness and because of how much we all love their beer but the first one to actually come about was Brau Brothers. It started in January when they were doing a tasting at the Four Firkins and I spoke with Dustin about us possibly coming out. He seemed to be more than happy to have us so I started thinking about putting something together.

I later saw Dustin and his brother Trevor when Paul & Paul & I were at Winterfest and we once again spoke about the group going to the brewery for a visit. After plenty of emails to the group, we decided on April 10th as the date that would work for the most people. It was on.

I wanted to make sure it was a good sized group so I encouraged people to bring significant others and any friends that were interested and by the time it the day came around there were seven of us from Beer Club with seven other guests. The more I thought about it, I realized that New Ulm was less than an hour away from Lucan so I also set up a private tour of the Schell's brewery for the same day.

The day of the tour we all met at Brau Brothers at or around 11:00 for the tour. The Brau Brothers tour reminded me of the Surly tour because most of it takes place in one big room. Dustin told us about the day to day happenings of the brewery, the history of it and plenty of other info that we all wanted to know.

Besides that, we all got to have some good conversation with Trevor Brau and Dale Brau as well as sample plenty of beer from the nine taps that were flowing. I can tell you with some certainty that there were some new fans of some of the beers, notably the Sheephead. I got lots of positive feedback about that beer. Eventually everybody broke off into smaller groups and spent the rest of the time talking with each of the Braus and just having a good time.

We were told about Brau Fest, which will happen the first weekend in June. I really want to make it and hopefully can get a small group of friends to go too. If you don't have plans currently, mark it on your calendar and come have a beer (or ten) with me.

One thing I'd like to reiterate is how much I love to support not just a local brewery like Brau Brothers, but to support a great group of guys like the ones who run the place. All three of them were very genuine guys that you'd want to sit and have a beer with, no matter where they worked. One of the very cool things about the day was that they didn't charge for the tour, they just asked for a donation to the local Lions Club and we were more than happy to oblige.

After the tour we decided to stop by the Brauhaus for some food and to check out their offsale beer which included (of course) Brau Brothers. One of the things I noticed on their website and for some reason thought I needed to try was a "Beyond Insanity Wings Challenge". Since this is a beer blog and not a "Man vs Food" blog, I'll spare you the gory details. I will say though that in hindsight, I'm not sure it was a smart idea on my part. Apparently the success rate is only 15%. But I did it and will now be immortalized in Lucan on the plaque inside the Brauhaus. Look for me if you're ever there!

After we finished up in Lucan, we all drove to New Ulm to hit Schell's Brewery. A regular tour is $3 per person and if you want to set up a private tour for your group, it's $60 or $3 per person, whichever is greater. I figured even if there were only 10-15 of us that paying the extra $2-3 per person would be worth it to have the tour all to ourselves. We ended up with 18 people because four others joined us in New Ulm.

I had been on the tour several times before, most recently in January of this year, but each time it's a little different. Sometimes it's because every tour guide has their own style and set of information that they decide to share with you. Sometimes it's because new events are going on. Sometimes it's because a new gift shop & tasting room just opened. Sometimes it's because of whatever. Bottom line is that even if you've toured it before it's worth your while to check it out again.

Since I wrote a bit about Schell's a few months ago when I toured it, I don't have a ton more to add about it. One very cool part of the day though was being able to do both of these tours on the same day to compare and contrast how different they are.

Brau Brothers is a very small operation that opened only a few years ago and they are making beers that are very current in today's craft beer world. Their lineup fills several different niches and no matter what you like, you should be able to find something. Included in that lineup, they have a great flagship pale ale, a very drinkable cream stout, a light lager and even a big & complex sipper. Their tour consisted of basic background on the brewing process, how they got the company going and some plans for the future.

Schell's on the other hand, is a pretty good sized brewery that is the second oldest in the country and has a lineup of beers that very much sticks to their 150 year history of brewing German style beers. Their beers are in no way as diverse as Brau Brothers but they have a proven history of success. Their tour consisted of a detailed historical background of both the brewery and the family that has been running it since day one. They talk about how to keep their history alive in modern times and sustaining both their success and the Schell's tradition.

I'd also like to mention that we had a wonderful tour guide at Schell's. From the minute the tour started she was very chipper and friendly to everybody and did a great job putting up with a group full of wise crackers and comedians. She let us hang around well past our hour tour and answered a ton of questions that we had. Schell's is lucky to have a sweetheart like her working for them.

After the tour was over, about half of us visited another staple of New Ulm, Happy Joe's pizza parlor. I mention this for two reasons. First and foremost, if you ever make it to New Ulm you have to eat there, and I would highly recommend the taco pizza. Second, they had the new Grain Belt Nordeast which had just come out three days prior and wasn't even in the Schell's sampling room yet.

If I had known how fun this day was going to be it would have happened a long time ago. Kudos to the entire group for mobilizing and making this happen. Everybody contributed in a positive way to make the day a huge success and that includes not just the Beer Club members but the guests as well. Everybody did a great job asking questions, engaging in good conversation and representing what the craft beer community can be like.

I'm not sure what the next field trip is going to be but after this experience I can promise two things. It'll be soon and it'll be a damn good time!