Field Trip: Lagunitas Brewery

My girlfriend and I stopped by Lagunitas Brewery on a Sunday night a few weeks back, went on the tour, and tried every beer on draft. Things were fuzzy enough after getting through the sampler, and now the passage of time has made them even fuzzier, but here are a few things that stood out:

1) The sampler is awesome! $20 for a four ounce taster of every beer on tap--a total of 16 beer samples.

2) The sampler is terrifying! Almost every beer is above 8% abv, and since they're in those little glasses you end up drinking 'em pretty fast--don't want them to warm up or go flat, you know.

3) Lagunitas likes hops. Half of the beers on tap were IPA styles, and a lot of the rest were hop forward.

4) Money is raining down on the brewery. They've got expansions galore going on, including the recent completion of what the tour guide claimed to be the largest capacity brewhouse on the West Coast (though it didn't look obviously bigger than Sierra Nevada to me), plus a new amphitheater. And they've got a customer following that's lapping the beer up--brewing is going on 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

5) Culture-branding is serious business. A lot of effort, from the decor of the 'beer sanctuary' to the tone of the tour guide's spiel to the flavor of the website, is focused on giving you the impression that Lagunitas is a laid-back bunch of weed-smoking dudes that like to drink beer and thumb their noses at authority. Probably more of the tour talk focused on their contentious, thumbing-noses history with the ATF than it did with the beer itself. 'Course, this rebelliousness didn't stop them from clamping down and kicking out a bus-tour group that got belligerently drunk and obnoxious.

6) The design of the brewery is pretty weird. There are pipes running all over the place, moving things here and there. The lines that run from the grain storage to the mash tuns are very long, and include brushes that crack the husks a little more at each bend. There are also pipes stretching all the way across the parking lot to more fermentation tanks in a separate building. Doesn't seem super efficient in its design.

7) It's all about their eponymous IPA. You've probably tried Lagunitas' flagship beer--it's excellent and it's everywhere. The bulk of the money raining down on the place is probably coming from sales of this particular brew. They're brewing it like gangbusters.

8) Despite their obsession with hops, they're not whole-hop purists. I didn't see a single whole hop on the premises, and when I asked the tour guide about it, he said they use pellets and whole hops both.

And, if you're interested in my favorite and least favorite beers tasted, here you go:

Favorite: A seasonal release called Holiday Leftover Sucks, or something like that. Malty and fairly sweet, but still with a very aromatic hop aura.

Least Favorite: Probably the only beer I really didn't like was their Cappuccino Stout. The flavor is overwhelmed by the coffee aspect, and the coffee flavor they've captured is reminiscent of the swill that sits on the hotplate at 7-11 until it condenses and burns into a horribly bitter nightmare.

Beware the Yellow Cat!

On Halloween I didn't go to work. I stayed home and brewed a beer instead. The original plan was for a British Pale Ale, but I drank one of our Wiccan Wheats (which I hope to write about here soon) while waiting for the wort to reach a boil, and inspiration struck! Instead of shooting for a run of the mill Pale Ale, why not go all in for an insane IPA!

In my mind, the most basic differences between a Pale Ale and an IPA are the original gravity and the amount of hops used--the IPA having more of both. To raise the gravity, I figured I'd just boil the wort down for a longer period, reduce its volume for a greater concentration of sugars. And extra boil time works with the hopping process too.

So as soon as the wort reached a boil, I threw in three ounces of Cluster Hops. After twenty minutes I threw in another ounce. Twenty minutes later, another ounce. And twenty minutes after that, another ounce. Each time I added another dose of hops, the wort took on a radioactive, pollen-yellow glow.

(I think Cluster hops are pretty interesting. I stumbled onto them because of my interest in domestic ingredients--they're an American strain, born and bred in the U.S.A. They've got a unique kick to them--some people think it's sort of harsh, and it's often referred to as 'cattiness'--that doesn't fit in with traditional views of what a hop should be. But I like that catty kick.)

I rinsed the grains an extra time, to strip out every possible bit of sugar, and threw that in with the boil too. I threw an ounce of Cascade hops in the mix, too, and kept things boiling.

After 100 minutes of boiling and hop additions, I killed the flame and started the chiller. Then I threw it in a carboy and pitched a vial of White Labs British Ale yeast (probably not the most suitable ale yeast, but it's what I had on hand).

After seven days in primary, I transferred the beer to a new carboy, and dry hopped it with two more ounces of cluster, and an ounce of Mt. Hood (another unorthodox hop for IPAs, but hey--this is an unorthodox beer!). Total hops for a five gallon batch: 10 ounces. I let it sit on those hops for three weeks, and then I bottled it.

OG clocked in at 1.070; FG was 1.016 (not as dry as it could have been, but that gives it a hearty mouthfeel--again, unorthodox for an IPA--which I like). The aroma at bottling time was pretty awesome. I'm definitely looking forward to cracking a bottle open once it's conditioned!

Fenton Smith's Sparring Spud Stout

Lord knows I love a good stout. It's probably one of my very-most-favorite styles. Full-bodied, rich and roasty, blacker than the tax man's heart. Course, stout can be a bit heavy too, and somewhat hard to drink on a hot summer's day. And some people get carried away with the roasted aspect, turning stout into a bottle of smoke. This recipe, another Parkside Original, addresses those concerns by using potatoes in the mash (to add strength without body), and Carafa Special II (for a lighter roast aspect)--sort of a welterweight version of a stout. I name it in honor of my mother's father Fenton Smith, a small man who packed a punch. Before you drink a glass, do the man an honor, and recite his traditional toast:

Here's to you
and here's to me
and if perchance we disagree
then hell with you!
and here's to me!
SLAINTE!

FENTON SMITH'S SPARRING SPUD STOUT
8 # 2 row
1 # 120L Crystal
0.75 # Carafa Special II
1 # potato
2 oz Simcoe (1 @ 60, 1 @ 30)
White Labs Irish Ale Yeast
2 tsp gypsum (1 with mash, 1 with sparge)

OG and FG unknown (broken hydrometer not yet replaced)

Dice the potato, put it in a pot with an inch of water over it, and boil it for ten minutes. Then throw it in with the grains, and mash for one hour.

Field Trip: National Homebrew Conference 2011

It's more than a month behind us, but I figured I'd take a brief moment to reflect on my experience at this year's National Homebrew Conference, which was held in San Diego on June 16-18. I'd gotten wind of the event through my friend Danny, the master brewer for Deeper Roots brewing. He told me he and another friend, Chris (master brewer for Lewy Brewing), were planning on attending the event. Sounded like fun, plus a chance for me to visit friends and family in my hometown (Chula Vista, which lies to the South of San Diego), so I bit the bullet and bought a ticket.



I drove down on my motorcycle the day before, taking a backroads route that lead me through Hollister and Coalinga, and then on through Interstate 5. Beautiful drive, but it takes a bit out of you, and there was some concern about whether I'd be able to rally for the fest the next day.

Well, when Danny and Chris and I got to the conference the following morning, I was feeling pretty good. I'd slept well, and I'd gotten a charge out of seeing my old friends, and then in the registration area they had beers on tap, and the first beer to hit my tongue (at 10 a.m. on a Thursday morning) was an incredible lager that might have been the best beer I'd ever had in my life (and normally, lagers aren't really my favorite type of beer). Then Danny found a way for me to get on the Volunteer list with him, which made it possible to get in to certain seminars I'd been wanting to see (but had been too cheap to pay for). Things seemed to be going so well that I was starting to feel giddy.

And geezus, all the beer didn't exactly put one in a sober mood, either. There were literally thousands of different beers available during the three days of the conference, all for free, from professional breweries and amateur brewclubs alike.

Really, it started hitting me while I volunteered in Randy Mosher's seminar. Randy is the author of my favorite brewing book (RADICAL BREWING), and his seminar was sort of a travelogue of visits to breweries all over the world. He brought along sample beers too, so that the people in the audience could drink what he was talking about. As a volunteer it was my job to help pour samples of those beers. There were seven samples for an hour long presentation--at least three of which were incredibly good--and I made sure to pour my self one of each (after pouring for everyone else, of course). I was rolling by the end of it.

Fortunately, the next seminar I wanted to attend was a drier event--Christ White of White Labs yeast was giving a talk on different yeast strains, and he didn't bring any sample beers. It gave me a chance to clear the alcohol haze out of my head, and to fill it with a fog of information instead.

After that seminar I took off my volunteer shirt, transforming to "civilian mode," and met up with Chris and Danny for more free beers out on the back patio. It was a beautiful evening, with all the beer you could drink, and how can you say no to that?



By the time they opened the main ballroom for the Professional Brewers Night, which featured free beer from dozens of different breweries, I was in the danger zone. Danny and Chris grabbed a table, and I made a point of anchoring myself there for a while, only going for samples every ten minutes or so. But if I was trying to pump the brakes, Danny was rolling full steam ahead, and Chris was gung ho going for it. I must have seen them drink 50 samplers each. And all my caution turned out to be for naught--I was a wreck when I got home that night.

Poorly rested and slightly queesy, I wanted to take it easy the next day, and did. Chris hit it hard right from the start, showing up at the conference at 8 in the morning, and staying and drinking all day long. I'd already seen the seminars I wanted to see, so I caught a ride with Danny toward the latter part of the day, in order to attend the Amateur Brewers night.

If the Pro Brewers' Night had been impressive, the Amateur Brewers' Night was positively mind-boggling. Brew clubs set up all around the same ball room the Pro Breweries had occuppied the night before, and they had outrageous setups and dozens of taps pouring every imaginable type of beer for free. Toward the end of the night they awarded the Golden Urinal to the homebrew club that brought the most kegs, and the winner this year was San Diego based QUAFF, with 160+ kegs (or some ridiculous number like that). I limped along, trying a beer here and a beer there, but I wasn't really in the condition to take advantage of the situation, or to fully appreciate what I was drinking. Danny and Chris, on the other hand, were making the most of it. If Chris drank 50 tasters the night before, this night he must have drank 100. I have no idea how he processes so much beer. The scientists should study him!

On the bright side, I didn't end up such a wreck that night. Still, I'd reached my limits, and skipped out on the conference all together on the last day. I know Danny went for the Banquet at the end of the day, and Chris, for the second day in a row, was there at 8 am, with sample glass in hand.

In the end, the main thing I took away from the experience was the thought "Geezus, that's a lot of beer!" And then, on the ride home, I crashed my motorcycle up near Hollister, and ended up in the emergency room. Sorry to say it, but this year's National Homebrew Conference really kicked my ass.

Ignorant Freestyle Baltic Porter

Probably our most successful brew to date, with one of the most interesting back stories in Parkside Brewing history--this beer was born from rebellion! In the early days of our brewing, after a handful of successful malt extract batches, we decided we wanted to take the leap to all grain. When the planned day came around, I headed to SF Brewcraft to pick up ingredients, hoping the shop owner Griz could offer some guidance. Griz is famous for his encyclopedic knowledge of homebrewing, but he's equally famous for being a grumpy old man. "Oh no no no," he said, "all grain isn't just something you can jump into, or learn from a book. You'll fuck it up! First thing you need to do is sign up for our all-grain class." I wasn't willing to postpone my plans, so I forged ahead on my own, improvising a recipe from vague notions gathered from what I'd read. The result was a decent beer, certainly not the disaster Griz had foretold, but nothing to write home about either. Scott took that freestyled recipe and refined it, through the course of four additional batches, tweaking things here and there each time, until we arrived at the current glass of bliss: rich, caramel-hinted sweetness balanced with intriguing smoke, and a hop presence you note with your throat more than your nose. It's got mystery, it's got depth, it's got euphoria inducing black magic intoxicants (e.g. a high alcohol content). It's tao-like in it's approach to perfection through simplicity. It's the best fucking beer you've never had, and it's brought to you by Parkside Brewing!

12 lbs Maris Otter
1 lb 120L Domestic Crystal
.5 lb Chocolate malt
2 tsps gypsum (1 with mash, 1 with sparge)
1 oz Fuggles (75 min)
1 oz Fuggles (20 min)
1 oz Fuggles (flame off)
English Ale Yeast

OG 1.076
FG 1.02*

Mash at 152 F in 3.5 gallons water treated with one teaspoon gypsum.
Sparge with 5 gallons water treated with one teaspoon gypsum, at 170 F.
Boil 75 minutes.

*FG is estimated, accidentally dropped hydrometer prior to measuring

Field Trip: Speakeasy Brewing

Speakeasy, the other "big" brewing operation in San Francisco (big meaning more than strictly local--you can actually find their beer outside of the city) opens up their doors to the public on Fridays at 4 pm. I've been laying low with a headcold for the past few days, but my girlfriend had this Friday off from work, which is rare, and we'd been wanting to check out Speakeasy, so headcold be damned. I filled my pockets with kleenex and we set out.


The brewery is located in a warehouse in the industrial part of San Francisco, near Hunter's Point in the southeast corner of the city. We got there at about a quarter till four, because we'd heard you needed to be there at 4 pm sharp to get the tour. We were the first to arrive, and the place was desolate except for a few brewhouse workers drinking beers on the other side of the gate. They told us to wait at the door, and it'd be opened at 4.

In the next fifteen minutes, the parking lot filled up with cars. People started parking out on the street, and a few taxis came to drop off drinkers, too. There were even a few who arrived by bicycle, which impressed me because of the relative isolation of the place. Must have been 50 people waiting by the time the door finally opened. The guy in line behind me said he'd come from Texas, and was touring brewspots in the Bay. A lot of the other people waiting in line looked like repeat offenders (ie they'd been here before).

The door opened at four on the dot, and we walked through it to find ourselves facing a little office with a walk up window. You buy tokens, which look like poker chips, at the window, and then trade those tokens in at the bar around the side. One token gets you one glass of beer, and they cost $3 each.


Besides for the token office, restrooms, and a few other private offices (also grouped together near the front door), the brewery is a big, open warehouse, with high ceilings and no interior walls. There's an informal bar alongside the token office, and a refrigerated storage room beside that. Otherwise, everything is out in the open, and different parts of the operation are sort of loosely gathered together in different places. Maybe twelve big fermenter's are lined up along the back wall, as well as a huge vat they store the beer in when they force carbonate it with carbon dioxide, and the (relatively minimal) machinery for a bottling line. Most of the center of the warehouse floor is used for storing pallets of kegs (both regular and 5 gallon size) and bottle cases. The mash tun and brew kettle (both are pretty big, maybe fifty barrel size), and the cooling system (looks sort of like a car's radiator) are along the side wall. The milling room (hardly a room, just a few flimsy walls, one of which is made from hanging strips of plastic) is between the brewing area and a roll-up side door. In the fenced in, concrete yard outside that door is a huge grain silo, where they store tons of 2-row. And there's a lowered loading section, where the trucks pull in.

When I think of Speakeasy, I think of hop-heavy ales, specifically their Big Daddy IPA and Prohibition Ale. (We learned, during the tour, that Big Daddy comprises 50% of their production.) Being at the brewery was a great opportunity to try some of their other brews. They had Big Daddy and Double Daddy (a double IPA) on tap, plus Payback Porter, White Lightning (a wheat beer), Prohibition Ale, and an expiremental batch (known as Batch #5937, or something like that) which was supposed to be a Imperial Red but ended up more like a Double IPA. My headcold congestion didn't leave my sense of taste or smell in optimum conditions, but I made sure to try every beer on hand anyway. The porter (a favorite style of mine) was good, but the surprise standout for me was the Wheat. Very crisp and refreshing. (As for Batch #5937, I think they'd better go back to the drawing board.)

The tour itself wasn't very formal--it only lasted fifteen minutes or so, and a lot of the drinkers didn't even bother to come along. Interesting tidbits for me were these: the people who started Speakeasy came together through SF Brewcraft, the brew supply store where I get most of my grains and gear; the one remaining member from those early days is Forest Gray, who served as the money man in the start, and now holds the title of President/CEO; Speakeasy makes most of it's money from keg sales--70% of all business being within the Bay Area--and considers their bottle sales mainly a form of 'advertising'; the company's been around for almost 14 years now, in the current warehouse location for ten years, has doubled in size in the past four years, and has plans of doubling again in the next four; they're planning on taking over the other half of the warehouse, putting in a stage for events, and opening their doors to the public five days a week, instead of just on Fridays. Interesting brewing related facts were: they filter through diatemaceous earth (the same stuff you put in your garden soil to kill nematodes), which probably kills any living yeast, which is probably why they force carbonate with CO2, and which probably also gives the beer longer shelf life than regular bottle-conditioned beers; they use (unless I misunderstood this) the same California Ale yeast for every beer, pumping the fluccolated yeast directly out of one fermenter and into another before adding the wort; the base of every recipe is 2 row malt, and their hops use is limited to four different varieties; during fermentation they blow off into plain old five gallon buckets, which promptly overflow with froth that then puddles and runs across the floor.

Boneyard Bitter

We just finished off the last bottle of our Boneyard Bitter. Based on Papazian's Humpty Dumpty recipe, with certain modifications (who really has the time to track down six ounces of rapidura?), Boneyard Bitter is an easy-drinking version of the classic British thirst quencher. Rich honey in color, and crowned with a loose frothy head, this ale looks fit for royalty. Tastes good too!, with an assertive bite up front, a sharp brown-sugar inflected aroma, and a lively mouth feel. Refreshing and relatively unfuddling (ie. light in its alcohol punch), Boneyard Bitter is a perfect teammate for our favorite pubgame: Boneyard dominoes. Forget the century, let's go to 500!

6 lbs 2-row
1/3 lb 20L crystal
1/4 lb aromatic
6 oz brown sugar (@ 60)
2 tsps gypsum (one in mash, one in sparge)
1 oz Fuggles (@ 60)
2 oz Goldings (half at 45 and other half at 5)
1 packet Safale S-04 Dry English Ale
1 tab whirlfloc (@ 30)

(mash grains in 6.5 quarts gypsum-treated water at 133 F for 30 minutes;
add 3 quarts boiling water to bring mash to 155 F, hold 45 minutes;
raise temp to 160 F for 10 minutes;
sparge with 3.5 gallons gypsum-treated water heated to 170 F)

OG 1.040
FG 1.012

Coming next: our Ignorant Freestyle Roasted Porter, and our Potato-Adjunct Stout)