NOON

Special Saucer/ Breckenridge Collaboration called FS 15

2 PM
Rahr Stormcloud IPA Cask-conditioned

Franconia Dunkel Cask-conditioned

5 PM
Avery 17th Anniversary Ale (dry-hopped black lager)

7PM
Stone Cali-Belgique (IPA with Belgian Yeast)

On the lake-side patio, we’ll be grilling Chicken and Pineapple skewers (Free)

Plus our usual Sunday Texas Pints are only $2.75 all day – love to the locals…. Come see us!

Festina Peche is pouring in most Saucers and at the Meddlesome Moth. It’s a nice Berliner Weisse with a hint of peach. A perfect pint for a HOT day.
Cheers,

Keith

Allagash brews some of the best Belgian Style beers in America and we are proud to showcase their beers. The Event starts at 6 PM

Details: 6 beers paired with 6 course from Chef Chad Kelley. Four of the beers are somewhat rare, especially in Texas.

Beers to be included are:

White - a fantastic example of a Belgian Witbier

Tripel - golden and complex with some nice herbal notes.

Curieux – The Tripel aged in Jim Beam barrels for 8 months

Odyssey - a dark wheat (10%abv) partially aged in medium toast oak barrels

Four - Four Malts and Four hops are used to make this beer along with date sugar and molasses – so good when it hits your lips….

Interlude - a rare treat and an interesting finale……

Tickets are on sale now at Moth and space is limited for this unique event. Call us to reserve a slot 214-628-7900 or come by and have a pint…..

Today, I celebrated with close to 900 friends at Lake Ray Hubbard Flying Saucer by hosting a Beer Festival – The Lake Saucer’s very first of an annual event. Twenty Five beers were flowing for the crowd. Some were rare an others simply appropriate for the hot day we had on the lake. The backdrop was beautiful with the lake and the wind and boats full of people coming and going. We even had a few flashers from the boaters….

I had the pleasure of spending this day with Marc Castaldo from Fort Worth’s original Saucer. He and Judson came out to help with the gig. Marc is an old pro at this by now, since his FW beer FALL BEER FEST has been a hit for many years. Marc and I have worked together for 14 years or so and we tend to feed off one each other’s enthusiasm for beer. If you’ve not gone to one of his beer dinners, you’ve missed out. Last week, he hosted one with Duvel Ommegang. His team hand sells these events in the first 3 hours after planning is complete. They know beer and will be happy to turn you on to the markets latest brew. More often than not, it was his team that encouraged the beer’s arrival to Texas and with all of our archaic laws, that’s not as easy as you’d think.

Jorge and Diane are the silent soldiers behind the beer fest. They’ve been to all of them and really orchestrate the event from inception to tear down. BTW – tear down is a beat down after FIFTEEN hours of watching other people drink beer all day.

Its a lot of fun to introduce so many beers to good people and to work with such a solid team. Next year’s event will be in early May to catch some cooler weather. The lake breeze was a pleasant surprise to everyone.

Thanks to all of you who attended the event. Next Beer Fest will be in Austin and after that, we’re headed to Fort Worth.

The hops used are Simcoe, Chinook and Cascade. The IBU’s (International Bittering Units) are around 60 which is up there. The color is a pale golden-amber with a solid white head that last awhile. It has a strong floral aroma and maybe some grapefruit. (I had four people taste it with me and one says grapefruit and it sticks.) I say some type of interesting flower that I cannot put my finger on and another agrees that it has something unique. It is bitter for sure but has enough malts to make it subtle and not really a hop slam like some IPAs. (Don’t get me wrong – I like the occasional hop slam in my beer too.) The mid-section of this brew has a creamy tinge of something sweet, but I could not place it. Maybe its the yeast. The hop bitterness lingers and it has a dryness at the end, but also that ever-so-mild sweet something right in the middle.

I like it and I would drink it again. In fact, put me in Wholefoods or Central Market in hunt for an IPA and I’ll snag a sixer or two. It quite possibly is my new favorite NBBC brew. Well, maybe after La Folie. If you dig NBBC and you dig hoppy IPA’s, I really think you will like this beer. Find it in your local market and at the Flying Saucer in mid Frebruary.

Last night I had a Sierra Nevada Celebration Ale – It looked like the Celebration I’ve always known. I have enjoyed this beer so much that I have tried to knock it off while home brewing a few times. I’ve come close but never as good as the real thing. This beer seems a little thinner than I remember, but very fresh with snappy hops.

Sierra uses Two-row pale as the base and then English Caramel malts for color and flavor. The hop bill is Cascade (nothing new) and Centennial, which I like. The alcohol is almost 7% so it can really take the edge off a long work day.

Check it out at Sierra Nevada’s site.

I am going to try to work my way through more beers and post them as I taste them.

As I have mentioned before, getting to Chico from Dallas is not that easy. But once we get settled, its nice to be there. Six of us were there to brew beer with Scott Jennings, the director of their Pilot Brewery.

Beer from the fermenters

Scott has been with Sierra for 9 years now. He seemed genuinely happy to see us and to show us how his brewery within Sierra Nevada worked. I must say, it is state of the art & he has some great beers fermenting, which he allowed us to try. The Pilot Brewery that he runs is where they tweak ideas for new recipes.

Fish bowl with Steve and Scott

In the “Fish Bowl”, we all met up to discuss our project. Steve tells us about the history behind Sierra Nevada.

It is a cool story and I will share some tidbits with you, other than what you may find on your own History of Sierra Nevada.

From 1980 – 1989 they had only a 10 Barrel Brewing System. The original kettle is an odd looking fabricated piece of used dairy equipment that Ken made himself. That kettle is still used to this day by the boys at Mad River Brewing Co. At first, the beer was sold in bottles only.The three original beers were Pale, Stout and Porter, which are still around today and excellent examples of each style. The first kegs were used in 1983 and were the old style Golden Gate kegs. They bought them from AB for about $15 each – a fraction of the cost of new kegs. The head brewer is Steve Dressler and he has been on their team for 27 years.

Early days at Sierra

In 1981: New Albion was producing 450 barrels annually, Sierra – 1500 barrels, Anchor Brewing – 25,000 and Yuengling 200,000. Today Anchor does around 100k barrels and SN is doing around 1M barrels. In 1989 SN moved into a new building and bought a 100 Barrel system. In 1998 they bought a 200 barrel system and expanded creating an east side and a west side. Today, they have 800 barrel fermenters, 50 of them. The daily brewing schedule requires the use of over 100,000 pounds of grain.

Sierra has a 9 acre organic hop field next door – for their Chico Estate Harvest Ale. They grow two row barley on 30 acres near their rail station. The brewery  uses about 4 rail cars of grain per week. At any time they have almost 1M pounds of grain on hand.

Grain Hauler

Let’s talk about Green living for a moment. I learned that 99.6% of all solid waste is recycled at SN. That their hop field is watered with their treated water from brewery production. The trucks are biodeisel. Their rooftops have 10,000 solar panel systems to feed the energy to their fuel cells. They have a farm that the local university uses to train their students on animal care and land management. The cattle on the farm are fed the spent grain from the brewery and the beef is used at the SN pub. All in all, SN is about 92% self sufficient and definitley setting a good example for sustainability. We don’t learn this from their marketing plan – it’s just how they think the brewery should be run. They’ve created a pretty incredible work environment. The group seems pretty darn humble and every person I encountered seemed genuinely happy to be there.

The Beer that is coming to Texas very soon will be called The Edge of Darkness. The campers decided to do a robust brown ale that was 6.5% abv – using Pale Two Row malt, Caramel Malt 60 and 120 L and some chocolate malt for color and flavors.

Rusty adds the grain

Mashing the grain

Testing the PH levels of our wort

The hop bill was HUGE – this is something Sierra is known for and they encouraged us to dig through their hop storage and use whatever we wanted. Scott was careful to keep us in the right direction and not let us pick anything too far out there.

After all, he wants the beer to be good just as much as we do. The hops for the batch were 8# Bravo for bittering and 55# fresh whole Centennial cones for flavoring. By now, the beer is in dry hop phase and the group picked – Motueka, US Challenger and Centennial.

Fresh Hops for the batch

Bill adds some hop cones

Stirring the Fresh Hops

Cleaning out the Hop Back - off to the fermenters

Steve e-mailed us today and said the beer has a nice flavor profile. It will go through another week of fermentation and should be released to us in a week or so. For logistical reasons, we can get kegs of this brew in one state only through one distributor. Since we have 6 locations in Texas now, I have scheduled the kegs to come into Austin and will send 2 kegs to each Texas location. Austin and FW will get a firkin each for their upcoming BEER FESTIVALS (October 17 – Fort Worth and October 24 – Austin).

Having Pints with Ken and Charlie at the pub

This was a fun time and has sparked my interest in brewing again. Yesterday, with the help of Jake “the Snake” (my 8 year old son), I created a Labor Day IPA which was based on a Celebration recipe.

Don’t you just LOVE BEER?