Region 2

Getting ready to use The Northern California Craft Beer Guide.  I am starting with Region 2 because that is where the book release party will be taking place Friday 13 in Petaluma at TAPS.  I will only be visiting the breweries I have not gone to.  This will exclude alot of breweries but I need to cut some new road.

The Northern California Craft Beer Guide

Although there isn’t a rating system yet (there never may be), Northern California Craft Beer Guide is hands down the best resource in print for the consumer who is looking for a great place to get a great beer.

The book’s interest is elevated by the loads of attractive photos taken by Anneliese Schmidt. Her photographs tell a story that make this book colorful and appealing. Ken Weaver’s descriptors for beer and attention to style are spot on.

Ken not only includes breweries in the Craft Beer Guide but other venues as well. Local bottle shops and liquor stores are catering to the aficionado by carrying quality and variety of beers. Restaurants that are in tune with the quality of beer in California and offer these spectacular beers to enjoy are also listed. Hopefully we will see more in the way of a beer list with the marketing of beers towards the restaurant industry. Markets and homebrew shops are also included in the contribution of places to purchase or brew your own. After all, if you pay attention to some of the profiles of the brewers many got their start as home brewers. Including oh yea, Ken Grossman of Sierra Nevada Brewing Company.

The Guide breaks the Northern California area into regions and puts each region on a very easy to view map. Breweries are listed and numbered for easy reference. Great for pub crawl organizing or just your weekend Iron Liver Tour.

Weaver recommends five to try and includes under “uncharted territory” breweries that were not open at the time of printing. This may be a good opportunity to check it out and give your feedback.

Place listings includes the web address, physical address, telephone number and hours of operation.

Icons are placed over the top section of each entry to cue the user to breweries that are organic, eco-friendly. Other icons let one know if they can expect to enjoy a nice sit down dinner or just snacks.

Don’t’ confuse the cask-conditioned icon with the keg icon. They don’t mean the same thing. Most breweries have samplers for you to try and some have growlers on hand for you to take your favorite home.

Throughout the book some beer styles are addressed along with some sterling examples. There are also sidebars which discuss beer related topics indigenous to the region. Some nice nods are attributed to the movers and the shakers of Northern California beer culture as well to the up and coming.

In case you have visited all the breweries, restaurants, bottle shops liquor stores and grocery outlets there are more venues to enjoy California beer. Northern California brewers rock when it comes to making contributions to community and fundraising. Festivals and events are listed by the month toward the end of the book.

So whether you planning a trip to the market and want to pair a beer with your dinner, or are going out to a restaurant and are looking for a nice place to eat that doesn’t offer the same beer three or four times, or if your planning to impress your buddies with the best local drinking spots, or want to drink the beer where it is always the best ( at the source) this book is the book to have in hand. Salute.

I met Merideth and Chris several years ago at a low key beer event. They were a nice, quiet couple. Merideth was wearing a t-shirt that said thebeergeek.com. I don’t think I asked her about it. I probably just thought that any girl brave enough to wear the shirt had to be cool. I took a picture with her and another beer geek chick, Beth.

Facebook was rapidly becoming popular and it was easy for me to create my profile. When it came time to look for friends, Facebook recommended Merideth. Oh yea! I remember her. So I sent a friend request. Being the cool beer geek chick that she is she accepted. 
When I learned that she was coming out with a book “Teaching From The Tap“- Life Lessons From Our Year In Beer. I was excited for her. I had reviewed 3 other books that came out in the past three years. I wanted to review hers. Chris gave me a link to CreateSpace where I could purchase the book and I waited anxiously. 
When I opened the parcel I gasped at the volume of the book. 427 pages! That is a lot a reading. I read the dedication, the table of contents, the acknowledgements, and the introduction. 
The Introduction gave me the necessary insight to the self discovery Merideth refers to. She introduces their adventures by defining the word geek. She takes a self deprecating definition. As you travel through the chapters and the months with Chris and Meredith’s , Year In Beer, we see the very quiet, rather introverted pair go through an apologetic reference and evolve the term “beer geek” into a term any beer enthusiast would be jealous to own. 
I liked the friendliness of Merideth’s narrative. “This should be an easy read” I told myself. 
Reading Merideth’s book was like being on the adventure with her. If you are a self proclaimed beer geek chances are that you may find yourself in one of the chapters. Merideth introduces personalities they have crossed paths with and you may even find yourself in one of their chapters, in a tavern, a pub, a brewery or at a festival. I couldn’t help but find myself playing the game of 6 degrees of separation. 
Each chapter of the book takes you to the following month with a nice subtitle that is easy to make a connection with as you follow. 
Through the twelve months of travel we feel the jet lag, homesickness. We get a glimpse of their idiosyncrasies and crushes. Frustrations are shared humorously and we are spared their domestics tiffs as wrongs turns are taken (but we can feel them). Traveling is stressful but the stresses are forgotten in the rewards of friends and fellowships, new relationships developed and the experience of enjoying beer from the source make it all worthwhile. 
After reading the book I kept my eye out for book signings. Quite coincidently they planned a trip to Sacramento within 2 weeks of its release. With book in tow I went to meet them. It was like spending time with old friends. Chris and Merideth are still the nice, quiet couple I met several years ago. Only this time with a serious cool factor. 
Cheers to Merideth and Chris for their adventures in The Year in Beer. Thank you for sharing them with us in your book, Teaching From The Tap. Your book elevates the term Beer Geek to a new status.

“Beer fills me up”. That is one of the most common complaints I hear when people tell me why they don’t like beer.

There are several reasons why people get the impression of being full when they drink beer: Carbonation, Color, Flavor, Quantity.

Carbonation is a natural by product of fermentation. Fermentation is the process of yeast converting sugars into alcohol and CO2. The amount of CO2 in beer during the initial fermentation process is so high that the pressure is literally explosive. It is during the conditioning period that carbonation development occurs at a more gentle rate.
The problem is how does a brewer know that the amount of CO2 during transportation or storage is not going to aggravate the conditions in the bottle so that it will not cause the CO2 to escape and create loss of product. The best way for this to be controlled is to control the amount of CO2 in the beer. Here in lies the issue with those who complain about the "filling" quality of beer.

Most beers are pressurized up to as much as two times the amount of CO2 naturally occurring in beers. That is a lot of gas! So what is a person to do? 
There are several ways to rectify the dilemma. One way is to aerate the beer. Pour the beer into a carafe at least two times the size by volume by turning the bottle upside down. This is not the time to be following the “correct” way to pour beer. You are not concerned about this right now. What you are trying to achieve is a release as much of the gas as possible by agitating it without it ending up all over you.

Allow the beer to rest at room temperature. Cold temperatures will hold CO2. As the beer comes up in temperature from traditional storage such as refrigerators which are about 40 degrees. Way too cold for most beers to be served at anyway. By allowing the beer temperatures to come up CO2 is naturally released. So now we have provided two ways to minimize CO2 in beer. All in all I would say allow at least 15 minutes for both techniques to bring the beer up to it best. Both ways do more than release CO2 in the beer. It also provides a way for the beer to open up and display more appealing aroma and flavor attributes.

Color is a visual clue that is as deceptive as prejudice. In the world of beer domestic consumers have to wade through decades of marketing. Even today beer that is advertised as “light” or “lite” is brewed toward the palest spectrum of beer color.

The fact of the matter is that color of beer has little to do with being more alcoholic, heavy or filling. The contributing ingredient which allows the brewer to make beer as black as obsidian is a roasted barley which contributes very little to the beer other than color and flavor and aroma.

Roasted barley is much like a roasted coffee bean. Roasted barley has been so deeply kilned that any opportunity for the barley to contribute carbohydrates ( necessary for sugars and alcohol) has been eliminated through the process of kilning. Like a coffee bean what you get with a roasted barley is color and flavor and aroma. It take a very small percentage of the roasted barley to make a large contribution to color and flavor. I will say that the majority of darker beers which are in the market today do lean toward the sweet and alcoholic side. This why it is important to understand beer style.

There are several different dark beer styles out there that are not sweet or alcoholic. Look for dark lagers such as a Schwarz bier or even a dark American Lager. Lager beers can have a lower impression of sweetness due to the yeast used during fermentation. English brown ales, Brown Porters, and Dry Stouts are also good choices for dark beer without considerable alcohol content or residual sweetness which gives the impression of “heaviness” to a beer.

I’ve talked about sweetness in a beer contributing to the impression of feeling full. So now I will go into flavor as the third reason why people tell me they don’t like beer. Our palate or tongue or taste buds as you will has the ability to discern five flavors: sweet, salty, sour, bitter, and Unami. Lager beers which have dominated the market particularly after Prohibition have the upper hand in producing beers with a lower sweetness or residual sugar.

The secret behind this is the yeast used for these beers. Lager yeast a.k.a Saccharomyces uvarum has the ability to digest practically all sugars made available during the brewing process. Another attribute of the lager yeast is it’s ability to digest sugars very slowly and carefully at cooler temperatures found while being stored in caves in the Northern European area. As a result lager beers have the particular ability to be dry. Lager beers armed with this secret weapon have been able to corner the market of light or “lite” beers.

Beers that are dry are not as sweet or do not have the same residual sweetness as their sister beers ale. Ales are brewed with a different type of yeast. This yeast is probably closer to yeast used prior to the practice of lagering beers in caves in the Northern European area therefore are more like the beers brewed before the popularity of Pilsner beers in the 1800’s.

Ale beers are fermented with a yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiea. The fermentation period is fast and furious, leaving behind a flurry of residual sugars as well as other yeast by products such as aroma and flavor which will not be found in lager beers. I am not going to talk about these because I want to focus on what the tongue perceives. Which is the sweetness of the beer. Flavors do not contribute to this perception. If it did then our mother would not have told us to hold our nose when taking medicine which “taste” terrible. It is important to differentiate the difference between flavor and taste for the purpose of this discussion. Back to taste.
Residual sugars in beer not only give us the perception of a heavier beer but they also contribute sugars to our body. These sugars are responsible for the satiability of sweeter beers or beers with more residual sugar.

Having said that, I would like to talk a bit about the last subject: quantity
We can do something about the CO2 in beer by decanting the beer and allow the gas to escape. Allowing the beer to be brought up in temperature also allows the gas to escape. We can educate ourselves and others regarding the color of beer and its relativity to the perception of heaviness. Learning the difference between lager beers, ale beers, the contribution their respective yeast and residual sugars in relative beers give us the tools to understand beer choices and the contributions that yeast make to beers.

The last factor I am bringing up is not in the list of most common complaints I get from people who say they do not like beer. As a matter of fact, in my experience, quantity has never come up as an issue as to why people will tell me why they don’t like beer.
Who is going to complain about having too much beer? Certainly I am not, However the issue is in fact it is mine. When people tell me that beer makes them feel full they don’t associate the amount that is dispensed from the tap or poured from the bottle as contributing to them feeling full. Twelve ounces of anything is going to make a person feel full. Twelve ounces of water is going to make a person feel full! A serving of Distilled spirits is measured as an ounce. A serving of wine is measured as 4 ounces. Who said we had to drink 12 ounces of beer? It is no wonder people complain about beer making them feel full. What can you do about that? I will leave that up to the consumer. No pun intended. Actually, I did intend it.
Seriously, consumption is a factor. Hopefully we will consume less and enjoy more.  But don't blame it on the beer!

picture was copied from
http://toomuchnews.com/featured/what-you-need-to-know-on-how-to-lose-a-beer-belly/

Beer Pairing at the Imperial Hotel

Join me at the Imperial Hotel this Memorial Day Weekend for an afternoon of beer pairing.  Make it a day and reserve a room.  Follow the link for details.

2012 World Beer Cup Results

Congratulations California Brewers for doing such an outstanding job.

Follow this link for complete results.

Breweries Of The Gold Country

While some immigrants came to California to search for gold others came with their recipe for liquid gold: beer. The trail of the Gold Country follows what is also known as the Golden Chain Highway. Writers R. Scott Baxter and Kimberly J. Wooten start this journey at the southern most end of the chain, namely Oakhurst. The book is filled with vintage prints and captions. 

If the job of digging, mining and panning for gold was tough so was the business of brewing. Supplies for both were brought in by horse and wagon. Roads were narrow, treacherous, and at times impassable. Brewing beer called for heating large kettles. Fire was not only necessary ally but also an unfortunate foe. Most breweries would catch fire. The owners would sometimes rebuild several times. More often than not owners just did not have the insurance to rebuild and left the job of brewing to the next entrepreneur.
Refrigeration allowed larger breweries to ship beer to the mining towns where they were bottled and distributed. Promotional items from these larger breweries can be found in towns as far east as Angels Camp. True to tradition, brewery owners always had a photo shoot representing their families in all their finery. Successful brewery owners were typically well to do in their communities. Jackson Brewing Co. proudly supported the Jackson Brewery Baseball team. 
The blacksmiths at the Knight’s Foundery in Sutter Creek may have knocked out a few pieces of brewing equipment along with other mining gear. Buffalo Brewing Co. of Sacramento would given these two breweries a run for their money. 
Today if you wanted to see what was left of the Sutter Creek Brewery take a trip into town and stop in at Chaos Glassblowing Shop. The stonework of the granary is the only thing left, Even this is impressive and it is fun to let the imagination picture the activities that went on throughout the late 1800’s and the early 1900’s. 
The dilapidated remains of the Sloughhouse on Jackson Highway remain only a curiosity to those who moved to the area after the 1980’s. These old barns are the only clues left to the vibrant hop growing culture in the area. There was a time when someone driving from Sacramento to Highway 49 would be mesmerized by the oddity of these vines clinging to poles over ten feet tall. Some of the older locals will tell you that they spent their summers there as young people picking the crop to earn a dime. 
Brewing beer at home was not uncommon. Growing hops in the family garden provided only the freshest hops for their beer. 
If you make a small detour to Fiddle town, stop at the Schallhorn’s Blacksmith and Wagon Works. The construction of this building was identical to the brewery that used to be next to it. 
Traveling north along the Golden Chain Highway is the county of Placerville. Placerville is currently thriving in it’s industry of beer brewing. Placerville equally thrived during the Gold Rush era. Mason work of structures left behind can be seen. The Zeisz family who owned California Brewery and the Mountain Brewing Company owned by the Giebenhain’s are testimony of the industry in this part of the country. A plaque is all that marks the location of two breweries in Coloma established in the early 1850’s .
As you mosey on through Auburn, tales told about the breweries and their families are classic. Ties houses, augmenting income by soda sales, ice, and bottle works and family tragedies complete abound. Included is a mention of Brewery Lane which also held the reputation of being the Red Light district. These days a stop at Auburn Ale house. Is a good bet. Hold the drama. 
Baxter and Wooten wind down our journey Nevada and Sierra Counties. Remote as these areas may seem to us the business of beer was booming: City, New York, Washington, and Grass Valley Brewing Companies to name a few . One in particular is still standing at 107 Sacramento Street. 
Downieville held it’s own when it came to making quality beer. Mines were plentiful and what better way to store beer than in a cave. Downieville Brewing Co. took advantage of this natural feature and even mentioned it in its advertising. This is just a small shot of the wonderful tidbits drawn out by the efforts and hard research of R. Scott and Kimberly. A lot of fun can be had by tracing the breweries of the past with the breweries of the present which are referred to in part at the end of the book along with mentions of the Steam beer which was also a style popular in the area not just San Francisco.  Breweries Of The Gold Country illustrates the trials, tribuations and successes of brewers, breweries and beer during the Gold Rush era. 

The Visual Aspects of Beer Appreciation

Visual appeal of beer is understated. Visual aspects of beer evaluation are considerable. Good lighting cannot be underestimated when it comes to appreciating the finished product of a beer. The range of color in a beer as well as any highlights give us appealing cues to the beer in hand.

Growing up most of us enjoyed the descriptors of colors given to us by Crayola Crayons. We learned the difference between brown and sienna, umber and chestnut. We also learned about shading: dark, medium and light. Descriptors such as deep and pale provide additional shades to the colors we see in beer. Even the most myopic drinker can enjoy the visual cues of a beer by bring the glass close to the face and we may only assume that they are deeply appreciating their beer.

The American Society of Brewing Chemists came up with a clever scale for standardizing the color of beer. It is referred to as the Standard Reference Method. It is a very scientific method of determining the color scale of a beer. The scale ranges from 2 (similar to that of a very pale lager) to 70 ( similar to an Imperial Stout). This tool is used as a standardization of color This tool has become important to the brewing industry because consistency is a very critical marketing factor.

Another good reason for good lighting is to consider the clarity of a beer. Since the 1800s, beer clarity has held a premium alongside beer quality for some styles. Prior to the 1800’s the issue was not as important. The process of malting prior to the invention of indirect kilning imparted a dark color to beer at the time. Issues of fermentation also effected the clarity of beer prior to the 1800’s. It was the revitalization of such styles that led to the acceptance of darker colors and affected clarity in beers. Ingredients such as wheat and oat were brought back to beer styles, and have a significant impact on the clarity of a beer without filtration. Fermentation factors such as yeast flocculation and lagering also contribute to the clarity of a beer. If a brewer is looking to capture a style, recreate a style or even create a style which causes a beer to be dark or cloudy then those features are considered desirable by the consumer.

Let’s move on to another important aspect of visual aspect of beer evaluation, glassware.  While the style of glassware may not give visual clues to the beer, there are more important factors to take into consideration.
Quality glassware has no warping or discoloration. Tinted glassware is a huge faux pas. Dimpling, impressions and printing on glassware are a distraction.  When pouring for several people, it is important that the same type of glassware is used. Beer poured into an old fashion glass will appear darker than the same beer poured into flute glass.

Clean glassware is critical to beer. Nothing is worse than pouring beer into a glass that is tainted with detergent and having it effect the crowning glory of beer. The head.

The head of a beer is so important that it itself is evaluated on three things: color, retention, and texture. The color of a beers head can range from white as the driven snow to espresso. Retention of the head is indicated by the amount of proteins in a beer. Grain selection has a great deal to do with head retention. Alcohol content will also effect head retention. The more alcohol in a beer, the less head retention in a beer.  The alcohol content in a beer may be given away by the "display" of legs on the side of the glass.  The texture of a beers head can also range from meringue-like to lacey. Some Belgian beers are famous for their lace. Only a clean glass will give us the special qualities of such a attribute.

It is unfortunate that in competition so little scoring goes into the appearance of a beer. There are so many things one can determine from a beers appearance. However, it takes more knowledge and experience to evaluate aromas and flavors in a beer.

3rd Annual Capital Beer Fest was a blast.
It was great to see old friends and
make new ones.

It's That Time of Year Again!!!!

Click on this page to take you to view my event on Sacramento Beer Week page.  Click on Events to take you to a description of my event.

Which came first; beer or bread?

Agriculture was dependent on mans ability to sustain himself. The practice of agriculture required a perceived value in the grains cultivated since it required a settled lifestyle which was not typical of herders. The differentiation between hunters and gatherers was defined in the 10,000 BC primarily along 30 degrees latitude.
Farming and irrigation came much later in 5000 BC. By this time post glacial warming was in full swing, pottery making became an important way for gatherers to store cereals. Kilning was important not just for making clay pots but for metallurgy as well. All of these developments were parallel to the making of beer.
Like others I have toyed with the question which came first beer or bread. When I contemplate on the Ninkasi poem it is clear that the practice of making a loaf first answers the question but not in the way one might think. I propose that loaf making was done for the purpose of making beer and did not become a staple in itself until after the fact.

I recently purchased The Oxford Companion to Beer from Amazon. 


To tell you the truth I could hardly wait for its release.  The book is simply bound with blank end pages. The book jacket is very handsome.  It has very few photo plates considering the number of pages (a hefty 920) and amount of information in the book.

The Editor in Chief, Garrett Oliver brings elegance to the undertaking of the job which is well bore out in the Preface. Horst Dornbusch, Associate Editor as well as founder of Cerevisia Communications, is a great asset to the of compilation which is a massive undertaking for the subject.  Another heavyweight in the industry and advisory board to the publication is Charles Bamforth. It is difficult to undertake any serious research of beer without coming across his name.

While the book is very modest in print it is behemoth in content. The topical outline is comprehensive. Each subject is a wealth of concise information in relatively brief entries. Reading such an entry requires a great amount of meditation on the subject. A book of this depth is well overdue. No serious beer writer, researcher, aficionado or consumer should be without this book.