Empty Growler now has actual Empty Growlers!

May 22, 2013
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You would think that a website called Empty Growler might actually have their own growlers. And up until now, it was just something we were talking about doing, but now, well, it’s a reality.

We partnered with our friends from MOTR Pub in Cincinnati for these fantastic growlers and we have to admit, it’s pretty amazing to see them finished and ready to take on whatever beer you want to fill them with.

They will be unveiled officially and available for you to purchase at our next MOTR tap takeover on June 19th in Cincinnati. We will also be giving a couple of them away here on EG, so stay tuned for that as well.

But until then, get excited for our event on June 19th, we have some great beers lined up yet again and will be sharing the full tap list very soon.

Link Flight: Sixpoint’s Grätzer, Hoppy Beer Battle, Decoding Beer Menus, More

May 17, 2013
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Inside the brewing of Sixpoint’s Mad Scientists’ series #14 Grätzer (A.K.A. Grodzisz). Brewmaster Jan Matysiak and head brewer Pete Dickson share about investigating and creating the rare smoked-wheat brew.

+ Slate says: “The craft beer industry’s love affair with hops is alienating people who don’t like bitter brews.” Read the article by Adrienne Ho. Bear Flavored Ales has a rebuttal. Personally, I am a fan of all beers and my interest in hop depends on the mood, the situation, and what’s available.

+ Whether you’re looking for hops or not at your local bar, here’s some information to help you decode beer menu names.

+ Now that you know what you’re getting into with the menus, here’s The 12 Hottest Craft Beer Bars in America Right Now as chosen by Eater.

Dark Lord Day 2013 sets a new standard for beer festivals

May 1, 2013
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Last year I gave you Dark Lord Day through the eyes of a total rookie. I talked about the bad weather, the cramped conditions and the amazing, amazing beer. Well, one of those three things are worth talking about after this years fest, and thankfully, it’s only the return of the great beer.

If you spend any time on the forums over on BeerAdvocate, you know that the questions were flying non stop leading up to this years Dark Lord Day. Would the ticket buying process improve? Would the Floyds do something to curb second hand sales of tickets? Would it be at the park? What would the variants be? What about the allotments?

Part of the reason for all of these questions is that Three Floyds keeps information pretty close to the vest. After all, it’s not like any of us won’t show up if they change things up, we want the experience, we want the Dark Lord!

So with plenty of questions and just enough doubt, I stumbled into a ticket again for DLD, and after that there is no going back, literally. After all, this year when you bought a ticket they stamped your name on it, so good luck selling it on StubHub for quadruple the price you paid. And they also doubled the price (to 30$) of the ticket, which gives you nothing more than the RIGHT to stand in line in Munster, Indiana. And it darklordlineturns out, they didn’t decide to just let the bartenders follow a metal band on tour or get their full back tattoo pieces finished, they actually used it to improve the festival experience!

Going from 2012 to 2013 was like going from a backyard BBQ to an actual festival. I know the event has grown like crazy in recent years, so it was quite a treat to show up and see Port-O-Lets as far as the eye could see and an gigantic area full of picnic tables and even a legit music stage. Yep, we didn’t know where we were at first. But after the shock wore off, it turned into the best beer festival you could ask for. Why? Well here are 25 reasons off the top of my head, in no particular order.

1) Fantastic weatherwhitechocbt
2) More room to roam
3) Mostly great people all around
4) New Dark Lord bottle art
5) The brewpub was closed, so less reason to get there super early
6) Cycle Brewing Nooner
7) Jackie O’s Oaky Golden Pucker
8) 2009 Fred From The Wood
9) Bells Batch 7,000
10) Hill Farmstead What Is Enlightenment?
11) White Chocolate, Chocolate Rain and Black Tuesday side by side by side
12) 3 Liter bottles of Supplication and Temptation
13) Barrel Aged Speedway Stout
14) Beachwood Full Malted Jacket
15) Mother Of All Storms
16) 10th Anniversary Utopias
17) Cantillon Iris
18) Three Floyds Cat Moves
19) Jolly Pumpkin La Roja Grand Reserve
20) Hill Farmstead Vera Mae
21) Cantillon Blåbær Lambik!
22) Sun King Pappy Van Muckle
23) 2011 Bourbon Barrel Dark Lord
24) BA Dark Lord with Vanilla Bean
25) BA Dark Lord Moscatel

Yeah, that was just some of the highlights of this years Dark Lord Day. The only low point was the long wait in line to buy our allotment of Dark Lord this year. I was in Group D and there were several bottlenecks which kept us waiting for nearly three hours. But at the end, I was happy to get my allotment, plus a bottle of Moscatel Barrel Aged Dark Lord. And with empty pockets and full backpacks we left another Dark Lord Day. The best one yet, and hopefully not the last for me.

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(Yes, I’m drinking Bourbon Barrel Dark Lord. This picture kinda proves it.)

How was your Dark Lord Day experience?

Ommegang’s Brewmaster Phil Leinhart Talks Game of Thrones Release Schedule, Collaborations, more

April 25, 2013
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Last summer I visited Ommegang in Cooperstown for my brother-in-law’s bachelor party weekend. The beauty of their location is unforgettable, and I find myself referring to the photo I took above of their outdoor patio in moments when I need to go to a peaceful place in my mind.

Ommegang’s Brewmaster Phil Leinhart has been with the company since 2007. Prior to joining the organization, Phil had spent time at Siebels Institute of Technology in Munich, Germany, and had worked for Anheuser-Busch, Manhattan Brewing, Harpoon Brewery, and Paulaner Brauerij. I had the opportunity to speak with him earlier in the month when he was visiting NYC. We spoke about his history with the brewery, collaborations, the schedule of Game of Thrones beers, and more.

Robert Duffy: At this point, what’s your average day like? How much time do you get to spend brewing, versus doing beer, press, etc?

Phil Leinhart: I have a team and I am not on the floor brewing really. I have a team of great brewers that I direct. I’m more involved in larger projects right now, the bigger picture.

RD: How big is the brewing team?

PL: Right now we’ve got eight full time brewers.

RD: What were the first beers that you consider your beers at Ommegang?

PL: All the beers have to go through me. At Ommegang we have an innovation manager, Mike McManus, and he is responsible for formulating beers on the pilot system and brewing them, whether those recipes come from him or other brewers or from me and then we go through a process of tweaking recipes, test brewing, tasting, test brewing again, tasting …

Every beer doesn’t originate with me. We have several brewers who are good brewers. They have recipes from home brewing or whatever and it’s a way to let them spread their creative wings, so to speak, and because, like I say, I operate on many different levels.

Formulating a beer is a very small thing and that’s the way it works. In fact the Game of Thrones recipe came from one of our brewers, Justin Forsyth, and it’s a not a complex malt brew or anything, but he just did a nice job of balancing the different malts to get that color and that little bit of residual sweetness, with the honey malt.

It’s just a common question with people who aren’t in brewing think everything is about formulating the beer and it’s actually a very small part. I like to say it’s the tip of the iceberg. Definitely the recipe is important, but just as, if not more important, is how you process that recipe. Read more »

Beer Beer Goggles

April 11, 2013
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I hope to use “hop blocking” in a conversation soon.

The night we drank all the Bourbon County

April 8, 2013
By

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They called it the Bourbon County Stout tasting to end all Bourbon County Stout tastings. Well, maybe I just called it that because the lineup was phenomenal. If you like Goose Islands sometimes elusive, always amazing Bourbon County Brand Stout, abbreviated affectionately by beer dorks everywhere as BCBS, or BCBCS or BCBVS or well, you get the idea. Then this tasting is one you might dream about.

We didn’t end up tasting every Bourbon County Stout and variant ever created, but it was damn close and there were some ‘custom’ variants and desserts to offset whatever might have been missing. Here was how things went down.

The first blind wave…

To start we had four different Bourbon County vintages put in front of us. We didn’t know what years would be represented, but were told that the 2006 and the 2012 were part of the mix. What ended up happening though is we were lied to. It’s true that the 06 and 12 were in front of us, as well as the 2009. What we didn’t know was that Bourbon County Rare had been substituted as the fourth blind competitor. I’m not going to lie, I gravitated towards the Rare right away. Of the four glasses it was the one I couldn’t stop drinking. So, naturally I thought it had to be the 2006 vintage.

I ranked them blind this way.bc3
1) Bourbon County Rare
2) 2006 Bourbon County
3) 2012 Bourbon County
4) 2009 Bourbon County

Among our group, this is how it shook out.

1) Rare – 8 1st place, 4 2nd place
2) 2012 – 4 1st place, 7 2nd place
3) 2006 – 1 1st place, 2 2nd place
4) 2009 – lots of last places…

What can we learn from this blind tasting? Well, first off, Rare is still badass and even though a couple people didn’t rank it #1 or even #2. The 2012 batch, which many have said is as good fresh as any in the past, is tasting fantastic still about 7 months since bottling, and the 06′ is decent, although most agreed is past its prime. Also, the 2009 was weird, it had a bit of a acidy taste in my opinion. Either it’s at an awkward stage or just wasn’t a great batch.

We didn’t go blind with the rest of the BCBS stuff, but here are my personal tasting rankings for the other stuff we tried, along with the blind beers.

1) Bourbon County Vanilla (2010): This was my first Vanilla taste and it didn’t let me down at all. Not only does it smell amazing still, but the vanilla finish is simply fantastic.

Recommendation: Trade for it like a madman!

2) Bourbon County Rare: Like I said before, still a badass beer and almost a 1a ranking for me. It’s still plenty boozy with just enough of those Pappy barrels tingling on the tongue.

Recommendation: Trade for it like a madman!

3) Bourbon County Cherry Rye: The most recent BC variant in our tasting really surprised me this time. I’d had it before and enjoyed it but didn’t feel the need to go out of my way to acquire more. bc2But now I just might. The cherry is toned down just a tad and isn’t cloying whatsoever. If you don’t like cherry, it doesn’t matter, this is a great beer.

Recommendation: Get your hands on a bottle.

4) Bourbon County Stout (2010 / 2006 / 2011): I’m grouping these together because they were all excellent and it would be tough to rank one ahead of the other. The 06′ wasn’t a favorite for many when tasted blind, but I found it mellow, smooth and really tasty. The 2010 and 11′ were both fantastic and just about in their prime in my opinion. I don’t know the ideal age for BCBS, but if I had a gun to my head I would say two years.

Recommendation: Drink the 06 now. Drink the 2010 now and sit on the 2011 a little longer if you have the patience.

5) Bourbon County Stout Coffee (2012): This years Coffee version is still tasting really really good. The Intellgentsia Coffee or maybe it’s still just fresh enough but I really loved it. I had another bottle back in December though and there was more coffee present, so as you might expect, the fade is on.

Recommendation: Drink it if you have it as soon as possible.

The rest of what we tried, with minimal notes. (Sorry, it was a lot)

Bourbon County Stout 2012: It’s only 7 months old but it really might end up being one of the best batches ever. I can’t wait to try this again at the one year mark, and the two year mark.

Recommendation: Hoard it.

Bourbon County Stout 2007, 2008: These two were very close for me. Neither was particularly offensive but neither stood out enough to rank them any higher.

Recommendation: Trade it.

Bourbon County Coffee (2010): I was really surprised to still get a solid coffee flavor when tasting this one. If I was drinking it along I’d probably rate it higher, but next to the 2012 it wasn’t as good.

Recommendation: Drink it now.

bc1smallBourbon County Bramble Rye: It’s been compared to Bourbon County plus Robitussin by many and it’s still not difficult to see why this was one of the least popular BC variants. It still has a heavy raspberry and blackberry flavors but the rye whiskey barrel is almost non-existent to me at this point.

Recommendation: Trade it.

We also got to try Bourbon County Stout aged in a coconut for three days, which was better than you might think, and BC with peanut and chocolate, which I hope becomes an official variant in the future.

My recipe for Bourbon County cupcakes was utilized, and there were three types of Bourbon County Ice Cream on hand as well.