Beer

Joining the Brewcasters this week is Bill Covaleski, the brewmaster and president of Downingtown’s Victory Brewing Company, one of the cornerstone breweries of the modern craft beer movement. Founded in 1995 by Bill and childhood friend Ron Barchet, Victory has gone from under 2,000 barrels in its first year to more than 93,000 in 2012. Covaleski shares a lot of information on some of the 45 yeast strains they use out of their lab. Another tidbit…remember Wild Devil (and yes some of the carbonation issues)? Victory plans to get into Brett fermentation again soon after the new brewery opens. Listen >> The Brewing Network.

(Freeport, ME) – Maine Beer Company co-founder, Dave Kleban, joined the Beer Hear! podcast recently to chat about what’s new at the brewery. The company now operates out of a new facility in Freeport, Maine, where it brews on a 15-barrel system. Initially, Kleban, who founded Maine Beer Company with his brother, did not want to expand beyond 3,000 barrels a year in production capacity. They later realized that he needed to hire additional people which required additional revenue. That and the Klebans run a top-notch lab, one that Kleban thinks is more advanced than some breweries 20x their size, so the revenue covers those expenses as well. The new cap for Maine Beer Co. will now be set at approximately 6,800 barrels of beer a year and Kleban doesn’t anticipate growing beyond that. They aim to brew 6,500 barrels next year after new tanks are in and a building addition is completed. That would be 3x what the brewery produced in 2012. Kleban also touches base on mistakes and successes. One mistake was originally naming what is now known as Peeper Ale as Spring Peeper Ale despite not intending it to be a seasonal. One success has been the simplistic labels (generic white with a small piece of artwork in the center). Despite early detractors, Kleban pressed on with a ‘less is more’ approach and it worked. The company saved money and the bottles stand out on shelves in a crowded marketplace. Finally, while Kleban didn’t mention it on the podcast, Maine Beer Company just released two new bottled beers: Another One IPA and Weez IPA.

In one of Stone’s geekiest accomplishments, CEO & Co-founder Greg Koch reached out to Wil Wheaton of Star Trek and Stand By Me fame to brew a beer with us, along with Drew Curtis, creator of fark.com. Drew Curtis/Wil Wheaton/Greg Koch Stone Farking Wheaton w00tstout is a delicious amalgamation of wheat, rye, pecans, and dark-roasted malts. More >> Hop-Con: The w00tstout Launch Festival.

Press Release: (San Francisco, CA) – Anchor Brewing announces its latest collaboration with the San Francisco Giants –a limited edition Anchor Steam® San Francisco Giants 12-Pack. On March 26, 1903–seven years after Anchor Brewing began making Anchor Steam® Beer near San Francisco’s Russian Hill–the team that would become known as the San Francisco Seals played its first Pacific Coast League game. Since that fateful day, Anchor Steam Beer has become inextricably linked with the Bay Area baseball experience as San Francisco’s beer. In recent years, Anchor Brewing has partnered with two-time World Series Champions, the San Francisco Giants. Together these iconic San Francisco institutions created the Anchor Plaza and Taproom at AT&T Park which serves Anchor Steam®, Liberty Ale®, and more alongside Anchor’s latest addition to their core beer line-up, Anchor California Lager®. The partnership was recently renewed through the 2017 season and expanded to include the introduction of an Anchor Brewing suite experience at AT&T Park as well as the Anchor Corral at Scottsdale Stadium, the Spring Training home of the Giants. In celebration of the SF Giants’ 2013 season and our longstanding partnership, Anchor Brewing has released a limited edition Anchor Steam 12-Pack with specially designed packaging. The commemorative pack features the team’s colors and logos along with the brews and baseball history notes printed on an interior flap. Fans can cut along the sides of the box for instant signs to cheer on their team during games. Lift the pack and fans will find the Giants game schedule printed on the underside. This limited edition SF Giants 12-pack is available now and throughout the season while supplies last at select retailers throughout Northern California, Nevada, southern Oregon, and Hawaii. Anchor Brewing’s video tribute to San Francisco’s rich brews and baseball tradition can be viewed by visiting www.youtube.com/anchorbrewing. A shortened version of the video will also be shown to fans at select Giants home games throughout the 2013 season. Learn more about Anchor Brewing at www.anchorbrewing.com. About Anchor Brewing Company Anchor Brewing Company’s roots date back to the California gold rush making it one of America’s oldest breweries. Its Anchor Steam® Beer is San Francisco’s original since 1896. In 1965, Fritz Maytag acquired and revived the struggling brewery at a time when mass production of beer dominated and seemed unstoppable. Maytag started a revolution in beer that originated today’s craft beer movement. An undisputed icon, Anchor is America’s first craft brewery where beers are handmade in our traditional copper brewhouse from an all-malt mash. At Anchor, we practice the time-honored art of classical brewing, employing state-of-the-art methods to ensure that our beers are always pure and fresh. We know of no brewery in the world that matches our efforts to combine traditional, natural brewing with such carefully applied, modern methods of sanitation, finishing, packaging and transporting. See what we are brewing today at www.anchorbrewing.com. About the San Francisco Giants The San Francisco Giants are dedicated to enriching the community through innovation and excellence on and off the field. One of the oldest franchises in Major League Baseball, the 131-year old franchise moved to San Francisco from New York in 1958. After playing a total of 42 years in Seals Stadium and Candlestick Park, the team moved to the privately constructed AT&T Park in 2000. The organization is widely recognized for its innovative business practices and baseball excellence. In 2010, the franchise was named the Sports Organization of the Year by Street & Smith’s Sports Business Journal and in 2012 was named Organization of the Year by Baseball America. Since opening its gates, AT&T Park has become internationally-renowned as a premier venue in the world of both sports and entertainment. On the diamond,

The 2013 legislative session in Albany is quickly approaching its end, so here’s an update on some of the latest beer-related legislation coming out of the State Capitol. Here’s a rundown of the liquor law reforms that impact the beer industry in New York that we’re keeping an eye on as the state legislature convenes for its final week of the season. More >> Brew York.

The bill, released Monday, would allow farm owners to make up the 150,000 gallons of cider each year, provided that it is made entirely with New York products. The measure would create a new license for farm cideries, which would allow them to host tastings and sell New York-made beers and spirits, as well. More >> Albany Watch.

The Cazenovia village board unanimously agreed on June 11 to change the zoning of Empire Brewing Company’s land on Route 13 from a residential to a Planned Development District, and also to amend the village code to allow the milling of flour, feed or grain in the village. Both actions allow Empire to move forward with its project to build a farmstead brewery in the village of Cazenovia. More >> Cazenovia Republican.

Already, some 50 brewers have expressed an interest in Hawley malts, from some larger craft brewers to guys still brewing private stock in a garage, Ted said. The passage of the bill also created another opportunity for the Hawleys. They were able to apply for and receive a $117,000 state grant, which allowed them to immediately double the size of their operation. Eventually, Ted believes the Hawley house will produce 150 tons of malt a year, but he’s starting out small — 1,000 pounds a week. Update: recent video interview. More >> The Batavian.

Beer is king in Pennsylvania. Tom Corbett is just governor. Those facts played out Tuesday when a Republican state senator unveiled his long-awaited plan to privatize liquor sales in a way vastly different and much slower than the two-year proposal favored by Corbett and the Republican-controlled House. More >> MCall.

AmericaAs we sidle up to Independence Day, I thought it might be nice to think about the good old US of A. Compared to the likes of Germany and Belgium, our contribution to the world beer canon is ... modest. It is however, real, a fact I think we sometimes forget. When I was writing the Beer Bible, I had to deal with a strange collection of oddities that don't fit in neatly with the idea we have about style and tradition--things like the place of corn and Northwest hops and our strange invented styles that we didn't intend to invent (amber ale, "Scotch ale," etc.). All of that got me thinking about America's role in brewing.As I traveled the world, I learned that brewers tend to have fixed ideas about how you brew a beer, and these are shared throughout a country. So, for example, you have single-infusion mashes in British cask ales breweries, and the regular use of sugar--but never beet sugar. (An abomination.) In Belgium you have things like cereal cookers and sugar--often beet--and the most important feature, the warm room where bottles rest for a month during secondary fermentation. German beer is all about the malt, and in the Czech Republic you almost always see a four-vessel brewhouse designed for decoction mashing. One could say a lot more, but you get the picture.Brewers also maintain certain national orientations that surprised me, like the way they would go about constructing color and flavor in a beer. English and Belgian brewers use sugars, including dark sugars, so they might add a touch of these for color. Their beers tend to be thinner and crisper than beers elsewhere. That's why, when you try a Belgian-brewed hoppy beer, it's often screamingly bitter: there's not a lot of unfermented crystal malt to sop up the BUs as is the American way. Germans, though, never use sugar, so they might add color with Munich malt. They each think about beer differently. So, how does an American think about beer? (I'm mainly thinking craft brewers--we'll come around to mass-market brewers later on.) Below are a few key markers that make Americans stand out in a crowd.American base malt. I didn't understand malts until I went to Germany and the Czech Republic. I should have gotten an inkling of the power of base malts when I went to the UK and Belgium, but I'm a slow learner. North American barley is a powerhouse of convertable sugar and enzymes, and give you a nice foundation on which to pile specialty malts. It doesn't have ton of character on its own (unlike those soft German malts and aromatic Czech malts). Americans get their flavor from specialty malts, especially .... Caramel/crystal malt. This is the real tell. Americans love love love crystal malt. It is versatile to a point, giving beer body and flavors that range from caramel/toffee to dark fruit, but it is also a really obvious component. I've seen American brewers build, for example, dubbels and dunkels out of crystal malt--things Belgians and Germans would not do. Probably Ken Grossman gets the most credit/blame: Sierra Nevada Pale is in many ways the ur-ale in America, and it has that rounded body and classic dollop of caramel flavor at its center. I'd say this is at least as an important marker as vivid hopping--though native drinkers may not realize it. Northwest Hops. This doesn't need a lot of explanation. It's the thing we're most famous for, the most obvious and flashy part of our beers. We like 'em early, we like 'em late, we like 'em dry. Just yesterday Zymurgy released the results of its latest readers poll, and nine of the ten most popular beers were hoppy. There are lots of beers brewed in the US, but the beers everyone thinks of as characteristically "American" have our distinctive, citrusy/floral hopping.Strength and intensity. American brewers aren't minor key kinds of guys. They brew like John Philip Sousa. Beers are rarely brewed below 4.5% and a good many are stronger than 7%. When we make hoppy beers, we make da