The Legendary Boonville Beerfest

I look forward to meeting those of you who will be able to make it out to Boonville this year for their Legendary Beerfest. So much, that I thought it would be fun if my dear friend Ashley, from DrinkWithTheWench.com and I hosted a tweet-up! As time grows closer to tomorrow festivities I have started to see far more tweets, Instagram tags, and Facebook posts than I have for the beerfest in previous years. There is more social media buzz--not just from attendees but also from breweries that will be pouring. It warms my heart to see the use of social media now more than ever in the craft beer industry because it's free to use and can truly make or break a customer experience.

So if you are in attendance tomorrow, please come say "Hi" at 2pm at the gazebo on the west side of the fairgrounds. Even if you don't have a twitter account, come and meet fellow Instagrammers and Facebook flockers and let's cheer to one of the best beer fests in the nation!

Read More

Modern Times calls for Modern Funding

Are you searching for the raddest new brewery coming your way? End your search at Kickstarter.com by helping out one of the most promising groups of guys to fulfill their dreams of opening Modern Times Brewing Company. The brainchild of Jacob McKean, former social media guru at Stone Brewing, Modern Times promises to deliver with beautifully minted canned beers and a solid sour beer program. With the support of his family and friends McKean bravely left Stone to seek his fortune as the next San Diego brewery rockstar.

Let it be known, he is not going it alone. He has an amazing team that includes one of the coolest brewers I have had the opportunity to meet: Derek Freese. I found Derek wandering around a local beerfest grumbling about the music and saving me from tasting a beer I didn't really want in my mouth. My new friend was no other than the head brewer at Monkey Paw. What blew me away the most was that was his first professional brewing gig—this man has talent!

Months pass and I learn that Derek has a new project on the brain: Modern Times. His enthusiasm is contagious: “If you talk to Jacob about his vision for Modern Times, understand the passion involved with the other people coming on board, and realize that stepping into a brewery like this could be a lifelong career, you'd see why it was a no-brainer. We're going to kick ass.”

Derek isn't the only beerstar involved with Modern Times. The beer [ninja] team includes Lost Coast Brewing's Head Brewer for the last 2 years, Matt Walsh, who has done amazing things at the brewery up in Eureka. There's also Alex Tweet from Ballast Point, and fellow blogger Mike Tonsmeire of the famed Mad Fermentationist.

Knowing you’re going to kick ass is an envious place to start, however, funding is of course always needed to make dreams come true. Jacob has a strong team of brewers and industry experts backing him, and now he’s looking for some investors via Kickstarter.  

I am very excited about their session beer lineup, their snazzy looking cans, and I’m especially looking forward to the sticky-icky "Hoppy Dankness." I encourage all of you to please check out their kickstarter and for as little as $10 get some very sweet rewards. This is your chance to directly support craft beer in San Diego; help Modern Times open their doors by early summer!

.

Read More

IRON MAIDEN BEER

No, I didn't fall asleep listening to Powerslave on repeat-- my favorite band just brewed a beer.

Iron Maiden- musicians, artists, soccer players, heroes, pilots, and now brewers. The excitement and emotion I feel at this very moment, watching worlds explode in a rainbow if magic and malt,  is paralyzing. So a word from Bruce Dickinson:

Read More

Why I Joined The Pink Boots Society

Women in craft beer have always been a hot topic in the industry. Everything from marketing, event promoting, industry related conferences, and even the macro beer discussion has at some point discussed the issue of “women relating to beer.” If you haven't read about my angle on the “women's” debacle before, I encourage you to visit my “Women in Beer” post from a couple years ago.

When I was last up in Portland I went to a special viewing of For The Love of Beer, a fantastic documentary that provided an honest and inspiring look into the spirit of the women involved in the craft beer community. I enjoyed that the film took the stance of portraying these women based on their individual contributions, and not needlessly playing up their gender roles. Women in general find stereotypes inflammatory whether they come from the angle of extreme frills or the angle of women trying to be men--it's a surefire way to get many of us up on our soapboxes. The way this movie presented the concept was simple and amazing: we do it for the love of beer--that is all. Viewing this movie prompted some self-reflection into my own personal experiences as a woman and my ever growing involvement in the beer industry.

It took a long time for me to decide to join the Pink Boots Society (PBS) for many reasons, including the paradigms surrounding being in a “sisterhood.” I feel like many female focused societies get a reputation as “women who lunch”--fund raising, fashion shows, extravagant parties to raise money that cost more than they produce. While this characterization is perhaps overboard, allow me to banish these thoughts when it comes to PBS. The Pink Boots Society has two official meetings a year, Craft Brewers Conference and the Great American Beer Festival, making them much more accessible to participants than so many other woman's social groups that try to limit their members through financial barriers and temporal constraints. Many of us will already be at these events and an extra meeting is in no way a burden to its members. Most importantly, membership requires you to be a woman who is actively employed by the industry. That's all. This alone eliminates any image of PBS only being a social club because it's a group strictly for professionals.

Why have a group that is dedicated strictly to women? I will be the first person to get on my soap box if I feel that I am being pegged as a lesser being for something being pink, or frilly, or “dumbed down” for me since I'm a woman. I also don't want to be categorized as attempting to be masculine even if I do think craft beer is “rock n' roll.” I don't think joining a “sorority” is working against the dream of gender neutrality in the craft beer industry. I strongly believe that an organization built for the purpose of encouraging strong female leaders in the beer industry is beneficial for brewing as a whole, the future of craft beer, and will help with strides towards more meaningful gender integration.

I am very excited to start my journey with such wonderful group of inspiring women, and I hope that my future contributions will be equally meaningful. I am proud to be new member of the Pink Boots Society.

Read More

Cans vs Bottles: Myths Busted

By now many of you have seen SierraNevada's big green tall boys on the shelves of your local bottle shop. Maybe you've been searching for some of that delicious GoldenRoad and only been able to find cans. No longer is the “Silver Bullet” for tasteless macro brews and soda pop--its popularity with the craft brewing community is growing everyday.

Much like the controversial “natural cork vs synthetic” argument in the wine industry, canning has been on the table of “flavor and tackiness” for some time now. What are the arguments against canning and do they have any validity or are they simply “old husbands tales”? I decided to do some research and find out for myself.

c.2012 M. Mioduszewski.

During the Craft Brewers Conference in San Diego I had the opportunity to sit down with the fine people of Crown Holdings. Crown Holdings creates the cans for Big Sky Brewing and Wachusett Brewing Companies. I wanted to hear about the process and couldn't have been more surprised by what I learned. Crown holds itself to some of the highest standards in the industry, through innovation and improvements on what is considered the most effective of packaging since the 1800's. They start by purchasing aluminum sheets and through a series of stamps and punches create a cylinder with a bottom on it and a separate top with an opener and perforated spout (to be added later at the brewery). They coat the inside of the cans with a special FDA-regulated coating which many canning companies do not make public because they are constantly trying to update and improve these coatings but I did get a fairly comprehensive answer after scouring some engineering and recycling forums online. The coating is a food safe polymer with vinyl-based resins (comestible polymeric coating) meant to keep metal particles (or metal salts) from migrating into the beer. This polymer is also impenetrable by anything other than industrial grade solvents or tremendous heat (as it is removed by most recycling plants) making it impossible to be eaten away by natural enzymes and acids that break down metals. Back pre-1980's before cobalt salts were regulated in beer (See History of Lite Beer) many people reported a metallic taste that came from drinking canned beers. This may not just have been naturally occurring in the beer but perhaps truly occurring in early cans that weren't coated with as sophisticated polymers as today's cans are. After coating the insides of the cans, topless wraps are sent through a screen printer to print the design appearing on the outside of the can, packaged, and shipped off to their designated breweries.

When I visited Oskar Blues Brewing out in Colorado they walked me through the canning process explaining how they ensure quality in flavor from the fermenting barrel to the can. Much as with bottling, they fill the cans using a counter-flow CO₂ displacement filler that pre-charges the cans with CO₂ and then pours the beer in to push the CO₂ out the top, leaving a healthy foam head. Using a CO₂ knife they cut the head level to the top of the can and float the can top on it before crimping it down. Unlike a bottle cap that is shaped more like a dome leaving room for air, the can tops are flat leaving no room between the carefully cured top and the foamy head. By keeping the oxygen out they are keeping the beer fresher longer by effectively preventing any oxidation.

As far as taste goes, canning seems to be the best option for keeping all the good flavors in, and all the bad flavors out of beer. Also, since oxygen is more limited in canning than in bottling, the chances of your beer becoming oxidized is decreased considerably. The other most obvious point to note is that aluminum is impenetrable by sunlight--keeping those pesky UV rays out of the beer. I think it's safe to say that canning is good for the beer, and metal being an infinitely recyclable product it's good for the earth too.

But wait there's more! I've heard many a beer snob say “...but it looks tacky to drink out of a can!” Don't worry I addressed this issue as well.

I consulted the co-founder of one of the original can-only breweries in San Francisco: 21stAmendment's Shaun O'Sullivan, who complains “So many times I end up talking more about the packaging than about the beer itself.” When they first started production it seemed to them that canning being environmentally sound and beer-safe was a no-brainer, but also that it was perfect for people with an active lifestyle as well. “I want to go sailing or hiking, not hauling a bunch of bottles with me everywhere I go” says O'Sullivan, who points out the portability of cans before and after the beer has been consumed. He also stresses that unless you're out and about on an adventure, please kindly pour your Monk's Blood into the appropriate glassware because “a can is just a small keg, not always a drinking vessel” and we all love beer from kegs!

Read More