Fun Facts...

Via the Brewers Association.

In Kansas, for in-state breweries of 15,000 barrels or less no less than 50% of the agricultural products going into their beer must originate from the state of Kansas unless they are given a waiver due to the fact the products are not available in the state. Also, their label must spell out the proportion of Kansas' products used.

A bill currently before the legislature would remove this requirement. (Bill Text in pdf)

While requiring a brewery to obtain a certain percentage of their ingredients from its resident state may seem heavy-handed, the idea of adding the origin of the ingredients may tweak some interest. There is a move to emphasize locally grown and harvested agricultural products and craft breweries and have been a part of that move towards local and sustainable products.

Previously I pointed out the fact that we were experimenting with wheat supplied to us from a local farmer. It hasn't moved beyond some basic tasting trials, but it's a step in an interesting direction.

As rising grain and hop prices force brewers to re-examine their approach, some brewers may begin looking at alternatives to what they have done in the past. Recently the references to gruit, meads and other malt beverage styles have gone through the roof.

As for brewers incluing the origin and makeup of their ingredients on the label, that probably falls on TTB's don't list when it comes to labeling regulations. The data-gathering and management that would likely accompany such a move would swamp most brewers. Best to keep it light, and to keep the sales folk educated.

Hops increase, so does the industry

ProBrewer reports that hop production is up this year.

Hop production for Idaho, Oregon, and Washington in 2007 totaled 60.3 million
pounds, up 4 percent from the 2006 crop of 57.7 million pounds and 14 percent
above the 2005 production of 52.9 million pounds.

While not an enormous jump, the increase is a good sign that there is light at the end of the tunnel when it comes to the hop shortage.

The increase comes on the heels of continued growth in the craft beer industry. Also from ProBrewer:

Information Resources said craft beer sales rose 16.7 percent from $493 million in 2006 to $575 million in 2007, marking the second straight year of double-digit increases. IRI tracks sales only in the off-premise trade.

The report also notes that price increases made necessary by the jump in malt and hop prices is only now beginning to reach customers.

Increased prices hitting customers just as the economy dallies around the edges of recession may put a damper on growth as consumers look for bargains. That said, a slightly more expensive craft beer may still be perceived as an affordable luxury to those who have become craft beer drinkers.

Bière de Garde is back

Bière de Garde will shall return to store shelves soon.

Schlafly's first foray into the world of bottle-conditioned beers, the September 2007 release of the Bière de Garde, topped with its jaunty orange crown, has been well received.

This past week, a fresh batch of BdG was krausened and bottled at the Schlafly Taproom. This cousin to the Saison will now spend the next two weeks conditioning at about 70 degrees (give or take a few), before we cool it down to age.

Provided we hit the mark and the dash of freshly fermenting wort added to each bottle doesn't cause the CO2 to exceed the bottle's pressure rating, thus making small rockets out of the Bière de Garde bottles, we should have them back on sale within the month.

For those of you unfamiliar with bottle conditioned beer, a quick primer. A staple for homebewers seeking to carbonate their creations, the method has been used for centuries in brewing.

Bottle conditioning is often used as a finishing touch in the brewing process to provide carbonation, character or add stability to the beer.

The bottled beer is condition through the addition of yeast and sometimes priming sugar or wort to add carbonation.

By measuring the amount of sugar in both the fermenting beer and the amount of residual sugar in the beer to be conditioned, we know how much yeast/sugar mix to add to achieve our desired goal. In this case, a particular carbonation level as well as a certain finished character.

In addition to giving a well carbonated pour, the additional active yeast provides other benefits. The fermenting yeast consumes much of the remaining dissolved oxygen in the beer. Oxygen, of course, being one of the great enemies of beer quality. It can also consume some of the other compounds like diacetyl and acetaldehyde that may be undesired in a beer, depending on the style.

Bottle-conditioned beer continues to age and mature when kept at cellar temperatures of around 50° to 55°.

Schlafly Bière de Garde is ready to drink in a few weeks following bottling. While bottle-conditioning can give a beer the ability to age for some time, Bière de Garde is best consumed before too long. In the Belgian and French regions, the farmers would brew their Saisons and Bière de Gardes in the winter and then drink them while tending their fields from the late spring into early fall. Fortunately, Schlafly Bière de Garde will be available most of the year.

Anheuser-InBev?

Probrewer.com is reporting that talks between Anheuser-Busc, the U.S.'s largest brewer, and InBev, the world's second largest brewer.

The Post-Dispatch's Jeremiah McWilliams has more on the background.

"Although this is speculation, we think the potential for an InBev bid (for Anheuser-Busch) will dominate the discourse on A-B," Bear Stearns analyst Justin Hott wrote Friday in a note to investors. He said he does not believe Anheuser-Busch's management wants to sell the company.

Though cryptic about the company's strategy, A-B executives say they would consider buying a foreign brewer if the right option comes along.

"We are interested in international beer acquisitions that would enhance our growth profile," W. Randolph Baker, A-B's chief financial officer, said Thursday in a conference call with analysts. "If we have an opportunity, we would certainly pursue it."

Hop In It

In order to get the aroma and extra hit of hop in our dry-Hopped APA, we need, naturally, hops; and lots of them.

In this case, fresh Cascade hops. It's not exact, and sometimes we add more, sometimes less. It all depends on the quality of the hops. But the more the better.

It may not be the hop-bomb style that has developed a strong following the craft beer and homebrewer worlds, but its hoppiness is not to be denied.

The APA began it's life as a seasonal beer that was our version of a Hop Harvest. Being the hoppiest of our beers it soon developed dedicated fans who wanted to see it brewed more often.

A non-dry hopped version of the APA made its debut in 2004 as the Expedition Reserve APA, which was brewed to commemorate the Anniversary of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Again, the beer developed fans who wanted a pint of the hoppy brew year-round.

So, in 2005, the APA made its way onto the list of year-round beers.

The beer followed in the tradition of the highly-hopped American-style Pale Ales (where the APA's name originated). Over time, however, the desire for more hop flavor and aroma, propelled by our regular APA fans, led to some trials with dry-hopping in late 2006.

The trials involved trying several methods to best impart the hope flavor and aroma we looked for. For the smaller batches the Tap Room brews we suspend weighted bags of hops in a unitank and then move the beer into the tank.

At the Bottleworks, however, the concern was that the much larger volume would not pick up the hops evenly. Several methods were tried including a variation on the hop-back which circulated the beer through a pressurized vessel (the "hop-coffin" as it was known) containing the hops.

The method finally decided upon is similar to what is done at the Taproom. the beer is moved into a horizontal tank in which has the hops on the bottom and covered with domed stainless-steel screens. This prevents the hops from floating to the top and provides for more even exposure.

After getting the thumbs up from hop-heads within the company and our hop-craving customers, the operation was ramped up and officially became the Dry-Hopped APA.

The new beer required new packaging and as such you will now see the Dry-Dopped APA label on tap handles around town, as well as new bottle packaging in the stores.

Rack 'Em

If the aroma grew any stronger, folks might think Schlafly had gotten into the distilling business.

Yesterday, 33 bourbon barrels were filled with this year's batch of Schlafly's Special Reserve Imperial Stout. The beer will age in those barrels for the next several weeks with the specific date of bottling depending on how much flavor, and how quickly, the stout takes up.

Last year, the the beer took about two weeks to attain the desired character. A test barrel that was aged over two months knocked over even our most enthusiastic bourbon-aged brewer.

The aroma that flowed from the barrels as they filled was rich, sweet and far from delicate. A snoot-full of the stream blowing out as the barrel filled was potent, to say the least. Perhaps Missouri's decision to ban alcohol vaporizers was a wise move.

The imperial stout began it's life this spring as four consecutive 15-barrel brews knocked out into a 60-barrel fermenter. A brew that taxed our brewhouse's capacity, averaging 24° Plato. Our ever-voracious house ale yeast went to work on the malty giant, fermenting out in a few days.

Afterwards, the beer aged in the fermenter for months. We periodically sampled it to monitor the process. It's initial heat mellowed and rounded out; an important step as it is now introduced into barrels that bourbon formerly called home. We want to introduce a bourbon character, not set fire to the glass.

Peering into the barrels before flooding them with CO2 revealed a nice alligator-skin pattern to the char. As we went through filling the barrels, the entire cellar filled with the aroma of bourbon, roasted oak, and imperial stout. It drew several onlookers to whom the operation played "Pied-Piper." Though you wouldn't need a tucan's nose to figure out what we were up to.

After being bunged, the barrels went back up in the racks to age.

Bottles of the barrel-aged Imperial Stout will be available just in time to sip while Halloween goblins ring doorbells around the city.

Need a beer? Check the Brewfinder

In a foreign locale, or perhaps just an unfamiliar part of town, and you need a beer? Well, the Beer Mapping Project might be your ticket.

The folks behind the project take advantage of Google's mapping ability to plot the exact location of pubs around the country.

Check out our hometown, St. Louis, right here.

Remembering Michael Jackson

The Brewer's Association is hosting an online collection of remembrance for Michael Jackson. The compiling of messages is long so far. To add to our own thoughts send a message to mark@brewersassociation.org.

The Beerhunter Passes

Pints will be lifted the world over today in memory of one of the great, if not the greatest, beer writer of the century: Michael Jackson. Ever prolific and ever loquacious about his favorite liquids, Jackson's wriging cronicled the resurgence of interest in beer beginning in the 1970's.

Though writers are nothing if not argumentative, Jackson's work was often considered to be among the best by his fellow sribes.

More than merely creating a travelogue of pubs and breweries, or a laundry list of beers from around the globe, Jackson's writing doumented the life and craft of the still growing beer culture.

Jackson brought expertise without snobbery and love without question; he quaffed pints regarless of pedigree. From the finest craft brews wrought on moonless nights with closely guarded secrets or pulled from thousand-gallon tanks at the commercial level. No beer to was too pedestrian, nor too haughty. Each was appraised for what it was, not what others thought it should be.

Schlafly Features Local Wheat for Witbier

Schlafly Beer is continuing its commitment to local purveyors with the inclusion of Alhambra Wheat in this year's Witbier.

The Alhambra Wheat Company is located just across the river in Alhambra, Illinois. The unmalted soft red winter wheat grown by John Gorenz and his partners is ideal for witbiers and other wheat ales.

So far they have provided several sacks of herbicide-free and pesticide-free wheat for the brewery at the Schlafly Taproom. Some the wheat was used for the witbier, but there is talk of possibly experimenting with the Hefeweizen to see if it could be more regularly integrated into the beer.

Early in June, owner Dan Kopman, chief brewer Steven Hale and quality control manager Christian Artzner took a trip across the river to visit the farm at harvest time.

While there, they shared a pint or two with the crew as they watched over some of the harvesting operation.

They were even given a chance to take the massive combine for a spin around the field.

"It's like riding on an oceanliner," said Hale.

The Alhambra-accentuated Witbier will be available beginning this afternoon with the kickoff of Schlafly's Mussel Mania at the Schlafly Taproom, at 21st and Locust streets downtown. The festival features mussels and belgian-style beers such as Witbier and Belgian Dubbel.