Friday Flick: Hop Harvest

Since we have a minor theme of hop harvesting going on, here are a couple of videos for your perusal.  First up, a promotional vid from the Oregon Hops Commission.  It's a bit long, but actually quite edifying if you can spare 8 1/2 minutes. (The music is weird and there is a minute and a half of blank tape at the end--but it's still worth a look, I swear.):

If you can't spare ten minutes, here's a shorter video by Ritch Marvin that covers the same material in 3 minutes. Ritch, incidentally, won best in show at this year's Oregon State Fair homebrew contest. He picked up the hardware for a Berliner Weisse.  Congrats to Ritch both for making a superior beer and having the good taste to brew a Berliner Weisse (something I fear is beyond my modest brewing talent).

Friday Flick: Cascade Apricot

I am slightly reluctant to post this, because a more shameless pitch for a brewery I have rarely seen.  And it's not like Gansberg and Cascade need any more press.  On the other hand, the beer in question is Satori-award-winning Apricot Ale, a beer that deserves its accolades.  And, for those of you who have never had the chance to hang with Ron, this gives you a taste of his sense of humor.

Friday Flick ... and a Mystery, too!

The good folks at Affligem (hard g) recently sent me an interesting package.  It included a bottle of beer and an embossed goblet--naturally--but also a wee cordial and an odd wooden serving tray.  A visual:

There are two mysteries here: what's the purpose of the cordial glass, and what am I supposed to put in that extra hole next to the bottle?  (You may glean a clue to question #1 here.)  Today's Friday Flick--which I shall embed below the fold to give you a chance to consider these mysteries--answers only one.  I invite your solutions to the unsolved mystery--and I'll even send out a copy of the nationally-touted Beer Tasting Toolkit if someone can convincingly answer it.  Have at it.

Friday Flick: Best Ad Ever?

Tallgrass (Manhattan, Kansas) is definitely in the running with this entry:

Friday Flick(s): Full Sail and Guinness

Today in Flicking, I offer you two good ones. Both are essentially ads, but extremely well-done. In the first, Full Sail has put together a little promo vid about their barrel-aging process (one I discussed here). It's clearly not an objective documentary, you get a nice sense of the brewery. For fans of Barney's ESB, you also get to see the brewer behind the beer.

(Incidentally, when I was at the brewery, Jamie Emmerson slipped me four beers from their personal stash of aging porters/stouts. A few nights back, we tried the '08 Top Sail and '06 Black Gold--both aged in bourbon barrels. These beers age beautifully. The Top Sail was remarkably fresh--not a trace of oxidation--and the flavors had sharp, clear edges. But the '06 was insane. Again, very little evidence of age except in a melding of elements along with the tiniest hint of vinous tartness. If you're buying these for the cellar, you're in for a future treat.)

The Art & Science of Bourbon Barrel Aged Beer from Full Sail Brewing on Vimeo.

Next up, for St. Paddy's, we have a really funny Guinness ad produced, I assume for the English market. When sketch comedy works, it's surreal and sublime. This works. Also, geezers who remember ads from the '70s will appreciate what appears to be an homage to, or at least unintentional resonance with, those old Rainier ads Gordon Bowker put together.

Friday Flick: St. Bernardus (Plus One Events Item)

The Lucky Lab Beer Hall is where big beer fans want to be today and tomorrow for the annual Barleywine Big Beer Festival. Matt Wiater has the full run down.

Apropos of that event, I offer you a brewery-produced virtual tour of the St. Bernardus brewery in Watou, Belgium. It's a bit over-produced, but you get a sense of what a typical traditional brewery looks like. (Elements of it remind me of Rochefort, Dupont, and St. Feuillien.) The brasserie at Westvleteren is one of the most intensely loved by beer geeks, but for my money, St. Bernardus makes beer of equal quality and far greater breadth--and I would probably put Prior 8 in my list of top twenty beers in the world. And hey, it's a good brewery for Lent, too (though not for everyone).

Friday Flick: John Bexon and Greene King's Five-X Vats

In Britain, "head brewer" is the term used for the master brewer, and in the larger ale breweries that usually means a man in loafers, not rubber boots. They oversee operations, head new product development, buy raw ingredients and so on--they don't haul grain sacks. The head brewer at Greene King over the past decade has been John Bexon, the man who took me on a tour of the brewery when I was there last month.

Despite some scorn locals heap on Greene King (too big, to acquisitive), it is one of the most traditional breweries in England, and to my American eyes, a real treasure of brewing history. The brewery recently spent 3 million pounds to replace old equipment, but unlike Adnams, decided to stick with old, quirky coppers. "We could have gone mash-filter, we could have gone lauter, but no, we said we’re staying with what we know. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Okay, we could have gotten a bit more efficiency by doing it, but I think you lose the authenticity." At a certain point in the last thirty years, every old brewery in Britain had to make a decision about whether and how to modernize, and they all answered the question a little differently.

Greene King went with tradition: an old tower brewery that does literally tower above the beautiful town of Bury St. Edmunds (see pictures below), beer is made much the same here as it has been for decades. One of the signature products--and one of the most important beers brewed in England--is Strong Suffolk Ale, sold in the US as Olde Suffolk. The beer is a part of living history, made by blending a young (mild) ale with vintage, 12% strong ale vatted two years on oak. This is a tradition that goes back centuries, but what makes Strong Suffolk important is that the vatted ale, called XXXXX, takes on the character of the wild yeasts that are resident in the wood of those old vats. Thankfully, more breweries are experimenting with wood-aged beer, but since Gale's has moved up to Fuller's, none from England have the continuity of using original oak vats like Greene King.

It's a remarkable product, one actually designated by the government by covenant--like Stilton cheese, which must be brewed in one of four counties--that can only be produced in Suffolk. Blended with between 10-17% old ale, Strong Suffolk has a malty base leavened with a vinous balsamic character. It's rich, warming, creamy, and elegant, like a Burgundy. If you can locate a bottle, you'll have a perfect winter ale to enjoy next to a roaring fire.

When we arrived at the vats, I asked John to stop and speak for a moment about them on video.



Some photos:

The view from atop Greene King over Bury St. Edmunds.

At Greene King, this counts as "push-button" brewing.

The mash tun.

Greene King has a campus of 44 acres, and subterranean pipes connect the brewery underneath Crown Street.

Square fermenters are common in British ale breweries--and are the norm at Greene King.

The tasting cellar.

Friday Flick: The Beer Hunter in Belgium

As Bob Massey, the man who posted an old, slightly dodgy VHS-transfer of Michael Jackson's Beer Hunter series from the 80s on Vimeo, put it: "I am posting this as a public service until I am told by the powers that be to remove it." In other words, it's probably an illegal reproduction, so watch in now. This episode is called "The Burgundies of Belgium." Enjoy!

The Beer Hunter - Burgundies of Belgium from Bob Massey on Vimeo.

Friday Flick: Adnams of Southwold

In just a shade under a month, I will be in Britain visiting a series of breweries for The Beer Bible. On November 10th, I'll be at Adnams, which is not only a famous family-owned brewery (I'll get to meet Jonathan Adnams, Chairman of the brewery), but also one of the greenest breweries in the world. They have pioneered a technology that converts spent grains into bio-gas (the bioenergy anaerobic digester). Today's flick is a tour of the brewery, including their green tech. It's a bit slickly corporate, but worth a look. Enjoy--

Friday Flick: Wells and Young's Re-Release a Venerable Brand

Wells and Young's used the GABF as the opportunity to launch beer that has a lineage going through the centuries and breweries--Courage Russian Imperial Stout. Writer Melissa Cole introduces brewer Jim Robertson. The event took place at Falling Rock in Denver.

Friday Flick: Firestone Walker's Burton Union System

Until three hundred years ago, brewing was a pretty small-bore enterprise. Much of it happened at the home level, and very little was what we could now call "commercial." The breweries of Burton upon Trent changed that when the region became the engine of English brewing in the 18th century. As they grew, brewers developed a process called the "union system" of brewing that involved a complex matrix of fermenting casks of ale. After a day of fermentation in a large vat, the beer was pumped into a series of connected casks, each fitted with a swan-neck rod that deposited expelled yeast into a capturing trough. The yeast and beer separated in the trough and the beer was returned to the casks. By 1890, every brewery in Burton used the system.

This was one point of innovation in a long line of automation, and by the 21st century the Burton union system was nearly extinct--only Marston's still uses it. Ah, but then things got a little brighter: Firestone Walker took up the art. It's a fascinating development, and this film captures it beautifully. Have a look:

Friday Flick: 1950's Promotional Vid

We often mock Soviet Union for its incredibly ham-fisted propaganda, but have a look at this 1950s promo for beer. It wouldn't even work as parody today--it's way too over-the-top. Which makes it all the more amusing. Enjoy--

Friday Flick: Fuller's Past Masters

This odd, cool, deeply wonkish video is worth your investment of ten minutes. Fuller's had the rather brilliant idea to reproduce beers from an archive of over 100 years of recipes. The idea almost certainly came from the work of a certain blogger (blogs, as you know, will save us) who has spent years poring through the tight scribblings in ancient brewing logs. But credit Fuller's for not only following Ron's lead and acting on the trove, but endeavoring to create a beer as close as is humanly possible to a 100+ year-old beer. (I especially like the reference to Oregon in the piece.)

If you'd like more background than the video provides, have a look at Ron's post on the subject.

For all the great beer America now brews, we have very little continuity to the old days. Yuengling, maybe, could do something like this, but not many more.

Friday Flick: Kriek Kamp

Today's movie is, what else--Kriek Kamp. One of the campers put together this video and sent me the link. I'm not sure he wants me to use his real name, but you can check out his other videos at his YouTube channel. Cheers--

Friday Flick: For the Love of Beer

This trailer speaks for itself, but I'll add that the world premiere will be here in Portland during the inaugural Portland Beer Week--August 20, 7:30, at the Bagdad.



Very cool.

Friday Flick: Geary's Brewing

I had the great pleasure to speak with David Geary of Geary's Brewing in Portland, Maine for about a half hour yesterday. Geary's brews two beers that I would call American classics--their Pale and London Porter. Both are brewed on a traditional Yorkshire system: open-fermented in "Yorkshire rounds" with a yeast originally from the Ringwood Brewery in Hampshire, England. (Geary's brews a beer called Hampshire Special Ale that has nothing to do with a neighboring state.) The yeast has been through so many generations that it is probably now more Mainer than English. It certainly behaves differently than the yeast at Gritty McDuff's and Shipyard, which started with the same strain.

This video doesn't capture quite the depth of our conversation, but it gives you a flavor. If you're ever on the East Coast, try to track down a bottle.

Friday Flick: Floor Malting

Today I have nice treat. This is a series on floor malting--the old-school method of malting barley that has died out in all but a few malteries in Britain. Some of them are at whisky distilleries, and that's where this footage comes from. However, except that the distiller uses peat to kiln their malt, the process is the same as with beer malt. I love especially that the kilns are old (200 years) and new (150 years). You can tell: they use coke to fire them, a fuel that was state-of-the art in about 1640. I doubt seriously Great Western is shoveling coke off railcar to fire their kilns. Anyway, here we go.

Part One: Floor Malting





Part Two: the Peat Fire





Part Three: The Kiln Floor

Friday Flick: Savor Flowers

The Brewers Association is dipping its toe in the waters of video production--and if this is any gauge, they're getting it right. This is FAR more effective as a craft-beer promo than that embarrassing "I am a craft brewer" thing. Showing guys making beer--that's the best promo there is.

Enjoy--

Friday Flick: Beamish Documentary

I don't think I'll find videos of this quality very often. But today's a good day for Friday Flick. This is almost a half hour long, so don't press play if you're looking for a short diversion. But do click play--this is fascinating.



Whoops. Apparently no embedding. No worries: you can watch it at Vimeo.

Friday Flick: Ezra Discussing the Fruit Beer Fest

This week's Friday Flick is a no-brainer. One of our own got on KOIN to promote the Fruit Beer Fest this weekend. (Hat tip to Brady, who posted this yesterday.)



Also remember that the Cider Summit is Saturday, so plan your weekend accordingly.