Beer Diary...

This is part two of a two part guest post by Brady Umfleet. Stop #7 Eddyline Brewing Author Brady Umfleet This brewery is located in Buena Vista a town north of Salida. This is a difficult to find place. It is in a faux area of downtown, you know one of those that developers build to make it look like it is part of some other development. There is a main street in Buena Vista. But then there is South Main Street where the brewery is located. Walking in you get the out door sports vibe. A very small bar of about 4 stools is opposite the door. My wife and I tried the CPA (Colorado Pale Ale) and the Chili Porter. The bartender who was unaware I was sitting at the bar, even after she helped two guys next to me, and she didn’t know what Chilies were in the beer. None the less it was good. May be worth a stop if you are actually in Buena Vista, otherwise head town to the cool town of Salida. Stop #8 Amicas Pizza and Microbrewery Following a long soaking in the Salida Municipal ...

Unibroue is a brewery in Quebec, Canada that has it's beginnings as a 1990 buy-out of the already existing Brasserie Massawippi located in North Hatley, which produced the first craft beer meant for commercial distribution. After becoming one of the most successful microbreweries in Canada, Unibroue was soon acquired by Sleeman Breweries , which itself was merged with Sapporo brewery in 2006. Blanche de Chambly is Uniboue's flavorful, relatively low alcoholic Belgian ale with plenty of phenolic spice and fruity esters. There's coriander in the nose and sweet orange peel comes on strong in the taste. With all that going on, I was surprised how un-impressive I was with this beer. Sure, it's quaffable but what detracts from the possibilities offered by those initial flavor components is the overly sweet bready flavors with a heavy handed candy sugar presence that feels cloying and burdensome. It impressed me as that of an under attenuated tripel. As if it didn't ...

While cleaning out my brewing area I set aside all of the empty yeast vials that I accumulated over the years. Although I've thrown away many more vials than I've saved and as a standard practice I use a lot of US-05 dry yeast, never the less, the remaining collection revealed some telling statistics about my brewing habits. The first and obvious is how often I brew wheat beers and my preference for Whitelabs hefeweizen yeast WLP300 . As you can tell from the picture below, I have far more empty vials of that yeast then any other. I use it for my standard German hefe and also a dunkelweizen recipe that I brew without changes at this point. Besides the great flavor I get from this yeast, I've discovered over time that fermenting with it at low ale temperatures (low 60's f. in this case) has a considerably influence in increasing the amount of phenols in the finished beer, a flavor component that I really enjoy. Empty vials of Whitelabs yeast The other clear in...

This is part one of a two part guest post by Brady Umfleet. My wife and I planned a trip to Boulder and Denver in conjunction with our friend’s birthday celebration in Salida. Since we are craft beer lovers we decided to hit as many breweries as possible because we wanted to make sure my wife visited her 100 th brewery during our trip. We were also interested in exploring the happening craft beer scene is CO. We also love baseball and have always wanted to visit Coors Field for a ball game. We were two weeks or so too early to watch our Cardinals play at Coors Field however we did watch the Phillies and the Rockies. As a result of my pre trip research and our visit I believe the CO is the craft beer epicenter. Sorry San Diego, this is not only because of the constant opening of breweries, but also because of the extent of craft beer penetration in the state. Brady enjoys a pint Stop #1 Twisted Pine TP is located off one of the main drags of Boulder. Walking in on a ra...

Have I suddenly become old? Hardened by years of beer related activities? Am I now a jaded homebrew geek too caught up in his own pretension to have fun anymore? These are the questions that flooded my mind as I attended a recent beer festival. This year I again played a minor role in supporting the California Beer Festival held at Aptos park on Saturday. In the midst of the spectacle (height of pandemonium?) I had a life altering revelation. Out of the blue it became crystal clear to me that I don't care too much for beer festivals anymore. God help me, I think I may have outgrown them. When I first fell in love with beer festivals I was just beginning my homebrewing journey and like a heat seeking missile, I sought out anything beer. I remember fondly my first festival. It was at Booneville and as I think back about my experience, I recall that the beers were all exceptional, the crowds were small, enthus...