September 2003

Issue xx

http://www.hbd.org/carboy

Mike Dixon (mpdixon@ipass.net)

August 2003 Meeting Minutes

1. Jim Brewer gave a recap of the Brew-In that was held on August 16^th
2. Steve Stoller gave a recap of the Pub Crawl.  We had a few members, some folks from TRUB, and quite a few guests.  Food items were provided at each stop and the crowd had a wonderful time. Many thanks to Steve!
3. Jim Brewer gave a quick educational program.
4. Mike Dixon gave a recap of the Great Taste of the Midwest (see article below) 
5. Larry Matthews gave an update of the recent Pop The Cap meeting trying to get the NC limit on alcohol changed.  More information should be available at www.popthecap.org
6. Tony Hewitt ran through the upcoming calendar of events.

We then went into "TELL US ABOUT THIS BEER", and it all went uphill/downhill from there.

SHARED WITH THE CLUB

Next meeting is Wednesday, September 24, 2003.

BREW-IN

The Brew-In was held on August 16^th at Jim Brewer’s house.

Brewing were:

Jim Brewer – brewed a Stout

Mike Weiss – brewed a Belgian Ale

J. Wilson – brewed a Stout

Steve and Donna Murphrey – brewed a Helles

Walter Haulenbeek – brewed a Belgian Trippel

Also stopping by were:

Richard Todd, Mark Garwatoski, Chuck Mason, Dave Buning and Mike Dixon.

For pictures from the event, go to:

http://hbd.org/carboy/brewin081603.htm

Great Taste of the Midwest – by Dave Buning (pictures by Mitch Hayes, Dave Buning, and Mike Dixon)  

Thursday, August 7, 2003 at 4:00am the alarm rang to start the Madison, Wisconsin Adventure.  Mitch Hayes and I hit the rainy roads at 4:15am and got to the parking lot #3 at RDU just in time to make the 4:30am bus to the terminals.  My weekend’s clothes were in a half-packed duffelbag, with room for a few of the best beers for taking back home.  No problems with the flights.  We left a hot, humid, rainy NC and by 10:30am Central we were cruising down the road in cool and sunny Madison in search of our first stop, the Cedar Grove Cheese Factory. http://my.execpc.com/~cgcheese/index.html

This trip, after all, was not only about beer.

The hour long drive to the cheese factory brought me back to my Michigan roots.  The soil was dark and rich; the roadside corn stands were touting a baker’s dozen ears for $2.50; hand painted signs tempted you to come in for some honey or jam or other local wonders; and we all remembered to stop at the Firm Worm bait and liquor shop on the way back, just to get a picture of the sign.

At the cheese factory, the four CARBOYs got a personal tour where we watched the cheese crew make cheese.  Once the guide found out we were homebrewers, he went into a little more detail on the process used to get milk coming in to aged cheddar going out.  Each of us learned more that we thought possible about the milk curdling business, and on the way out we
got some extraordinary cheese, along with some more ordinary stuff, including a couple bags of freshly shoveled bags of squeaky curds.  We were then in search of ice to get this stuff back in its solid form.  In addition, after munching about 4 pounds of various cheese styles, you get a bit thirsty, so Mike Wallace went into the local gas station to pay for the
bag of ice and came out with an ice cold 6-pack of New Glarus Spotted Cow. Since I was driving, I didn’t get to indulge in the Wisconsin experience of cheese and New Glarus cream ale, but by the reaction of the three passengers, it was heavenly.  Tooling back to the other side of Madison, we could not forget our picture of the Firm Worm;

and, of course, we had to check for any local beers.  I grabbed a growler to read about the brewery (you don’t always see growlers for sale in your average convenience store, but this -- after all -- was the Firm Worm!) and was surprised to see the address as Arena, WI, which was the 750 person town we were planted in at that minute.  Next minute, Dixon was on the phone with the brewer arranging an impromptu tour of Lake Louie Brewery.

Lake Louie (LL) http://www.lakelouie.com turned out to be a very small brewery run by two guys, Tom Porter and his sidekick TimWauters. Tom started as a homebrewer in his garage.  He worked up to a three barrel system (still in his garage) and just in the last few weeks finished an addition expanding the brewery to a 15 barrel system he had purchased from a defunct brew pub in Oregon.  We had a quick but informative tour, tasting LL Scotch Ale, Extra Scotch Ale, and Arena Premium Pale Ale (our personal favorite).  We could have stayed longer and would have, but we had a schedule to keep -- Tyranena Brewery tour on the East side of Madison.

Continuing to polish off the perfect aged cheese, we made it to Tyranena http://www.tyranena.com/ where we met up with the rest of the Brewer’s Dozen. What I remember here is the story behind every beer -- and the story about how the snowmobilers speed up to the brewery in the winter for a cozy time in the tasting room.  The Bitter Woman and the Bitter Woman From Hell were two hoppy beers, but the best beer there (in my opinion) was the Hefeweizen -- favoring cloves over banana, and good carbonation.  One of the more interesting beers was a bourbon barrel conditioned stout.  This proved to be a recurring theme among many of the microbreweries on our tour.

Returned the rental car, checked into the Union South while some of the others stayed at Memorial Union and then we all headed to Great Dane -- our first of MANY hikes around Madison.  The beers were good, but I really liked my dinner.  I got the peanut stew, an African dish, and it was excellent.

Headed back by way of Angelic Brewing http://www.angelicbrewing.com/, where I tried their Trippel on several folks’ recommendation.  I was not overly impressed (but I did get my AHA discount for probably the only time I’ll be able to get one), and headed for bed.

Got up to another nice day and couldn’t resist a run around the campus.  I ran along the lake and got a good view of the city and the other side of the University of Wisconsin.  Grabbed a shower and breakfast, and off with Brian Cole and Garlin to New Glarus Brewery by 10:30. New Glarus Brewing Company http://www.newglarusbrewing.com/ proved to be our most interesting brewery tour.

Deb Carey, the owner (her husband, Dan, is the master brewer), gave us a private tour, arranged by Chuck Cook. She treated us all as beer magazine writers, told us some great stories about how the location was chosen, how they got into the business, how the “regulators” are strange and unusual people, and kept the Belgian Red and Raspberry Tart a mystery.  We ended up getting a tasting glass and a chance to try all of their beers, including a new single batch “Belgian” named Enigma that was (of course) aged in bourbon barrels.  Some in the group really liked that a lot.  I was a much bigger fan of the reds.  Deb ended up giving us the tour free (normally $4.50 and only tasting 3 or 4 beers), but made out pretty well with all the beer the group purchased.  I probably got the least amount, coming home with 2 bottles of the Belgian Red and 2 of the Raspberry Tart. A group of three brewers from Kuhnhenn Brewery in Warren, MI lucked out and got to join our group.  I talked to them for awhile and they told me to stop by at the Great Taste for some free drink tokens, since we’re thinking we’ll be close by when we go up to MI for Christmas.

On to the Grumpy Troll http://www.grumpytroll.com/ for an OK lunch and a gander at all the trolls around Mt. Horeb. 

 Then our next stop was Capital Brewery http://www.capital-brewery.com/index1.htm, where we joined their normal tour group, and the tour was much more elementary.  The brewer, Kirby Nelson, was entertaining, but the best part was sitting on the tables outside afterward, talking informally with him, and getting into other beer and non-beer related topics.  At the end, he did let us try the Autumnal Fire from the fermenter.  It was still green, but you could tell it was going to be a really good beer.  We ended up meeting Tom Porter, from LL, again in the Bier Garten.

Next, our group (Brian, Garlin, Andy, me) made what turned out to be a very wise choice -- we went directly to the pre-festival party at Olin-Turville Park.  This is a “by invitation only” party attended by brewers and local homebrewers.  When they heard of our bunch from NC they invited us.  We got there in time for some interesting beers. (I picked up a “Demolition” from Goose Island, which no one seemed to know about.  I asked many brewers what the style was and no one knew, so I took a bottle home.  I later found out it was supposed to be a Belgian Pale Ale.) There we had great Wisconsin sausage, and freshly picked corn-on-the-cob.  By the time the rest of the group joined us, many of the beers were gone, all the corn was eaten, and things were winding down.  We walked back to the Union by way of the Essen Haus http://www.essen-haus.com/essenhaus.htm, but moved to the place next door, the Come Back In http://www.essen-haus.com/comebackin.htm

where we met Larry Bell of Kalmazoo Brewing (Bell’s Beer) and a couple of his brew crew.  Our small group talked beer with Larry for about 45 minutes...by that time I think the “great Wisconsin sausage” or, perhaps, the pounds of cheese curds were catching up to me, and getting back to my room sounded good. Some of the group then headed off for the Memorial Union to have a beer or two.

The day of the Great Taste Of  The Midwest http://www.mhtg.org/gt2003.html arrived.  The weather was clear and sunny with a slight breeze.  We started over early and stopped for a couple of hours at the Madison Farmers’ Market http://www.madisonfarmersmarket.com/, which is a weekly market set up around the capitol building in downtown Madison.  I got some curds and bread to put in my backpack for later.  We tried a bunch of samples of the local fare -- cheeses, honey, maple syrup, sausages, and a bunch of fruits and veggies.  We finished our mile or so trek to Olin-Turville Park and joined the line of folks waiting with anticipation to enter the festival.  Mike Dixon and I formed a strategy.  We were joined by a woman we met in line who decided to tag along with us, another guy we met walking to the event, and Mitch (off and on).  So we usually had 4 of us, and we’d hit a brewery, each would try a different beer, and we’d talk about the beers, sample each others, and throw the remaining beer out.  After making the rounds, we went back to those breweries we liked the best for a full sample.  This proved to be a very good way to manage the day.  Some of the best beers included Dragon’s Milk (New Holland), Raspberry Eisbock (Kuhnhenn), several from Flossmoor Station (like Train Wreck), Bells (Kalamazoo), and of course New Glarus.

On our way back to the Union, Mike Wallace and I stopped and talked to a couple whose house was right on the lake, almost in the park.  I don’t really know how we got talking to them, but it was a lot of fun -- almost wound up buying a Honda 250 motorcycle from the guy.  (They were busy drinking their Icehouse, having all those great beers just a few steps away from them.) After trying to ensure a young woman got at least part of the way to her house safely (a real challenge, given her state of inebriation), we stopped at a wonderful Afghan restaurant to eat dinner.  We shared two dishes and both were excellent.  We met up with most of the NC crew at Memorial Union where they were having a beer.  There we recounted the events of the day while listening to a GREAT local band http://www.youngbloodbrassband.com/site/index.html and enjoying a cool, clear night.

The next day was spent returning home after a quick “Savior’s Breakfast” at Memorial Union.  The only thing of note here is that the CARBOYs got bumped and received a free roundtrip ticket on United...for the next festival???

Note: There is a website of the trip at http://www.ipass.net/mpdixon/GreatTaste2003.htm it contains more pictures, and tasting notes from the breweries.