[…]

I really enjoy the beer scene at DEKS right now (aside from the high prices, something which concerns me, because I’m afraid people are going to get turned off — a few people have already said as much to me). On the bright side, Dean’s got more than 100 different bottles and he’ll probably hold there for awhile and tweak the selection rather than add more and more stock. That’s a good strategy. There’s enough variety for beer-geek respectableness, but not so much that the beer will sit around and go stale.

[…]

Elk Head Brewing Company, Buckley

[…]

How do you know you have a sulfur off-flavor in your beer? Some people are more sensitive to this off-flavor than others. Most homebrewers know exactly what this smell like. Sulfur is that rotten egg smell or sniff a match head.

Sulfurous off-flavors in beer are caused by several factors. One cause is bacterial infection. If you get a bacterial infection in your beer, too bad. Next time, just do a better job with sanitation.

Another cause is yeast autolysis. If you think this is the cause, then next time, don’t let the beer sit so long on the primary yeast cake. I typically keep my beer on the yeast cake for two or three weeks with no problem. I had one beer two years ago that sat on the primary yeast cake for about six months with no resulting sulfur flavors.

Sulfur aroma is part of a natural fermentation process. Some yeasts throw off more sulfurs than others. Typically the sulfur aroma is scrubbed by the release of CO2.

I had a keg of beer that wreaked of sulfur. I just set the keg aside and let it age. The residual yeasts with scrub the sulfur for you. When I tapped this keg again after six months, the sulfur aroma was completely gone. The problem took care of itself.

My suspicion is that this sulfur aroma problem was caused by too low a fermentation temperature. I used an ale yeast and then fermented in the basement during April. The floor temperature in my basement can get down to 50 °F. I use an insulting pad between the carboy and the floor, but the temperature at the surface of the glass is still around 60 °F — a little on the low side. I was counting on the heat of fermentation (remember fermentation is exothermic) to bring the internal temperature of the fermenter up to at least 65 °F. It’s possible that it never warmed up enough. The fermentation was long and slow. I had a steady bubble going even after two weeks.

Next time… I’ll talk about the craft lifestyle.

Listen: download the mp3 (6.6 MB, 13:39 mins) [other info]
Subscribe: regular feed | with iTunes

Amanda Switzer wrote an article for Shallow Water Angler which gives some good information on fishing the Long Island Sound. Evidently an angler can have good luck targeting striper. Here’s what she suggests for flies:

There are many effective striper flies, and after a few years of fishing the flats you narrow it down to your go-to flies. While I have a few favorite flies that get the bass fired up, it isn’t just the fly that matters. It’s how you work it, but with that said, top Long Island flats flies include big bunker patterns, used in the early part of the season. Light brown Deceivers with long splayed feathers tied on No. 2 and 4 hooks are great for shoreline flats. They tend to look like small lobsters and crabs, and maybe even baby sea robins, and are very effective. A No. 4 and 6 sparsely tied sand eel imitation, tied with olive and white Ultrahair, with one strand of holographic flash, is deadly. These are so sparse that they look like nothing, but are frighteningly effective in the latter part of the season.

White Deceivers and 6-inch squid flies work at times, too, but the key is to know when to use the flies you have, and then how to retrieve them. If you see no apparent bait on a flat that has heaps of cruising fish, try a tiny pattern, something that imitates the small sand eel, for example. If you see schools of bunker, tie on a 5-inch bunker pattern. Match the hatch, and then if that doesn’t work, try different speeds of retrieve. Long, slow strips will get many follows, but a pause between the strips may elicit a strike.

When strikes are at a premium, don’t be afraid to use shocking patterns and excessive sizes. If the fish still aren’t interested, Mother Nature is taking a break, which would be a good time to eat lunch.

There’s a nice picture of the flies in the article. I suppose I should get a fly rod and reel. For now my old open face will have to do.

The fact is that I’m not trying to do what Graham calls a “brewcast”. Yes, I talk about brewing beer at home (amateur craftbrewing), but my goal isn’t to instruct anyone in the mechanics of the art/hobby. There are plenty of “basic brewing” podcasts out there and I don’t feel the need to compete with them; namely, because I think the other guys are doing a fine job. Why dilute the potential audience?

Graham notes that my podcast is focused on a limited geographical location: Long Island, New York. The primary reason my podcast is so narrowly geographically defined is because my end goal is to get people thinking more about building local culture. I live on Long Island, so I’m speaking to my fellow Long Islanders about the importance of growing the local craft beer culture. So far I’ve focused on all aspects of that local beer culture: commercial and amateur, retail and free.

Now that the Long Island Beer & Malt Enthusiasts are doing the work that I was pretty much doing single handedly before, I believe it’s time for me to leave the commercial craft beer culture to develop without me leading those efforts. As you have probably gathered from the last couple of episodes, I’m talking more about life style and cultural criticism than I am brewing techniques.

I don’t know how this podcast will develop. I’ve tried all kinds of formats since I started podcasting on May 19th, 2005. My show was called Angler Radio back then and the first episode was a freeform ramble on the French filmmaker Eric Rohmer and the French novelist and screenwriter Marguerite Duras.

I won’t give you a history of this podcast, but the phrase “constantly reinventing itself” comes to mind. I suppose that a more accurate name for the podcast would be The Donavan Hall Show, but that formula is so overused and, besides, I’m no celebrity and the name “Donavan Hall” has very little drawing power — and I’d like to keep it that way. (No danger of getting famous here.)

What amazes me is not the small number of listeners that I have, but that anyone bothers to listen at all. Don’t get me wrong, I want people to listen, but (I’ve said this before) the show has to interest ME or I won’t do it. I don’t get paid for this. I don’t have sponsors, nor do I want any (though I’ve considered it in the past). The only reward I get from this activity is the occasional email from some one saying that something I said made them think.

Now, let’s get away from this navel gazing and move onto to the subject of brewing.

This last month I finished drinking the Mild that I had on tap in the home pub. I sanitized the empty keg and moved the “blond ale” I had sitting in the fermenter into the now clean keg for serving. Immediately, I hit the beer with some CO2 to pressurize the keg and I poured myself a sample. It was at cellar temp and still, but it was a pretty tasty beer. There wasn’t enough head space in the keg to do a proper job of force carbonating the beer, so I drank a couple of pints still the next night, then force carbonated. Hit the keg with 40 psi and shook until the overpressure dissolved into solution.

Then on day number three, the beer is fizzy. Pours with a great head, but all the sudden I’m noticing the aroma of sulfur. It’s a punch in the nose kind of sulfur aroma. The question for all you brewers out there is this: where did the sulfur come from?

If you think you know, send me an email with your answer. Or if you want me to play your response on the show, send me an mp3. I’ll discuss the causes of the sulfur off-flavor in beer on the next show.

Here’s a hint. By day seven the sulfur aroma was completely gone. Put those thinking caps on and let’s hear from you.

A while back, my buddy Rasan and I started talking about local economies. He wanted to know more about the current cultural interest in craft beer and how that ties in with the “buy local” movement. Of course, part of the craft beer scene is made up of folks who are “drink local” advocates. Rasan suggested that maybe our culture is on the verge of rejecting global corporate culture and embracing that which is local. As always, time will tell, but I might be able to help raise consciousness about our responsibility to look after our local economies by making wise choices and not just choosing whatever is cheapest.

One of the proposed books in my beer culture series is called Cottage Industry; it would be an account of my experiences brewing and drinking my own beer at home. Cottage Industry is rooted in what I have called Slow Brew (echoing Slow Food of course). The idea is to keep it local and grow as much of what you drink as possible. Obviously, I can’t grow enough barley for my own use and I haven’t had any luck with hops, but I’m sure I could do more. I’m not sure if buying organic stuff is really the answer, since that usually involves increased shipping costs. What we need on Long Island is a community run Beer Farm growing barley, wheat and hops right here. Then we brew it ourselves and drink it. Beer Farm, I like it. Book Five?

I see a time when the US is dotted with nanobreweries, one or two in every neighborhood. Enough to supply the community pub that is within walking distance of everyone who drinks there. Yes. This is a Golden Age vision of how things once were when people who brew beer at home and sell it to their neighbors. British beer writer Pete Brown talks about the Beerhouse Act of 1830 (repealed in 1993). That bill made it legal for anyone to brew and sell beer as long as they paid for a moderately priced license. When I first heard about this, it sounded to me as if this state of affairs would be paradise on Earth, but Brown says it killed brewing. He argues (if I remember correctly) that this paved the way for the “tied-house” system where brewers could own the beerhouses and thereby control the supply of beer sold. Instead of proliferating local beer production, the Act ensured the centralization of production. It sounds as if the English Parliament forgot to put in a clause forbidding this sort of mass ownership of beerhouses.

Small producers can’t compete with big (read industrial-scale) producers. The corporation brewing beer will always be able to sell cheaper beer than the one man operation in your neighborhood. What happened in England was that the local beerhouses realized that it was a lot cheaper to buy industrial beer and resell it rather than mess with brewing it themselves. The failure of the Beerhouse Act wasn’t a fault of the Act itself, but of people’s choices — choosing cheap over choosing local. We have to give people a reason to choose local over cheap. The argument that locally brewed beer tastes better than industrial beer doesn’t really hold, since we all know that the big breweries are capable of making interesting beer. It’s just that the mass market stuff has less character precisely because it is mass market.

So why is local better? The economic argument is too complex for most people. Or perhaps we have been brainwashed by the industrial capitalist mechanism. As counterintuitive as it may seem, buying cheap might save you money in the short run, but it ultimately lowers your wealth. I talked about this effect on the last podcast. Money spent in your town at local business stays in your community at an almost two to one rate over the same money spent at non-local chain stores.

That’s what Rasan and I were talking about a month ago. Rasan believes that people are starting to wise up about corporations and they are beginning to realize that deregulation is destroying local culture. I don’t know. I hope so.

Thoughts on the home pub revolution: see The Beer Hall for some text and photos.

That’s all for this edition Radio Beer Hall.

Next time… I’ll tell you about my new home pub.

Listen: download the mp3 (9.7 MB, 20:08 mins) [other info]
Subscribe: regular feed | with iTunes

On the beer calendar for May: (3) The Atlantis Beer Festival in Riverhead. (10) Legacy Brewing Company will be at Bellport Beer & Soda. (12-18) American Craft Beer Week. (17) The B.E.E.R. amateur craftbrewer competition. (19) B.E.E.R. meeting at John Harvard’s.

If you have an event you would like to add to the calendar, just send me an email: donavan at radiobeerhall dot com.

Last week at the B.E.E.R. meeting, a representative from Peak Organic Brewery brought samples and told us about his beer. The beer was just okay. Nothing amazing about this beer. And the beer is brewed in Maine and not on Long Island.

There’s nothing wrong with the beer. It’s even organic, so they are making the moral choice there and organic beer is probably going to be the new craft beer as the microbreweries become national macros and it’s going to get hard to tell what craft beer really is anymore, the organic label might help provide a quality designation that just not being Anheuser-Busch did ten years ago.

[…]

Here’s a simple rule that I would like to embrace for myself and if it resonates with you then give it a try: Drink only locally brewed beer. Which begs, “what is local?” How about this rule of thumb for starters? If a beer has to be trucked more than 100 miles, then don’t drink it unless you are the one doing the trucking.

Trying to convince beer geeks not to drink a beer because it was trucked more than 100 miles is not going to be an easy task. Beer geeks want to taste the next new thing. Since traveling is expensive, the next best thing is to do your own liquid tour of Belgian by heading down to the beer store or the pub and picking out some exotic bottles.

[…]

It’s not just an aesthetic choice; it’s an economic choice, but one that places the good of the community over what is expedient for the individual. A person shouldn’t seek to only maximize quality while minimizing cost to themselves. The moral imperative is to maximize locality even if it costs more. This might seem counter intuitive, but if you look at the whole picture, then it starts to make sense. Almost 70% of the money you spend buying local products from local businesses will go right back into your community. Only a little over 40% of your money will stay in your community if you buy industrial products from corporate chains. The money that stays in your community will make your community richer. You might be spending more of your money on basic items and have less left over for consumer electronics, but your town will have a more interesting local culture and your schools will be better and you’ll know more of your neighbors.

[…]

I’ll mention one more thing. I picked up an excellent book by Tom Hodgkinson, the editor of The Idler a periodical about the idling lifestyle. Tom Hodgkinson has written a few books, namely How to be Idle and the one I purchased titled The Freedom Manifesto. Hodgkinson’s goal “is to return dignity to the art of loafing, to make idling into something to aspire towards rather than reject.” In short, idling will set you free. You can find more about Tom Hodgkinson and The Idler on his web site (idler.co.uk).

How does idling fit in with brewing beer? That shouldn’t be too hard to figure out.

Brewing beer is a leisure activity. Technically, when I make beer I am being idle. The prejudice of our time is that idleness is completely passive. This is not the case. Passive idleness is only one part of idleness and not the whole. Active idleness includes any movement of the body that is done for the purpose of pleasure and not for production.

Next time… I’ll tell you about my new home pub.

Listen: download the mp3 (7.7 MB, 16:46 mins) [other info]
Subscribe: regular feed | with iTunes

Before we get into the main part of the show, let’s take a look at the calendar…

All these events are listed on the Long Island Beer Calendar at thebeerhall dot net.

On the beer calendar for April: (18) Frikin Friday at DEKS. (19) Sixpoint Craft Ales at Bellport Beer. (21) B.E.E.R. Meeting at the Brickhouse. (23) Beer Dinner at DEKS. (26) Legacy at Bellport Beer. And on May 3rd, the Atlantis Beer Festival.

If you have an event you would like to add to the calendar, just send me an email: donavan at radiobeerhall dot com.

I was delving into the blog-o-sphere to catch the buzz on the Southampton/Pabst thing when I ran across a term that has bugged me ever since. The term (introduced by Stan Hieronymus in “Phil Markowski talks about Pabst deal” posted November 12th, 2007 on his Appellation Beer blog) is “beers of conviction.”

Stan describes the Southampton beers as “beer of conviction.” He ends that post with: “It’s hard to overstate the importance of conviction.” Okay, Stan. It’s important. But what does it mean? More specifically: What does conviction taste like? To find some answer, I trolled through Stan’s “beers of conviction” posts on Appellation Beer trying to find imparts conviction to beer. Is it a quality of the beer or of the brewer who makes the beer?

Two years ago (I think) Brewer’s Publications released a set of three books by prominent brewers and beer writers on Belgian and French ales. At the time Stan Hieronymus, author of Brew Like a Monk, pointed out that there aren’t really any good books on brewing Wit (or White beer). I like Wit beers a lot. Stan’s statement (while not intended as a challenge) planted the seed for the Wit Project. It’s very simple. The goal is to brew a batch of Wit (approximately) once a week (Friday night?), take copious notes, and record my experiences and observations in a book (and on this blog/podcast).

That’s all for this edition Radio Beer Hall.

Next time… As promised before, we’ll be doing a recap of the Spring Craft Beer Festival.

Listen: download the mp3 (12.4 MB, 25:44 mins) [other info]
Subscribe: regular feed | with iTunes

The buzz: Hop Obama by Sixpoint. Southampton Biere de Mars selling out quickly. They released 250 numbered bottles on March 8th. It’s being sold only at the brewery. Imperial Pilsner at the Black Forest. Old Willy, Double Bock, and Vienna Lager at John Harvards.

On the beer calendar for March: (25) Sierra Nevada Beer Dinner at Bobbique, (28) Cask Night at Deks in Rocky Point - LIBME sanctioned event, (28 - 30) Manhattan Cask Ale Festival at Chelsea Brewing Company, (29) Spring Craft Beer Festival - LIBME & BEER will be present, (30) Sam Adams Beer Dinner at Canterbury Ales.

April (9) Smuttynose Event at the Downtown Bar & Grill in Brooklyn, (12) Sixpoint Craft Ales at Bellport Beer. (21) B.E.E.R. Meeting at the Brickhouse.

If you have an event you would like to add to the calendar, just send me an email: donavan at radiobeerhall dot com.

New in The Beer Hall Guide to Craft Beer on Long Island: Downtown Bar & Grill in Brooklyn.

Next time… We’ll be doing a recap of the Spring Craft Beer Festival.

Listen: download the mp3 (13.6 MB, 29:35 mins) [other info]
Subscribe: regular feed | with iTunes

If you are an amateur craftbrewer or want to learn how to brew beer at home, you should join the Brewers East End Revival.

B.E.E.R. members get good discounts at craft beer retailers all over the island. For example, if you present your membership card at Bobbique from Sunday to Thursday, you’ll get $3 mugs of beer.

On the beer calendar: (17) BEER meeting at John Harvard’s in Lake Grove, (25) Sierra Nevada Beer Dinner at Bobbique, (26) Beer Dinner at Deks?, (28 - 30) Manhattan Cask Ale Festival at Chelsea Brewing Company, (29) Spring Craft Beer Festival, (30) Sam Adams Beer Dinner at Canterbury Ales.

New in The Beer Hall Guide to Craft Beer on Long Island: Karp’s Homebrew Shop in East Northport.

Next time… I’m going to take you to Louisiana to visit Abita Brewing Company and the Crescent City Brewhouse in New Orleans.

Listen: download the mp3 (7.9 MB, 17:15 mins) [other info]
Subscribe: regular feed | with iTunes

I invited Rich Thatcher into the studio to tell us a little more about the Long Island Beer & Malt Enthusiasts (www.beermalt.org).

Part two of my chat with Rich will be on the next edition of this podcast. Next let’s take a look at the calendar…

On the beer calendar: (7) Cask Night at Deks, (8 & 9) Mugs Ale House 9th Annual Split Thy Skull Festival, (10) Beer Dinner at Sea Levels Restaurant, (13) Brooklyn Beer Dinner at Rowdy Hall in East Hampton, (15) Shmaltz Brewery at Bellport Beer.

New in The Beer Hall Guide to Craft Beer on Long Island: Arbor Wine and Beer Making Supplies in Islip.

Spring Craft Beer Festival.

Session I: 12pm-4pm (doors open at 11:30am)
Session II: 5:30pm-9:30pm (doors open at 5:00pm)

“The event will be held at the Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum. Everyone who purchases a ticket will get in. No tickets will be sold once the event sells out.”

We tasted the White Magick of the Sun “off breed wit style” from Voodoo Brewing Company in Meadville, PA.

That’s all for this edition Radio Beer Hall.

Next time… Part two of our chat with Rich Thatcher about the Long Island Beer & Malt Enthusiasts. We’ll also be tasting a couple of beers from Flying Dog out in Denver, Colorado.

Listen: download the mp3 (8.6 MB, 18:50 mins) [other info]
Subscribe: regular feed | with iTunes

I’d like to say hi to some new listeners. I got an email from Rich Gallagher inviting me to join a new social network for beer drinkers. The network is called Democracy’s Drink. While the red, white, and blue national patriotism seems a little odd for such a universal beverage, Rich has got the right idea. Bring beer enthusiasts together and let them make plans. He gives a glimpse of his vision on a blog post dated July 4th, 2007.

On the beer calendar: (26) Beer Dinner at Bobbique, (27) Beer Dinner at Deks, (28) Beer Dinner at the Black Thorn.

New in The Beer Hall Guide to Craft Beer on Long Island: Once & For All in Patchogue. Beermapping.com: Legends and Village Beverage.
Next time… We talk about the Long Island Beer & Malt Enthusiasts.

Listen: download the mp3 (7.7 MB, 16:00 mins) [other info]
Subscribe: regular feed | with iTunes

Randy spotted Local 1 at a grocery store. Grocery stores used to have a very limited selection, but now even the one in my neighborhood has a “craft wrack.”

New at Dave’s in Bellport… Sierra Nevada ESB “Early Spring Beer”

Recent samples: Brooklyn Brown Ale in the cask. I was really impressed with the cask version. Pasteurization really takes a lot out of a beer. Also had the Sixpoint Triple.

On the beer calendar: (18) BEER meeting at the Brickhouse, (22-24) Cask Head cask fest at Brazen Head in Brooklyn, (23) Butternuts is doing a tasting at Bellport Beer, (27) Beer Dinner at Deks.

New in The Beer Hall Guide to Craft Beer on Long Island: Village Beverage in Wading River. Beermapping.com:, T.J. Finley’s, and Deks.

Next time… James Thatcher on beer on the Franco-Belgian border.

Listen: download the mp3 (10.6 MB, 22:05 mins) [other info]
Subscribe: regular feed | with iTunes