All posts by escowles

It Comes in Crates!

Beer, ,

I spent way too long trying to return empties today.  Our grocery store, Albert Heijn, has a nice machine that counts the bottles, randomly rejects a few, and then spits out a receipt you can exchange for cash at the checkout stand.  Except today it wasn’t working.

So there was a line of people with bottles and such to return, and a handful of Albert Heijn employees gamely trying to fix the machine — testing all sorts of bottles, peering inside, and even rebooting it (I sometimes apologize on behalf of all programmers at times like this).  In the end, a little glass cleaner in the right place fixed things and we were all able to get our empties turned in.

Though watching a couple of guys returning crates of bottles reminded me that I can get crates of Westmalle Dubbel and Tripel now.  We’ve been mostly buying one or two bottles of different things, and trying lots of different things.  But Westmalle Dubbel is one of my favorites, so it was nice to get a crate (though I was cursing myself as I lugged the crate home in the snow).

Now my only problem is I want to keep the crate instead of turning it in for refund…

Kafé België and Bert’s Bierhuis

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We went to Kafé België in Utrecht for lunch and a few beers today.  The food was great café food, but not a lot of selection.  This continues the trend of really outstanding food we’ve gotten at cafés.

The beer selection was impressive — they had 150+ bottles (see pic), and a dozen or so taps.  They were dominated by abbey beers, but there were also a few saisons and other styles.  They even had some American beers (Bud, Anchor and Flying Dog).  We were glad to see some saison and Flanders red on the menu, since we hadn’t seen any since we got here.  One of the beers we got was contract-brewed for them specially, and our waiter called it a DPA (Dutch Pale Ale): a milder, less hoppy cousin to IPA.  It reminded me a lot of Swamp Head’s Big Nose: lots of aromatic hops, but not a lot of bitterness.  Though it wasn’t as full-bodied and malty as Big Nose.

After lunch, we strolled down the Oudegracht to Bert’s Bierhuis.  This is a great beer shop owned by the same people who run Kafé België.  The selection is great, and very well-organized by region and style.  It was nice to see the beers I’d seen back home lined up, with all the other beers from the same brewery next to them.  There were a ton of beers I’d never heard of before, and hard-to-find things like Westvleteren 8 and 12.  We got as many bottles as we thought we could lug back to the train station, and they threw in a free totebag.

I’m definitely looking forward to coming back to both of these places, and sampling many more of their broad selections.

Stadskasteel Oudaen

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We took the train into Utrecht today and walked around, looking at the famous churches and generally taking in the sights.  We did a little shopping, but almost everything opens late on Mondays for some reason, so most things were closed in the morning.

Luckily, one place that opened for lunch at 11am was Stadskasteel Oudaen.  In addition to the cafe and a variety of meeting/catering functions, they also have one of the handful of breweries in Utrecht.  Their website touts their 15,000 litres of production, which works out to something like 640 barrels, so it’s a pretty small operation.  We tried three of their beers: Ouwe Daen, Jonge Daen and their Winter Bock.

The Ouwe Daen is a nice unfiltered hefeweizen.  It has a little creaminess and sweetness that I really liked.  The Jonge Daen is the filtered version of Ouwe Daen — and it’s sparkling clear and golden.  It’s got a much gentler taste, and comes across as a refreshing summer beer.  Given that it was just above freezing outside, it was a little out of place.  But still very enjoyable.  But the real treat with the Winter Bock.  This was rich, malty and spicy.  It was also a little smoky, which went nicely with the sweetness, reminding me a little of maple-smoked bacon.

Beside the beer, the cafe itself was also very nice.  Wind had a ham and cheese omelet, and I had a prosciutto and Gorgonzola sandwich, and both were excellent.  The cafe is in a nicely restored castle, in a large hall with high ceilings.  The location is great: a short walk from the central train station, right on the canal that runs through the center of town.  And our waitress barely winced at all when I butchered the pronunciations of their beers in Dutch.

First Week in the Netherlands

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We’ve been in the Netherlands a week, and we have a few bottles to show for it.  The family we traded houses with thoughtfully left a few bottles for us, and our local grocery store also has a handful of Belgian beers.  We have found a wine shop up the road that has a somewhat wider selection, so we’ll be checking those out soon.

We mostly enjoyed the Belgian dubbels and tripels from Westmalle, Leffe, La Trappe, and Duvel.  We hadn’t had any lager in ages, so it was interesting to try Heineken, Grolsch, etc. again.  A few of the lagers were surprisingly good: Grolsch’s Herfstbok and Kanon were both pretty drinkable, and Brand’s Sylvester winter beer was good, too.  But most of them were the same old lager I don’t like much these days (though I did manage to choke them down somehow).  The only total loss was Heineken’s Oude Bruin — I don’t know if it was spoiled or if it was supposed to taste like cough syrup, but it was our first drainpour in some time.

What’s the difference?

Beer, , ,

Stewardess: What would you like to drink?
Guy in 23A: Beer.
Stewardess: Beer, or lager?
Guy in 23A: What’s the difference?
Stewardess: We have Heineken or Grolsch lager, and London Pride beer.

It would have been much better if the stewardess had asked “Ale or lager?” instead.  Though frankly, since they only had three kinds, I’m not sure why she didn’t just list them to start with.

Sigh…

All Packed Up

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Our first keg of homebrew kicked last night.  Which was good timing, since we’re leaving the country tomorrow.  I packed up the kegerator and cleaned out the keg today, packing everything away until we get back in June.  There was a minimal amount of swearing and I only cut myself once.

Tomorrow we fly to Amsterdam, for a 5 month sojourn in the Netherlands.  I’m really looking forward to easier access to European beer.  Though I noticed that St. Somewhere just released a new beer, so I’m already missing Florida beer, and I haven’t even left yet…

Saison du Swamp 2011

Beer,

Our local brewery (Swamp Head), released this year’s Saison du Swamp today.  In addition to having it on tap and in bottles, they also had a number of special beers:

  • Saison du Brett: This adds just a little funk, with a nice floral nose and a very slight bitterness in the finish, reminiscent of orange peel.  Several people said they should bottle with Brett next year.
  • Saison du Cardamom: Very big cardamom aroma and flavor, totally dominating the underlying saison.
  • Bacon Maple Smoke Signal: Big greasy bacon nose, very smooth smoky porter body.  I’m not a big fan of the regular Smoke Signal, but this beer is much smoother, with just a touch of added sweetness.  Wish they had this in bottles
  • Catherine’s Inspiration: Very bold and sweet Russian Imperial Stout.  Rich cocoa nibs, full-bodied and velvety.

They also had some nice BBQ from Chunky T’s.  I hadn’t heard of them until recently, but they had nice pulled pork sandwiches and mac&cheese.

Autumn Mead

Mead, ,

We had the first bottle of mead just before Thanksgiving, and we’re pretty pleased with the results.  It has a very sweet, delicate honey flavor and is nicely dry.  There is still a little yeasty funk, but mostly from the sediment.  It was a nice accompaniment to Thanksgiving dinner.

So of course we’re already thinking about the next batch (which will probably have to wait for summer).  Some improvements we’ve got in mind:

  • Add a stronger-tasting honey (like Tupelo or Everglades) to the mix for a bolder flavor.
  • Using apple juice instead of water, again for a bolder flavor and a more cidery taste.
  • Switching to a yeast more suited to Champagne or cider.

We’re also thinking of brewing some cider, so we might do a few different batches with different combinations.

Kegging, Interrupted

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The dubbel finally got done fermenting, after a good shake and another week in a warmer room.  So I headed down to my local homebrew shop, and picked up a used soda keg.  I was hoping to find a new one, because the price difference wasn’t that big and I’ve heard used soda kegs can have reliability problems.  But they haven’t been able to get any new ones in stock recently, and only had two used kegs left, so I picked the one that looked like it was in better condition.

Getting the beer in the keg was much easier than bottles.  It was easy to sterilize and siphon the beer into the keg.  But that’s where the smooth sailing stopped.  First, I found that I’d gotten ball-lock couplers and a pin-lock keg.  So back to the homebrew shop I went and picked up the right couplers.  Then I found that my store-bought 5/16″ gas line wouldn’t fit the 1/4″ pin-lock gas coupler.  I had never imagined that they might use different gas line sizes (I’ve been fiddling around with kegs and plumbing long enough to know better, but for some reason I still expect things to work out by default).  By the time I figured this out, the homebrew shop was closed and the Thanksgiving holiday was upon us, so the beer sat refrigerated but unpressurized over the long weekend.

Once back in town, the homebrew shop was still closed, but luckily my local hardware store helped me jury-rig an adapter.  So I hooked it all up and pressurized to my normal serving pressure (8-10 psi), but the keg was leaking CO2.  I tried reseating the lid and greasing the O-ring, with no success.  I’ve also read that increasing the pressure will help the seal (and speed up the carbonation process), so I cranked up the pressure to 25 psi.  As I increased the pressure, the sound of the CO2 leak changed in pitch, heading from a benign hiss to a worrying whine and then, just before making me truly worried, changed into a satisfying gurgle as the seal took hold and the keg started to pressurize properly.

It was then, crouched behind my kegerator, adjusting the pressure on the regular with a small screwdriver, feeling the frozen condensation on the gas line and regulator shaft, that it occurred to me that I should be worried about the whole Rube Goldberg contraption exploding.  Just in time to rock the 25 psi keg around to help the carbonation get going.  Standing on the other side of the kegerator made the CO2 canister less dangerous, so actually rocking a pressurized keg around on the floor didn’t seem so bad.  Now that’s done, and in theory we should have drinkable beer in a few hours.

Xmas Beer Roundup

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Our local brewery just released their winter seasonal beer, and we’d seen a few other Christmas beers around town, so we gathered a few and had a tasting.

  • We started out with Swamp Head Hoe Hoe Hoe — which they describe as their Cottonmouth Wit infused with ginger, cranberry and Tupelo honey. I like Cottonmouth quite a bit (it was the first keg in our kegerator). This beer isn’t much different — there’s just a hint of honey and spice, and we couldn’t find any cranberry at all.  It’s also unusual to make a light Wit as a winter seasonal, but I guess you have to make allowances for Florida.
  • Next up was another semi-local beer, Sweetwater’s Festive Ale.  I think this is the first Sweetwater beer I’ve had, though I often see them around town.  In sharp contrast to the Hoe Hoe Hoe, this beer is a very dark Winter Warmer.  It has a smoky coffee bitterness like a porter, but also a big malt and aromatic spiciness that provide a good counter-balance.
  • St. Bernardus Christmas Ale is very similar to their Abt (which is one of my favorite Belgian beers), but with a sharp ginger note added.  This seemed very jarring, but perhaps I should actually follow the temperature guidelines on the bottle instead of drinking at fridge temperature.  As the beer warmed up, the sickly sweet malt mellowed a bit, and the spiciness didn’t seem as sharp, and they seemed to make a better blend.
  • Affligem Noël fell into the same trap as Hoe Hoe Hoe — there was just not much difference from their Dubbel.  I like the Dubbel just fine, and the additional of a little spiciness is a nice improvement.  But I was hoping for something a little more distinctive.

The Sweetwater Festive Ale is the clear favorite here.  I really enjoyed the balance between the spicy/sweet and bitter/smoky aspects.  Though, unlike the other beers in this bunch, I haven’t had a similar beer from Sweetwater, so that could be a factor.