Last Drop

I just found out that Zymurgy published my account of exploding barleywine in the Last Drop section of the current issue. I haven't received my copy of the issue yet--always seems to take a few extra weeks to arrive in Hawaii--but I saw it in the online eZymurgy edition. If you're a member of the AHA (American Homebrewers Association) and you're logged on at the website, you can view the issue online here.

breaking brews into batches

I made my first cider a while back, which left me with the four 1-gallon glass jugs that the apple juice had come in. I figured the jugs would be perfect "mini-carboys," and on Sunday I got a chance to try using one in that capacity.



I was finally getting around to bottling the Belgian-yeast beer I brewed almost two months ago. I'd left that beer sitting in secondary fermentation for six weeks because I wanted to see if an extended secondary would help mellow the yeast further before bottling--I've been having trouble with bottles over-carbonating and turning into gushers. I've collected a lot of lilikoi juice in that time, and I thought it would be cool to rack some of the Belgian beer onto a few ounces of lilikoi, to see how the flavors would blend.



So, after sanitizing one of the 1-gallon jugs, and pouring three ounces of pasteurized lilikoi juice into the bottle, I added about four-fifths of a gallon of beer to the jug (I wanted to leave it with some headroom, just in case it kicks into another vigorous fermentation). Then I put a sanitized cap on the bottle and shook it up. A sanitized airlock on top, and it was all set.



It's already bubbling, and I'm eager to see how it turns out.

Kona Brewing

Two weekends ago my wife and I went to visit my mom and step-dad in Kona on the Big Island. We were there for three days, and visited two breweries during that time. Last week I wrote about our trip to the Big Island Brewhaus; this week I'm posting about our visit to Kona Brewery.



This isn't the first time I've been to the Kona Brewery Brewpub--my wife and I stopped by once around six years ago. This is, however, the first time I've been to the brewery since it was acquired by Craft Brew Alliance, which also owns Red Hook in Seattle and Widmer in Portland. The brewpub has undergone some serious changes since that acquisition, but in all honesty (and despite my anti-big business, commie-pinko leanings) the changes I noticed during this recent visit seemed positive.

First of all, and perhaps most-importantly, the Kona brewpub offers more beers than ever before. I've had their bottled offerings, and I stopped by the Koko Marina pub on Oahu earlier this year, but the Kona location offered another half-dozen "seasonal" beers beyond that, and the server mentioned them as if they were all on tap and available right then (instead of seasonally). I'm guessing that there are more than 15 beers to choose from. I tried three beers--a Marzen, a Steam, and a Red--that I'd never had before.

Secondly, the seating area is largely expanded--and very nice. Last time I stopped by you had the choice of sitting inside--which was a bit dim and dank--or sitting on the outside, covered porch--which was also a bit dim and dank. Now they've significantly increased the outside seating: dozens of sunshade-covered tables running along miniature palm planters that are crawling with green geckos. It's a very nice place to drink yourself mellow, and the food was good too.

And thirdly, the money-flood that seems to be hitting Kona Brewing is being used in some cool projects. They've installed a ton of PV solar panels to offset their energy use, and they've made some other environmentally-oriented decisions. They commissioned a huge mural on the side of the warehouse. They've turned their brewing facility into a pretty massive operation (you can see the keg yard in the picture below) and both the brewery and restaurant seem to be hopping with staff--so lots of good jobs for people in Kona.

spent-grain thin mints

I'm a big fan of the chocolate-mint flavor combo, and my wife is kind enough to indulge me. She recently made a batch of the Spent Grain Thin Mints featured in the Brooklyn Brewshop recipe site. The comments on that page are kind of mixed, but the cookies my wife made turned out great--very minty and chocolaty. There was a slight grittiness from the spent grains, but it actually added pleasant texture (and helped to slow me down a bit--I've been known to go through a half dozen thin mints before I even realize it).

Big Island Brewhaus

Last weekend my wife and I flew over to the Big Island to visit with my mom and step-dad, who were in Kona for vacation. We stopped in at both the Big Island Brewhaus and Kona Brewing. I plan on writing about my impressions of both places, starting with Big Island Brewhaus this week.



Big Island Brewhaus is located in a little town called Waimea. It's about an hour's drive from Kona, and about a million miles away in terms of atmosphere: Waimea is paniolo (Hawaii cowboy) territory, with lots of ranches and cattle and big trucks and motorcycles. The altitude is 2670 feet above sea level, and the air is cooler and moister than Kona seaside air. The people in the area struck me as more of a mix of European and Polynesian ethnicity, whereas Honolulu definitely reflects more Japanese and Chinese influence.

The Big Island Brewhaus brewery itself is located in a tiny little strip mall, alongside a hunting supply shop and a bicycle store. The place was locked up and empty when we were there--the only sign of life coming from a bubbling barrel of trub on a pallet out front--but I peeped through the window to get a look at the brewing set-up. I'm guessing it's around 15 barrel system, with around four fermenters. They've also got a small bottling system for the 22 oz bottles you can get on Oahu. There's a picture below--if you've got a different guess about system size, or if there's anything else interesting you notice from the picture, please feel free to mention it in the comments section of this post.



Big Island Brewhaus also owns and runs a small Mexican restaurant and bar, located in a free-standing building on the property. We went in for lunch and got a sampler of every beer they had available (picture below). Despite the German-influenced name of the brewery, the beer lineup didn't swing toward lager-dominance. Of the eleven beers we tried, about half of them were Ales, and the majority of the rest of the lineup used Belgian-yeasts. Here's a link to the beer descriptions they list on their website, though the list doesn't reflect all of the beers on hand during our visit. Another thing I noticed: grain-wise, the beers on hand seemed to focus on what I think of as "mid-range" grain bills--mostly pale and some caramelized grains, mostly 5-7% alcohol. The only beer that had any roast to it was the White Mountain Porter--I guess they also brew a Guinness style stout, but it wasn't on hand when we were there.

All the beers tasted good to me. My favorite was a Sierra Nevada-styled beer called Paniolo Pale Ale, and what I loved about it was the way the cascade hops came through in the aroma. They smelled super green and fresh, just like the smell you get right when you throw the hops in the boiling kettle. And that helped solidify another thing I've been noticing about beer on the islands--that heady, resinous aroma that I love about West Coast Pale Ales and IPAs is hard to come by here, even in beers that are famous for it like Sierra Nevada, because boat-shipped beers are never gonna be as fresh as what you'll get on the mainland. One more argument for homebrewing in Hawaii.



Another beer that stood out to me was, I think (memory's not too clear on this one), a Pale Ale brewed with ginger. I swear to Ninkasi the beer tasted almost exactly like the Sage Pale Ale I brewed a couple months back, though they say they used ginger and not sage.

As for the food, it was pretty good--probably better than a lot of the Mexican food I've had in Hawaii, but still not up to California standards. My wife gives them super-extra-credit for having real chips--actual tortillas cut into triangles and then deep fried. But my step-dad thought the hot-sauce was seriously lacking in sufficient hotness. I'm not a spicy food connoisseur, but I agree the spice seemed pretty tame. And I also think it's worth noting that the dude who served us was friendly and helpful and on top of it, even though he was working alone during the lunchtime rush.

Griz

(This picture of Griz sleeping in his habitual location was taken by Chris G., originally posted on Yelp.)

Back when I lived and brewed in San Francisco I got most of my ingredients and equipment from SF Brewcraft. A dominant, unforgettable (and almost unavoidable) feature of that store was Griz. Griz was a grizzled old guy who looked like Santa Claus dressed in overalls. You were pretty-much guaranteed to see him unless you came in near closing, and if you saw him, guaranteed he'd be sitting in the easy chair in the back right corner of the shop. No matter what you knew about brewing, what you came into the shop for, or what type of person you were, Griz would be a key part of your Brewcraft experience.

Griz was an interesting guy. Despite the fact that he never seemed to get out of that easy chair, his presence filled every corner of the shop. You could ask him about any topic related to brewing--and probably plenty of topics completely unrelated--and rely on an opinionated answer. And Griz was an unapologetic contrarian, too; so if you ever came to him with a plan or an idea, chances are you were wrong. (I wrote about this phenomenon on my old brewing blog, Parkside brewing.)

Some people didn't like the type of experience Griz provided. Whether these people were thin-skinned or just preferred a different level of propriety, there were Brewcraft customers who'd swing by the store right before closing specifically so they wouldn't have to face Griz. And truth be told, I butted heads with Griz a few times myself. There probably aren't many who didn't, unless they had absolutely no stomach for a fight.

That said, I also want to say this: in all of the experiences that I had with Griz, he never struck me as a bully. He spoke his mind because he cared about things, not because he wanted to bend you to his way of thinking. And on the occasions when I saw him realize his plain-spoken manner was bowling someone over, he changed his course and held back.

(I've come to value the unapologetic, opinionated attitude Griz displayed more than ever, now that I live in Hawaii. The brewing scene is so small here, and so fragile, that people seem to go to lengths to avoid confrontation. (You can see it in Beer in Hawaii's post on Aloha Beer's closure, in which author Tim Golden tells us that "the real facts are murky and we may never really know what happend, nor should we really care.", though that's hardly the only example.) I miss being around someone like Griz, who wasn't afraid to ask questions and point out bullshit.)

Here's my favorite Griz memory: I stopped by Brewcraft on a Saturday to pick up grains for the next day's brew. There were a few people in the shop ahead of me--brewing newbies with lots of questions and lots of doubts--and they were peppering the guy behind the cash register with worst-case type scenarios. Griz was in his easy chair, like normal, looking more agitated with each additional question. Before I'd managed to gather my grains, a few more people came into the shop behind me. Apparently Griz's maximum-capacity level had been reached, because he started loudly complaining that there were too many people in the shop. "Eric," Griz shouted, "you gotta get some of these people out of here! It's turning into a clusterfuck. Come on!" Honestly, I can't think of any other time, in my entire life, in which I witnessed a shop owner getting upset about having too customers in his shop.

Thinking about it now, Griz's unapologetic stance might be the greatest thing he ever showed me about brewing. Getting your hands on great beer is pretty easy nowadays, even here in Hawaii, because craft beer is a growing market and plenty of breweries are producing awesome product. Homebrewing isn't a necessity anymore, so if you're gonna homebrew, you should be doing it because you love it, and because you have a particular vision you want to pursue. Passion is the prerequisite, not compromise, and Griz was an incredible example of that.

About a week ago I got an email from SF Brewcraft with the following message: "On the evening of Monday, September 23rd, our friend and teacher Greg Miller, endearingly referred to as Griz, passed. In honor of Griz, Brewcraft will be closed for the next two days and will reopen Thursday, September 26th. We are making plans to have a celebration of his life. We will be posting details soon. Until then thank you for your love and support and for this week please raise a glass and tell a story about Griz."

In my life I've only had the privilege of meeting a very few people who seemed honestly, uncompromisingly themselves, and Griz was definitely amongst that small number. The homebrewing world is a poorer place, now that he's no longer with us.