Past Newsletters

Vol. 4 No. 9

Brewery	Beers Featured
American Beer Guy Brewing Company	Groovy Ale (Alt Bier)
Spring Street Brewing Company	WIT Belgian White Ale
Spring Street Brewing Company	WIT Black Wheat Ale

American Beer Guy Brewing Company

Founded in 1988 by Tony Nguyen, The intent of the American Beer Guy Brewing Co. was and continues to be to produce fun products that compete with the highest quality U.S. micros. Tony business roots stem from a Manufacturing-management background as he has held both technical and managerial positions at Rolm (Siemens) and Megatest, and has extensive hands-on experience in the food & beverage industry. Tony has developed recipes for three other beer styles in addition to the Alt Bier featured this month, however, Groovy Ale is the only product currently in limited distribution.

For more information about the brewery and scheduled tours, call (415) 332-7421 or check out their web site at www.beerguy.com.

Groovy Ale (Alt Bier)

Serving Temperature: 38-42° F
Original Gravity: 12.0° Plato
Final Gravity: N/A
Int'l Bittering Units: 25.0
Alcohol by Volume: 4.6%

Groovy Ale is modeled after the Dusseldorf-style Alt Bier which is Germany’s equivalent to the ales of England. The German word Alt means old or ancient and refers to the fact that these beers are brewed by the traditional method of top fermentation predating the relatively new method of bottom fermentation now predominant throughout Germany. Alt Biers are generally found in Dusseldorf and served in short stubby glasses. As one is finished the waiters of this area will automatically replace it. The only way to stop is to place a coaster over the empty beer glass! Groovy Ale is brewed with a combination of two-row Pale, Caramel and Black Patent malts. The majority of hops used are Cascade, which are added both at 15 min. and again at 60 min. into the 75 min. boil for both bittering and aroma. Fuggles are also used up front for additional bittering, while Tettnanger hops are later in the boil for their aromatic and flavor contributions. Complementary Foods for the style include: Baked Brie Cheese and bread, and various luncheon meat sandwiches.

Notes From the Panel:

Appropriately light brown in color, we found Groovy ale to be a highly hopped, medium-bodied beer with a big malty flavor profile. Look for some hop fruitiness and sweet maltiness in the beer’s nose and a very clean, crisp and flavorful body. Note that fruity esters are low to style and Groovy Ale finishes somewhat dry with a slight roasted character evident. Overall, an excellent interpretation of an unusual style not brewed by too many micros.

Spring Street Brewing Company

While Belgium has long been recognized as home to some of the world's highest quality and most colorful specialty beers, American microbrewers have largely ignored Belgian recipe beers in favor of traditional German and British styles. To reverse this trend, in 1993 Harvard Law School graduate Andrew Klein founded Spring Street Brewing Company with one goal in mind: to offer American beer enthusiasts hand-crafted Belgian recipe beers. The microbrewery currently produces three ales: WIT White Ale, WIT Amber Ale and new WIT Black Ale. For centuries Belgians have produced particularly delicious and thirst quenching wheat ales by using special yeasts and a careful balance of bitter hops and other aromatics. The Wit beers are microbrewed in this rich tradition. Plans to launch additional Belgian recipe beers are also brewing at Spring Street and include an abbey style ale, a peach wheat ale and a lemongrass-mint ale.

For more information about the brewery and scheduled tours, call (212) 228-5787 or check out their web site at www.witbeer.com.

WIT Belgian White Ale

Serving Temperature: 35-40° F
Original Gravity: 11.7° Plato
Final Gravity: N/A
Int'l Bittering Units: 10.0
Alcohol by Volume: 4.8%

Beer of Wit's style was first produced in the eastern provinces of Belgium over 500 years ago. At that time, before the universal usage of hops in brewing, local brewers employed a wide variety of ingredients to soften the bitter sourness that characterized their primitive beer, which was primarily made with wheat and thus called "witbier". The Flemish trade routes brought home oranges from Spain and exotic spices from the East Indies. Some brave brewer one day played with the odd mix of orange peel and coriander. The witbier that resulted must have been very pleasing to the pallet. Before long brewers all over Belgium were producing this new style. WIT Belgian White Ale is brewed in the traditional style from wheat and two-row pale barley malt and it is spiced with orange peel and coriander. Tettnanger and Cluster hops are used for flavor and primarily aroma. A lager yeast strain is used in this ale.

Notes From the Panel:

Immediately not a pleasant fruity citrus nose with a spiciness lingering in the background. Look for good head retention in this medium-bodied, unfiltered ale. The body is very smooth with the key flavor elements being again fruity, citrus, and spicy notes. We found the beer to be very refreshing, very well conditioned and possessing a nice dry, clean finish. Overall, a very unusual beer. Complex and very enjoyable.

WIT Black Wheat Ale

Serving Temperature: 42-47° F
Original Gravity: 11.3° Plato
Final Gravity: N/A
Int'l Bittering Units: 25.0
Alcohol by Volume: 4.8%

WIT Black Ale is the first black wheat ale brewed in the United States. Brewed with a combination of two-row Pale, Caramel, Wheat malts as well as Black Patent barley, this unusual beer which doesn’t fall neatly into any specific beer category is a truly unusual beer. Additionally, WIT Black is brewed with a proprietary blend of exotic spices including anise. Willamette hops are used up front for bittering while Mt. Hood hops are used in two separate additions for both bittering and aroma.

Notes From the Panel:

Look for a very dark roasted nose coupled with a dark malt sweetness in this garnet-brown, filtered medium-bodied beer. Its body offers a complex dark malt character with traces of more than one spice evident. We found it very clean with low esters. The finish is crisp and sweet. It is such a clean and well-blended beer; it’s hard to believe that it’s an ale. Overall, a very complex, unusual, and very flavorful dark ale.

Food For Thought...

Black Wheat Chicken Thang

You’re gonna like this one. It’s easy, you’ve probably got half stuff you need in the fridge at this very moment, and it contains two kinds of alcohol in the recipe. It was provided to us by the good folks at the Spring Street Brewery and who should know better then them as to what to pair with such an unusual style of beer. Enjoy!

• 3 tablespoons oil of your choice – No, not massage oil. Save it.
• ¼ stick butter
• 16-20 pearl onions
• 4 ½ lb. Chicken, cut into 8 pieces
• ¼ cup gin
• 1 tablespoon flour
• 1 ¼ of WIT Black Ale
• 1 cup button mushrooms
• salt, freshly ground black pepper
• ¼ cup heavy cream
• 1 tablespoon chopped parsley

Heat the oil and butter in a wide, heavy-based casserole. Sauté the baby onions until they begin to brown, then remove with a slotted spoon. Brown the chicken pieces in the same pan over moderately high heat, then lower the heat and lame with the gin. Sprinkle the flour over the chicken and cook for 1-2 min., stirring frequently. Return the baby onions to the pan with the WIT Black, mushrooms, salt and pepper. Bring to a boil, cover and simmer until the chicken is tender, 40-45 min. Stir off excess fat and stir in the cream. Bring back to a boil and check seasoning. Serve sprinkled with parsley. Serves 6-8 persons, 2 Chicken Hawks, or Rush Limbaugh.

Norm's Corner...
As spoken by Cheers' Norm

Norm: "Women. Can’t live with ‘em, pass the beer nuts."

True Brew Facts

DAILY MIRROR - Cleanliness counts to barfly Brits. The British Brewer’s Society reports that when it comes to choosing a pub, women’s first priority is a clean toilet and men’s is a clean bar. The sexes switched positions on the second order of priority, and both chose friendly staff for their third choice. Stocks of beer, by the way, came far down on the list after general comfort, value and speed of service. The report also found that pub-goers drink a pint almost two minutes faster on Saturday nights and that 86 percent of American prefer British pubs to their own back home.

Brew It Yourself

Fat Wanda’s Altbier

This month’s recipe is contributed by Jeff Benjamin of Fort Collins, CO, who after repeated attempts to contact, still refuses to disclose just exactly who Wanda is and how she inspired him to create a beer recipe for her! The mash procedure for this beer is a bit unusual as the mash-out is close to boiling, but we’re told that this is the traditional way that altbier is made. This is a very aggressively hopped recipe, so hopheads get busy. All hops are added at 15 minutes from the end of the boil, so the hop aroma is kept low. The cold-conditioning also helps to make a very clean tasting ale.

• 7 ¼ pounds Baird Pale Malt
• ½ pound crystal malt, 40 degrees Lovibond
• ¼ pound wheat malt
• 1 ¾ ounces Hallertauer hops
• 4.7% alpha, in boil at 70 min.
• 1 ounce Hersbrucker, 4.9% alpha, in boil at 30 min.
• 1 ounce Tettnanger hops, 3.6% alpha, in boil at 15 min.
• 1 teaspoon Irish Moss
• Schiller A4 or Wyeast # 1007 German Ale
• ¾ cup corn sugar, for priming

Mash grains in 2 gallons water and hold at 132 degrees for 20 minutes. Add 1 gallon more water, raise temperature to 144 degrees and hold for 50 min. Raise temperature to 162 degrees and hold for 15 min. Mash-out at 194 degrees-212 degrees for 20 minutes. Sparge with 4 gallons of 172 degree water. Bring wort to a boil and boil for 20 min. Add 1 ¾ ounces of Hallertauer hops and boil for 30 min. Add 1 ounce of Hersbrucker hops, and boil for 15 min. Add 1 oz. Of Tettnanger hops and Irish moss. Boil for a final 15 min. and turn off heat. Coo, transfer to the primary fermenter, and pitch yeast. Ferment for 6 days at 67 degrees and rack to the secondary fermenter. Ferment for another 5 days at 67 degrees, rack to a tertiary fermenter, and cold-condition there for a month at 40 degrees. Prime with ¾ cup of corn sugar and bottle.

Commander McBrew Meets Vampires, Transvestites, and the Snakemaster

Wortly and I landed in Bangkok in the early evening and with minor difficulty, managed to locate the area whereby we were supposedly able to pick up a bus to Kosan road, a popular destination point of travelers. The presence of two backpackers either confirmed that we were in the right place or that we were all lost. Our first night on Kosan road, we were joined by 2 other colorful characters after dinner. We all sat around a small table drinking a few Kloster beers. All had discovered that Thailand's equivalent to Budweiser, Singha lager beer, contained a significant percentage of formaldehyde as a preserving agent. Three Singhas was enough to create a serious headache the following day.

Brian, a 22-yr. old American described himself as a professional daredevil and after listening to his stories all night, I would have to agree with his self-appointed title. I never imagined that I would be involved in a conversation where one participant is systematically explaining how to safely set yourself on fire. That's what Brian was doing in Bangkok. Each night, he performed in a show where he stood on a 40-ft. ladder, gave a "foot cue" to another to ignite his body and then dove, a human fireball, into a pool of water below. Now Brian had some good stories sure enough, but the Canadian, Ted, was certainly more humorous. He had just come up through Indonesia and had some interesting experiences there that he shared with us.

He started, "Yeah, I saw some pretty weird stuff, eh."

I prompted him, "What kind of stuff, Ted?"

"Well, like, black magic, the occult, voodoo. That kind of thing."

"You actually saw this going on or heard about it?"

Elusive, he replied, "Let's just say I got in pretty deep, eh. I can't really talk about it."

Wortly pressed on, "Well, Ted, the Commander and I are heading that way next. Is it safe? Cool? What? I mean, would you recommend to someone to seek that kind of stuff out?"

He cracked, "Okay, eh. One day my girlfriend and I were in this small village. They had one bar so we went in that night to check it out. Suddenly, we both stopped talking to each other. We looked at each other and at the exact same time, said 'VAMPIRES'". Trying to keep my smirk to myself as I could see that Ted was 1000 % serious, I probed, "Vampires?" "Yeah, vampires." Wortly jumped in, "So what are you saying here, Ted? Did you see something that looked like a vampire? Did you think that the people in the bar were vampires?" Ted thought about it for a second and answered "Not all of them, but most of them."

This was fun. My turn, "So what exactly was it that make you think that the people in the bar were vampires?" This time he thought about it for at least a half a minute before responding, "Lets just say...it shook my soul." The group resonated in harmony, "Humm..." We all nodded in condolence at Ted's frightening experience. Wortly and I had to suppress our natural instinct to verbally assault Ted with further intense questioning as we were in mixed company. But we did press on to other related topics to get his opinion on werewolves, Frankenstein and the Easter Bunny. Ted was definitely supportive of werewolves, had to think a while before rejecting Frankenstein and laughed with the rest of us over the Easter Bunny.

Our next mission in Bangkok was to attend a Thai Boxing match. Just outside of the stadium, we found a small diner and decided to kill a few cold ones to get in the mood for fight night. The waitress in this little place was a big gal. Not obese, just big. Legs like an NFL fullback and broad shoulders, she wasn't exceptionally beautiful, but not bad looking. She kept making flirtatious gestures and facial expressions at me, walking behind me slowly as she dragged her nails across my back and smiling with raised eyebrows from behind the counter. I smiled back, thinking I was some kind of Casanova and boasting to Wortly over who she had selected to pour her affections on.

No doubt jealous, Wortly suggested that she was not a she at all and most likely a "he-she" or "shim", names we had dubbed for a transvestite. We ordered another round to get a closer look. The starry-eyed gazes continued but were no longer met with my pearly whites, as I was not sure that Wortly wasn't right. She was built like a man. The breasts could have been hormone induced or implants. Up close, I could see that "she" used heavy makeup to cover his beard. He also had a noticeable Adam's apple. I felt nauseous and a fool. Here we were drinking a couple of cold beers from the bottle in preparation to watch men beat each other senseless, generally feeling pretty manly, and I was making eyes at another guy. Fortunately, just as I made our waiter, it was time to head for the stadium. We enjoyed watching the wiry young bucks kicking and punching each other for several hours before retiring back to Kosan.

On our third and last day in Bangkok, we stumbled across something called the Red Cross Snake Farm. The snake farm didn't really breed snakes as we suspected, but rather milked poisonous ones to manufacture existing and develop new antitoxins. Ten or 12 tourists joined us in the small stand set up for the demonstration. A man came out wearing a white, doctor-like coat and gave us a brief explanation of what we were about to see. Soon thereafter, 3 men emerged from a large wire cage carrying a 25-ft. King Cobra. One had a firm grip on the snake's head, which was comparable in size to that of a small dog. They set the snake down on the ground and released it to do as it pleased! It was only 10 ft. from where we sat and our small group began to subtly search for escape routes. The head Snakemaster assured us that we were in no danger, that they were professionals in complete control. Just then, one of the "professionals" reached over and smacked the cobra on the back of its head with his bare hand. The animal instantly thrust straight up, hissed and expanded its great head, now appearing to be the size of a humans. It stood at least 3 feet in this upright posture and continued to hiss and lunge as the assistants proceeded to taunt it. The Snakemaster informed us that this was one of the deadliest snakes on the planet because unlike other venomous snakes, when the King Cobra struck, it locked on to the victim with its powerful jaws long enough to release all of its venom. People rarely survived such an attack. He again assured us that we were safe though as the killer could only lunge to, say...the first row! A little Thai humor that was not so funny for those of us sitting in the front row.

The show continued as the Snakemaster force-fed our cobra friend another large, ominous looking snake, itself, perhaps 12 feet long. Good riddance. One less to worry about. The end of the show was marked with the appearance of a 15-ft. Burmese Python as thick as my thigh. We were told that we could come down to the front and pose for a photograph with this massive reptile if we so desired. I gave it a shot. He was a big boy all right. I would guess his weight to be somewhere between 75 and 100 pounds. As I held him draped over my shoulders, his tail found its way around my backside and came up firmly between my crotch, a little embarrassing, but harmless nonetheless. Or so I thought. The great beast suddenly moved with lightening speed and wrapped its massive coils around my torso, prepared to tighten its grip as I exhaled, suffocate me, and set himself up with some American Sushi. As the "professionals" sought out a tranquilizer gun in a frenzied state of panic, I conclude that I needed to act on my own if I was to defeat the reptile. Thinking quickly, I had Wortly pass me the 5 remaining bottles of Singha Beer from the 6-pack we never finished. I wrestled open the jaws of the monster and force-fed him the entire lot. By the third beer, the coils had loosened considerably and by the last, he was quite dead, yet well preserved. And so once again, my life was extended with the assistance of the sweet malty nectar, albeit, a nasty interpretation of the stuff.

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