Past Newsletters
Vol. 8 No. 3
| Brewery | Beers Featured |
| Sweetwater Brewing Company | Sweetwater Ale (ESB) |
| Sweetwater Brewing Company | Exodus Porter |
| Greenshields Brewing Company | Greenshields Nut Brown Ale |
| Greenshields Brewing Company | Greenshields Amber Ale |
Sweetwater Brewing Company
You got your 3 friends that are all equally passionate about quality beer. You got your business plan, some start up cashola, and BAM! …you’ve got your grassroots microbrewery producing some fine beers. The first thing the lads that founded Sweetwater did was to move halfway across the country from Colorado to Atlanta.
Why would three good friends make such a sacrifice? Well, the answer is two-fold. First, Colorado continues to be the top market in the country for microbrewed beers. It leads the country in many brewing categories, including most breweries per capita, most number of individual beers available for sale and most barrels of beer produced annually. Bottom line? Barriers to entry, Baby. So it’s off to "Hot-Lanta" where educating the general populace on the finer points of freshly brewed craft beer are slightly more challenging…But there are that many more to convert!
The Sweetwater Brewery officially opened on February 17th, 1997 and quickly began winning over the taste buds of beer lovers all over Georgia. For anyone in the brewing industry, this came as no surprise.
Fredrick Bensch, Sweetwater’s master brewer, had repeatedly proven himself at the Oasis Brewery, Rockies Brewery, Mile High Brewing Company and at the Marin Brewing Company. If you aren’t familiar with these breweries, they are some of the more respected breweries in the country. Marin holds literally dozens of Gold Medals from the Great American Beer Festival.
Kevin McNerney, Sweetwater’s head brewer, had already turned heads brewing for Rockies Brewery, Avery Brewing Company and Mammoth Brewing Company. And Matt Patterson, the final piece in the puzzle, had helped put Breckenridge Brewery on the map as their Western Regional Sales Manager.
With their combined knowledge of the brewing industry, this was a brewery bound for greatness. Being the second most decorated brewery in the world at the 1998 World Beer Cup certainly proves that they have achieved that goal.
For those who reside in or are planning to visit the Atlanta area, The Sweetwater Brewery opens its doors on Monday afternoons at 4:20PM to the public. Stop by and meet the guys, have a beer, and take a tour of the brewery.
For more information about the brewery and scheduled tours, call (404) 691-ALES or check out their web site at www.sweetwaterbrew.com.
Serving Temperature: 43-48° F
Original Gravity: 13.5° Plato
Final Gravity: 3.0° Plato
Int'l Bittering Units: 45.0
Alcohol by Volume: 5.6%
This highly accoladed ESB was the silver medal winner in the English-Style Bitter Category at the 1997 Great American Beer Festival, took home the silver again at the 1997 World Beer Championships and then the Gold at the 1998 World Beer Cup! You could say…it’s a champion in its style. Look for a deep rich copper color with some amber red hues in this medium bodied ale. We found a predominately English hop nose to be subtle. You’ll get them more in the body. Some pale malt in the nose. Kevin uses Kent Goldings for aroma and Centennial and Willamette, Kent Goldings and Cascade for flavor. The complex malt flavor is very well balanced with pleasant hop bitterness. Note a slightly malty sweet finish. Enjoy!
Serving Temperature: 38-42° F
Original Gravity: 13.5° Plato
Final Gravity: 3.3° Plato
Int'l Bittering Units: 50.0
Alcohol by Volume: 5.5%
Another award winner from Sweetwater, Exodus took home the Silver in the Brown Porter category at the 2000 Great American Beer Festival. It should be no surprise that this ale was originally crafted as the official beer for the 1998 National Craft-Brewers Conference. Exodus Porter is brewed with a combination of 2-row pale, crystal, Munich, and chocolate malts as well as a touch of malted wheat to add to the beer’s head retention. Kevin uses both Centennial and UK Goldings hops for flavor. You’ll pick up their bitterness in the body and finish. Look for a dark brown hue with some red hues in this medium-bodied, delightful porter. Note a distinctly roasted nose with some chocolate malts evident. We’d call it a classic porter with a hint of sweetness normally found in a brown ale. Overall, we loved it! Great flavor and very drinkable.
Greenshields Brewing Company
Greenshields Brewery & Pub is among the oldest brewpub operations East of the Mississippi. It was founded by Gary Greenshields, a native of Oklahoma, who has over 25 years of experience in the beer and beverage industry.
Gary started out in late 1987 researching brewpubs throughout the U.S and Canada and finally decided to start up the business following a month-long pub-crawl through England and Scotland. Believing that it is better to visit snow than to live in it, Gary limited his search for a location to the nice weather states of Kentucky, Virginia and North Carolina. Raleigh’s Old City Market seemed to offer the right ambiance and so Gary and his wife moved from Winston-Salem in early 1989 to build their dream.
Operations kicked off in the summer of 1989 in a 200 seat restaurant in Raleigh’s historic Old City Market building, where the beer was brewed in a new 10 barrel "old English" style brew house designed and commissioned by Michael Lewis. The 1989 facilities proved too small to satisfy Raleigh’s taste for handcrafted beer, so in 1993 an expansion of both the restaurant and the brewery began. When all was said and done, another 200 seats were added while keeping with the cozy English manor house decor style.
The expanded brewery is built around a 25-hectoliter brew house constructed by the notable Kaspar-Schulz, a German company that has been in the business since 1677. Brewing operations are directed by German brewmaster Thomas Kunzmann, who has over 20 years of training and experience. With three years of training to become a brewer and a malter, an additional two years in practical, and another two years to get his Brewmaster and Maltmaster Degrees, it's not hard to see that Thomas is truly devoted to creating beers that are of the highest possible quality.
Greenshields has the awards to show for the excellent work done by Thomas and his staff --- taking the silver medal at the Great American Beer Festival, winning Spectator Magazine's "Best Draft Beer in the Triangle" award six years in a row, and receiving the award for Best Micro Brewed category for the last four years.
For more information about the brewery and scheduled tours, call (919) 829-0214 or check out their web site at www.greenshields.com.
Serving Temperature: 42-47° F
Original Gravity: 11.9° Plato
Final Gravity: 2.5° Plato
Int'l Bittering Units: 20.0
Alcohol by Volume: 4.9%
Look for this full, smooth brown ale to have a color just slightly lighter than New Castle’s legendary brown ale. We found the nose to offer roasted coffee tones and a caramel maltiness which translates to the flavor as well. There are just enough hops to balance the sweet malt character nicely. Greenshields uses Northern Brewer hops for bittering and Hallertauer for flavor. The hop emphasis seems to be on aroma. Look for a relatively dry, malty and clean finish. The brewery uses a decoted mash which means part of the mash is boiled which translates to pulling more malt flavor out of the grains. Salute!
Serving Temperature: 45-50° F
Original Gravity: 12.3° Plato
Final Gravity: 2.2° Plato
Int'l Bittering Units: 35.0
Alcohol by Volume: 5.5%
The brewery’s flagship beer, Greenshields Amber is brewed with a combination of 4 non-roasted malts. Look for a mild hop aroma up front coupled with a pale maltiness. We found the flavor to be predominately malty with a slight hop character. Thomas uses Northern Brewer hops for bittering, Hallertauer Hersbrueckner for flavor. Greenshields amber is brewed with proprietary kolsch yeast which contributes to the beer’s clean palate.
Ask Murl
Dear Murl,
I’ve got a bet going with a buddy of mine. He claims that Budweiser is the best selling beer in the United State and although I think it might be true, I took his bet cause Budweiser sucks! I figured you could help me build a case that would win the bet! What do you think, Murl?
Dave Howbert
San Clemente, CA
Yo Davester!
Your darn tootin’ I’ll help ya, pal. I’ve been think about this one for a couple days cause the fact of the matter is that Budweiser from Anheuser-Busch is easily the No. 1 selling beer in the United States and the world. Sadly, about one beer in five beers consumed in the U.S. is a Bud. And what’s worse, # 2 is none other than Bud Light.
However, counselor, the argument in front of us is whether Budweiser is the best selling "Beer" in the United States, is it not? Now we could all sit around and debate the fact that Bud has absolutely no redeeming characteristics shy of using it to remove nail polish or as a gasoline additive. But that could be held as subjective speculation in a court of law and may not help build your case.
We need to address the true definition of "Beer" and challenge that Bud is not in fact what it claims to be. The first definition I found, an American one, states that beer is a generic name for alcoholic beverages produced by fermenting a cereal or mixture of cereals and flavored with hops. My argument won’t work with that definition; so therefore, it is not worthy of our attention. Seems we should really be looking at a German definition of beer anyway. The Reinheitsgebot is a German Law that governs the production of beer in their country and it states quite plainly that beer can only be made of water, yeast, hops and…MALTED BARLEY. That one, I like. Make sense too, doesn’t it? Well, my good buddy, did you happen to know that Bud uses grains like rice and corn in the place of malted barley to cut costs? It’s true. Explains a lot, don’t it?
So you do the math, Davie. You don’t need my pocket abacas to know that it doesn’t add up. Bud, by definition of the Reinheitsgebot Law of Beer Purity, is not in fact Beer. Just be sure and try the case in Munich, counselor!Good luck!
Woof!
Murl.
Food For Thought...
Exodus Carbonnade Flamande
(That’d be Beef and Onions Braised in Beer for you uncultured
savages!)
- 4 tablespoons oil
- 1 beef rump or similar roast (2 to 2 ½ pounds), trimmed and sliced ¼ inch thick
- Salt and pepper
- 2 pounds onions (about 4 medium), thinly sliced
- 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
- 2 cups beef stock or canned beef broth
- 1 bottle dry Stout or Porter
- 1 teaspoon brown sugar, if needed
- 1 teaspoon red wine vinegar
- 3 sprigs parsley
- 1 bay leaf
- 1 sprig fresh thyme or ¼ teaspoon dried thyme
Preheat the oven to 325 F. Heat 1 tbsp of the oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Season the beef slices lightly with salt and pepper and cook as many at a time as will fit in a single layer until all are nicely browned, about 1 minute per side. Transfer the slices to a plate and set aside.
Reduce the heat to medium-low and add the remaining oil to the skillet. Add the onions and cook, stirring occasionally, until they are golden brown, about 5 minutes. Lift the onions out of the skillet with a slotted spoon, leaving behind as much of the oil as possible.
Return the skillet to medium-high heat, stir in the flour, and cook, stirring, until the resulting roux is a medium brown. Add the stock, beer, and any accumulated juices from the meat plate. Cook, stirring to break up any lumps, until the sauce is lightly thickened. Taste for salt and add more if necessary; add the vinegar and a little brown sugar, if you like, to balance the bitterness of the beer. (Sugar may be unnecessary with some sweeter beers.)
Spread half the onions in the bottom of a shallow covered baking dish. Arrange the beef slices in a layer on top. Tie the herbs into a bundle (bouquet garni) with clean string and place it on top of the meat. (If using dried thyme, just scatter it in the pan.) Spread the rest of the onions on top. Pour the sauce over the meat and onions, cover the baking side, and bake until the meat is quite tender, 2 to 2 ½ hours. Let it stand until the fat rises to the surface, then discard the herb bouquet and skim off the fat. Serve with new potatoes or wide noodles. Serves 6 Adults, 3 rabid bunnies, or Murl if you don’t restrain him!
Norm's Corner...
As spoken by Cheers' Norm
Woody: Hey, Mr. Peterson, there’s a cold one waiting
for you.
Norm: I know, and if she calls, I’m not here.
True Brew Facts
JUICE MAGAZINE - After consuming stale bread and dough, 3 Vermont cows died of alcohol poisoning. Investigators believe unbaked dough yeasts reacted with the partially digested material in the cow’s stomachs to produce alcohol. Rumor has it that the Pabst Brewing Co. is investigating the viability of this previously uncharted brewing technique with plans to market it as "Pabst Blue Bovine: The Brew that makes you Moo."
SECRET LIFE OF BEER - Among the forest tribes of Latin America the practice of exocannibalism, or the eating of one’s enemies, was commonly combined with brewing and drinking beer. Legend has it that you couldn’t beat the taste of human fingers with a cool skull cup of chicha beer. The Putumayo River tribes ate captives only after an eight-day beer festival where the prisoners, soon to be consumed, were kept drunk until mealtime. These guys take the phrase, "marinating your liver" to an entirely new level!
THE PERFECT BEER STORM - The Norwegian captain of a Dutch whaler that capsized as it was trying to pull aboard a giant whale went down with his ship while holding a beer in his hands, survivors reported. The 42-member crew of the 543 ton factory ship Tonna, landed at Funchal, Madeira, after being picked up by a Greek freighter when the whaler floundered about 220 miles off the Portuguese coast. The crew said the last thing they saw before the ship went down was Captain Vesprhein, 52, clinging to his bridge with a beer to his lips. They implored him to abandon ship but he refused.
THE £635 BOTTLE OF BEER - How big does a bottle of beer have to be before you'd spend $1,000 for it? Bierodrome, a division of London's popular Belgo restaurant chain, offers a bottle of Bon-Secours that takes two from the bar staff to pour, a 15-liter serving that goes for £635 (about $1,000). That works out to nearly $40 per pint. The large bottles, called Nebuchadnezzars, hold the equivalent of 20 standard wine bottles and come with a wax seal. The Bon-Secours at the Bierodrome is made at the Caulier Frères Brewery in Péruwelz in the Walloon region and bottled to order.
BEER TRIVIA - The concept of the 6-pack was developed over the 4, 8 or 10-pack in the 1930’s when major brewing companies determined that six bottles of beer was the maximum number that a woman could carry home from the market at one time.
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