Last week was my final week of the American Brewers Guild program. Other than my internship at Hopworks Urban Brewery I’m all done. The last six months have gone very quickly.
The final week was held at Hoppy Brewing Company in Sacramento. Rather than fly down to Sacramento and deal with TSA (pronounced tossers), flight delays and everything else that goes with traveling in a post 9/11 world, I decided to drive down and camp on the way there and on the way back. I left town mid morning on Saturday and after trying to stop at a couple of breweries (which were closed) I ended up at Standing Stone brewing in Ashland, OR.
After a quick pint it was off to Emigrant Lake Camp Ground for a night under the stars before continuing my drive down to Sacramento on Sunday morning. The plan was to arrive around 4pm and get ready before heading over to Rubicon Brewing for a welcome drink with the Guild faculty and the other students. There were nineteen other undergraduate brewers from all over the place including one chap from Australia who now lives in Croatia. The rest were a mix of folks from all over the country, including the south, the mid-west and the east and west coasts including Portland, Salem and Pacific City.
Monday morning we were issued our ABG coveralls and boots, and split into three groups. My group was to spend the day brewing with Dan Delgrande of Bison Brewing, and Peter Hoey of Sac Brewing. We followed the process from milling, mashing in, sparging, boiling and knockout to the fermenters through a heat exchanger. We also took various pH and gravity samples from both the mash and the kettle throughout the day.
Monday evening we all went to Sacramento Brewing where Peter Hoey very kindly supplied the beer. Had some really excellent beers, and the BBQ was great.
Tuesday our group spent the day filtering with Luke, using both a plate and frame filter and a DE leaf filter. The morning was spent with a demonstration of both filters, and the afternoon was spent transferring and filtering a Wasabi Pale Ale from the fermenter to the bright tank. The DE filter was an impressive piece of equipment. Although it seemed somewhat complicated to operate, mainly due to all the valves, it is in theory quite simple and wouldn’t take long to get used to.
Wednesday we spent the day on some simple lab analysis work including yeast counting and viability testing, and water chemistry titration testing. The yeast cell counting using a hemactyometer and microscope was pretty straight forward, although it took a little while to get oriented on the hemacytometer. The titration of the water samples was also quite straight forward. I would to be doing some of this at home right now, learning more about it and getting a good routine to use in the brewery when I get started, the equipment is quite cheap, but still several hundred dollars.
Wednesday night we went to BJ’s brewing company on the invitation of Sam, the head brewer there who graduated from ABG the previous year. He landed a hell of gig, their brewery has 30bbl system and lots of very large 60bbl fermenters. They brew not only for the pub, but also for several other BJ’s in the area. Which provides me with an excellent segway into our taxi story.
Although I drove down to Sacramento and drove to the class at the brewery every day, I didn’t want to drive in the evenings. So I took a taxi with the other guys that were staying at the Comfort Inn, Matt, Mike, Jamie & Bob. The taxi driver didn’t know where the brewery was so I ran into the hotel googled it and gave him the address. Steve had warned us it was quite a drive from the hotel, so we weren’t surprised with the $45+tip cab fare. We went up to the hostess station and said we were with a large group of 20 brewers that had already arrived, she didn’t know what I was talking about. The biggest group was Tiffany for 12, and they don’t have a brewery at that location…….. Bugger! We’re at the wrong BJ’s….. We called the cab driver and he said he would be back in a ‘few minutes’ Well 25 minutes later he shows up, we give him the correct address and settle in to another long cab ride. 30 mins, and $75+tip later we’re at the right place. Ryan & Kerry also got lost and arrived at the same time as us. Everyone had eaten and pizza had gone. Sam was kind enough to order us up a couple more pizzas and also provided us with some more pitchers of his beer. It was a good night, but we would have enjoyed it more if we had arrived with everyone else.Thursday morning we did a little more lab type work, this time Steve was showing us various microbiological sampling methods and associated equipment. In the afternoon we went over the last exam.
Every afternoon at 5pm we had a sensory evaluation session, and despite what most of you think this doesn’t mean necking several pints and packet of peanuts! With sensory evaluation we sample a control beer which is relatively plain, with no strong flavors or aromas, and then sample the same beer spiked with various flavor and aroma. A company called FlavorActiv produce these kits and include everything from DMS, and Diacetyl to Butric Acid (Baby Puke) and Sulpher. After the spiked sample we also got to do some sensory analysis on commercial beers that were either excellent examples of a style or demonstrated a particular flaw.
Friday morning was the Exam. Although I had aced (101%) the previous two exams and this one was also open book I was somewhat nervous. In the end though it seemed to go ok, with only a couple of questions that I wasn’t completely certain about, and I used all three hours.
After the exam we headed back to Hoppy Brewing for Lunch & Graduation. Steve & Christine handed out the diplomas and bags of graduation swag, including a rather nice American Brewers Guild “Graduate Class of 2008″ Hawaiian shirt (which I’m wearing right now!), an ABG baseball cap, ABG Bevkey bottle opener which is the best bottle opener I’ve ever used and an ABG pin. I’m definitely all kitted out now!
We stayed at Hoppy for a few more beers before heading back to the hotel. We arranged to meet some folks in Sacramento at an ‘English Pub’ called The Streets of London later in the evening. The Comfort Inn crew took a cab as usual, and over the course of the evening more and more recently graduated ABG brewers arrived. Much was drunk, and so were we.
At one point in the evening Art Garfunkel tried to pick a fight with me, and half the line of guys waiting to use the gents by trying to cut in-line and then going all ultra-camp and crazy talking when we wouldn’t stand for it. To paraphrase Eddie Izzard “When crazy people start talking to you, just be more crazy than them and they’ll leave you alone”. So I started talking to him about his music career with Paul Simon. He had no idea what I was talking about and quite bothering me.
Saturday morning I was hungover, but had to drive 90 miles to Chico for a behind the scenes tour of the Sierra Nevada Brewery. I’ll write a separate post about that later. After lunch and the tour we all said our respective good byes, and most folks headed back to Sacramento, and I got back on the road to head to Portland.
My camping plans changed due to the forest fires in Northern California and the big storm in Southern Oregon, and I decided to push on through to Portand. I got back around 11pm after around 10 hours of driving and 625 miles!
What a great week! Its almost sad that the studying portion is over.
