Thoughts on Beer

Vegas Baby!

My friends and I recently went to Las Vegas for a bachelor party.  Las Vegas is known for clubs, bright lights, and mixed drinks, but not really beer.  In actuality, Las Vegas does have a few beer experiences that don’t break the bank.  Since our hotel was on the south side of the strip, and didn’t have a car or didn’t feel like taking cab rides, our selection was limited.

The first place we tried was the Burger Bar, located in Mandalay Place.  They had a large selection of beers from common selections, such as Spaten Optimator to more exotic selections, such as Life & Limb, a collaboration between Sierra Nevada and Dogfish Head.  The prices ranged from around $6 to upwards of over $100 for rare selections.  The atmosphere was nice, but the prices tended to be on the high side.

The next day, we stopped by Sin City Brewing, located in the Flamingo hotel and casino.  We tried the Amber, Stout, and Seasonal, which was an IPA.  All were quality beers, but at $6 each, again, we wouldn’t be able to purchase many pints.

While we were sitting at the bar, another patron mentioned that O’Sheas, the casino next door, had all-day happy hour, which included $1 Guinness drafts and $3 Black and Tans (Guinness stout layered on Harp lager).  We were excited to find such a great deal.  At the casino, a couple of my friends entered into a beer-pong tournament, and made it into the second round.  We enjoyed O’Sheas  so much, we went back the next day.

A couple days later, we heard of another place, just off the strip, called Ellis Island Casino and Brewery.  The casino had karaoke 7-days a week from 9 pm until 3 am, and had a brewery on-site.  We tried the brewery’s Amber, Wheat, and Stout (which mas more like a brown ale).  When it came time to buy the round, we found out each glass was only $1.50.  We sang all night, drinking $1.50 craft brews.

The next day, to finish our weekend, we went to Pour 24, a 24-hour, 24-tap bar located on the mezzanine level of the New York New York Hotel and Casino.  They had several craft brews not available in Iowa, including several Stone Brewing Co. options, such as Arrogant Bastard and Ruination.  On the pricey side at $7.25, we only had a couple of pints (in plastic glasses), but it was a nice way to end the trip.

Next time we go to Las Vegas, we have several great, inexpensive places to enjoy some beer.  What kinds of places have you found in Las Vegas?

Today, Sioux Brew published an excellent article titled: “New era for Iowa’s breweries ushered in by revamped beer laws”.  It does a great job summing up the impact of the passing of SF 2088, and its importance for Iowa brewers and distributors.

Asahi Tour

A couple of years ago, my fiance and I visited a friend in Japan.  One of the highlights of our trip was visiting the Asahi Brewery in Fukuoka, the Hakata Brewery.

It was here where I learned a bit more about the process of brewing, where malted grain is put into heated water for a certain amount of time, to allow the starch in the grain to convert to sugar by enzymes.  This liquid, called wort (pronounced wert), is then boiled, and the hops are added.  Once boiled for a certain amount of time, the wort is cooled, then the yeast is added, and the conversion to beer takes place.  An amusing comic by The Oatmeal shows this process (and other interesting things about beer).

The great thing about the Asahi brewery is that you actually got to taste and smell the ingredients used in the process.  We saw the empty kegs, the brewing room, and the bottling line.  We also learned that the breweries employed sensory experts who would randomly test samples for consistency.  The tour was a great learning experience.

Once the tour was over, we had the complimentary tasting, and I was hooked.  We then saw Asahi Super Dry everywhere.  It was on tap at the restaurants, the karaoke lounges, and there were even vendors walking around the Japanese baseball game with 10 liter (around 3 gallon) kegs strapped to their backs, dispensing the beer.

To this day, Asahi Super Dry is my favorite Japanese beer, and is definitely one of my favorite lagers because the flavor is very clean, and you can taste the quality of the ingredients.  But maybe that’s just me recalling the taste of the ingredients on the tour.

Have you tried Asahi Super Dry?  What did you think?

Tailgating with Homebrew

Since becoming homebrewers almost two years ago, my friends and I have found every reason to have home-made beer at events.  Get-togethers, parties, you name it, and we would have homebrew.

This never was more true than this past Iowa Hawkeyes football season.  At the beginning of the season, two of my friends and I decided to create and keg a 5 gallon batch for every Hawkeye home game instead of the regular old tailgate beer (yuck).

There were seven home games, so we decided to split it up that I would brew three batches, and my two friends would each brew two.

We already knew how to make the beer, and we had the 5 gallon soda kegs, so all we needed were the “extras” to make it perfect.  We used our carbon dioxide tanks and regulators to push the beer, and we purchased a picnic-style tap to dispense the beer.  To make the beer stay cold, we bought a “Keglove“, which is a neoprene sleeve that houses an ice blanket.  This sleeve fit  over the soda keg, and kept the beer cold for several hours.

Because the University of Iowa doesn’t allow kegs, even 5 gallon kegs for responsible parties, we needed to find a location off-campus to do our tailgating.  Luckily, we found a nice spot not far from the campus.

Over the course of the year, we had several styles of beer: an Irish red, a porter, an IPA, an English bitter, and a “breakfast” stout (coffee, oatmeal, and chocolate).  Needless to say, all the people in our group always finished the keg before the game, and we had a great time.

Tying Up Hop Strings

It’s about that time of year again, when the snow melts, and the growing season begins.  If you have home brewed for a while, you may ask yourself, “What’s the next step?”

The easy answer is growing your own hops!  Hops are a hearty plant that thrive between the 30th and 50th parallels, which is roughly between the panhandle of Florida and just north of the great lakes.  Anywhere in this area can do well growing hops.

In the past, hops have been grown in several US regions.  Originally, many of the hop fields were in New York until several diseases ruined the crops.  The hop growing then continued west, occurring in Wisconsin and other Midwestern states, until several different diseases destroyed the crops in the Midwest.  Now, most of the hops grown in the US are in the states of Oregon and Washington, although many areas can support hop growing.  In fact, one Iowa farmer has grown hops outside the town of Oxford.

Hops are perennial plants, and usually take at least a year to develop and produce hop cones, the parts used in beer-making.  For example, last year I planted three types of hop rhizomes: Goldings, Tettenanger, and Willamette.  By the end of the growing season, despite my anticipation, I did not harvest a single hop cone.  Because it usually takes a year to establish, I have high hopes for this year.  In addition to these three types, this year I also plan on planting Cascade and Hallertau types of hops for the first time.  The description of each of these types of hops can be found on the home brew wiki.

In a future installment, I will describe what needs to be done to grow hops.

Have you tried to grow hops?  What’s your experience?