The beer is still fresh in the growler

The Super Bowl was two weeks ago. Iron Hill served us up two pizzas and a growler of Pig Iron Porter for $25. The pizza disappeared, the growler stayed in our fridge since then — unopened.

Now, we're back from SF Beer Week and looking for beers to empty out of the refrigerator.

How will this Pig Iron Porter have held up over the past two weeks? It got me to recalling one of the most, still to this day, referred topics from The Google — the freshness of a growler over time.

Adam, now of The NonconFermist, in August of 2006 summarized some of the most important factors to consider on this topic.

My growler from Iron Hill certainly met all 3 of these conditions, plus one.

- filled to the very top,
- never opened,
- kept cold — plus,
- the Iron Hill bartenders have a tendency to triple-check that they've tightened down the lid as hard as they can

Just as roasty-tasting, slightly-bittered, foamy-looking as I'd expect it to have been two weeks ago. In light of all of the wonderful beer from the various Iron Hill locations in the past 5-10 years, this Pig Iron Porter is still one of my all-time favorites.

While I was out....

....on a Rhine and Moselle Rivers cruise with the esteemed Mr. Stephen Beaumont (beer cruise tour director of 'Beers on the Rhine'), things appeared to be humming along as per usual in and around Philadelphia. As I continue to dig out from around 2,000 emails, 3,000 RSS feeds, hundreds of missed Facebook and Twitter connections, and hundreds of podcasts, it will be nearly impossible to catch up with everything that I might have missed. But, that was the intentional direction of this trip--it was designed to be a vacation away from everything. For almost 17 days, I did absolutely no Facebook updates or RSS surfing and replied only to the emails that looked like they required a timely reply. Prior to leaving on October 8th (Happy Birthday to me :), I wrote around eight articles to be posted on a scheduled basis at both The Brew Lounge and After Hours at The Brew Lounge (Washington Times Communities). So, while it may have looked to some of you that I was still actively on line, nothing could have been farther from the truth--and, it was good! Now, I'm back and getting re-engaged. Here's a bit of what I missed that I could glean from various sources. If I missed something important, like responding to your email, please forgive me and gently nudge me with a follow-up e-mail. - Lew Bryson reported on PBC's Harvest from the Hood. I saw a shelf-full's worth at Wegmans this morning and, if it wan't 5am (y'know...jet lag...the body clock thing), would have purchased a bottle or two to bring home. This is a fine beer to do such a thing. - Adam the NonconFermist was busy. Not only did he finish his garage floor in preparation for a new homebrew system, but he was able to sneak some time in at Iron Hill's West Chester location where they were conducting a homebrew contest. (And, here's a link to Iron Hill's take on the event.) - Victory will be at Rattle 'n' Hum in NYC on 11/2/10. Lots of their beer like only Rattle 'n' Hum can do it. Reportedly 40 lines, plus cask, and Bill Covaleski too. - More from Lew...he'll be at Craft Ale House in Limerick tomorrow (10/26) and he's fond of their Pennsylvania lineup in honor of his book promotion tour that he'll be there for. Check it out and see if you agree. - I haven't quite figured out the whos and whats of Thirsty Girl yet, but Whitney Thompson of Victory Brewing is one of them. A nice bit of reading about her over on the Facebook page. - Just a few miles south down I-95, Alexander Mitchell covered Baltimore Beer Week with passion and a lot of ambition and motivation. Check out his site and scroll through some of the fun stuff that he posted along the way. I get a feeling that if we hadn't been out of the country, an overnight trip to Baltimore during BBW would not have been out of the question. - Back home here in Philly, Joe Sixpack discussed pre-Prohibition as both a time period for beers as well as a modern-day style. He also touches on the very cool event occurring this coming weekend in a cemetery--yes, a cemetery. - Jack Curtin, last but certainly never least, kvetched a bit over session beers. I'm not sure if there was any motivation to the posting other than wanting to start a conversation. Basically, my response is that a session beer is very personal when it comes to ABV level. Because of my size and my eating and drinking habits, I've always considered my own "session level" to be at around 5.0%-5.5% Do you feel differently? Go to Jack's site and contribute to the conversation. - Bringing this full circle to Steve Beaumont, he, on the other hand, did take his laptop with him and manage to squeeze in some blog posts and Facebook updates. Scroll through and find a couple of Rhine-related postings of his over here. My telling of the 16+ days in Europe will have to wait until I can wade through 1,000+ pictures, dozens of videos, and scribbled notes (oh, typed ones, too, on my iPhone) and determine just exactly how to present some slimmed down portion of them to you. Until such time...

A New Homebrew....what could be next?!

(The brewhouse setup, looking all nice and clean while awaiting boiling temperature) I heard the cries to "just brew something". I felt the beer pressure from The NonconFermist. I'd put the finishing clamps on the homemade wort chiller that Patty made for me....2 years ago!! I bought the ingredients from Mike Hamara at Artisan Homebrew in Downingtown, PA all the way back in early May. I was out excuses and had no where to hide; it was time to brew. The way I shape the story makes it sound like I don't like to homebrew the way some people don't like to prepare and cook dinner for themselves. Reality couldn't be farther from that. I love to cook and I love to homebrew. Problem is, as life accumulates more things and more things to do, it seems that I have less time than ever to cook dinner, let alone make a batch of homebrewed beer. (After the boilover, everything looking not so nice and clean) It was obvious this past weekend that I was a bit rusty. My timing and sequencing of steps was off. My sanitation and attention to detail, fortunately, was pretty good. Maybe the recipe was too much for a "re-entry beer". Who knows. Still, even after brewing in the rain and cleaning up in the dark, the following morning it appeared that the yeast had begun their busy digestion of sugars overnight and a fermentation was underway. With 11 pounds of malt extract, 3 pounds of specialty stepping grains, 8 ounces of 100% cacao baking chocolate, and two packets of healthy yeast, there wasn't much excuse for fermentation to not begin quickly. In between, let's see, what else happened? I used a new turkey fryer that we got a steal of a deal on after last Thanksgiving at Lowes. Apparently turkey fryers don't sell so well after Thanksgiving. For $70, we got a nice 30-quart 45,000-BTU turkey fryer. Also, new to the process was a sweet new wort chiller that Patty made for me as a wedding anniversary present. Which anniversary, you should ask? Wait for it.......how about our 10th anniversary? Yup. And, yes, your math might be correct if you said we were coming up now on our 12th. Yup, I'm the jerk...but no-less-grateful jerk. (The wort chiller after a hard 25 minutes of work) She made the wort chiller with approximately 50 feet of copper tubing and made the input/output pieces high enough clear even the deepest homebrew kettles. Once hooked up to the garden hose, we were able to chill this batch from boiling temperature to under 100 degrees Fahrenheit in 10 minutes. Getting it down another 20-30 degrees proved a little more difficult given the extra warm summer we've been experiencing. After a total of 25 minutes, we gave up and dumped the wort into the primary fermenting bucket at 75 degrees Fahrenheit and pitched the yeast. There was, obviously, plenty of sugar for the healthy yeast to go to work on. In less than 12 hours and a temperature hovering around 70 degrees, the fermentation took off and lasted for almost two full days, with close to 30 of these hours showing a vigorous fermentation. Okay, so that was gratifying, given all that seemed to have gone wrong leading up to this point. Now, it's time to let things settle down and out before taking a reading in the next day or so to determine if we need more yeast to a little more work before racking the beer over into a glass carboy for a secondary fermentation while sitting on ten pounds of fresh sour cherries (well, fresh last year...frozen since then). Check back and I'll let you know what's happening. (The morning after, the yeast looks to have found enough sugars to digest)

See, I've got this neighbor....

You may know him personally, or at least heard of him. He's the NonconFermist. He's my neighbor, recently of Beer Bits 2 and originally of The Brew Lounge. He's Adam Beck and when I looked out my window yesterday and saw him foraging for pine cones or anything that might have fermentable sugars in it, I knew the NonconFermist was up to something good. Turns out he was brewing. It's something he's been trying to back on track with recently. Looks like he's back on track making something in the 4-5% ABV range and may turn out to be something like a black-ish American IPA....or not. Doesn't matter, though. That's why he's called The NonconFermist.