It’s hard to believe that American’s are friendly drunks, but compared to our cousins-across-the-pond, we’re a bunch of Miss Congenialities.  Mostly because when Brits get drunk, they kill each other with broken pint glasses.  So, instead of looking at why so many people are angry and drink so heavily, they thought, “It must be the glasses that make them do this!”

There are about 87,000 alcohol-related glass attacks each year, with many resulting in hospital visits, Home Secretary Alan Johnson said as he introduced the two prototype shatterproof pint glasses.

“Glassing causes horrific injuries and has a lasting and devastating impact on victims and their families,” Johnson said. “I hope these designs will help bring an end to such attacks.”

Really?  Glassing?  That’s what you get when you move all of your jobs out of the country, create a police state, and attempt to guarantee 100% safety through legislation.  Good thing that could never happen here… right?

I just wish I had one of the glasses with me on New Year’s Eve.

When Philly Beer Week first kicked off with the Craft Beer Fest at the Navy Yard, I remember thinking, “WOW!  This has got to be one of the greatest things ever!  There should be beer week every month!”  But just as Tom Hanks learned in Big, be careful what you wish for, because it just might happen.  Don’t get me wrong: if the event sells out every time, why not offer it more frequently?  But now that we’re up to what—4 festivals a year?—it’s getting a little tiresome and EXPENSIVE.  Ticket prices have gone up (not much), and the novelty has gone down.  There’s now the Winter Beer Fest, the Craft Beer Fest (in March, which is no longer Beer Week), another Fest for Beer Week in June, the various Oktoberfest events, etc, there’s just too much to drink and too little time to appreciate it.

Bryan at the Brew Lounge quotes Jennie Hatton’s prediction for more than 1000 events at this year’s Beer Week.  Yes, it’s great that people are excited about good beer.  But with Beer Week turning into your standard chug-and-run-to-the-next-event format (like the Erin Express, but with better beer), it’s hard to get as excited about it.

How to remedy this situation?  Plan events outside of beer week!  Such as…

The Home Brew Brunch
Hawthornes Cafe (11th and Fitzwater) @ Noon, January 23rd

We’ve set up a brunch with the new beer café, Hawthornes.  If you haven’t been there yet, Chris (of Bella Vista Beer Dist. fame) and his fiancée Heather have opened a cozy tasting room complete with food, huge bottle selection, and a growler station (with an impressive list of options).  Come join us on Saturday, January 23rd at noon to share and sample home brews.  Space is limited, so leave a comment if you’re coming.  Feel free to stop by to taste a few sips and say hi if you don’t have anything brewed.  Feel free to send this info to any other home brewers you know.

We had a great brew last weekend—our holiday porter is bubbling away, and it smells fantastic.  I’m really excited to see how it turns out (although I can’t think of any brew I haven’t been excited to taste).  We had a few helping hands—Helene, Ant, Katie, and Cederic (somenames have been changed to protect their top secret identities).  Helene is quite a beer connoisseur, but had never brewed before.  Ant’s always up for a few beers, and Katie was taking Cederic on a tour of Philly before he has to head home to redacted.

Other than the hop bag coming undone and spilling hops into the boiling wort, the whole brew went according to plan.  Temperatures were held, the cooling was quick, and Garrett Oliver’s extra yeast suggestion worked… too well.  The next morning, I came down to find a stream of wort leading away from the carboy.  The escaping gases foamed up, causing wort to clog the holes on the airlock.  After building up some pressure, the cap of the airlock went flying (I still can’t find it) and a geyser of beer shot up (scrubbing the ceiling is not fun).  Next time, I’ll leave the cap off of the airlock…

Becky and I finally made it over to Hawthornes Cafe for dinner, and it was great.  I thought the food prices were a little high at first, but then I saw the portions.  We talked to the owners, Chris and Heather, about a homebrew brunch some time in the next few months.  Anybody else up for swapping a few beers on a cold Saturday morning?

And another thing—I’ve really been enjoying the newest local beer mag to hit, Philly Beer Scene.  Anybody else reading it?  I liked the beer tasting they had a Raw Dawgs Saloon in South Philly—might have to hit that place up soon.

Garrett Oliver recently came to Philly for a night of debauchery high-brow discussion.  A bunch of us met up at Bishop’s Collar, and after Garrett finished mixing some beer concoctions behind the bar, we figured we could pick up a few tips.

We learned that he has a new beer encyclopedia in the works, covering all aspects of beer.  How such a thing could exist and not have to be split into 8 volumes is as-of-yet beyond me.  But if anyone is able to make such a thing not only readable, but enjoyable, it’s him.

We were also able to glean a very important tip from him.  Joe asked, “If there was one thing you could tell all home-brewers that would make a definite difference in their brewing attempts, what would it be?”  Garrett didn’t even blink: more yeast.  He asked if we use liquid yeast (sure), if we’ve ever run into the situation where we ever waited more than a day for the yeast to start bubbling away (yes!), and if we ever notice off-flavors in those batches (umm, yeah).  He said that if his batches aren’t bubbling away after 12 hours, he starts sweating.  There are two good reasons behind this (the 12 hour mark, not the sweating).  Pitching too little yeast puts the yeast into “reproduction mode” first, where they have to multiply to achieve sustainable numbers.  He said this produces a lot of esters that you may not want in your beer.  Also, it gives other bacteria a head start, creating even more chances for those tongue-twisting off-flavors to occur.  He said that the amount that most home brewers pitch is between a quarter to a third of what big-time brewers use.

His recommendation?  Buy two pouches of the liquid yeast and pitch them both at the same time.  A yeast starter would work too, but if you’re brewing on short notice (as we often are) two pouches should be sufficient.

Which reminds me…  We’re brewing this weekend, so if I’m going to get that starter going, I’d better go buy some yeast.

A new study has found that hops in regions of eastern Germany and central Slovakia have seen decreases in alpha acid content of 0.06% per year since the 1950s.  They’re blaming it on increased air temperature stemming from our misguided belief that the planet went through all the trouble of evolving us just to collect a few trillion tons of combustion byproducts.  Good job, planet.

I find the numbers a bit hard to swallow, since 0.06% x 50 = 3%, meaning that back in the ‘50s, brewing supply shops would have carried bags marked “Saaz (8%)” instead of the 5% they quoted in the article.

I’ve said it before, but it’s time to make hops illegal.  It’s the only way to get massive underground labs producing more potent strains (and way better names).  Purple Mystic Alpha Buddha (26%), anyone?

Yes, it’s true.  I’m horrible at remembering to blog.  But can you blame me?  Sure.

Truth be told, I haven’t been feeling very beery lately, since our last batch has yet to carbonate.  I had a friend try it, and even after explaining the situation to him, his response was, “Where’s the body?!”  Beer without carbonation equals sweet alcohol water.  Considering how many batches we have done that have gotten their fizz on, what was different about this one (we keep asking ourselves)?  It’s not that this one has absolutely no carbonation, but it’s way less than I’d like to see.  We’re talking a "sck” when opening a bottle as opposed to a “sckxxxxxxx”.

Possible Problems

• We added the water and dried malt extract right off of the stove.  It went in when we had about a 2 gallons of the wort in the bottling bucket, with 3 still to go.  Even if the heat killed whatever yeast was in that 2 gallons, the next 3 should have brought the temperature down.
• There wasn’t enough yeast left alive to carbonate.  But the heat and additional sugars should have brought them out of hibernation.
• Too much alcohol!  Even with the extra sugar water, the yeast were suffocated in their own excrement (thanks Kurt Vonnegut!)
• Improper sterilization.  Always a possibility, and there’s no way to know exactly how it happened.
• Time!  We just need to wait.

Possible Solutions

• Pour all of the bottles into a soda keg and pressurize with CO2.  After a day or two, we’ll have beer!
• Distill the beer and make whiskey.
• Suck it up and drink it as-is.

My guess is that we have too much alcohol for the yeast to quickly carbonate the beer, but given enough time, it will be good.  Of course, the problem with time is that you have to give it, well, time.  I guess I can use that time to catch up on my blogging…

Cheers!