Blog Archives:
Thursday, January 27, 2011
Flavour Training
Thanks all for the great response to the Flavour Training Courses.
We've sold out both courses we had planned quite quickly. We're taking names now for a potential course in late March, and if we have 20 people to take it, I'll go ahead and run the course for them.
Cask Nights
As you can see on the front page of our website, there's a of cask night coming up in the near future. For those of you unfamiliar with cask ale here's the Wikipedia definition:
"Cask ale or cask-conditioned beer is the term for unfiltered and unpasteurised beer which is conditioned (including secondary fermentation) and served from a cask without additional nitrogen or carbon dioxide pressure."
Some breweries like to serve their cask ale through a "beer engine" which is basically a hand pump to get the beer into a glass. We prefer the gravity method because it's relatively idiot proof. Pop a cask on the counter, hammer the tap into it and serve directly into glasses via gravity. This also leads to some interesting keg tapping routines where everyone gets sprayed with beer. Check out a video here.
$ellout $tout
There's a batch of our $ellout $tout that will be wakened shortly from its six month + slumber in the barrels. Now that we've got the labels here and some time, we'll be getting down to business and bottling the beer up. Keep your eyes on our front page for a date.
For those of you who preferred Chris' Rigamarole Rye, we'll be filling the barrels with one more batch of that beer before we retire them. It won't be ready till sometime in late August, though.
February 1st, 2006
Remember that day? We certainly do!
It's the first day that Half Pints officially began business in our location on Keewatin Street. We've come a long way in the five years since the days of staff meetings at the picnic table.
We don't count our official anniversary until August 9th, since that's the day that we actually started selling beer to the public.
The first few months were a maddening salad of inspections, red tape, contractors and planning. Looking back it's hard to believe we got through it without killing someone.
We're planning our some beers for the coming year and have some fun stuff coming down the pipeline.
Cheers! Brewmaster Dave
Thanks all for the great response to the Flavour Training Courses.
We've sold out both courses we had planned quite quickly. We're taking names now for a potential course in late March, and if we have 20 people to take it, I'll go ahead and run the course for them.
Cask Nights
As you can see on the front page of our website, there's a of cask night coming up in the near future. For those of you unfamiliar with cask ale here's the Wikipedia definition:
"Cask ale or cask-conditioned beer is the term for unfiltered and unpasteurised beer which is conditioned (including secondary fermentation) and served from a cask without additional nitrogen or carbon dioxide pressure."
Some breweries like to serve their cask ale through a "beer engine" which is basically a hand pump to get the beer into a glass. We prefer the gravity method because it's relatively idiot proof. Pop a cask on the counter, hammer the tap into it and serve directly into glasses via gravity. This also leads to some interesting keg tapping routines where everyone gets sprayed with beer. Check out a video here.
$ellout $tout
There's a batch of our $ellout $tout that will be wakened shortly from its six month + slumber in the barrels. Now that we've got the labels here and some time, we'll be getting down to business and bottling the beer up. Keep your eyes on our front page for a date.
For those of you who preferred Chris' Rigamarole Rye, we'll be filling the barrels with one more batch of that beer before we retire them. It won't be ready till sometime in late August, though.
Remember that day? We certainly do!
It's the first day that Half Pints officially began business in our location on Keewatin Street. We've come a long way in the five years since the days of staff meetings at the picnic table.
We don't count our official anniversary until August 9th, since that's the day that we actually started selling beer to the public.
The first few months were a maddening salad of inspections, red tape, contractors and planning. Looking back it's hard to believe we got through it without killing someone.
We're planning our some beers for the coming year and have some fun stuff coming down the pipeline.
Cheers! Brewmaster Dave
Flavour Training Course Info
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
One of the most important things I learned at brewing school was to identify flavours in beer and be able to competently speak about them and get what I tasted across to others.
A few years after I finished my schooling, these same flavour training courses came in handy as I wrote my BJCP exam while living and brewing in Regina.
We're running a Flavour Training Seminar here at the brewery on February 21st, 2011 thru to February 24th, 2011 at 7pm - 9pm each night. During the four night course, we'll tackle 24 different flavours in beer, using a sample spiking kit that replicates the abuses that beer can be subjected to.
The cost is $60 + taxes per person and the class size is limited to 20 people total.
We'll taste the beers, discuss the samples, go over where the flavours tasted might be appropriate, and go into some solutions regarding the avoidance of off flavours in beer.
If you'd like to sign up, drop into the brewery and pay for your spot - Vanessa will have a sign up sheet so we know who's reserved their seat by paying. You can also reserve by phone by speaking with Vanessa and giving her your VISA or Mastercard numbers.
If there's enough interest, we'll also run a course on March 7th - 10th, 2011
FAQ:
Hope to see you there,
David Rudge,
Brewmaster/President
Half Pints Brewing Company
EDIT: FAQ #7 - Why don't you offer the course over 4 weeks? 4 days in a row is too hard to block out - c'mon man I'm busy!
You'll find that tasting the beers gets easier after the first night and you become almost hyper sensitive to faults. With a week off in between, the learning is more difficult. 4 nights in a row hammers home the learning and makes you a better taster.
FAQ #8 So why not just do the whole course in one night? Pallete fatigue sets in and you can't taste much after 6-10 small samples. Ever try to drink a St. James Pale Ale after having 6 Little Scrappers? Same deal.
January 20, 2010 UPDATE: There's been plenty of interest in the February course so we've added a second session in March
March 7th - 10th from 7pm - 9pm each night we'll be running the Flavour Training Course again. Same details as above, call Vanessa at our front desk (832-7468) or stop by to register.
A few years after I finished my schooling, these same flavour training courses came in handy as I wrote my BJCP exam while living and brewing in Regina.
We're running a Flavour Training Seminar here at the brewery on February 21st, 2011 thru to February 24th, 2011 at 7pm - 9pm each night. During the four night course, we'll tackle 24 different flavours in beer, using a sample spiking kit that replicates the abuses that beer can be subjected to.
The cost is $60 + taxes per person and the class size is limited to 20 people total.
We'll taste the beers, discuss the samples, go over where the flavours tasted might be appropriate, and go into some solutions regarding the avoidance of off flavours in beer.
If you'd like to sign up, drop into the brewery and pay for your spot - Vanessa will have a sign up sheet so we know who's reserved their seat by paying. You can also reserve by phone by speaking with Vanessa and giving her your VISA or Mastercard numbers.
If there's enough interest, we'll also run a course on March 7th - 10th, 2011
FAQ:
- Why do I want to train my palette to pick out off flavours in beer? Simply put, an educated palette raises the bar for everyone when it comes to beer. You can help spread the word for good beer everywhere.
- $60? That's a lotta scratch - why is the course so expensive? To cover the cost of the beer we need to use to do the spiked sampling, the kit to do the spiking, as well as the course handouts, and some palette cleansing breads/crackers and such, not to mention my time for the course prep and teaching. How much do you think accepting bad beer will cost you over your lifetime?
- I've got too much going on that week, why don't you run the course on ______ date? Read above - we'll be having another course in March to accommodate more people. If there's enough interest after that, we'll even run another course in late March.
- If I train my palette to pick out all these off flavours, then how am I ever going to enjoy my ______ beer again? You probably won't look at beer the same again after this course, but it pays to have the knowledge to know the difference between good and bad beer.
- I once got served a beer at a pub that tasted "funny", how can this course help me avoid this? If you've been trained, you can pick out dirty beer lines, bad glass washing techniques, and old, stale draft, etc. You'll learn how to send the beer back and make suggestions as to where the problem might stem from, without sounding like a jerk.
- I brew my own beer at home. Will this help me improve my homebrewing skills? Knowing why your beer tastes the way it does is the first step towards improving your brewing skills. We started as homebrewers and know the value in being our own worst critics. You can brew world class beer at home but sometimes it helps to have a little push in the right direction first.
Hope to see you there,
David Rudge,
Brewmaster/President
Half Pints Brewing Company
EDIT: FAQ #7 - Why don't you offer the course over 4 weeks? 4 days in a row is too hard to block out - c'mon man I'm busy!
You'll find that tasting the beers gets easier after the first night and you become almost hyper sensitive to faults. With a week off in between, the learning is more difficult. 4 nights in a row hammers home the learning and makes you a better taster.
FAQ #8 So why not just do the whole course in one night? Pallete fatigue sets in and you can't taste much after 6-10 small samples. Ever try to drink a St. James Pale Ale after having 6 Little Scrappers? Same deal.
January 20, 2010 UPDATE: There's been plenty of interest in the February course so we've added a second session in March
March 7th - 10th from 7pm - 9pm each night we'll be running the Flavour Training Course again. Same details as above, call Vanessa at our front desk (832-7468) or stop by to register.
Labels: Flavour Training Course
Regional Differences
Thursday, January 13, 2011
Canada's a big place, so it shouldn't surprise anyone that breweries from coast to coast exhibit vast differences in brewing ideology. There's an odd mix of politics, the local water's mineral content, the provincial liquor authority, and so much more that all play into the unique quality of a beer.
We see these differences played out in the mature American craft beer market with East Coast IPA's like a DFH 60 Minute vs. West Coast IPA like Green Flash IPA. Worldwide, we see the differences with a great malty example of an English Barleywine like JW Lees vs. a ridiculously hoppy American Barleywine like Avery's Hog Heaven which verges on Double IPA territory.
What got me thinking about this was the recent release of the Brewer's Association's 2011 Style Guidelines. This nifty document serves to neatly classify beers for judging purposes at competitions in the states such as the World Beer Cup or the Great American Beer Festival. Every year, brewers look at these guides and scratch their heads wondering where they could classify some of the beers from their roster if they were only willing to pigeonhole their creations and try to win a medal of some sort.
What the guide doesn't do is seriously take Canada into consideration when formulating their opinions of what differentiates certain beers from others. Quite honestly, that's a great thing because as Canadians we're likely to never be subjected to an awards ceremony where someone says "and the award for the best Prairie-Style Northern English IPA Whisky Barrel Aged On Apple Wood with Fresh Lakeside Hops goes to:"
Such is the strangeness of the Brewer's Association's task: every year, some brewery puts out an unclassifiable boundary pushing beer that beer lovers rave about and the constant one-upsmanship generally ends in a pissing match over that particular beer's defining characteristic. So they throw in a new category until slowly they have 140+ styles defined where once there were 8-12. I was kinda hoping that this year, they'd classify the freeze distilled slop that was bottled in a taxidermist's squirrel from the guys at Brewdog in Scotland. God knows what the world needs is all the brewers trying to one up each other with their taxidermy skills rather than their actual brewing.
Having worked in three different western provinces, I can safely say beer lovers in Canada have been more willing to accept these regional differences for the sake of better DRINKING beer. You know, the kind of beer you'd prefer to have a few pints of rather than a few ounces because it's just that good. People from all over Canada travel and are surprised that somewhere like (insert Canadian city name here) has something decent to drink.
It's not like the brewery they "discovered" was the best or better than any local brewery, it's just that it's different.
And in true Canadian form, simply being different is worth celebrating.
We see these differences played out in the mature American craft beer market with East Coast IPA's like a DFH 60 Minute vs. West Coast IPA like Green Flash IPA. Worldwide, we see the differences with a great malty example of an English Barleywine like JW Lees vs. a ridiculously hoppy American Barleywine like Avery's Hog Heaven which verges on Double IPA territory.
What got me thinking about this was the recent release of the Brewer's Association's 2011 Style Guidelines. This nifty document serves to neatly classify beers for judging purposes at competitions in the states such as the World Beer Cup or the Great American Beer Festival. Every year, brewers look at these guides and scratch their heads wondering where they could classify some of the beers from their roster if they were only willing to pigeonhole their creations and try to win a medal of some sort.
What the guide doesn't do is seriously take Canada into consideration when formulating their opinions of what differentiates certain beers from others. Quite honestly, that's a great thing because as Canadians we're likely to never be subjected to an awards ceremony where someone says "and the award for the best Prairie-Style Northern English IPA Whisky Barrel Aged On Apple Wood with Fresh Lakeside Hops goes to:"
Such is the strangeness of the Brewer's Association's task: every year, some brewery puts out an unclassifiable boundary pushing beer that beer lovers rave about and the constant one-upsmanship generally ends in a pissing match over that particular beer's defining characteristic. So they throw in a new category until slowly they have 140+ styles defined where once there were 8-12. I was kinda hoping that this year, they'd classify the freeze distilled slop that was bottled in a taxidermist's squirrel from the guys at Brewdog in Scotland. God knows what the world needs is all the brewers trying to one up each other with their taxidermy skills rather than their actual brewing.
Having worked in three different western provinces, I can safely say beer lovers in Canada have been more willing to accept these regional differences for the sake of better DRINKING beer. You know, the kind of beer you'd prefer to have a few pints of rather than a few ounces because it's just that good. People from all over Canada travel and are surprised that somewhere like (insert Canadian city name here) has something decent to drink.
It's not like the brewery they "discovered" was the best or better than any local brewery, it's just that it's different.
And in true Canadian form, simply being different is worth celebrating.
Labels: Business of Beer, Ramblings