International Brewers Day Profile–Dave Coy

Happy International Brewers Day!

The brainchild of Jay Brooks, over at Brookston Beer Bulletin, IBD is the kind of holiday I can get behind. It’s about showing appreciation. It’s a celebration rather than a remembrance (not that there’s anything wrong with that). And it’s about beer.

The premise is basically this: today’s the day to honor brewers the world over for their noble work. This is to take the form of events highlighting the day, brewer profiles from beer writers and bloggers, as well as a little bit of “hug the brewer.” Not sure if homebrewers count, but I hope my wife hugs me anyway. I deserve it for all the brew I provide for her.

I’ve said before that brewers are good people. It’s really that simple. And today’s the day I bring an example. Actually, I’ve mentioned Dave Coy before:

Recently, I met Raccoon River’s brewer, Dave Coy, at a homebrew competition, and he let me know that he was working with the local A-B Distributor to get his beers out. I then approached my local Bud rep about bringing Dave’s stout in on tap. He didn’t know they were working together. My rep’s supervisor said the logistics would be tough to manage, so I should just do Goose Island on draught.

Several conversations with my rep, calls to Dave and Dave’s calls to the distributor higher-ups later, and I’ve got this tasty Iowa beer on tap. You can’t tell me a well-oiled national distribution system can’t manage to get me a beer that they’ve agreed to distribute. Thankfully, a little follow-up and positive persistence, as well as communication with and help from the brewery itself, made it happen. Big thanks to Dave. If you’re in Des Moines, go try his beers at the source. If you’re in Corning, drink ‘em at my place.

This is the spirit of the Brewer. Helpful. Good. I know that Dave has plenty to do around the brewhouse, but he took the time to help lowly me get his beers rolling. Quite a bit of time, phone calls and prodding, as a matter of fact. I’m thankful, because my restaurant is better as a result.

I stopped in to say hello, thanks and have lunch at Raccoon River Brewing Company recently, and Dave couldn’t have been more kind. As I left that day, I was reminded of the other good Dave-trait: he’s a whale of a brewer. His maibock was delicious and just the right after-zoo-with-the-family-brew. It’s one thing to be a nice guy. And it’s one thing to have a snazzy logo. But it’s another thing entirely to be an incredible brewer on top of it.

Dave’s got all the good traits, and tonight, he’ll be one of many brewers to which I’ll be raising a pint.

AAAAARRRRRRGGGGGHH!!!!!/YIPEEEEEEE!!!!! Syndrome

OR Bi-polar Brewer Syndrome

You know the feeling: acute pain, agonizing disappointment, and sudden loss followed by excitement, elation and a smile stretched from ear to ear.

It’s triggered by that pssshhhh sound of a keg that’s just kicked. Aaarrrggghh!!! That beer is gone. The sweat of my brow measured finite. History recorded. Poo!

But then…Yipeee! I’ve got a new keg ready to go! Out with the porter; in with the dubbel! How exciting! I’ve been dying to get this beer on! My brow sweated for this one, as well.

You know you’ve felt it, and there are worse afflictions to have than Bi-polar Brewer. It happens with draft system owners more than bottlers. When you have bottles running low, you know when you get to the last one. You’ve seen it coming. You know it when you pick up the last. Popping the cap doesn’t cause a cry of pain, just a matter-of-fact well, here’s the last one.

Even though you can lift that keg to gauge your stock, and you know it’s low, it’s still a surprise when that keg kicks. Sorta like when a loved one dies after battling an illness. You know it’s coming, but still, when they pass, the reality of it is shocking. Now, I don’t mean to say that a keg running dry is akin to the death of a friend or family member. Just take the flippin’ metaphor for what it is.

There is, of course, a time for everything. And we’re now talking a time for change: I’ve been driving through my Bramling Cross Porter for quite some time, and now it’s time for my Ceremony Abbey Ale. I don’t think I’ve every really talked about this porter, so in remembrance, I should mention that this was not my Number One Porter recipe. I stumbled across some Bramling Cross hops a while back, and snatched them up knowing that I’d wanted to try them since reading a description that mentioned lemony and black currant notes. Though I’d looked variously over the years, I didn’t find them easy to track down.

So I hopped this porter (which is what I was thirsty for, and was scheduled to brew) more than I normally do to push the hop profile enough to peak through this otherwise roast-leaning beer. I can’t say as I noticed black currant, but I could see a lemony character peaking through, an interesting nuance to this beer. But not the porter I want to drink every day.

Kinda like when you have an employee that’s a good worker, but a pain in the ass to deal with. Maybe they talk too much or don’t shower everyday. But they’re really good at their job. And finally, they move on. You know you have to replace them, but you’re glad about it. That’s the reality of how I feel about this dead soldier.

Will I use these hops again? Yes, in a different beer.

For now, rest in peace, Bramling Cross Porter. I need your keg for my Jennings Farm Mild a little later today. While I sip on Ceremony.

site updates

I’d planned on a bit of a site facelift around the time of my first anniversary, BUT that just didn’t happen. Finally, I take a Sunday morning to fool around a little. Maybe this will stay like this, and maybe it won’t.

One element I’d like to call your attention to is the page I set up for The Gospel According to St. Arnold. Some will remember this series I did back in December. Since that time, I’d wanted to get the links all together in an easy-to-navigate fashion. Finally, I’ve got that taken care of so the whole series is easy to find.

Peace and Pints!

Wilson

Session #17–going against the grain

With summer in full swing and people talking about lawnmowers and the beach, this Session topic couldn’t be more appropriate. I mean really. It couldn’t.

Why all emphatic, Wilson? Pfiff!, this month’s host, speaks to me on this one. To me.

This just happens to be Dark Beer Summer. I decided a few months back that I simply wasn’t going to drink lighter beers just because it was hot. Just because you’re supposed to. I love a good light beer, but this year, I just decided to stick with the Dark Side.

Now, Wilson, aren’t you being a little like those one-dimensional hopheads? you might be thinking. No. Stylistically, I’ll be all over the place.

The “rules” basically have me drinking darkish beer. Brewing dark beer. Condoning dark beer. I’ve already broken the first rule. So I had to consider more rules. My brother Joe showed up with a sixer of Franziskaner Weissbier the other day, and I drank some. I caveat myself on this one on the fact that I didn’t buy it.

Rules are made to be broken, after all. Like the one I’m breaking by doing this Dark Beer Summer Project.

So like the “Joe bought it” situation, I’m sure there’ll some light stuff creep into my system. Can I pass up a double wit if I stumble across one at a festival? Hell, no. That one will be in the I Drank It At A Festival Category of excuses.

I refuse to be obnoxious about it. If I were, I’d be setting some kind of SRM barrier. If I were to draw a line in the sand, where would it be? I’d accept your comments on the matter. What is light? What is dark? What is the meaning of Life? Before I launched this Project, I’d been planning on brewing my Merckx Belgian Pale Ale, and possibly a saison. Then I thought, oh, they’re too light, and maybe they should be the lines in the sand. I haven’t brewed them yet, and I haven’t ruled them out. Good old Kyle brewed a saison; am I allowed to drink it? I think yes, under the Kyle Brewed It Clause. Thank goodness, because I already have.

So, what do I have planned? I’ve got a porter on tap, along with a Belgian dubbel, half of which I “doubled-barrelled” with oak soaked in Cabernet Sauvignon and Southern Comfort . I just bottled my much-anticipated Sanctuary, my first go at a Flanders Red. I just brewed a dark mild, which I can’t wait to try. The fact is a little time will pass before I brew again, so when will the old ale, wee heavy, Baltic porter and Russian Imperial stout and milk stout arrive? I do not know.

It is possible that by that time, autumn will be approaching, and I’ll be ready to get back to the rule following of the Days of Cooler Weather (i.e: dark beers!). However, I won’t be following the subset of rules about pumpkin beers. I’m not a very good sheep.

The long and short of it is this: I’ll mostly be drinking dark beer this summer. Join me, won’t you?

__________

Big thanks to Rob at Pfiff! for hosting.

Detour-induced memories of beer

Perhaps you’ve been watching the news. Iowa’s had a lot of rain lately. Flooding. Twisters. Etc.

I live out in the country. Out here, sometimes you look forward to the rain, as it keeps the dust down. Sometimes you don’t look forward to rain. It makes for precarious driving. Sometimes you look forward to snow, because it’s beautiful, but the melting makes for precarious driving, as well.

All the rain caused a sinkhole just south of our driveway. For a few days, we drove around it. Then the road was closed entirely. We took a look at the sinkhole to find that it was more like a cave as tall as Andre the Giant and reaching back as far as the road is wide.

So now we have to take a detour. When it’s wet, the detour is long. When it’s dry, the detour isn’t so long. I like it when it’s dry. I like the shortness of it, but I also like the fact that it takes me over a dirt road. I’m not joyriding. I live in a place that requires dirt road travel. That’s kinda cool.

And it makes me think of the good old, beer-soaked days of yesteryear. We’d hang out on dirt roads and drink beer, with AC/DC, Tom Petty, Bob Seger and a million other bands making it all a smalltown paradise. I once wrote a poem about those days. Those places. Actually, it was a giant, epic poem, brimming with rhyming couplets, called Landmarks of a Mediocre Town. The only nice thing I ever wrote about my hometown. Today, I think about Piss Street (we pissed our names), the stone tunnel (we wrote our names), Cookie Street (burned rubber), the Axe Murder House (I dated the girl that lived there just so I could see the inside), the Stanton road (oops, I killed the lights), Hacklebarney (who needs a tent to camp?), Baker’s Cut (ever surf on a car?), and the Church Parking Lot (clearly God is forgiving).

Ahh, memories! Dirt roads, cheap beer and old friends.

Three Sheets–beer in HD

The Backdrop

I don’t watch much TV.

I used to be heavily addicted to TV when I was a kid: Gilligan’s Island, MTV, The Brady Bunch, stand-up, The Frugal Gourmet, The Young and the Restless. Well, everything really.

For two of my college years, I did without, out of poorness and an abundance of working. But I was still very much pro-TV. When I graduated, I moved to Pinon, Arizona, smack dab in the middle of the Navajo Reservation. There was no TV reception. No cable. We didn’t even have a phone for the first six months. Primestar dishes were new and available, but for some reason, we didn’t rush out and get one.

We were busy getting settled into our new home, my new job, our new culture. Our newborn son. In the winter, we made a quilt together. I tied a lot of flies. Michelle started scrapbooking. We hiked. I homebrewed. We talked.  We didn’t have time for TV. My grandma taped The Olympics and PBS Cooking shows, and soon, we were waaaaay behind in watching them. You can’t imagine how amazing this possibility is, as my grandma, is very slow. If she was taping and mailing videos and we had them stacked and unwatched, you know we weren’t turning on the old idiot box very often.

It was great! We were free! And to this day, I enjoy this euphoria! A TV schedule does not run my life. I hear people in their oh-crap mode rushing to get home to Big Brother or American Idol or whatever, and I feel sorrow for them.

I watch what I want, when I want. We subscribe to Netflix and work our way through a lot of movies, but generally, I’m too busy making and living my life to watch someone else’s on TV.

Three Sheets Calling

So it’ll be no surprise then that when the PR crew from MOJOHD’s show Three Sheets, with Zane Lamprey approached me that I hadn’t really heard of the show. I still don’t have cable, and I sure enough don’t have HD. In fact, right this moment, our DVD player is crapping out, narrowly beating out our TV in the Least-Functional-in-the-House Competition. One of these days, I’m going to climb up on the roof and figure out how to hook up that antenna so I can watch Al Roker refer to my neck of the woods without so much fuzz blocking him.

Even though the shows are available on-line, I request that they send me DVDs, as a hard copy reminder to actually check this show. For the week following their arrival, I ask comrades and high school students if they’ve ever heard of Zane. The consensus is No. I’m thinking that despite the bio on the website, he might not actually be famous or funny:

Zane Lamprey has starred in shows for MTV, VH1 and Comedy Central and now finds himself in the role of a lifetime…hosting a show about drinking!  From Champagne, France to Jaco, Costa Rica, Zane is on a mission to immerse himself in foreign drinking cultures.  Cheers!

And he surely won’t know crap about beer. I probably won’t like this show.

Anybody notice I’ve used the word crap in this post three times now? Actually, four.

So?

So, finally I watch the shows. They sent me three episodes: Munich, Czech Republic and Gibraltar. I watched them in that order because I was drinking German beer at the time and Gibraltar didn’t sound that beery.

Here’s the premise: Our buddy Zane is cruising to all these destinations around the globe. He first looks for the local hangover cure (which had me thinking, oh, great. Not really the quality over quantity style of drinking that brewvana preaches). Then he drinks the Stuff. Maybe that’s Oktoberfest Adventures. Maybe that’s absinthe. Interspersed is a goodly amount of cultural education, liquid education and silly fun and games.

I liked the show. I’d watch these on purpose. Three Sheets wouldn’t dictate my life like when MTV was showing The Monkees three times a day so many years ago, but I found it both entertaining and educational.

It’s not precisely the drinking show that I’d make, and I really should make one, but it was a good show. Zane wasn’t Eddie Murphy circa Delirious, but he’s an entertaining Drinking-Host-Guy doing a fine job of the Job I’d like to be doing. I need to find a producer.

And I should say that the show really did push me a bit introspective. I get in my beer geek mode, all serious and all moderation and all quality and all scoffy at getting a bit loaded. It’s a good thing that I shun the daily hangover, to be sure. But it’s a fact that if I showed up at Oktoberfest, I’d drink too damn much. And I have to remind myself that that would be entirely okay, once in that great while. With a good friend or a good wife or a TV audience or a good occasion, a couple extra pints would be fine.

Thanks, Zane, for de-geek-ifying me, just a little. While it is about quality, not quantity. It’s also about fun.

My autobiographical bar

Back in February, I acquired a building on Main Street in a small town in Iowa. It had been an office space for the Rural Electrical Cooperative. The walls were white, much like those of so many little mom-and-pop restaurants in these parts. So many hang a 1974 print of a pheasant flying over a dirt road and call it decor, ready for hot beef and meat loaf action.

That wasn’t what we were after. Over the last few months, I’ve spent a lot of time transforming this space into Electric Burrito. It’s a blend of rock and roll and cowboys, I guess, with a healthy smattering of Good Beer. I thought about how much of myself was in this space. The colors. The soundtrack. The recipes. The beer. The subtle references to the times and places and people in our lives:

NookIzzydadchelle’sgrandparentslocalbeergoodunclesAC/DCTucsonmyboys

There’s really so much more. The whole place is an autobiography, if you take a look around. But, the bar. That’s what we’re here to talk about, Mr. Digression-Pants. First, the place is really a little burrito joint, not a bar. Not a tap room. It’s just that we have Good Beer, thanks to my enthusiasm/ridiculousity.

(another quick digression: the other day, one of my high school aged servers gave me an order and said, “Hey, J., what would be a good beer recommendation if someone ordered beef enchiladas?”

“Oh,” said I. “I wouldn’t hesitate to point them toward something darker, since they’re doing beef. That GI Nut Brown oughta be a good choice.”

“Cool,” said she. “That’s what I told them.” Warmed my heart it did.)

Anyway. I’m a scrounger. I re-use stuff. I buy bargain brands for stuff that doesn’t matter so I can afford expensive beer. The building had a built in cabinet against one wall. I decided that I’d turn that into my bar. This became a brotherly project, since Joe’s a carpenter with both skills and tools that I don’t have. Joe helped reconfigure the construction of the bar, per my crappy sketch, and I did the fun part: telling my story through bottle caps.

Basically, I took a router, and made bottle cap sized circles and then polyurethaned the daylights out of it with the hardcore stuff they put on basketball courts until the caps were sealed flush with the bar. It ain’t perfect, because I’m not Norm Abram, but the imperfection is part of my autobiography.

The caps were carefully chosen. They’re at least a good beer, possibly a sentimental beer, and often reflect a trip, a friend or a period of my life. I’ve got Dogfish Head’s World Wide Stout, which reminds me of that great beer, and the two trips we took there, one with Heather and Paul. Speaking of Heather and Paul, I’ve got a Chimay Blue cap as well. Speaking of friends, Monte gave me the 2008 Bigfoot, which is how I marked the year of The Beginning for us.

Can you believe that Goldy doesn’t like Roquefort 10? He gave me a bottle during the “building the bar days,” so I drank it and used the cap.

Of course, I had to represent Mongrel Brewing Company, my humble homebrewing operation. For that, I chose Molotov Cock’d Ale, my Russian Imperial Stout. Dude, I could go for one of those right about now.

There are many more: Duck-Rabbit, for whom I used to work; EKU 28, from the studying-for-the-BJCP-exam-days; Duvel, one of the first post-Pop the Cap beers I bought; Unibroue, because Bob and Doug aren’t the only thing great about Canada; Millstream, because it’s brewed and bottled in Iowa; Adnams; nodding to beerblogger cameraderie. Conspicuously absent would be Milwaukee’s Best Light.

My bar tells the story, but apparently not the whole story:

Beer guy from a kid’s eye

My boys are prolific artists. Among the many pictures of cowboys, cars and super heroes littering our home are a good many portraits of me.

There are pictures of Dad as a cowboy, Dad as a Scottish guy (with a machine gun for a peg leg, even), Dad as an army guy (WWII, Civil War and present day), Dad as a million other guys. They are very special to me, and will one day be framed, all together in a hallway, or my basement pub. Not so much an act of conceit–I just think they are all really cool, and want everyone to see them.

But the really cool ones, I must share with you. Tom did the first one several years ago (he’s only nine at present). I like the beer bandolier. Clearly, it suggests my affection for Guinness, something this small boy picked up on with ease:

Jake did the second one last weekend. It’s self-explanatorily cool–and I don’t just mean because of the six pack abs and well-placed hop cone. Me as Beery Renaissance Man:

International Brewers Day on the horizon

Where holidays are concerned, I like them with beer rather than greeting cards. That’s why I didn’t shop on Black Friday, at Sean Wilson’s suggestion. And that’s why I’m backing Jay Brooks‘plan for International Brewers Day, slated for July 18.

It’s a great idea that we need to make snowball. So, tell everyone. And celebrate.

For my part, I’m now in a position to contribute an event of sorts. I’ll be running beer specials at my restaurant, and probably running my mouth about beer, and the greatness of brewers, all day long.

Day-off pleasure

It is Monday, my day off. I did a little work today, but am home relaxing at 1:30 in the afternoon, with a Franziskaner Weissbier at my side. I haven’t had one of these in quite some time, but man, is it good.

A beautiful sunny and pleasant day (after much rain, tornadic activity and flooding), this beer is perfect. It is counter to my Dark Beer Summer plan, but I’ve decided that it is allowable. I didn’t buy it or brew it. Joe brought it by the other day. He is turning into a pretty decent brother/beer guy.

As soon as my fingers stop typing, I’m heading out to the porch to read a little more of Julia Child’s My Life in France. I used to not completely take her seriously, but I’ve come to really like her. One, I understand that she’s a credible cook. Two, despite the book’s focus on her time in France (hence, the title), she also lived in Germany for a while, which gives Julia a little Beer Cred, as well.

She is, of course, better known for her wine enjoyment. But… here are two beer quotes from her early days in speaking German and early tastes:

“The waitress understood me perfectly and smiled nicely as she placed two enormous foaming steins in front of us. My, that beer tasted good.”

and, this one I like not only for its beer-positiveness, but because she’s also observing jackass Americans:

“They drank beer, but only the lighter, American-style beers. What a shame! They were surrounded by some of the most wonderful beers in the world–and, with a 13.5 percent alcohol content, some of the strongest, too–but they deemed the traditional German ales ‘too heavy.’ We quite liked German beers. Our favorite was a flavorful local beer called Nuremberer Lederbrau.”

Yes, Julia is good for a beautiful day. And so is German beer.

Prost!