Drinking Beer for Science

I drank some beer recently. This shouldn't be surprising, but the way I drank it might be of some interest. As outlined in my previous blog entry, James Spencer and I wanted to test if different glasses  have an effect on the characteristics of the beer. To test this, I drank eight pale ales from eight different beer glasses. (I used Sierra Nevada, because I didn't have any homebrewed pale ale on hand -- I'll be fixing that problem soon.) Here's a shot of my "laboratory." 

The glasses were a red plastic "kegger" cup, a Duff Beer mug (hiding behind the Pilsner glass), a Pilsner glass, an Ayinger wheat beer glass, a Red Hook pint glass, a Duvel glass, an Orval goblet and a Sam Adams Lager glass. In addition to smelling each beer and tasting it, I held the clear glasses up to a blank word processing screen (for a white, backlit background) and took a photograph of each beer every 15 minutes or so. In these pics, each bubble can be clearly seen. In the next couple days, I'm going to print these pictures out and actually count the bubbles, so I can compare between glasses with etching on the bottom and regular glasses. 

I also took the temperature of the beer every 5 to 8 minutes to see if things like glass thickness or the presence of a stem on the glassware affected the temperature of the beer. 

See James' podcast (Basic Brewing Radio) for some of the results of this experiment and look for a story in BYO later this year. Long story short, I was skeptical at first that the glass would make much of a difference, but I -- and our collaborators -- found marked differences in aroma intensity and foam depth. Likewise, I found some interesting differences in the temperature between glasses and expect the bubble counting will yield some interesting results. Most importantly, I found at that staying focused during a scientific experiment gets increasingly hard when you are drinking eight beers at one time. 

My Trip to South Austin Brewing

I visited South Austin Brewing recently, a soon-to-be-opened brewery in, well, South Austin.  The brewery has most of their equipment and is gearing up to start brewing once they get all the plumbing installed. 

South Austin Brewing plans to specialize in Belgian-style beers and will release all their beers in 750 mL corked and caged Belgian-style bottles. The beer they are hoping will be their flagship brew is going to be a Belgian strong golden ale (along the lines of Duvel). They also plan to barrel age some beers to sour them. 

Here's a picture of my buddy Ed Peters (their brewer) and Jordan Weeks (the owner) by two of their three 20 bbl fermenters, and their boiler:

My Trip to Jester King Brewery

I also visited Jester King recently. Jester King has already released a few beers to the Austin market -- including Wytchmaker IPA, Black Metal imperial stout and Commercial Suicide, an oaked dark mild ale (at 3.5% ABV). 

The brewery plans to specialize in farmhouse-style ales, and they've even harvested, isolated and had a lab identify wild "bugs" from the coolship on their roof that they they plan to use in barrel fermentations. They've started brewing these beers, but they won't be released for at least six months. 

Secondarily, the brewery plans to brew plenty of session beers, aiming to have most come in under 4% ABV. Their Commercial Suicide is their first in this series and they have also brewed a beer in collaboration with Mikkeller (Drink'in the Sunbelt, a pale, hoppy ale that clocks in at 4.2% ABV). I drank a bunch of both of those on my visit as it was around 100 °F out that day. [Speaking of collaborations, the brewery has also collaborated with Amy's Ice Cream (a local favorite ice cream shop) to release an ice cream with their Black Metal stout in it.] And, the brewery recently brewed a Berliner weisse (a pale wheat ale soured with Lactobacillus). I got to sample some of the bacterial starter when I visited. (Mmmm . .  tangy.) 

Jester King started with three 30 bbl fermenters, but are already brewing at capacity. They are already planning to expand soon by purchasing a couple 60 bbl fermenters in the near future. 

Heres a picture of Jeffery Stuffings (owner, along with his brother Michael) in his barrel room. Not only are there barrels of Jester King beer in here, but barrels for group brews of the Austin ZEALOTS (my homebrew club) and the Carboys (another club in the Austin are). 

Still More Austin Breweries

My wife and I stopped by the Draught House for a ZEALOTS Roaming Happy Hour (our club's weekly get-together) and saw two taps for Austin Beerworks. This new brewery, along with the recently-opened Black Star Coo-op brewpub, Thirsty Planet brewery, and other planned breweries (Circle, Hops and Grain, and I swear there was at least one other I've heard news of) mean that Austin is soon going to have a very wide variety of locally-brewed craft beer. Most of these breweries were either started by homebrewers or have some strong connections to area homebrewers (as investors, brewers, brewery help, etc.). The joke in my homebrew club is that soon every Austin ZEALOT will have their own commercial brewery.