Brew Masters

I have been watching and enjoying the new Discovery Channel documentary series Brew Masters starring Sam Calagione from Dogfish Head Craftbrewery in Delaware, US. Tonight is the screening of the last episode in the series, and previous episodes have covered collaboration beers with Sony for Bitches Brew and Epic Brewing from NZ with Portamarillo which is a beer spiced with Tamarillo fruit. My favourite episode is the Cicha episode where they make a corn beer which is mashed by chewing on the grains so the amylase protein in the brewers saliva converts the corn starch to fermentable sugars. Besides these interesting brews the series highlights overall Dogfish Head production from issues with the bottling line to the operation at the Rehoboth Beach brewpub. Snippets of the series is available from Discovery Channel website, and through other various means such as *cough*channel BT*cough*.

I had heard of Sam and Brian's hip hop act the 'Pain Releivaz' before, but the Bitches Brew episode was the first time I had heard them in action. Enjoy.
BTW - Dogfish Head use proper real keg as there preferred packaging. If this offends, then maybe this isn't the documentary for you.

George Keeley

Just around the corner from our room on the UWS of Manhattan was the George Keeley. This place is especially for the beer geeks among us where proper real keg and cask ale can live side by side. Besides the pseudo-Irish feel, this place is pretty cool with friendly regulars and bar staff. I managed to sneak in for an hour why SWMBO was getting her nails done across the street. First off the mark I ordered a beer that I had been looking forward to sampling for years. Dogfish head 90 Minute IPA (9% abv) is a syrup of hop juice and alcohol. It tastes like pinecones, but also has a strong malt flavour shining through and a balance is formed somewhere within the intensity of flavours. It's extreme and bizarre, but I liked it. BTW it's also cloudy due to too much hop oil throwing up a haze....nice.

The next beer I had was rather tasteless in comparison to the DFH90 but was still pretty good. Avery Redpoint IPA (5.5% abv) is another cascade/chinook/centennial hop bomb, but a lot more subtle. I have to admit though that after the stronger beer, I had too much mouth pucker present from the earlier beer to really appreciate it. I'm just being honest, but thems the breaks.

By this time my wife had come to round me up so we could grab a feed, so I bid my farewell to the fellow beer geeks that I had befriended for the hour and made my way back out to the real world.

http://www.georgekeeley.com/