Thoughts on Beer

Hanging with the Basic Brewing Guys - (from left to right) Steve, me, Andy, James

A few weeks ago, I had the chance to visit Northwest Arkansas.  While there, I had the privilege to meet up and hang out with the guys from Basic Brewing, my favorite brewing podcast and video podcast.  You may remember last year I had a chance to chat with the guys about the spontaneous homebrew I had made.

To begin the evening, we met up at Tanglewood Branch, where I had a chance to finally meet James, Steve, and Andy in-person.  While at the pub, I had a chance to try the porter made by the owner/brewmaster, J.T. Wampler.  After we finished our beers, we decided to head over to the Fayetteville square and enjoy some pizza from Tiny Tim’s Pizza and West Mountain Brewing Company.

West Mountain was a quaint restaurant that had been a pizza place for some time, but just began brewing at the end of 2011.  While there, as we were enjoying the pizza, I tried the Rye Pale Ale and the West Mountain Saison, with the saison being my favorite of the two.

After we had finished our meal, Steve decided to call it an evening, but James, Andy, and I went back to Andy’s home.  James had brought a few of the beers he had purchased while at the Great Taste of the Midwest the previous weekend in Wisconsin.  Additionally, I also wanted to see Andy’s automated brewing setup he had (along with the barrel he had just purchased; see the Basic Brewing Radio archives for more info).  While checking out the brewing setup, we split the Berliner Weiss James had just made (7/26/2012 episode of Basic Brewing Radio), along with a couple of New Glarus beers – the Thumbprint Saison and the R & D Sour Ale.  After a while, we realized it had gotten late, and we decided to call it a night.

Over the course of the evening, I had a chance to sample some great beers and enjoy great company.  I hope the next time I get a chance to visit Fayetteville the guys are available again, so we can have another great time.

This past weekend, I entered the spontaneous homebrew created in October, 2010 into a local homebrew contest, and it ended up taking first place in the Sour Beer category!

If you aren’t familiar, the specifics of the beer were discussed on the October 18, 2011 episode of Basic Brewing Radio.  Again, thanks to James and the guys for giving me a vote of confidence to enter the beer!

Totem Keg on TV

Over the weekend, my friends and I were interviewed by the local news about the Totem Keg. Check out the feature on the Fox affiliate or on the CBS affiliate.

I feel an Emmy isn’t out of the question…

Last week we had the pleasure of joining James Spencer, the host of Basic Brewing Radio, on his weekly podcast (it’s the October 20, 2011 episode) about brewing.  He (and two of his regular guests) interviewed Austin and myself on the ‘spontaneous’ beer I made last October.  We had a lot of fun, and enjoyed the beer on the show.

Check out the episode now!

After last year’s tailgating season, my friends and I started brainstorming ways to pay tribute to our game-day homebrew.  Slowly our ideas grew from a tap attached to a board sunk into the ground, to a way to contain the homebrew and dispense the beer.  After the Big Ten college football conference gained a member and divided into two divisions, the Legends (which the Iowa Hawkeyes are in) and the Leaders division, we decided to create a ‘totem’ pole that could hold two homebrew 5 gallon soda kegs, one stacked on top of the other.

Once we decided on our idea, the design was next.  What should we make it from?  How do we engineer it to dispense the homebrew?  After one of our designer friends took the idea and ran with it, we came up with the idea to use 12-inch diameter concrete forms.  Two of the tubes are 8 foot tall, and all it took was some engineering to make it all work.  The bottom tube is secured with 6-inch L-brackets with removable bolts.  The top section has long beams that are secured with bolts, and has a notched hole-less peg board for wings of the top figure.  The bottom section contains two gas lines, one for each keg, and the top section has two beer lines, hooking up to tower-style shanks.  After several months of planning and design, we unveiled the keg totem at opening day weekend!

The Concrete Forms, Before Painting

Full Mockup

Primed Tubes

Applying the First Coat of Paint

Bottom of the Totem After the First Coat

Sizing Up the Wings

Completed Totem

Set Up at the Tailgate

The Inaugural Pour

Friends Tailgating with Homebrew

With college football season nearing the end of the season, we take a look back and reflect on how the season went.  On the field, things didn’t turn out exactly the way we had hoped, but at least we had a great time tailgating.

This year, we got together every Saturday with our friends, just like last year, and had lots of food with homebrew.  Three of us divided up the weeks for home games, and made up a batch for each week to bring to the tailgate.

Some of the different beers we made included a saison, a honey red ale, an Oktoberfest, a trippel, and a Boston lager clone.  Each of these beers went very well with the smoked pork shoulders, homemade pretzels, and other food we had.

Here’s the best part: at one point during the season, we started designing a “homebrew keg totem”.  Although it never materialized, by next year, we should have it built and ready to go.  The design is a twelve-inch diameter PVC pipe, 5 to 6 foot high (which isn’t easy to find).  It has two beer taps, and on the back, there’s a post to connect the carbon dioxide tank.  It will look like our school mascot, and going to dispense our delicious homebrew.

What’s your favorite tailgating beer?  Have you made or had homebrew for tailgating?  Let me know!