The Loss Column — Baltimore Sports Blog and Community

editor’s note: this is the latest in a series of libations-related occasional columns by contributor Ryan Boddy

Despite temperatures near 90 degrees, autumn is at least officially here. As such, the thoughts of many a brew fan turn to seasonal additions to their normal schedule of beer crafting and drinking. Typically, this means pumpkin ales. Funny thing is, most of these ales don’t actually contain any pumpkin at all, and the ones that do are usually inferior to those that don’t.

The reason is simple. Most people associate pumpkin’s flavor with the pie that they scarf down after Thanksgiving dinner, while the actual fruit tastes more like a rather bland squash. It’s the flavor of the spices used to make that pie that people want in their ales. Perhaps pumpkin ales should more accurately be described as “pumpkin pie ales.”

Some brewers take to adding roasted pumpkin flesh to their mash tun, and then finish things off by adding a certain amount of nutmeg, clove, cinnamon, allspice, and mace at the same time they add hops. The difference is almost imperceptible if things go according to plan, and disastrous if they don’t (I’ve heard remarks about ales with pumpkin used in the mash that likened the flavor to that of a Matchbox car). The squash addition doesn’t up the ante for flavor or alcohol production, and is much more likely to create off-flavors than just the spice addition (not to mention a fog that can’t be exorcised from the finished product).

(more…)

(editor’s note: this is the latest installment of “So Yeah, Dood” — a semi-regular column devoted to something near and dear to many a sports fan’s heart: beer.)

One of the holy grails of the intermediate brewer is the achievement of brewing a beer that has good head retention. That is, the beer maintains an appropriate amount of foamy suds throughout the duration of the drink. Despite this, bartenders often spend inordinate amounts of time during their workday spilling off valuable foam into a drain, just to provide the drinker with what is supposedly more bang for the buck. What’s the point of having it at all if it takes up space in the glass that would otherwise be actual beer?

The short answer is that without it — despite getting more liquid — you aren’t getting everything you paid for. Head serves a purpose more important than looking good in advertising. Head acts as a diffuser for the aromas relatively locked and buried beneath the surface tension of the beer. Because we drink beers generally either ice-cold or at cellar temperatures (45-50 degrees), they don’t diffuse molecules into the air as readily as say, red wines or brandies that begin to smell intensely as they are warmed by the heat from our own hands conducted through the glass. That lack of diffusion leads inevitably to a reduction in flavor.

Beer’s aroma arises with the effervescence of the CO2 coming out of solution. You see it rising up from the bottom of the glass or bottle. Head prolongs and intensifies this diffusion, allowing more of the beer molecules to enter our noses. And yes, it looks good in advertising, and ultimately in a glass up close and personal.

Within the brewing process, factors ranging from how much alcohol the yeast produces and how much it settles out of solution, to the amount of unfermented sugars left in the beer all affect whether a beer will generate and retain head. How hoppy the beer is can also be a factor, as hops contain oils that can both help and hinder the process.

A well-poured beer in a clean glass should retain head for a while, leaving a lace pattern down the insides of the glass as the beer is consumed. Typically, with a pint glass, a good pour utilizes the standard “45-degrees-until-half-of-the-glass-is-full-and-then-straight-down-until-full” method. This ought to give the drinker about an inch or inch and a half of head that should slowly decrease until the beer is gone, allowing the drinker the chance to fully smell, taste, and hopefully enjoy the beer. (more…)

Editor’s note: this is the latest in an ongoing series about something near and dear to the hearts of many sports fans: beer. Read the rest in the “so yeah, dood” category on the right.

Most actual fermentation occurs in the first week to ten days after yeast is added to the wort. Depending on the style of beer, brewers tend to siphon, or rack, the resultant beer into a secondary fermenting vessel.

If a brewer wants to clear a beer following fermentation, he will usually transfer beer that has reached its expected final gravity from the primary fermenter to a secondary fermenter. Doing this, the brewer can siphon, or rack off of the spent yeast cake that has settled to the bottom of the primary fermenter. If he happens to make the same beer, he can use the spent yeast instead of re-pitching from a new starter, though usually brewers will only do this one time to avoid significant changes in the yeast strain.

Flavoring agents are usually added during secondary fermentation. For instance, if you want a raspberry flavored ale, you would pour raspberry purée into the empty secondary fermenter, and then rack the beer onto the fruit and let it soak up the raspberry essence for between ten dasy and two weeks.

By cooling the second fermenter, suspended particles of yeast, grain dust, flakes of coagulated proteins, and other bits will fall to the bottom of the new fermenter where they can be left behind when bottling or kegging. This process is called lagering, but doesn’t necessarily make the final product a lager. Lager in German literally means “to store.” True lager beers are often lagered at near freezing temperatures; often for lengthy periods of time in order to fully clear a beer of particles and stronger yeast-produced flavors.

Beer is not carbonated at this point in the process. While yeast produces carbon dioxide throughout fermentation, the gas is not allowed to pressurize. Brewers use airlocks to take advantage of the positive pressure created by the CO2 production of the yeast to keep unwanted oxygen, wild yeasts, bacteria, and other invaders out of the vulnerable, fermenting wort. Getting the fizz into beer can be done in a number of ways.

For bottling, a small amount of sugar is added to the beer, sometimes with the addition of a strain of yeast specifically developed for bottling. Once the bottle is sealed, the added sugar allows the yeast to produce enough CO2 to pressurize the bottle. When the bottles are cool, more of this CO2 will chemically dissolve into the beer, escaping when the bottle is uncapped. As the liquid warms up, you can see the gas coming out of solution as it rises up from the bottom of your glass. This process is called bottle conditioning. Cask or keg conditioned ales pretty much do the same thing. All of this usually takes about two weeks, which can be a long time to wait if you’ve already spent three weeks or more waiting to taste your beer. But like a lot of things, it can be worth it.

Force carbonating is a different story. This process involves forcibly pumping CO2 into the beer without the addition of sugars. After kegging the beer, brewers add as much gas as the keg will hold and then chill the beer. Once it’s cold, brewers shake the keg to force more gas in and return it to the cooler. Within a day or two — sometimes even hours if the beer is already cold enough — the beer is carbonated and ready to drink. Macrobrewers pasteurize and filter after primary fermentation so the beer contains no yeast but is full of dissolved CO2.

That’s how beer converts from crushed grains, leaves and water to wonderful elixir; proof, according to Benjamin Franklin, that God loves us and wants us to be happy.

(Editor’s note: this is the latest in an ongoing series relating to the process of making beer, something near and dear to the hearts of many sports fans. For earlier installments please browse the category archives.)

Immediately following the end of the boil, brewers turn their minds to fermentation, the part of the brewing process that requires the least actual work but the most patience. Despite the seeming simplicity of this phase, careful choices must be made.

Yeast performs most of the legwork of brewing. By “digesting” sugars suspended in the wort, yeast respirates carbon dioxide just like we do, but it also produces another waste product: Alcohol. Given, there are certain sugars that the yeast can’t digest, and these unconvertible sugars give beer sweetness and aid in head retention.

Wort is cooled to below 80 degrees. A specific gravity reading is taken using a hydrometer. This determines the relative density of the liquid, and allows brewers to determine both when the beer has stopped fermenting, and what the beer’s final alcohol content by volume (ABV) will be. After aerating or oxygenating the wort, we pitch yeast.

Most of the time brewers decide on a particular strain of yeast that they want to use in advance of even starting their brew. They consider whether they want to produce ale or lager. Using yeast that rests on top of the wort (top-fermenting), and converts sugar to alcohol most efficiently at temperatures in the upper 50s, an ale is produced. Exactly the opposite, bottom-fermenting, cold temperature yeast (below 50 degrees) produces a lager.

Ale yeasts produce abundant flavors just by converting sugars. They give off chemical aroma and flavor compounds that affect the final taste of the beer. The higher the temperature, the more and different chemical flavors the yeast will produce.

Lagers ferment cold and produce fewer esters but also produce a much clearer final product. Most store-bought canned beer is lager. Brewers must maintain strict temperature control when using lager yeasts to avoid producing off flavors.

Of course, there are many different strains of yeast in both categories. California Ale yeast has a high alcohol tolerance, so it is more likely to continue to ferment when living in high concentrations of its own waste product. There are about as many types of yeast as there are styles of beer. Ale yeasts specifically cultured for use in wheat beers produce fruity, clove and banana-like esters. They give hefeweizens their characteristic cloudiness and fruity, citric flavor. Hefeweizen literally means beer with yeast, as the yeast is not intentionally cleared from the beer.

Coming next, from flat to fizzy: conditioning beer.

editor’s note: “So Yeah, Dood” is a regular column by contributor Ryan Boddy which deals with something near and dear to the hearts of many sports fans: beer. The goal is to provide insight into the process by which it is made, and the many ways we enjoy it. This piece is the second in a series.

At mash-out, wort is transferred to a vessel where it is brought to a boil. In this phase of the brewing process, flavoring and preservative agents are added at pre-determined intervals.

In a general sense, this step is easy. You bring the wort to a boil and you dump some herbs into it. Within that framework, however, brewers have some serious decisions to make. Choice of additive, length of boil, and times at which additions are made can all have wildly divergent effects on the final product. Subtle differences in this process can result in making a beer that fits a recipe style, or could cause an outcome more in line with a 40 oz. than your typical craft brewed beer.

There are hundreds of different hop varieties to choose from. The Noble Hops — Hallertauer, Tettananger, Spaltz, and Saaz — are the famous German and Czech varieties used to make Pilseners, Märzens, and Weissebiers. Goldings, Northern Brewer, and Fuggles typically go into British beers like Bass and Newcastle. American cultivated hops are typically fruity, floral flavor giants. Cascade, Chinook, and Crystal hops all impart flavors distinct to American craft-brewed beers.

Once a type of hop is chosen, there’s also what form to use the hops in. Plugs, pellets, whole leaf, dry or fresh, each form has an effect on the product. A fresh hop is very similar to the use of fresh herbs in cooking. They don’t keep well and lose flavor over time in the finished product, but used correctly impart a much more pungent, fresh aroma than dry. Dry hops behave like dried herbs, with a little bit going a lot farther than the fresh. Certain beers —like Lambics— even call for the use of oxidized, spoiled, cheesy smelling hops.

The wort is brought to a boil and the initial bittering hop addition is made. This essentially provides a preservative backbone for the beer. Hop oils naturally prevent beer spoilage to a certain degree, while allowing brewing yeasts to thrive. In the past, agents ranging from spruce tips to wormwood were used for the same purpose. Usually with a few minutes left in the total boil time, another, usually smaller addition will be made. This provides the majority of hop flavor to the beer while an addition made at knock-out —when the heat is removed from the kettle— provides the familiar hoppy aroma of finished beer.

Some American brewers have taken to drastically altering this traditional boil structure in attempts to break out of conventional styles. Dogfish Head Brewing in particular works in creating “extreme” beers. Their 60, 90, and 120 minute IPAs are continuously hopped, producing a much more pronounced aroma and flavor profile.

Other herbs can also be added to achieve different characters during the boil. Beers like Blue Moon and Hoegaarden use curaçao orange peel and coriander to achieve a more floral, citrus character. Seeds of paradise, liquorice root, and numerous other spices can be used as well.

The wort is held at a rolling boil for a pre-determined time. Usually, the boil is closely attended in order to prevent boilovers, and a timer is monitored to ensure hops are added at the correct intervals. The longer a wort is boiled, the more intense the flavors become. Think about steeping tea — the longer you leave the bag in, the stronger the flavor gets.

However, the boil doesn’t just allow for the addition of preservative and aroma/flavoring agents. The boil has a significant effect on the beer’s eventual clarification. Even without adding a clarifying agent like Irish Moss or isinglass during the aroma hop addition, the wort will go through what’s called a “hot break” in which proteins denature and coagulate at a certain temperature. Another break, “a cold break,” happens when the wort cools off, allowing the brewer to leave undesirable, nasty tasting particles behind before pitching yeast and fermenting.

Which we’ll get to next installment.

editor’s note: “So Yeah, Dood” is a regular column by contributor Ryan Boddy which deals with something near and dear to the hearts of many sports fans: beer. The goal is to provide insight into the process by which it is made, and the many ways we enjoy it. This piece is the first in a series on the brewing process itself. All images can be clicked for full-size versions.

Regardless of the scale of a brewing operation, three basic steps are constant and, in almost all cases, completely separate: Mash, Boil, and Fermentation. Ultimately a simple process, brewing becomes infinitely complicated by variations on these three steps.

A few weeks ago, I had the privilege to attend an open brew with three homebrew clubs at the DuClaw Brewery in Abingdon, Maryland. Brewmaster Jim Wagner led us in producing a massive quantity of his Venom Pale Ale. Over the next few weeks, I will detail the general process involved with brewing, illustrated by the photos I was able to snap during the brew.

Mashing is simply converting the starches imprisoned in grain to sugars, and suspending those sugars in liquid that can then be boiled with various flavoring and preserving agents — almost always hops — and fermented.

Selection of grains has a huge effect on the final outcome. Most beers are made using malted barley, with the malting itself being a process. Grain is soaked and allowed to begin germinating. This begins the process of converting the starches locked in each grain to sugar. The grain is then kiln roasted to a particular degree, which determines the color and grade of the malt. Darker malts, obviously, make darker beers.

Whatever grain a brewer uses, the mashing process usually begins with grinding large amounts of grain. The consistency of grain milled for brewing is very coarse, husk broken but not completely pulverized.

Hot water is then run over the milled grain in a container, called a tun, specifically designed to accommodate the mash. Minerals are often added to the water at this stage to help achieve specific characters.

The temperature is held between 150 and 180 degrees for about an hour in order to activate enzymes already present on the grain that will convert starch to sugar. The same enzymes, Amylase A and B, are present in your mouth. Think mock apple pie or the way Saltines become sweet if you chew them for a long time.

Once the starches have been completely converted to sugars, the resulting sweet liquid, or wort, is drawn off the grains in a process called the sparge. Sometimes brewers use what is called a lauter tun, with a false bottom to draw the wort off the grain and into a boiling kettle. Smaller scale brewers often use the grain bed itself as a filter and draw the liquid directly off of it.

up next: the Boil…

As we step up to the bar just about anywhere in the country, there are three immediate options available to us with barely a consideration as to actual types of beer: draft, bottle, or can? The former two fuel an age old debate amongst homebrewers, much less the typical beer drinker.

While each container has its benefits there are definite detriments that make the lowly canned beer inferior — though not altogether undesirable — in multiple ways. The benefits of canned beer, outside of mere convenience, are far less obvious than those of bottling or kegging. Canned beer, stored properly, remains fresh pretty much indefinitely. Given, the beer acquires certain off flavors from the container over time. Regardless, the beer never truly goes bad in a can. For large beer makers canning is convenient and cheap. For the consumer, canned beer is convenient, cheap and far more portable than bottled beer.

However, getting past the taste of the aluminum container in your beer isn’t all that easy outside of making the beer and the container itself very cold. Ever wonder why Coors Light commercials practically beat you over the head with an emphasis on temperature? The coldest tasting beer, right? Cold service temperatures hide off flavors. Hell, they hide most flavors.

Case in point: Guinness distributors in America over the past ten years have essentially phased out proper service of stouts by telling bar owners that kegs of Guinness can be stored in the cooler with the rest of their kegs for the sake of convenience. Mostly they do this just to get bar owners to serve Guinness. Couple this with the fact that Guinness, tapped properly, uses a nitrogen tap — creating a nice head but inhibiting taste — and the result is an excellent mouth feel but a beer that you can’t actually taste…at least until the stout warms up to about 44 degrees Fahrenheit.

So we’re left with bottles and draft kegs — don’t count the gimmicky Heineken mini keg; it’s still aluminum. So what’s the difference between bottles and stainless steel kegs? Age, for one. Stainless steel kegs don’t usually get aged for very long. While airtight and perfectly capable of storing beers for years, more often than not, the contents of kegs are consumed quickly and replaced. Thus, the beer is fresh and hasn’t had time to take on any characters other than those intended by the brewer. Stainless steel also doesn’t impart any off flavors like aluminum does.

Beer, under most circumstances and within certain limits, does improve with an amount of aging. Draft beers served in bars usually don’t have the time to develop these improvements as the beers’ primary flavors mellow and subtler undertones rise to the surface. Nine out of ten beers poured from a bar keg taste exactly alike. A homebrewer’s keg, on the other hand, stored properly but tapped less often over a greater period of time has the chance to develop. The last pint pulled often achieves a grand superiority over the first.

Bottled beers develop in individual ways and much more slowly, though without taking on the characteristics of the glass. Each bottle becomes a completely different entity from the ones filled just before or just after it. If the bottle is corked rather than Crown capped, the process speeds up. Slow oxidization is the basic cause. The rumor that the color of the glass has an effect on the flavor of the beer is actually somewhat true.

Ultraviolet light, rather than heat, is the main factor in bottled beers developing off flavors. Thus, a clear bottled or green bottled beer is more likely to give off that nasty skunk whiff that anyone who has drunk an old, improperly stored Heineken is familiar with.

Outside of bottle color, sealing method is also a large factor in the flavor of the drink in question. Debate rages amongst wine enthusiasts over the ranging, various virtues and inferiorities of the synthetic cork, the traditional cork, and the screw cap. A real cork allows what it is sealing up the chance to breathe, even very slowly and minutely and thus to change over time. A synthetic cork hasn’t been proven to do the same thing, even if it does conserve traditional cork. And obviously a screw cap doesn’t breathe at all if it’s sealed correctly, but way too much if it isn’t.

Even using a crown cap, that creates an airtight seal between the beer and the outside world, beer changes in the bottle over time. A beer with a high alcohol content and alpha acid level will age gracefully over a certain period of time.

Regardless of what it’s stored in, beer changes over time. Before making an argument for a particular brand of beer over another, think about the kind of beer it is at the same time that you decide what it should be stored in and how cold it ought to be.

Every Friday night from the time I could remember anything until I was about five or six years old I got my NASCAR fix on CBS. I watched a super-modified, orange Dodge Charger drive circles around the local authorities that were desperately trying to stop the good old boys from delivering moonshine whiskey. They happened to also save their county from the nefarious plots of the establishment every week. You know, for some semblance of a storyline to accompany what already made NASCAR awesome.

That’s right, the Dukes of Hazzard has its roots in the same earth as NASCAR. The true story isn’t all that far off from the version we children of the late seventies remember. Southern Moonshine runners needed fast cars and impressive driving skills to evade G-men and county sheriff’s deputies as they made their deliveries. Eventually, mechanic William France, Sr. moved from the DC area to Daytona Florida to escape the Great Depression and started NASCAR, the fastest growing spectator sport in America; second only to NFL football in popularity.

So how did a sport (and yes, it is a sport) that was birthed in an alcohol-fueled, anti-establishment movement become so confoundingly tied to the very establishment that worked so tirelessly to stop it from happening? How did France’s vision become the NASCAR Nation, a veritable moral and political ideology?

With the end of alcohol prohibition in 1933 ’shine running continued as distillers sought to escape the eye of the tax man, but in a much less populous way. Racing moonshine runners became common as a form of entertainment amongst Southerners. France began NASCAR as a reaction to the unscrupulous practices of promoters who would skip town before the end of races. He believed that spectators would enjoy watching races of unmodified, “stock” cars that anyone could afford without the moonshine profits and that the sport could never take off without a governing body to lay down rules. On December 14, 1947 France convened a meeting amongst influential racers and promoters at the Ebony Bar at the Streamline Hotel at Daytona Beach, Florida. The meeting resulted in the formation of NASCAR on February 21, 1948.

Over time, drivers got around the “stock” part of the rules in favor of safety and the sport became much more about speed. Huge, high-banked, oval tracks were built to accommodate faster cars and excluded the dirt tracks and races less than 100 miles. France made this change at the behest of former NASCAR title sponsor and tobacco mogul R.J. Reynolds. The series of races used to be the Winston Cup.

The infield of this track became far more the heart of the sport than the stands themselves. One big, weekend-long, tailgate party at which attendees play horseshoes, drink copious amounts of cheap beer, (usually Busch as they’re a sponsor) and occasionally look at the track as cars whiz by in a blur of color and roar of sound. NASCAR events themselves were as much about partying wildly and roaming through the infield in county fair fashion as they were about the actual racing.

With NASCAR’s rise in popularity, these events became the province of family and that family reflected the paradoxical, Southern social and moral-political dichotomy that affected moonshiners themselves. Baptist by birth but not necessarily by nature. The same thing was seen in the Dukes TV show. Morally ambiguous behavior, like running moonshine and tripping up the cops is glossed over for the sake of a G rating. Safe rebellion, or the appearance of being a rebel is as important as being within the bounds of what the culture dictates as acceptable.

The symbolism in the switch from Winston to Nextel Cups is particularly obvious. Massive commercialization of the sport has mirrored, for better but mostly worse, this country’s great religious awakening. NASCAR drivers, who used to be Libertarian criminals by default, are now conservative role models for multitudes of children. Imagine Jeff Gordon being imprisoned for transporting untaxed alcohol across state lines. It happened to other NASCAR stars like Junior Johnson and Jerry Rushing in the fifties. Personally, I’d like Gordon better if he did a stint at Leavenworth than I do seeing his supposed affairs detailed in supermarket tabloids.

The rebellious roots of NASCAR need to make a comeback. More Johnny Cash, less Toby Keith. Perhaps it would be appropriate for the biggest auto sport in the world to switch from petroleum to all-ethanol. Run the cars on the moonshine that birthed the sport in the first place.