Wheat Night

We had eight tasters and twenty six beers for a pretty epic evening. It also meant we each sampled just 1/8 of a beer, which really is not enough for a reasonable tasting. Also, wheats and hefeweizens don’t feature the same degree of variety as other beers. The ratings were more closely grouped than our stouts and IPAs and generally we had little to comment on.

26. Leinenkugel’s Sunset Wheat (43.2, 42)
This divisive beer set records for the lowest overall rating and lowest single rating we have served thus far. Brooks gave it a 4 out of 100. Three others had it below 30. Tom gave it an 81, one of his highest marks of the night. Comments included “wildly fruity”, “candyland”, “like a tea and scones”, “Dr. Something’s Elixir” and “fairy tale.”

25. Avery White Rascal (53.7, 63)
Very inconsistent marks ranging from super-low to pretty high for this somewhat wild Belgian white.

24. Widmer Hefeweizen (57.4, 38)
Fruity, sweet, and light with a funky stale aftertaste. Reid’s 70 was the highest rating given.

23. Purkel’s Organic Hefeweizen (58)
I don’t think the brewers of this organic beer had “good beer pong beer, Coors-like” in mind when they brewed it.

22. Estes Park Stinger Wild Honey Wheat (61.6, 19)
The second-lowest rated ratebeer.com brew we have sampled thus far. “Strong, sweet, banana, fruity, spritzer.” Certainly nothing special, and no one noticed the honey – if it in fact existed.

21. New Belgium Sunshine Wheat (64.4, 56)
Wheaty, with a funky aftertaste, with a bit of a seltzer taste. One of the most popular wheat beers but not amongst our blind tasters.

20. Left Hand Haystack Wheat (65.1, 65)
Very spicy and malty, and inconsistently rated by the judges.

19. Paulaner Hefeweizen (66.1, 90)
Very consistent but unremarkable scores for this German, the highest rated on ratebeer.

18. Tommyknocker Jack Whacker Wheat Ale (66.7, 23)
Inconsistent scores for this “sour, pure, bland, one-flavor” local wheat.

17. Erdinger Hefe-Weizen (69.2, 54)
Bland, with a slight wheat aftertaste. Very consistent marks, with all eight scores between 63 and 74.

16. Blue Moon Belgian White Ale (69.6, 46)
Inconsistent marks (Natalie gave it a 35, Brooks an 84) and few notable attributes for this wildly popular Coors product.

15. Franzijkaner Hefe-weisse (69.6)
Generally high marks for this fruity, rich, creamy German hefeweizen.

14. Shiner Hefeweizen (70.2, 29) We thought this was barely beer, more like carbonated cider, yet gave it a pretty decent score. Very tart and lemony.

13. Konig Ludwig Weiss (70.9)
One of our lowest-rated Germans.

12. O’Dell’s Easy Street Wheat (71, 47)
Solid marks and an appreciated honey presence.

11. Homebrew Hefeweizen (71.5)Reid procured this from someone at the bike-shop, and it turned out to feature a solid, woody, and not surprisingly, “home-brewed” taste.

10. Sierra Nevada Wheat (71.5, 37)
Really not much to say. Somewhat bitter and somewhat bland.

9. Flying Dog Woody Creek White (71.7, 76)
We had some very high scores for this bitter, spicy, woodsy, wheaty beer but also a few low marks.

8. Pyramid Hefeweizen (74.2, 33)
Pure and consistent, but not much to it, with a “Coors Light scent.”

7. Flying Dog In-Heat Wheat (74.6, 38)
Consistent scores for this banana-flavored wheat.

6. Breckenridge Hefe-Proper (75.2, 14)
The lowest-rated beer on ratebeer.com we have yet sampled. It had a sour lemon taste and got reasonably high marks from everyone but Tom.

5. Samuel Adams Hefeweizen (75.2, 27)
Not very fruity or wheaty.

4. Bristol Beehive Honey Wheat (75.9, 28)
We enjoyed the strong honey and malt flavor of this Colorado Springs brew, though it left a bad taste in the mouth.

3. Hacker-Pschorr Hefeweizen (77.2, 87)
Big, banana, wheat, fruit, and alcohol flavors. The highest-rated of the bunch on ratebeer.

2. Plank Bavarian Hefeweizen (77.4, 83)
We enjoyed the consistent banana scent and flavor of this high-rated German.

1. Julius Echter Hefe-Weiss (81.5, 74)
Excellent overall ratings for this huge-headed, honey “banana nut crunch” German Hefeweizen.

I put less stock into these ratings than for our other taste tests. 1/8 of a beer is not enough for an adequate test, and we had some inexperienced tasters. By the end of 26 tastings, people were getting bored with it and the unvaried taste of wheat beers made it hard to distinguish between them. We did learn that right now, the Germans know how to make good Hefeweizens and the Americans do not. Tons of room for improvement from American brewers. Right now, if you’re out to buy a good Hefeweizen, go German.

IPA Night (Part I)

Last night Jacob, Anne, Reid, and I sampled fourteen different IPAs from around the country (including many locals). We were later joined by my brother Jimmy and his friend Ben. Here are the results of a blind taste test we conducted, from worst to first:

14. Victory Hop Devil Ale (55.75 avg, 98 ratebeer percentile)
For the second straight week we universally panned a high-rated Victory beer. Jacob said “I hope I don’t go blind”, Anne hated the acrid smell and hard alcohol taste, Reid thought it tasted like “grandma’s attic”, and Tom thought it tasted like wood.

13. Great Divide Hercules Double IPA (61.1, 99)
For the second straight week we universally panned a high-rated Great Divide imperial. Some had a few positive things to say (got better as it went along) but overall we all thought it tasted really soapy.

12. Boulder Beer Hazed and Infused (62.75, 80)
Technically this is an American Pale Ale, and we probably should not have included it in this tasting. I think we were looking for an IPA flavor this beer didn’t intend to provide. Everyone thought it lacked flavor and Reid questioned its freshness, claiming previous encounters with Hazed had gone a lot better for him.

11. Avery IPA (72.2, 90)
We hated the vomit scent of this straightforward, fruity, smoke-finishing IPA.

10. Il Vicino Wet Mountain IPA (75.8, 90)
Everyone was stunned by its treebark taste, yet we thought it was pretty decent overall. Good wood.

9. Boulder Beer Mojo IPA (76, 91)
This one came on weak and watery, but its pure and backloaded hoppy flavor converted a few.

8. Dogfish Head 90 Minute IPA (77, 99)
Copper color, strong floral scent, with a big head and a stiff scent. The maltiest beer we tried last night. Very bitter, hoppy, malty, and flavorful

7. Stone Ruination IPA (77, 99)
Extremely dry. This was the hoppiest beer I have ever had. Jacob said “it feels like I’m eating a hop” which I agreed with. This isn’t a bad thing though. I feel I finally found the big hoppy daddy I’ve been looking for.

6. BridgePort IPA (78.3, 89)
This fruity IPA hit a wall. The flavor disappeared after a promising start. A hoppier or more consistent finish would have garnered it one of our highest ratings of the night.

5. Estes Park Renegade IPA (79.7, 65)
This extremely dark, bourbon-like IPA featured a consistent, bitter flavor. This barely passed as an IPA.

4. Odell IPA (80, 88)
This fruity, bitter, floral, grassy IPA was a bit weak but overall got high marks.

3. Breckenridge 471 Small Batch IPA (81.25, 92)
Clear and copper, with a fresh, fruity, alcoholic smell. We thought it was crisp and refreshing with a strong immediate taste which quickly receded. Anne said “that’s an IPA.”

2. Dogfish Head 60 Minute IPA (82.5, 95)
Very berry, woody, fruity, consistent, and carbonated.

1. Redhook Long Hammer IPA (83.25, 33)
I can’t believe it happened again. For the second straight week, the lowest rated ratebeer.com beer was our highest rated. It was my personal favorite by a mile. We agreed it didn’t have an intricate flavor but tasted “bitter and only bitter”, was quite drinkable, and smooth.

At this point it is obvious that our tastebuds are quite different from the ones over at ratebeer. It’s really interesting to see the opposite ratings we give out. Beer is so complicated and subtle. It would be interesting to take these tests again in five years and see what happens.

I don’t really know what to conclude from this tasting in terms of flavors we should attempt to go for in our own beer. It did seem we enjoyed the fruitier, smoother IPAs more than the woodier, maltier ones.

Stout Night

Last night we gathered fourteen different stouts and porters, five tasters, and held a stout tasting. Brooks, Natalie, Reid, Nick, and I took turns pouring the stouts for everyone else so the tastings were blind except for the pourer. All were poured into snifters from 12 oz individual bottles except for two 22 oz bombers. We first took a good look at the beer and commented. Then we smelled and commented. Finally we drank the beer, commented, and then each person gave it a taste rating on a scale of 1-100. Here’s how the rankings shook out, from worst to first (our average rating listed first, then the ratebeer overall percentile rank):

14. O’Hara’s Irish Stout (avg score 51.8) (ratebeer 71)

The big head and complex scent exciting beginning gave way to an ultra-bitter, flavorless death we compared to “wet straw” and “trodden poop.”

13. Great Divide Yeti Imperial Stout (62.2, 99)

This was an extremely hoppy, wildly bitter, flavorful beer. Tom gave it a good rating but everyone else despised it. The general consensus was that it had “too much of everything” and was lacking a consistent flavor.

12. Bridgeport Black Strap Stout (65.6, 84)

Nick called this “polite and timid” and gave it a decent mark; Tom thought it was the worst of the night and compared it to PBR; all thought it tasted metallic.

11. Sierra Nevada Porter (66.4, 90)

Smelled hoppy and creamy. Barely tasted like a dark at all – was almost an IPA masquerading as a porter.

10. Victory Storm King Stout (68, 100)

No one thought this was better than mediocre – complaints included “watery aftertaste”, “way too sweet”, “off-balance”, and “overpowered by malt.”

9. Rogue Shakespeare Stout (73.8, 98)

This ultra-dry stout was generally agreed to be “almost there.” Everyone rated it in the 70s. There were a lot of intriguing hints of sugar, spice, smoke, and other flavors. It lacked aftertaste which frustrated us.

8. Sierra Nevada Stout (74.8, 88)

A bitter “leftover coffee grinds” aftertaste detracted from this somewhat bland, straightforward stout.

7. Lion Stout (83.4, 97)

There were some mildly differing opinions on this stout imported from Sri Lanka. If there was a general complaint, it was that it was too sweet.

6. Murphy’s Irish Stout (83.6, 77)

This creamy Irish got high ratings from everyone except Reid, who felt it tasted alcoholic and watered down.

5. Oskar Blues Old Chub (88, 92)

A boozey, chocolately odor agreed to be the worst of the bunch gave way to a rich, malty, flavorful, tasty Scotch Ale. We felt the overwhelming flavor deteriorated as we continued to drink it, however.

4. Guinness Draught (88.2, 83)

We knew what this was despite tasting blind. Very drinkable, straightforward, smooth (watery?), with a bitter finish.

3. Beamish Irish Stout (89.7, 75)

This was the milkiest, least watery of the Irish stouts, with a gigantic creamy head and a bitter aftertaste.

2. Left Hand Milk Stout (90, 84)

Everyone agreed this was a “pretty ideal stout” with very consistent flavor throughout. This had all the flavors we look for in a stout – sugar, caramel, coffee, and malt, and pulled it together with a smooth middle taste and a bitter chocolate finish.

1. Ska Steel Toe Milk Stout (95.3, 50)

This was the favorite stout for Reid, Nick, and Tom, the three judges remaining when we made our last sample. This was exactly what we were looking for all night – a smooth, coffee, toffee, consistent flavor ending with a slight bitter high note with no bad aftertaste.

Amazingly, our blowout gold medalist was the worst-rated of the fourteen on ratebeer.com! Our #s 2,3,4 weren’t given very high marks, either. And the three highest-rated stouts on ratebeer were all low on our list.

I imagine many of the connoisseurs on ratebeer have a more developed palate than us and look for different sorts of things. There are also possible extenuating circumstances like getting a skunky beer, and uncontrolled variables like how drunk we were getting and, especially, the table talk during tasting.

Despite these, the results are still astonishing. A few trends:

1. We loved milk stouts
2. We really liked Irish stouts
3. We preferred stouts with one consistent flavor throughout
4. We didn’t care much for the highest-rated connoisseur beers. Flavor changes during tasting probably account for much of the disparity between us and ratebeer critics.
5. We all love nitro-tapped beers
6. Bigger beers are not for the uninitiated

Based on these results it seems logical for Sleeping Giant to try to develop a Milk Stout.

Next week: IPA Night.

Name

What do we want to name this thing?

I think Sleeping Giant is a fantastic name. It sounds pretty cool, pretty microbreweryish, pretty mythological, has the local tie-in, and even has metaphorical qualities (I think most of the people involved in the project are kinda "sleeping giants" of unrealized potential).

But

Steamboat Springs! How can we not use that name in our beer? It's so perfect. It sells itself. The marketing is built-in with that name.

What do you guys think?

A Tale of Two Breweries

This past week Laura and I visited two breweries: New Belgium in Fort Collins and Twisted Pine in Boulder. New Belgium is a wildly successful former microbrewery that, in eighteen years, has expanded from a husband and wife homebrew operation to a 270-employee machine set to expand nationwide. Twisted Pine is a small microbrewery with eight employees, two full-time. Twisted Pine has a small tap room and self-distributes to about forty locations, all in Colorado’s urban corridor.

My personal feeling is that Twisted Pine’s beers are tastier than New Belgium’s. Twisted Pine has the usual staple beers – an amber, red, blonde, IPA, honey brown, and stout. These are all very solid staples, particularly the honey brown which is one of the better ones I have tasted from the genre. In addition, Twisted Pine offers a fantastic raspberry wheat (best fruit beer of the few I have ever had) and a very intriguing chile pepper beer that somehow a) tastes and smells like peppers, b) tastes and smells like beer and c) tastes and smells really good. The current recipe for “Billy’s Chilies” is a metaphor for Twisted Pine overall: peppers are hand-cut, then put in mesh bags and steeped in their wheat beer (I don’t remember how long). They have no machine to cut and de-seed the peppers, so it’s all done by hand. This leads to a great, truly “hand-crafted” beer, but also means they struggle to produce it on a massive scale. The raspberry wheat is made using the same process – adding, then removing raspberries to their wheat beer – but can be produced more easily because no manipulation of the fruit is necessary.

New Belgium runs a great tour, with a personable hippie spinning beermaking tales accentuating the brewery’s core values – making Belgian-style beers, treating each other with respect and kindness, and protecting the environment. New Belgium really plays up the “brewery next door” angle – everyone knows everyone, everything is done with a smile: they’re just hippies trying to make some beer and be nice about it. But make no mistake about it, New Belgium is an aggressive, savvy company with serious business moxie looking to spread, expand, and carve out market share. The company is now run by the wife of the original husband and wife team – the husband retired about seven years ago and they brought in a new European brewmaster.

New Belgium’s tour hardly went into the brewery at all. Most of it was a Q&A sort of thing in a bus outside the building. They really want to deemphasize the scope of their operation, which has gotten pretty industrial. Their beers are pretty adventurous, generally speaking. Highlights include the Mothership Wit, an excellent hefeweizen; Trippel, a very wild, almost absurdly flavorful ale, and their filtered Sunshine Wheat. But the best of all, and the first reason why New Belgium is so much more successful than the Twisted Pines of the world, is Fat Tire. I have had a lot of ambers, and have never tasted anything near as good as Fat Tire. The beer is rich but smooth, flavorful but not bitter. Quite simply, I think it is a perfect beer. It is also very popular and leads the New Belgium charge across America. Fat Tire really serves as a mascot for the brewery, and much of their success depends on it.

The second reason why New Belgium is more successful than Twisted Pine is ambition. Twisted Pine does not seem to have much design on growth. They appear to be happy as a microbrewery, making good beer, experimenting some with seasonals, and always providing an excellent, fresh product to consumers. I like everything that Twisted Pine does, and taking this understated route might be the way to go for our company. I’m not sure how much money the company is making, but they’ve been around for about nine years, they make good brews, and their customers are happy. I think this is just what they want.

The third reason why New Belgium is more successful than Twisted Pine is marketing. New Belgium beers have great labels, with illustrations done by an old friend of the company’s founders. You can tell you’re looking at a New Belgium beer by the illustration on the bottle, though they’re all different. Finding a creative, entertaining way that both aligns and differentiates the different beers will be a critical part of our sales process. It’s going to take some good ideas and good execution, and we really can’t afford to screw it up. New Belgium does a great job, but their style can’t be copied. New Belgium also does a lot more aggressive mass-marketing than Twisted Pine. I’m not sure of their techniques, but they certainly do a good job of getting their name out there and getting beer into the hands of merchants.

New Belgium does not have a pub or any other sort of business attached to it. They have a decent-sized, fairly popular taproom attached to the brewery. Twisted Pine has a comfortable taproom along with their brewery open afternoons and early evenings. They serve peanuts, play some tunes off an i-pod, and sell gear. Sometimes they have some small concerts. If we don’t end up going for the all-out pub approach, I think a small taproom similar to Twisted Pine’s would be an excellent compromise.

Minor Setbacks

We decided not to go to the Breckenridge Beer Festival since it was snowing and nasty.

In worse news, the small business development class I was hoping to take mysteriously vanished, so I don't think I'll be able to do that. Looking into alternatives right now.

Restauranteuring

I talked to Paul Wasicka and Truman Bradley (Paul's agent) early this afternoon. Paul is certainly interested in the project, mostly from an investing standpoint. They have plenty of concerns too, of course - concerns that we have already recognized and are troubleshooting right now. We talked also about the restaurant part of it. Paul worked at an Italian restaurant, often as manager, for a few years so he knows a lot about that. We'll talk more when he's in town. In the meantime, I may go down to that restaurant (Via Toscana in Louisville) and talk to the owner, Rob (Paul's brother-in-law).

I have a lot of reservations about the restaurant part of it. I really don't know if that's the direction we should take - it's a lot more ambitious. Several different people have said that we can always move on to a restaurant/pub after establishing the brewery part of it. If it was totally up to me, we'd just get a warehouse and make beer, for now. But I might change my mind, and it's everyone's decision. Pretty much everything should be everyone's decision as much as possible, I think.

I talked to Truman's dad Jeff afterwards and he was hyping the idea of serving barbecue. I'm intrigued by this. He said it's really easy to make and serve. Something for us to think about. A minimal but excellent menu might be something we could pull off without too much difficulty.

I'm going to Breckenridge on Saturday for the beer festival, then probably heading to Steamboat on Sunday to check it out and talk with Nick and Chase.

- Tom

The Beer Project

It begins here - the building of a microbrewery business from scratch.