Microbrewed Adventures - Charles Papazian [29]
Rick Smets, Andy Schwartz and Tom Nickel
Both Rick and Tom explained the “secrets” about their pioneering Double India Pale Ale, a style that one might safely say originated in Southern California.
Using three to four pounds of hops per barrel (that’s about 10 ounces per 5 gallons, or a 20-liter batch of homebrew!), the hops are dosed throughout the process to emphasize hop flavors and aromas. They are added to the malt mash, to the kettle boiling, during the lautering process, to the fermenters and even into the “bright tanks” just before kegging. What one ends up with is infused pale ale bursting with vibrantly fresh hop character.
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JEFF BAGBY’S HOP WHOMPUS 2004
Jeff sent me a three-page e-mail detailing his recipe and procedures for his award-winning beer. This homebrewed version is an adaptation, extravagantly full of hop flavor and aroma. Yet it is unrepentantly balanced with a foundation of malt. Superbly drinkable and not just for sipping, it’s a winner for your own brewing pleasure. This recipe can be found in About the Recipes.
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There’s excitement in Rick’s conversation as he adds details. Later he points out how Tom has encouraged him to learn about everything that he has access to, especially by tasting the beer throughout its journey from malt and hops to finished product. He notes that tasting the beer at all points of the process really helps a brewer to become a master. I agree, as I, too, find myself tasting ingredients, tasting unfermented wort, fermentation and finished beer before bottling and noting how beer flavors evolve with time and patience.
Oggi is the Italian word for “today.” All three of us are enjoying today’s still-fermenting India pale ale fresh out of the vat, while knowledgeably imagining what tomorrow holds for the glass of beer in our hand. We are microbrewers.
THERE ARE SEVERAL “location” brewmasters working at other Oggi’s Pizza breweries. We visited brewmaster Jeff Bagby, award-winning brewer at Oggi’s in Vista, California. Jeff offered us a quick taste of a smooth, velvety imperial stout and a new fermenting barley wine sort of ale. As bubbles rose in our glasses from ongoing fermentation, Jeff, Tom and I all agreed that the future was huge for this smooth, hard-to-characterize ale with a unique balanced blend of hops. Little did Jeff know that 68 days after my visit he would be awarded a Gold Medal in the Imperial/Double Red Ale category at the 2004 Great American Beer Festival.
New Frontiers on the Edge of a Continent
Stone Brewing Company, San Diego
You are not worthy of drinking this beer. It is quite doubtful that you have the taste or sophistication to appreciate an ale of this quality and depth…
The preceding is part of the statement you will behold when reading the label of Arrogant Bastard Ale. It may be quite true: you are not worthy of this beer unless, as they continue to say, you like big, flavorful brews that are not hyped by multimillion-dollar advertising campaigns that convince you that yellow fizzy beer makes you more sexy. This statement at first struck me as quite confrontational, but I wasn’t convinced that this was all there was to the attitude of the brewers and makers of a wide variety of beers at the San Diego area’s Stone Brewing Company.
Steve Wagner and Greg Koch (not related to Boston Beer’s Jim Koch) are the figurative “bastards” who with their attitude co-founded Stone Brewing in 1998. They were homebrewers and beer enthusiasts before starting what is now Southern California’s most successful microbrewer turned craft brewer.
Arrogant Bastard is their hugely big-humongous-grand-colossal red ale loaded with malt,