May I suggest the 42 gallon Blichmann Fermenator.

http://www.northernbrewer.com/shop/brew ... tings.html

yeah dude don't be a pussy

I spent the better part of my afternoon watching an interview between All About Beer Magazine and Nebraska Brewing Company via Google + and sampling most of the reserve series beers of Nebraska Brewing Company for free. It was pretty awesome. I think I consumed a half bottle of Black Betty Imperial Stout by myself, and I was ecstatic about the Responsibly and Melange a trois. The local rep who set up this event also allowed me to try the Goose Island Madame Rose Oud Bruin.
I almost feel guilty for drinking that much great beer during the afternoon, but the sport coat and mustache gave me a pass.

Wow! Too much pressure.

Way too much pressure. The only people I know who have that sort of home brew system are professional brewers, one of which is a local attorney who is just starting to brew professionally with a significant economic backing from a local surgeon an some other folks. You really have to have your shit together to brew on that sort of system.
I'd give you props if you made a one gallon small batch kit from Northern Brewer or simply used a Mr. Brew Kit.

Pintley has an app. I downloaded during the summer and used it a few times just to look up beers while in a store or a pub. I haven't used it much though.

Recents:



Russian River - Sanctification

Its a sour blonde fermented with 100% brettanomyces then aged in stainless steel tanks. I bought a few bottles of these over a year ago and drank one and sat on the others. Either its much improved with age, I forgot how good it is, or my appreciation for sours has grown since I first tried it, or most likely all of the above. Very crisp and refreshing with some tartness and funky complexity. Wish I had more bottles than I do.



Lagunitas - Daytime IPA

I know many here are familiar with this one. It's a lower alcohol, sessionable IPA. I didn't care for it that much. I thought the lightness of it did end up sacrificing a good deal of flavor. I'm sure I was influenced though by it being the last beer of the night after good and much more expensive beers. It's pretty cheap though so I'll probably try it again. Looking forward to having some Brown Shugga this holiday season though.



Jolly Pumpkin - La Parcela

The beer buyer at my wine shop loves these guys, and it's a pumpkin sour so I was expecting to be really impressed but was a tad bit disappointed. I don't know -- it seemed to me in their care to make sure that neither the pumpkin nor sour elements were too dominant over one another, they really muted the flavors. I found it a little dull. Not bad but I was expecting more for the price.

I also had a German Beer by Mahr's which was pretty great. I don't remember which one though.

I haven't tried that Lagunitas Day Time yet (it came and went quickly here) but I did try 21'st Amendment's foray into the session beer world, Bitter American. I thought it was quite good and drank it, appropriately, while on a boat fishing. Would def. buy again.

OHG, forgot about this one:



Eagle Rock Brewery's Unity
A Berliner Weiss with Prickly Pear

This was a special release during L.A. Beer Week. The powers that be in charge of LA Beer Week pick a special ingredient every year and local brewers release a beer utilizing it. This year it was prickly pear. These guys really make great beer, and this one was no exception. Really refreshing with bright prickly pear and tart citrus in the background. Probably a one time release but I wouldn't mind at all seeing this one become a regular.

I will defend Lagunitas Daytime on the merits that it is a nearly flawless and well balanced beer. It is a great beer despite its low ABV, and I really hate the fact that we have come to a point where we discredit great tasting craft beer because it isn't a "big" beer.
We have basically reached a period in American craft brewing where Big beers and lots of hops are the only exceptable standard for brewing, and that is complete nonsense.
I would drink a Daytime over a Lagunitas IPA orA Lil Sumptin Wild any day of the week.

I'm not a fan of big IPAs with tons of hops for the most part. I just thought that it was really light on flavor. Like I said though, it was the last beer of the evening after drinking a few heavier, well-made, expensive beers. I reached for it because I wanted a lower alcohol beer if I was going to have another. It didn't make much of an impression though. I might have liked it more if it were my first or only beer.

I wasn't trying to criticize you, despite my poorly worded reply. I had it first when I tried the Lagunita's beers for the first time, and the well balanced flavors stood out, but I'm certain they wouldn't be prevalent after a hop bomb or a high ABV beer. This is a nearly perfect APA, and it seems like most folks are expecting a DIPA with every hoppy beer.

Way to set up a series of strawmen there, Prom.

I liked the Daytime. Great session beer. To me it seems that craft "session" beers are just going to have an uphill battle on several fronts.

I'm no brewer, but to get big, bold flavors doesn't one have to do certain things to get that and do those things ultimately make the ABV go up? Seems like there is a delicate balance to get good flavor and a low ABV.

Also, the consumer and market has an issue with a $10 6 pack of beer that's under 5% ABV it seems. It's either new consumers to the market who have been used to $6 sixers all their life having an issue or the mentality of "why pay $10 for this low abv brew when I can pay the same price and get a sixer of Two Hearted or some other big beer".

Also, making a "session" beer by definition means drinking a bunch of them. Tough sell at $20+ a 12 pack.

I think you're getting at the heart of the matter here. I like plenty of craft brew session beers but they tend to be pilsners, lagers, and other beers that aren't supposed to be big bold flavors but more refreshing and relatively lighter in alcohol to start with. Daytime is the second session IPA i've had. Golden Road's Point the Way IPA was the first. Both claim to make lower alcohol IPAs without compromising the flavors. I think both are fine beers for what they are, but they utterly fail at not compromising the flavor. I'm not even a big fan of the hop monsters but these just aren't that exciting at all to me. I can tell they are IPAs but I don't like them. Don't hate them either but I don't have much desire to ever drink them again.

I must try the daytime.

I love everything else I've had from them.
Maximus is my favorite. I'm just so impressed by how defined and aromatic the malts are for such a hop machine.

You might also be making the other side of the argument. As the craft beer market gets over saturated people will start to respect the difficulty of making a great session beer. Er...maybe?

I drink for flavor... and I will typically have a couple regardless of the ABV. Love to have a couple and still function.

I have one of these:


never use it

You can get a lot of flavor into a beer without actually upping the alcohol content. Quick explanation in case you're curious how (skip if not):

Crystal malts add color and flavor (raisiny, caramely, sweeter flavors for the most part) without adding much alcohol at all. Has to do with the way they're roasted and how wet they are when they're roatsed, as I understand it. The sugars get crystalized within the malt and then they don't convert properly so the yeast don't want to eat them. Yeast only like certain shorter chain lengths of sugars, and only certain structures of sugars, so if you have a wort (beer before it's fermented, the sweet stuff) that is full of a lot of long-chain sugars or lactose sugars (milk stout!), then when you dump yeast in there, they're gonna pass most of that sugar over and not eat it. It survives through as "latent" sugar, makes the beer taste sweeter, and is inviting for bacteria so the beer is more likely to spoil sooner.

Beer yeast: picky little fuckers.
Brett/Champaign/Red Wine Yeast: somewhat picky, but more complete eaters who leave a dry product behind with more alcohol.
Bacteria: Equal opportunity eating machines who will eventually eat ANYTHING, leaving a sour acidic product behind with no alcohol.

So as you play with the final wort product, either with ingredients that have sugars the beer yeast won't touch or by cooking normal malts at higher temps to make longer sugar chains that the beer yeast won't touch, you move a tradeoff scale left and right... more latent sugar and less alcohol, or vice versa. So you could have malts with lots of roast (flavor), or with lots of crystalized sugars (flavor) and not get a bump in booze.

But all that costs as much to make as a beer with more alcohol, so it's not as tempting to Make them, or for people to Buy them, given that you're getting less ethanol for your dollar on both ends.

One reason Guiness is has probably been so popular for so long... a lot of flavor and not a ton of booze. Because they use a little bit of roasted black grain for color and flavor, and because they mix in a small % of old beer that's begun to sour, it tastes big and unique, relatively speaking, for a beer with 5% abv. And neither of those things (pinch of dark malt, or aged old beer) cost a lot, so it can sell cheaper. win-win.

It's true of course that Guinness is relatively low in alcohol. It has even less than 5% (4.2% in the U.S.). I wonder if the average Guinness drinker even nows or thinks about that. I'd also say that for most people, it isn't really a session beer. Session beers generally are both lower alcohol and less heavy/less filling. That's why I think some varietals such as IPAs just are hard to make good session beers out of. To me, Daytime and Point the Way just taste watered down and TOO thin.

Agree. Guiness has a lot going on for your tastebuds. And yet people can and do pound 8 of them in one evening.

Oh and



I now have two bottles of Westvleteren, somehow. Wife's highschool bff married this guy, a very kind and funny air force fighter pilot / trainer, and they now live in germany. He drove 10 hours roundtrip to get his alloted 2 cases after a guy over there told him about the beer and the mystique. They're swung through town last night on the way to CT, and they met us out at 4 for an hour to say hi and have a meal. Lo and behold, he brought me two. Nearly shit myself.

Read this guy's blog post about visiting Vermont breweries. It's good.

http://brewinthebuff.tumblr.com/post/32921391404/northeast-kingdom

Oops. I meant to say that I don't think most people really think of it as a session beer because it's probably a little too heavy (is to isn't corrected above). It's my favorite, widely available beer so I used to drink 8-12 in an evening when I was younger and not driving so I'm not saying that some people don't but I think most people wouldn't want to do that and I do generally think of session beers as being generally less full bodied (helluva run on sentence buf eff it). At least I think that's what most brewers aim for which is often my problem with the result.

I always find Guiness to have a really light body. It doesn't hit the gut hard. Maybe my view is colored by the guys I played all those irish shows with in Madison a decade ago, who would absolutely drink 8 each in an evening. That, and the old dudes at the bar that one time in Wateford Ireland, who sat there and POUNDED Beamish stout like it was fucking gatorade after a marathon. Like a 16 ounce pour gone in 2 minutes, repeated 5 or 6 times as I sat there.