I love Iron Hill’s Burgers. The Blue Cheese Burger is my favorite (not just the cheese, but the mushroom duxelle). I love them so much that I have to force a self-imposed limit of one burger per week. Otherwise I might eat them every day. I may have to lift that limit next month. You see May is National Burger Month and Iron Hill plans to celebrate! We’re doing “A Burger a Day in the Month of May”. That’s right, a different burger every day available at both lunch and dinner. We’ve got a very talented culinary staff and I’m really looking forward to some of these creations. I’ve looked at the list and I can’t wait for the Sumo Burger or Luau Burger to name a couple. I think I’ll probably take the day off for the Onion Lover’s. The only onion I can handle is the satirical publication. I’m setting up a Twitter account just for Burger month (BurgeraDay) so you can see what each day’s burger is. All I can say is I’m glad they finished the work on the Maple Shade Bridge so I can return to riding my bike to work. I’ll need it!
Chris
Iron Hill Brewery and Restaurant took the “Best Large Brewpub of the Year” 
title Saturday night at the World Beer Cup. The distinction is determined by the amount and level of medals won by a company. This year Bob “The Medal Machine” Barrar took two Golds and a Bronze for the Media location and Justin snagged a Silver and Bronze for Newark. Nice job guys! As you can imagine getting up for our flight on Sunday morning wasn’t exactly easy! Congratualtions also to Yards, Troeg’s, Nodding Head and Weyerbacher for their wins. Affirmation once again that we live in one of the best parts of the country for drinking beer.
Just wanted to share some photos of the pre and post celebrations of our victory. Every year Mark takes us all out for a nice steak dinner the night before the results are read. That way we get a celebration in regardless of how we actually do at the competition. Mark gave a nice toast about how lucky we were to be in this industry and how “no matter what happens tomorrow” we’re one of the best brewing companies in the world. It turns out that “no matter what” wasn’t necesarry. Yep, there’s a lot of wine in that photo. Unfortunately most steak houses have awful beer lists, but the boys like their steak. So once in a while we have to slum it and drink wine. We ended the night with Bob devouring about a one pound ice cream wedge covered in just about every kind of sweet and gooey accompanyment you can imagine. We’re a supersitious bunch, when we do something and then win a bunch of medals afterward we feel like we have to do it every year. So I guess in 2012 Bob will have to eat another pound of ice-cream. Something tells me he will embrace the obligation. 
Once we got to the awards dinner things got a little tenser. We went through about half of the ceremony without winning anything. And we had beers in a few of the categories that we’d gone through. It wasn’t looking 
good for a bit, but once they called our name for the first time, the medals just kept on coming. We won a total of 5, two golds, one silver and two bronzes. The cherry on top came when they announced that we had taken the title of Best Large Brewpub for 2010 and 2011. As you can imagine a lot of celebration followed. In Chicago the bars are open almost all night so it took a lot of discipline to get home in time for even a little bit of sleep before the flight back!
So Jeff had such a good time in Chicago that the rest of us decided we had to check it out. Actually the Craft Brewer’s Conference is in the Windy City this year. Every year Iron Hill sends us out to the CBC to spend a few days learning about our craft and science. (That’s us having a pre-flight pint. Boy the airport bars really have a long way to go before 
they catch up with the rest of the city. If our train station can serve great beer, why can’t our airport?) The CBC is mostly classroom time and trade show floor visits. But as you can imagine when a group of brewers from all over the country get together in a city away from home, plenty of sampling and socializing occurs as well. The brewer’s community is a kind of a spiderweb one rather than a geographic one. There are brewers in Boston, 
California, Colorado etc that I consider personal friends and brewers in New Jersey that I’ve never met. We tend to develop friendships and professional relationships with brewers from all over the country and all over the world. That’s largely due to the fact that we get together in Denver for the Great American Beer Fest and in a different city every year for the CBC. It’s also great to spend time with friends that I’ve worked with in other breweries who have since moved across the country for new jobs. Last night was the reception in the Field Museum. It reminded me a bit of the Michael Jackson tribute event that takes place in the Museum of Anthropology every year. You’ve got loads of people enjoying world class beer in a beautiful piece of architecture and surrounded by priceless and ancient works of art. After that we headed to the Map Room, which was one of my favorite haunts when I was out here attending beer shcool 9 years ago. It’s just as I remembered it, only without the pool tables. Today was the keynote speech which for a change was given by two congressmen. Usually its a brewer or brewery owner who gives the speech. This year the addresses focused on developing relationships between our government and members of the craft brewing industry. Alright, I’m off to learn about Lautering for Maximization of Quality, Throughput, and Yield!
Cheers,
Chris
I just wanted to let you all know about the new homebrew shop that opened nearby, the Keg and Barrel. The owner came in for one of our beer dinners. Nice guy and very dedicated to good beer.
I consider myself a recovering homebrewer. I used to be really into it. Most professionals were at some point. People ask me if I still homebrew and I tell them “yes, but at work!” Back when I worked in a production brewery I still did a bit of homebrewing. The production work taught me a lot that I never would have learned in a brewpub, but it didn’t offer a whole lot of creative satisfaction. I had to get that at home. Here I get to play around with all kinds of fun recipes so my weekends are now for cycling and drinking beer.
Because most of the brewing crew at Iron Hill started as homebrewers (including the owners) we keep dedicated to the hobby. We do what we can to support and sponsor homebrew clubs and homebrew competitions. We offer a great discount for AHA members. I do the wort giveaway every year. And one of the benefits of working here (in any capacity, not just brewing) is free homebrew ingredients. We’ve got four or five homebrewers on our staff right now that regularly come in and get malt, hops and yeast for their brews. Once in a while we’ll even give yeast to some of our regular customers who homebrew. That’s a shelf in our cold box in the picture right there. On it is Iron Hill yeast I cropped for one of our homebrewing servers and behind it is various homebrews the staff have brought in for Jeff and I to enjoy.
Not a bad deal for our staff! The rest of you will just have to visit Keg and Barrel.
We’re on to the last firkin in the Study in Hops. Ahhhh Amarillo, my least favorite American hop! (that’s not true, Simcoe is probably my least favorite, but Amarillo is a close second). Definitely the standout of the five. Amarillo has some of the requisite American pine character, but its really loaded with peach, apricot and tangerine characters. Its so fruity it almost gives a perception of sweetness, which I find ironic for a hop. All of my personal hang-ups aside, this is one of the most popular hops out there today. Enjoy!
Three down and two to go in the Study in Hops. Columbus replaced Chinook last night. (sorry to be late with the update, we dropped the ball). Things get different from here on out. Columbus is the most pungent of the bunch. Some say it has an almost onion-bagel character to it. Columbus will probably be replaced by Amarillo sometime tonight.
Chris
We’re on to firkin three in the study in hops. I like the Chinooks, spicy and piney. Still a bit fruity, but not as much citrus as the first two.
