Sometimes I’ll do a train/bicycle combo to and from work (although I’ve been lazy this past month.)  When I do I usually ride from the Westmont station.  All spring and summer I’d noticed a storefront with signs promising the coming of a new homebrew shop.  Look’s like its open!  When I saw they were in business I had to pop in and check it out on my way to the station.  I still get a nostalgic sort of excitement when I walk into a homebrew shop.  It reminds me of the days when I’d visit George and Nancy at  Home Sweet Homebrew to grab the ingredients for my next creation.

I met Brett, the owner of Brew Your Own Bottle.  I like the concept of his shop.  They seem set up to provide a pretty wide array of ingredients for the experienced homebrewer, but they also seem willing and able to help newbies get started.  The shop offers classes for beginning homebrewers and even a brew on premesis option for people who don’t want to invest in equipment or mess their kitchens up!

If you’re at all interested in getting started with homebrewing, pop your head in and say Hi to Brett.  (Oh, and for those of you with poorer taste, he sells wine-making supplies too.)

Cheers,

Chris

Last month I told the staff that I was dedicated to always having some type of IPA on tap, whether it be traditional, American, black, Belgian, Imperial etc.  Then I released Rising Sun, it sold out about twice as quickly as I’d expected, and I promptly broke my promise.  Well I’m working to catch up.  I’ve got India Black Ale in the tank and firkens now and we’re brewing another batch of Rising Sun on Wednesday.  The good news is that I’ve got 1/4 keg each of the Rising Sun and #100 squirreled away and I’m going to put them on tap on Wednesday at 5:00 when I tap those firkins of India Black Ale.  So for a brief (possibly very brief) while we’ll have three IPAs on tap.  I saved just a little bit of the #100 and Rising Sun in the hopes that I’d be sending one of them out to the GABF, but alas Bob’s Hopilicious from Media beat me out.  (Every year we do a blind tasting of a few styles that we’re entering for competititon to see which location gets to represent the company in Denver.)  That’s OK, Hoplicious deserves to go and this way there’s less for the judges, more for us!

Cheers,

Chris

Since we don’t normally name beers after people, a lot of people have been asking who Pete is.  Chris figured it was appropriate for me to explain why I named this Belgian Quad “Pete’s Celebration”.

I’ve known Pete since I was born.  My mother was pregnant with my older brother Brian while Pete’s mother was pregnant with him.  They were born within a couple of weeks of each other.  Since then our families have always spent time together over the holidays, and during these get-togethers I always got to try Pete’s homebrews. During my junior year in college I decided I wanted to “make something” for a living and more specifically I wanted a career making one of my two favorite beverages, beer or tea.  Obviously beer won out.  With that decision made, I sent Pete an e-mail expressing my interest in homebrewing.  The next day I recieved an extensive e-mail about everything from what equipment was needed to details about the steps in a partial mash brew day. 

A year after I graduated from Kenyon College, I went back to Ohio to visit my friends who would be on campus.  The last day of my visit I stayed with Pete in Columbus and met Ellyn, his present day fiance.  That night, after Pete and I enjoyed a few yards of Avery, he told me that he planned on proposing to Ellyn and half-jokingly asked me to brew him a beer, either at work or home for his wedding.  Shortly after my return from Ohio I was offered the job at Iron Hill.

A few months ago I returned from Siebel with some malt samples from Briess Malting in Wisconson.  Chris asked me what I wanted to do with them and I suggested a Belgian Quadrupel.  I formulated the grain bill for the following Monday’s brew.  Chris told me since it was my beer I had to name it too and to think about it over the next few days.  Coincidentally, over the weekend preceding the brew day I found out that Pete had proposed.  So there it is, my first beer at Iron Hill is dedicated to the guy who got me into homebrewing and his bride to be.  We’ll be tapping Pete’s Celebration on Wednesday September 8th at 5 pm.  See you then.

- Jeff

Just wanted to give you a preview of what we’re putting on tomorrow night at 5 pm.  Don’t worry if you can’t make it in, these are all full batches of beer that will be on tap for a while.  It’s just not often we throw four new beers on tap at the same time.  These are all beers I’m sending to the Great American Beer Festival, so I worked the brew schedule so that each beer would be at its peak when we sent it off to Denver for judging.  As a result we’ve got a bunch of fun beers premiering on the same day.  Two of these are gold medal winning recipes that we’ve never brewed at this location before. (They’re slow stubborn styles that I didn’t have tank space/time for before the delivery of F8).  So come out to have a beer with Jeff and I and wish us luck in Denver! 

Here’s the lineup;

The Cannibal – Named for cycling legend Eddy Merckx, this beer is also strong and Belgian.  Golden ale with a complex yeast character reminiscent of tropical fruit with a balancing bitterness and dry spicy finish.  7.9% abv 2005 GABF gold medal, 2006 WBC Silver medal

Saison - Belgian-style farmhouse ale.  Unfiltered, bright and light bodied, yet with a yeast character that is at once earthy, fruity, and spicy.  7.0% abv 2008 GABF gold medal

Caprice – Our tribute to Belgium’s tributes to American hops.  Classic Belgian (Orval) yeast marries with the fruity characters of American hops.  Dry sessionable and refreshing.  5.4% abv

Hopfenweizen - Another Euro-American hybrid.  Banana and clove notes from Bavarian wheat beer yeast mingle with the fruity characters of American Citra hops.  5.0% abv

Cheers,

Chris

That’s not a typo, the beer that won this year’s Iron Brewer competition was a collaborative effort of Jim Carruthers and Scott Davi.  Several months ago I posted about the wort giveaway and subsequent competition we do every year.  It’s a tradition I started years ago in our West Chester location and it’s always been a lot of fun. Don Russel (Joe Sixpack) wrote an article about it a while back that summed up the spirit of the whole thing pretty nicely.  Anyhow, we finally got around to judging the beers that resulted and I have to say there was some great stuff!  So what did the guys win?  They’ll get to come in and brew their own recipe in our brewery, name the beer (within the confines of good taste gentlemen!) and take home a 1/4 barrel of it.  The original plan was to brew the winning recipe, but the beer they won with happened to be an American Pale Ale and we didn’t want Ironbound to get jealous.  So they agreed to brew a different style.  They brewed a Coffee Stout a while back that they’re pretty proud of so we’re going to scale up that recipe and brew it here.  Once I get back from the GABF in Denver we’ll get it in the tanks.  You should be seeing a release party sometime in November.  I’ll keep you posted.

Cheers,

Chris

I meant to put something up on my blog about this months and months ago.  I ran into the winners of the 2010 Off Centered Film competition at the Sly Fox goat races and I told them I wanted to post the winning film on my blog.  Of course I got busy and it slipped away from me.  Well I was just up in Cooperstown for “Belgium Comes to Cooperstown” and I ran into Brian and Robert (that’s with an accent aigu, which I haven’t figured out how to do in wordpress) again and thought “hmmm, I never posted that.”  Well here it is.  Good stuff.