Our last city in Belgium was Ghent, which we really enjoyed. In a lot of ways it had the best parts of both Brussels and Brugge. Like Brugge it had all of the medieval architecture, canals and church spires, but all with way fewer tourists. I know, I know, we’re tourists. But Ghent just felt a little more authentic somehow.

We hit a couple of the bars suggested on the Vanberg and DeWulf site including the Waterhuis and De Brouwzaele and managed to find at least one beer I’d never had before, Klokke Roeland. Then we decided we’d try to find something a little different than what we’d been doing for the rest of the evening. The Lass pointed out that we weren’t really finding too many beers that we hadn’t had before (partly due to the fact that we’d already been in Belgium for four nights and partly due to the fact that we’re from the city nicknamed “Brussels on the Schuylkill”). So we decided to find a great dinner and some live music if possible.

We did find a place for live Jazz and would have loved to have seen a show there, but sadly it was one of the few evenings of the month that they weren’t playing any live music. It was a shame, it was a comfortable little place accessible only by a long cobblestone alley that led to a pleasant courtyard. Inside was a dark woody room with plenty of Belgian beer on tap.

We did some recon on restaurants for that evening’s dinner and decided on C. Jean. It’s a small place run by a couple, their daughter and her husband. They’ve owned the restaurant for 27 years. I asked the daughter who was our server for the evening how they’d had to adapt over the years. She said that 5 years ago her father, a skilled but very traditional chef decided to take a step back and hire a more modern chef. Both the modern take and traditional expertise shined through. The dishes used very traditional Flemish ingredients, and there were a couple of traditional dishes (eel in green). The bulk of what we ate though focused on the core flavors of the raw ingredients and how they played together. Very different from your sauce-heavy Carbonade Flammande.

The service was excellent as well. Our server made our lunch plans for Paris after a phone call to her father for a recommendation. She even made the reservations for us.

The only sad part about the dinner was that they didn’t embrace beer. We enjoyed the Pinot we had, and it even worked well with a couple of the dishes, but a couple of the bites just screamed for a Belgian Blonde or Golden Ale. I think it’s a shame that people are often forced to choose between a world class meal and a suitable beer selection. It doesn’t have to be one or the other. That’s one of my favorite things about Philly; our best chef owners embrace and even feature beer in their restaurants. In all fairness, we were only in Ghent for one night and it is entirely possible that they have a Marc Vetri or Jose Garces hiding a couple of blocks off of those canals. But I will say that it’s harder and harder to find places like C.Jean in Philly where the cuisine and beer are so far out of balance.

We got back to our hotel at a reasonable hour, hoping to be up early for our trip to Paris. Check out the view from our room and our morning coffee. It’s just like that here. It kind of reminds me of some towns in Colorado where even the simplest businesses come with a built-in breathtaking view. In CO it’s mountains, here it’s beautiful and ancient buildings.

Next stop Paris!

Proost,

Chris

This morning certainly came early. We had dinner last night (sweetbreads, Iberian ham, and of course mussels) then a little nightcap of Rochefort 6 (thought that was prudent) before coming home to get my London blog post up. That left me with less than three hours of sleep before getting on the bus for DuPont. Today was the day we brewed the official Philly Beer Week collaboration beer.

We arrived in Tourpes and were greeted by Olivier from DuPont and Don and Wendy from Vanberg and DeWulf (the folks who made a big chunk of this trip possible). Not long after that we headed into the grain room to taste some malts. I had originally been concerned with the amount of peated malt Tom told me was to go into this beer. It was way way more than we put into our Wee Heavy or Smokin’ Blonde Ale here at Iron Hill, and for a much lighter bodied beer at that. After tasting the peated malt though, my mind was put at ease. This malt had a much more delicate character and way less phenols than the stuff we had used. It was actually malted at a small maltings just a few miles down the road from the brewery. That done, Vince and I got milled and mashed in.

I was pretty surprised with how small and hands-on DuPont was. Given the popularity of their beers in Philadelphia I just assumed they were an automated behemoth churning out barrel after barrel. As a matter of fact when they set a time for the brew to start I wondered how they could even schedule something. “Aren’t these guys brewing 24/7?” It turns out DuPont only makes about 16,000 Barrels a year, less than Yards or Flying Fish.

The brewery was pretty old world as well. Most of the brewhouse is stainless but they stuck with copper brew kettles and a direct flame boil.

The stacks lead up to an attic and are actually vented inside the building. I also quickly learned there’s probably no such thing as OSHA in Belgium. Brewers have to keep on their toes!

I’m excited to taste this beer when it finally makes it to the US. I think we’re going to have a little Farmhouse Ale themed release party in June with a couple DuPont products, a couple Iron Hill Farm House Ales, and of course the collaboration.

That’s it for now, I’m off to meet up with the crew and have a couple of well-deserved beers at the Den Duyver!

I got some flack for not being adventurous enough when we decided to do London as one of our side cities on this trip. I’ve been to London four times and I’ve never been to Germany, Austria, the Czech Republic etc. Something told me I should have checked off another one of the “beer nations” off my list. But we decided to go to London for two reasons. One was that I thought it would be a good way for the Beer Lass and I to acclimate to the European time zone and culture without the added obstacle of a language barrier. The other is, I love London! And possibly more importantly, I knew that the Lass would love London and I was really excited to show it to her.

London just has a comfortable feel to it, the pub culture in particular. The Lass and I spend a significant amount of time in bars, both for business in pleasure. We like ‘em! Our favorite bars tend to be the ones where we can chat with people and each other. No loud music, no big crowds, staff and patrons we know and of course great beer. English pubs seem to be built for such things. They’re basically communal living rooms where you can really spend hours. Not only are you comfortable enough to spend hours there,but you can do so without getting incoherently drunk. I think every beer we drank in London was less than 4.5% abv but had way more flavor than any 5% macro-swill or “import”. Proof that color and flavor don’t have to correlate to alcohol content.

Love the tube too. It’s pretty hard to find a pub that’s not accessible by public transportation. We spent a day heading from place to place without ever having to get into a car.

There were two big highlights of the trip. One old and one new. The old was The White Horse on Parson’s Green. It’s legendary for its real ale, and has been named CAMRA’s real ale pub of the year over and over again. But there’s so much more to it than that. It’s got some of the best pub food you’ll ever find. Scratch that. It’s got some of the best food you’ll ever find in a pub. The Lass and I had lamb sweetbreads and venison carpaccio for our mid-day snack. Not exactly fish & chips. They’ve also got an impressive selection of beers beyond the cask-conditioned English stuff. The first time I went there was 9 years ago and they had Anchor’s Liberty Ale on tap. They also led England in acceptance of Belgian beers. We were lucky enough to have a friendly enough bartender and assistant cellarman to get us a tour of one of the best cask cellars in England.

The other find for me was something I’d managed to overlook on my previous trips to England. Fortunately Yard’s Head brewer and former White Horse employee Tim Roberts insisted that I visit one of his former haunts, the Churchill Arms. I always knew London had great pubs, and also great Indian and Thai food. But I never knew they had them both in the same place. The Arms is a Fuller’s house and we grabbed ourselves very fresh pints of Chiswick and ESB. Despite the abundance of fresh flowers covering the outside walls of the establishment, I felt like I was in your quintessential English pub. But a trip to the back brings you to a completely different world. You cross a threshold and the pint in your hand is the only thing that reminds you that you’re in a pub in England. Out of your left ear you’re hearing Chelsea fans deriding Birmingham loyalists and out of your right you hear the staff speaking Thai. I don’t know who owns Churchill Arms or how they came up with the combination, but I’m glad they did. It worked really well.

If you ever make it to London check out the Churchill Arms. If you’re the sort of person who reads this blog, you’d probably find the White Horse on your own. But you can thank Tim for Churchill Arms.

Every year since we’ve been together the Beer Lass and I have spent our Valentine’s weekend in Baltimore for Max’s 72 Hour Belgian Beer Fest. (How many guys can get away with that?!) When I won the trip to Belgium her first reaction was “Oh no, we’ll miss Max’s”. I pointed out that we could fly out of Baltimore instead of Philly and the plan was born! So Max’s is the send off for our European adventure. I thought it was kind of fitting, to start of a trip to Belgium with what has become my favorite Belgian beer festival. If you’ve never been to this event you have to check it out one year. I’m always amazed at how smoothly it runs given the insane amount of people that flood the bar. I mean it’s 11:30 on a weekday morning and there’s hardly room to move. But everyone has a beer in their hand and a smile on their face. I don’t know how they do it. Every year they think of something new to make everything run more efficiently. Props to Casey Hard for making this event what it is. I shot a video of the doors opening but can’t seem to attach it to the blog from my bar stool. It’s a sight to behold. Before noon on a weekday and there’s just a stream of people pouring into this bar. I got tired of recording at the 7 minute point but the influx was nowhere near finished by then… Fortunately we got in and found a foothold early, so I was safely seated and drinking a DuPont Biere De Garde as soon as I turned off the camera.

Cheers,

Chris

I knew someone would make one of these for brewers sooner or later…

Must admit, its not inaccurate!

Cheers,

Chris

Hopefully you’ve all been enjoying the Kamikaze IPA over the past few days.  There are two things about that beer you probably don’t know.   A. That beer was guest brewed by two of our managers.  (It’s a requirement at Iron Hill that all of our managers spend a day brewing before they officially earn their stripes).  And B. When we mashed that beer in we were planning on brewing Rising Sun.  (I guess I’m a bad inventory keeper).  Anyhow, here’s manager Steven Lesli’s account of his brew-for-a-day.

-Chris

The opportunities that present themselves as an employee of Iron Hill Brewery continue to amaze and impress me.  A few weeks ago I was given the invite to Brew-for-a-Day with our accomplished Head Brewer Chris LaPierre and his talented assistant Chris Vaughn.  Of course, I jumped at the chance.

Drinking, tasting, savoring and of course talking beer are some of my favorite pastimes, let alone part of my job description as a long time Iron Hill employee.  Brewing beer has unfortunately escaped my resume up until this point, (unless you count the failed ventures within my own tiny kitchen), and I was quite happy to contribute.  Joining us that day was Greg Iredell, a colleague of mine that was also a brewing virgin.  Not sure what Chris was thinking having us both there on the same day but he was guaranteed to be bombarded with questions all day.

The day started nice and early with a generous dose of 2 Row, Munich, Pilsner and Wheat malts into the Mash Tun.  Greg and I took our turns mixing the mash to the appropriate consistency (oatmeal anyone?).  Greg was convinced at this point that a trip to the gym that night was unnecessary.  After all the starches had been converted to sugars it was time to transfer to the kettle.

We had planned on brewing one of Chris’ most popular styles, Rising Sun, which is made with 100% Sorachi Ace hops.  At this stage of the process we realized that Rising Sun was not going to happen today as there was a lack of Sorachi Ace inventory.  Oops.  As any experienced brewer does from time to time Chris adjusted the recipe on the fly and we moved towards another IPA recipe involving Sorachi Ace… Kamikaze IPA.  As a hop fan myself this change of direction was undoubtedly inconsequential as the beer was sure to be even more bitter and piney than the Rising Sun.  Hooray for hops.

Once the wort found its way to the Kettle we added Bravo hops for the first dose and began cleaning the Mash Tun.  There sure is a lot to scrub and clean when brewing beer and Chris Vaughn the assistant was happy to have Greg and I around to take that duty off his hands.  One cautionary tale from the brewery is to make sure the hose is pointed in the right direction.  Both ends of the sprayer look the exact same and I sprayed myself in the face.  Five minutes later I sprayed myself in the face again.  Lessoned learned I promise you.  About this time we added Centennial hops to the kettle and continued the boil.  A half hour later we added Sorachi Ace and more Centennial hops.  The aroma from all those hops was fantastic.  You would think we would stop there but Chris is a mad man and we transferred the wort back to the Mash Tun so we could add even more hops (whole leaf Amarillo and Horizon) in the form of a hop back.  After that was complete we were able to transfer the wort through the heat exchanger and into the fermentation tank and added the yeast.  Our day was over.  That’s a lie…  more cleaning and scrubbing of course.

I am thoroughly surprised and impressed with the whole process, but specifically with the timing and detail oriented nature of brewing.  Everything is timed and to follow the recipe correctly the brewers make sure to set timers and add ingredients at specific stages.  I didn’t really know this prior to my brew-for-a-day.  I always thought the brewers would just go through the steps and use the appropriate ingredients but they could do so at their leisure… I was way off.

My brew-for-a-day experience with the pair of Chris’s was a blast.  They are both so informative and willing to teach that I came away with an increased repertoire of beer knowledge and a clear respect for the hard work they put in every day.  Thanks again gentlemen for the opportunity.   I am looking forward to tasting our Kamikaze IPA in the near future and I hope that all of you who have a chance to stop in Maple Shade for a pint will enjoy it too.

- Steven Leslie

Wow, this trip to Belgium has really snuck up on me, it’s exactly one week away! I mean I’ve been planning the whole time; bought the plane and train tickets, found the passport, made the hotel reservations, done lots of research etc, but man, one week! We’re actually flying out of BWI instead of Philly. The beerlass and I go to Max’s 72 hour Belgian Beer Fest in Baltimore every year and we couldn’t let a trip to the real Belgium get in the way of that! It’s sort of appropriate, we’ll literally finish our last beer at Max’s then hop a train to BWI to catch a plane to London. Hopefully we’ll be at the White Horse sipping real ale within 24 hours of leaving Baltimore. I’m going to do my best to document our trip on the blog. I’m at the mercy of my iPad and European WiFi availability so we’ll see how well I do. Speaking of documenting my trip, I’ve started a new Twitter account just for this trip. @lappybrewer Follow it if you’re the Twitter type. Alright now, where’s that Dutch phrase book?

Cheers,

Chris

I have to tell you, when we first brewed Luca Brasi (coffee stout) I never planned to do it again.  I thought of the Iron Brewer  winners as one-offs, never to be repeated.  But so many people kept asking me and the staff when we were going to bring it back, that I had to make it again!  I have to say, I’m glad I did.  I really like this beer.  Luca Brasi, by the way is a coffee stout aged on 10 pounds of whole, dark roast, Sumatran beans then infused with cold-press coffee brewed with 20 ground pounds of the same.  Even more than Luca itself, I really love the Decaff.  The base beer for Luca is an English Stout.  You can call it a Milk Stout or an Oatmeal Stout (it’s got both lactose and oats in it) but anyway you look at it it’s way English.  I remember tasting the beer out of the tank and wishing I didn’t have to add coffee to it.  It just tasted that good.  Don’t get me wrong, the full city roast version is great, I just happen to have a soft spot for classic English stouts.  So this year, as in 2010 we’ll be offering limited amounts of Decaff and Half Caff alongside the Luca Brasi on its release night.  (Half Caff, by the way, is Luca Brasi aged on whole coffee beans before the infusion of the cold press coffee).  They’ll all go on tap at 5 pm on Wed night.  Warning, Luca ain’t subtle!  I’m usually fairly light-handed when I uses spices, fruit or other unusual ingredients.  But this one tastes like a shot of espresso!  By the way, having Luca Brasi on tap opposite The Quadfather was not by design, it just worked out that way.  I’m thinking we need to come up with a cool name for a Quadfather / Luca Black & Tan!  See you Wednesday!

Cheers,

Chris

The Courier Post wrote a great piece about southern New Jersey’s growing craft beer culture.  I’m really impressed with how much the beer scene has grown in my home state and I’m proud to be a part of it.  Check it out, it’s a good read.

Cheers,

Chris

I’m probably the least sports savvy male I know. In fact I know less about sports than most women I know. But I value every time I got to meet Andy. I knew him as a beer lover, not really as a sports announcer. Andy was an investor and a semi regular customer at Dock Street when I was bartending there and scrubbing floors in the brewery. Occasionally my tip would include his giveaway seats for a game.
Andy was always friendly when he came in, and always had time to chat. It was a hobby of his to visit breweries whenever he travelled, and on our first conversation he had visited well over 100. He was excited about the new one that had just opened up in New England that he planned to visit that weekend.
I enjoyed talking to Andy not because of his celebrity or professional sports status, but in spite of it. Dock St was next door to the Four Seasons hotel and as a result we had more than our share of actors, athletes and other celebrities grace our bar. Many made you feel like they were doing you a favor by answering your questions, even if the questions were akin to “how’s your beer?” Some of them were nice, but you still knew that their pleasantries were little more than public relations. There were of course exceptions, some of them (Gary Maddox for one) were genuinely friendly people.
Andy was more genuine than most. His fame to ego ratio was way out of calibration. He was not just polite, but interested. He seemed genuinely happy for me when I mentioned I was about to start working more in the brewery.
Any time I ran into Andy outside of Dock St, I’d go say “hi” and reintroduce myself. I knew he didn’t know my name, but when I’d say “I’m Chris from Dock St” he’d always respond by saying “of course, how are you?” shaking my hand and looking me straight in the eye with a big smile. He always had a short minute to chat after that and never gave me the impression that he was on the clock.
I haven’t seen Andy in years, the last time was probably at an Anchor promotion or beer festival somewhere. But I can honestly say I’m going to miss him. I’ll miss running into him here and there, and I’ll miss having him as a representative of our city in a world where celebrities are often in the news for their crimes and misbehavior.
So long Andy, Philadelphia just got a little less classy.

Chris