So apparently Bob and Kevin have dyed their hair and beards BLONDE for the Smokin’ Blonde Ale Release party tonight in Media. Man….how the heck do we keep up with THAT!

Check me out on WC Dish!

Summer is on it’s way for sure now. to that end we are rolling out the first of our Super Special summer beers: Mahalo, Apollo! (Welcome, Sun God). Here’s a short description “A wheat ale for summer spiced with Honey, Lemongrass, Grains of Paradise, and Amarillo Hops.” This beer totally rocks and is a staff favorite. Come and get it tonight!

In case you’re interested here’s the full jilt:

In early history spices were a luxury item and, consequently, one of the world’s most valuable trade goods. Until Hops became the dominant spice in beer, brewers (like us) would throw just about anything they could get their hands on into the kettle! Beer was commonly made with an ever changing mixture of herbs and spices know a Gruit to help preserve it, and to add bitterness and flavor until about the 13^th century. Brewers started using hops and stopped using gruit for a couple of reasons: 1) hops helped to preserve the beer better and 2) in France King Louis the 9^th threatened to cut off their heads if they didn’t buy his hops! In any case, consumers preferred the flavor of beer brewed with hops, and with a few exceptions spiced beers more or less died.

Mahallo, Apollo is a Summer Beer that blends traditions of European summer beer cultures into a product that is uniquely American. It’s a wheat beer. It’s strong. It’s flavored with Lemongrass from India and the West African spice Grains of Paradise. Lemongrass is a grass the smells like fresh cut lemon rind and Grains of Paradise is a ginger like seed that has a zesty flavor reminiscent of pepper, with hints of flowers, coriander and cardamom. The beer contains unpasteurized honey, and has been hopped with Amarillo adding to the peachy citrus nose. It was fermented with a Belgian yeast strain which enhances the complex flavor.  This unfiltered ale is crisp, refreshing, and food-friendly. Welcome Summer! 6.9% ABV 20 IBUs

Deep into the Judging

The Iron Brewer was judged Thursday night! This year we had exactly 20 entries, which is a record I think. All 20 beers were presented blind and judged to style in a ‘Best of Show’ type round. If you’ve never seen a beer comp judged I can tell you that it’s a lot of deep thinking, drinking, and politicing. Everyone works their way throught the HUGE flight of beers (you try and taste 20 beers and make notes in a timely fashion) and then we slowly narrowed the field to 3 winners. There were tons of very well made beers in many different style categories on the table. Picking winners was extremely difficult. It took us almost 3 hours to come to a consensus. Thanks to Chris Claire who did all of the leg work on the competition and to the B.U.Z.Z. crew for making some really outstanding beer. Special thanks to the special guest  judges: Mrs. Larry (aka Whitney Thompson from Victory Brewing Company), Gerard Olson from McKenzie’s Brew House, and Paul McGinnis. Keep in mind, the original wort was for a Belgian Tripel.

Drum roll Please…..and the winners are:

3rd Place  Brian Parker – Hopped Belgian Tripel

2nd Place  Mike Hamara – Imperial Java Milk Stout

 and the winner who will get to brew their beer here at Iron Hill…

Dave Houseman – Groundhog Baltic Porter

Congratulations to Brian, Mike and Dave.  Prizes, trophies and glory will come at a later date.  Also, the official tapping of Dave’s winning Baltic Porter will occur during a special event at Philly Beer Week. Friday June 11th 2010 we will have a ceremonial tapping and release party. We will also be awarding the IRON BREWER trophy on the day as well. Watch for more details.

My boss just had an article published in DRAFT mag about where to drink in Phily. Nice work…check it out.

Welcome to Brewery Stadium! Every year we team up the BUZZ homebrew club to host a very special one of a kind homebrew competition. Jean and I brew a batch of Tripel and rack of 5 gallons of the strong unhopped wort for worthy contestants to take home and use as the base of a beer. We are ready for the hops and barley to start flying as brewers battle head to head to see who can make the best beer. Just like the Food Network’s Iron Chef, brewers will declare a style, formulate a recipe and ‘throw down’ with wort from right here at Iron Hill Brewery. Cash, prizes and pride are all on the line as we intend to brew the winning style to be released during beer week at a very special Iron Brewer Awards Presentation (Friday June 11^th, 2010). The contest is under way and we’ve been tracking some of the Brewer Warriors on their quest. Notes from the Battle:

From John J. Bossong, III

“It was a dark and stormy night, the wind was whipping up a storm, but damn the torpedoes I was brewing, an Iron brewer am I! Ok, In past years I have usually brewed once a month but I have two young boys, between soccer, basket ball and scouts the Darbarian and Sons kettle has sat and gathered dust since last August. Upon hearing of the wort gathering date I announced to my family, actually asked my wife, that the 6th of March is brew day! Recipe in hand I went on a relentless search for the elusive ingredients of hops, yeast, grains, and malt. The search took me to our trusty homebrew shop Artisan where Mike and I gathered the elements for creating a brew worthy of being called THE IRON BREWER, duh duh duh dummm…..
Mike painstakingly ground the grains, found the exact yeast strain requested and packaged the hops in a air tight sealed bag that would help it weather the elements on the long ride back to the epicenter of brewing in West Bradford twp, Darbarian and Sons.”

Game on!

Cue the music “We are the Champions….” We had a GREAT week in Chicago sharpening the saw and learning new things about brewing. Oh, yeah…..WE WON WORLD BEER CUP LARGE BREWPUB OF THE YEAR 2010!!!! I still can’t talk. My voice is totally shot from screaming. I’ll have a full story soon, including late night craziness but you can read the press release here and see the full winners list here. Nice

So we had dinner at a Cuisine de la biere spot last night called The Publican with one of my new favorite people Chad Yakobson (more about him later). If you are in Chicago GET TO THIS PLACE! It’s a beer and food spot designed for the workshop of all things pork. Their salt cured meat is magical…pork and beer together should be just plain illegal! First off the place is set sort of like a German beer hall with big family style tables. This is one of my favorite seating styles as if forces you to interact with the fok around you. The room was packed with beer conference goers so the company was great. What was really great though were the complementary house made Spick Pork rinds. I don’t think I’ll be able to eat a pork rind from a bag ever again…they have officially spoiled that for me. The waiters were all dressed in Kobis (Jackob) style waist coats like you would see in a pub in Koln and they swarmed around the room delivering meat and beers from the very well thought out menus. The beer menu was not exhaustive…but it was very well thought out. Round one finished!

If you plan on stopping by the brewery over the course of the next week, you may notice something a bit unusual. No, no… I’m not referring to the cask conditioned Sorachi Ace APA (that IS supposed to taste lemony and cedary)! Sadly, what you will notice is the absence of your friendly local brewers! Fear not, this is all for the best. You see, for the past two days myself, Kevin (assistant brewer Media), and Kyle (assistant brewer NW) have been on the road, headed to Chicago by way of Pittsburgh for the annual Craft Brewers Convention (Larry flew out over the weekend. This man knows how to travel!).
The relativley short journey to Pittsburgh from Philly was a breeze; good weather, great tunes, and some seriousley killer beers waiting for us upon our arrival. After anchoring the car at a friends house, we reenergized at Artillery Park with some fresh baked bread, cheese, and a bottle of our tripel (it’s amazing the things that hitch a ride with you on trips like these… who knew 4 bottles were hiding under my passenger seat ). After a little bit of frisbe throwin’, we headed of to our first beery destination, Church Brew Works. Wow. What a cool space. If you’ve never been, the brew pub is actually housed in an old church, and from the outside it still retains all of it’s church-y charms (So much so that Kyle actually thought that we were playing a trick on him as we entered the building looking for beer and not forgiveness). We met up with Jason and Matt, brewers extroadinare, and drank some of their beautifully fresh Czech Pils and Belgian Black Ale. After checking out their brew house and bottling line (6 head Meheen, same one I operated at my old brewery… I feel your pain guys!!!) we headed across town to Susquehanna Street, where we found a big red run down looking warehouse space. No windows, and a few unmarked doors… that’s pretty much it. After snooping around a bit, a spray-painted stencil on the last door on the warehouse indicated that we had found what we came to see; East End Brewing Co. Pittsburg’s self proclaimed “microest” brewery! East End produces some well crafted beer for the fine local folk of P- Town. Their Blabber and smoke session ale was killer and paired super well with the take out pizza that was had at our gracious host’s house in the pm. A little Wii bowling and some East End big hop sent me off to dreamland.
Today we make the sojourn to ChiTown for the conference!
-Jean

We just tapped a firkin of Sorachi APA. Sorachi Ace is a new (to us) Japanese varietal of hop. Our friends at North Country supplies were just as excited as we were about this hop, and hooked us up with a bunch to play around with. Sweet! To test the Sorachi-y waters, we dry-hopped half a dozen firkins of Ironbound with an inordinate amount of our new hop. The result? A super lemony pale ale with nuances of cedar and vanilla. What a beautiful miscreant of a hop! Look out for an all Sorachi beer (belgian pale? biere de mars? saison?) to hit the taps within the next month or so.
Also, our oak fermented, 100% Drie Brett pale ale, Dr. Drie is on tap for your funkified pleasure.
-Jean