MBG Winter Beer Festival 2015

Hello again!

We have been gearing up for the Michigan Brewers Guild's 2015 Winter Beer Festival. It is truly one of the unique beer events out there. This outdoor festival has been expanded to two days this year, and it promises to be a true celebration of Michigan weather and Michigan beer.

(Now let's take a moment of silence in appreciation for all of the volunteers that will be busting their tails in the freezing cold to help pull this event off!)

I like to view the Guild festivals as a time to really try and put on the best show we can for festival goers. Usually that entails brewing up some specialty small batches that will only be available at the festival. It is a time to get creative and spread our wings. In the past we have done a version of our Honey Kölsch that we infused with green tea. That beer was the brain child of the well bearded Aaron Stryker, now of Rhinegeist Brewery in Cincinnati. We have made aggressive Imperial IPA's, blended barrel aged beers with cherries, coffee beers, and others.

However, with our production schedule as full as it is, this year we did not have time to brew a lot of small batches, but that doesn't mean we aren't still excited about what we will be pouring. We will be pouring a host of bourbon barrel aged beers (Wheat Wine, Robust Porter, Belgian Amber), some new lagers that we have been working on, a Munich Helles and a Classic American Pilsner. Our Propaganda Red IPA will be pouring as well as a couple of cask beers.

As of right now there are still tickets available to the Friday session of the festival, while the Saturday session is sold out. If you do have tickets, makes sure to stop by and see us at the Cranker's booth!

Drink good beer with good people!

To Helles Or Not To Helles

I am a bit of a beer purist. Magnify that by the fact the I teach and love history and you get some pretty old school beer style dogma. I am all for innovation in beer, but the old school styles are something special. Pilsner, munich helles, bock, vienna lager, dortmunder - all are beer styles that organically grew out of the agricultural and environmental necessity of their respective birthplace. I find it fascinating that german pilsner's color, malt, and hop profile are largely a result of creating the beer that went best with the water profile of Plzen (Pilsen). Talk about drinking locally. To me beer is history as much as beer is food (more on that on another day).

Every brewpub has it's light beer. Let me say first of all that there is nothing wrong with a beer that is gently flavored. If you are a BudMillerCoors (BMC) drinker that is fine. Those beers aren't for me and I would argue that they aren't for you either. In my opinion, all BudMillerCoors drinkers should be drinking well made fresh munich style helles. First of all, it tastes like beer. We all have a conception of what beer is supposed to taste like and a crisp helles hits those marks better than the BMC products. Munich helles has a light bready pils malt flavor with just a hint of herbal hop aromas. That leads into a low hop bitterness that provides a gentle malty sweetness that serves as the beer's focal point. It is light, crisp, and easily quaffable. Better yet, it is real, it has roots and history, and it is delicious.

It is a goal of mine to have the light beer of Cranker's Brewpub to be a munich helles. This can be tricky. A helles is a lager. That means that it uses a style of yeast, lager yeast, that is traditionally fermented in the 48-52F range. Ale yeasts ferment in the 60's to low 70's range. Because they work at lower temperatures lager yeast takes a longer time to ferment. As a homebrewer time is no issue. As a pro brewer on a production schedule time is more vital. It will be my challenge to produce a quality lager efficiently.

Now to the beer. I decided to go with all pilsner malt with a small portion of light munich malt. The munich malt is meant to add a slight malt complexity to what is a very straight forward pilsner malt base beer. I have been kicking around different concepts when it comes to hopping. I can either utilize a hop that has great bittering power called magnum, or use a hop that has less bittering power called hallertau. If I use the magnum, I will be adding less hops to the kettle. This will mean less hop mass which will lend less hop flavor and aroma to the final beer. If I use the hallertau, that means more hop mass in the kettle to achieve the same amount of bittering as the magnum. However, the greater portion of hallertau will lend pronounced hop characteristics compared to the magnum only beer. I brewed the beer with hallertau the first time and I feel as if it took the beer out of range style wise due to the hop profile, not that that is a serious concern for a professional brewer. I have kicked around the idea of blending the magnum and hallertau to dial down the hop impression. I am going to go with the all hallertau version for the upcoming Michigan Homebrew Festival and see how it is received there.

That's all for now. In the meantime, drink good beer with good people!

Salute!