This past weekend, in preparation for our upcoming release of Mountain Standard Reserve ‘10, A Double Black IPA, we filled a couple Subarus with brewers, beer and camping gear, and set off on a little trip through the hop growing regions of Palisade, Montrose, and Paonia Colorado. With these small artisan farmers growing high quality Organic Hops right here in Colorado, we could not pass up the opportunity to meet the growers, visit their fields, and enjoy some beers with the fine folks who work to produce the ingredients we use to craft our beer. We stopped by a farm we have selected hops from before; Glenn Fuller’s Rising Sun Organic Farms, www.coloradoorganichops.com to see his mature Cascades. We made our way to Montrose to meet with Randy at San Juan Hop Farms, www.sanjuanhopfarms.com, and were very impressed by his beautiful Chinooks. Lastly, we visited the new kid on the block… or rather a new school teacher on the block… Hippie Chicks Organic Hop Farm in Palisade. Julie, with the help of her volunteer Hippie Chicks, is in her first year and is already off to a beautiful start. We were so impressed with her operation that we decided to set up our sleeping bags right in her field and wake up amidst the hops to Palisade’s “Million Dollar Breeze.” We are really looking forward to working with Julie and the Hippie Chicks’ hops in our beers. Check out their story and photos of their “girls” (read: hops) at:
http://hippiechicksorganichops.tumblr.com/
And… If you ever find yourself in Palisade, make sure to check out the delicious offerings at Palisade Brewing Co. and Peach Street Distillers… Those Palisade Peaches aren’t bad either. So, after spending the weekend walking through Glenn, Randy, and Julie’s fields of high quality, mature hops we selected beautiful Chinook and Cascade varieties that we contracted from each grower for this and next year. We will be using these hops in our upcoming Mountain Standard Reserve ‘10, Double Black IPA. Our motivation with our Mountain Standard Reserve offering is to brew an inspiring beer that uses ingredients from Colorado craft farmers, whenever supplies and quality permit, as well as to support these local craft farmers and ensure the sustainability of hop farms throughout Colorado’s western slope. We had a lot of fun picking these hops and having a beer with these growers, we hop(e) you enjoy our upcoming Double Black IPA which will use these special hops!
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Most of our beers are brewed with select malt varieties, clear rocky mountain water, fresh hops, and our house ale yeast strain. It may come as a surprise to you, dear reader, to know that we recently brewed an Indian Curry Hefeweizen. Myself, alongside my co-workers Linsey Cornish and Jake O’Mara joined forces with local homebrew master, Remi Bonnart to brew Remi’s homegrown, homebrewed recipe on our pilot system. Consisting of an approximate 50/50 mix of wheat and pale malt, with just a dash of Munich, the grain bill supports a hefty addition of spices typically found paired with pad thai and fried rice which include, but of course are not limited to, coconut, cayenne pepper, ginger, and kaffir lime leaves. Let’s not forget the bucket of locally sourced wildflower honey from our friends up at Copoco’s, thrown in for good measure before fermentation with a unique Bavarian Hefeweizen strain. Curry Hefeweizen is now on draft in our Tap Room. This curiously delicious creation is our pro-am entry at this year’s GABF. Wish us luck!
Deconstruction, our upcoming barrel aged deconstructed golden ale, was an exercise in the art of process. Over the course of its development Joe and I had the opportunity to delve into the intricacies of a malt bill, the hop profile, our pilot system and numerous yeast stains – and how they all interact with various oak barrels with various histories.
Click to open a PDF of the full thing
This kind of complexity is annoying at best and unreasonably interesting at least.
Needless to say, the government took some convincing to let us sell it. Beers aged in barrels which have been used for other alcohols are regulated much the same way as malternative beverages in the US. The TTB (tax and trade bureau), who approves labels to facilitate interstate commerce for us regional brewers, requires beers with questionable ingredients, or with alcohol potentially contributed by other means than primary fermentation to be approved after reviewing a formula or Statement of Process. This could mean blending straight ethanol and flavoring into light beer or aging beer in wine or whiskey barrels. In our case, our process was many layered and after some failed submissions, we finally arrived at a 5 page description of the inception of Deconstruction in order to protect consumers from our deliberately incremental approach to brewing. Below, please find the full story (thoughtfully redacted) of Decon’s (De-con’s) life. The beer is slated to be released August 7th at a taping event at Odell. We’ll be pairing fresh western slope fruit converted into tiny pies. I’ll be securing the fruit at this weekend’s Old Town Farmer’s Market.
Keep it surreal, Zach
Our Woodcut #4 Oak Aged Lager provides a toasted oak nose filled with dried apricot, pineapple and raisin along with a warming vanilla character in the finish. Woodcut #4 provides an exceptional base for showcasing the importance of hand selected, hand coopered, medium toast, American virgin oak barrels. By choosing a double Marzen style lager, we as brewers were able to develop a beer that showcases the caramel malty characters of a Marzen, along with the clean warming alcohol character only an 11% lager can provide. The nose of this beer is rich in complexity, providing pineapple, dried apricot, raisin and a pleasantly soft muskiness. Toasted oak overtones balance these aromas with a light cedar quality. As the warming alcohol coats the palate a soft vanilla lingers on the tongue imparted by the medium toast virgin American oak. As this lager warms in the glass, notes of caramel, raisin, brown sugar and a not-so-sweet plum emerge. By aging this beer in American virgin oak barrels at both barrel room temperatures and lagering temperatures, we were able to extract the intricacies of the oak along with the cleanness of a well-brewed lager. Woodcut #4 pours a brilliant maroon with a rich white head and prominent lacing.
For those of you living up in the north country, in the land of 10,000 lakes, we recommend pairing this complex beer with your freshly caught Walleye, lightly seasoned and grilled with bell peppers, caramelized onion and mushroom, lakefront el fresca style, with your favorite friends and family…or just nice people who love great hand crafted beer, good food, and listening to you re-tell how you caught that evenings Walleye again and again and again. And if you want to send some Walleye our way now that we are sending our Woodcut #4 your way, we wouldn’t mind!
Cheers!
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We love hops here at Odell Brewing Co. We also love experimenting with how we can add these beautiful little green flowers to our beers to achieve new and previously unobtainable hop flavors and aromas. We have been using whole leaf hops in our hop-back for years. As most people know the hop-back is a traditional English brewing vessel originally used to aid in the clarification of wort by running the post-boil hot wort through a bed of hops on the way to the heat exchange. We re-appropriated the traditional hop-back to serve as a means for adding more finishing hops for our IPA, 5 Barrel Pale Ale, St. Lupulin Extra Pale Ale and other special hop-forward releases. So, what are we experimenting with now on our pilot system? How can we fit more hops into our beers through new and unique additions? How about whole flower hops in the mash tun! Our most recent pilot brew, a Double IPA, provides a totally new hop schedule possibility for us, not only with the hop additions in our mash tun, but also with each addition thereafter. If you want to experience a progression in hop flavor and aroma, be sure to stop in the tap room when this beer is tapped. We will announce the tapping of this beer to our fans and followers on Facebook and Twitter, so hop on!
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What a week this past week was! As a crew from Odell Brewing Co. spent the past Monday through Saturday rolling out Odell beers to the Twin Cities you greeted us with empty pint glasses ready to be filled. 12 Odell co-workers hosted over 30 events during those 6 days, we tapped 7 extremely limited release firkins, and hosted 1 amazing beer dinner. The amount of people who followed us throughout the week via Twitter makes recapping each event a bit redundant, however, I do want to reflect on a few moments that stood out during the week and provide you with a few photos, because a picture is worth a million words and its a lot easier to look at “a million words” then to read them. For a snapshot of the our MN release party read on…
Read more »
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Yesterday our distributer partners from the greater Twin Cities area were in town at the brewery, and we put them to work! Our friends traded in their slacks and loafers for work pants and rubber boots and helped us brew a Black IPA on our Pilot Brewhouse, fill firkins with 3 very special beers for our Minnesota release week, and followed Brewers and Packaging Team members around as they worked hard handcrafting our unique beers. By the end of the day we ended up with a new Pilot Beer in the fermenter, 4 firkins filled with a very special variation on our upcoming Woodcut #4 release with Brettanomycees that we developed while innovating our to be released Woodcut #4 recipe (so special only those who make it to the tapping of one of these will get to try it. Not even us at the brewery are going to have the opportunity to have it on tap this time), 3 firkins of our Rich and Roasty Imperial Stout before it gets that famous Bourbon Barrel Treatment, and 1 super special blend of our Raspberry-Cherry-Lambic, known as Friek. This blend of Friek has been blended by our brewers with the help of our friends from Original Gravity Distribution from four different Friek barrels, ranging from 6 months old to 3 years old. Only 1 firkin of this Brewer’s Blend ‘10 Friek has been filled, and only 1 firkin will ever taste like this particular blend. I must say that after tasting this blend it is worth doing whatever it takes to make it for the tapping of this extremely limited offering. Thanks to our friends from Minnesota for all your hard work here at Odell Brewing Co. in helping get our Black IPA brewed and these firkins filled! Check out our events schedule and follow us on Twitter as we update the firkins and events throughout the release week, and most importantly get out and firkin celebrate with us in the Twin Cities!
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For those lucky enough to attend the Inaugural Boulder Sour Beer Festival held by our good friends at Avery Brewing Co. you may have been fortunate enough to taste a very rare unblended version from the Odell Brewing Co. Second Golden Ale Pilot Beer, simply referred to as Golden. Golden has been spending time in our new Barrel Room within the comforts of a delicious French Oak Cabernet Barrel awaiting the correct time to be blended into our final offering. For the rest of you who did not have that chance, this photo will have to do for now.
Cheers!
Joe & Zach
