An Apology And A Historic Book

I have to apologize. I've gotten really busy with school. As a result, it has been a week since my last post. I would like to say that the beer festival was great, and a much needed break from school work.

I'd like to also mention that I added a link to my Brewing History section, linking The Closet Of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened, a brewing book from 1669. Granted, it is mostly about mead, but it is one of the few brewing books that can be considered SCA period (though it is stretching it). Someone talked about the book on SCA Brew Yahoo Group, and I thought it was worth mentioning.

Beer Week In Tucson

It must be beer week in Tucson. First, as I mentioned in my last post, the Great Tucson Beer Festival is happening on Saturday. In addition, there was a big article on Nimbus Brewing Company, Arizona's largest brewery, in the Tucson Citizen today.

The article states that Nimbus is looking for a new location in downtown Tucson. About that, the Tucson Citizen says the following:

A $30 million brew pub, condo and retail project proposed for downtown hinges on a quick agreement between city officials and the brewer.

If there's no agreement by the end of the month, Nimbus Brewing Co. could build its new microbrewery in Marana or on the South Side.

I know that the city is very interested in getting them into that downtown location. However, the part that interested me was the fact that they are looking to possibly move to Marana, since that is the area of town where I live. I would love to see Nimbus move closer to us.

I plan to follow this story very closely.

The Great Tucson Beer Festival

The Great Tucson Beer Festival is coming up this Saturday, September 24th. I plan on being in attendance of that. It looks like all three Tucson micro-breweries, Nimbus, Thunder Canyon, and Gentle Bens, will be there, as well as some from Phoenix, like Four Peaks, and even a few from out of state, like Stone, New Belgium, and so on. I am looking forward to it, and plan to make a full report afterwards.

1997 Kunde Syrah

Years ago someone gave us a bottle of 1997 Kunde Syrah. It has been sitting in our cellar for years. In fact, it has been sitting in our cellar since it was nothing but a wooden wine rack, not this refrigerated thing we've got now.

Julie decided to grill up some New York steaks tonight and said, "Go pick out a red." I saw this bottle and thought that maybe we should give it a try.

Man, is it awesome. It is spicy, and has some dried fruit notes. I was so impressed that I looked it up. Granted, what I looked up is not the 1997 vintage, but if the 2001 is anything like the 1997, I will be looking for it in the stores. At $23.00 a bottle, it is not even that expensive.

Barnett Vineyards

We got the fall mailer from Barnett Vineyards. The reason that I mention this is that Barnett happens to be one of our favorite vineyards. I've talked about them before.

Barnett makes exceptional wine. Unfortunately, they do not ship directly to Arizona. However, they do have a distributor here, so we will be keeping an eye out for the latest releases.

We have no affiliation with them. We are just happy customers.

Working The Growler

Jeff Renner sent me an interesting article from World Wide Words, by Michael Quinion, in response to my Old Tin Bucket post. A couple of things came out of it worth mentioning. The first is an old drinking song:

There was a little man who had a little can, and he used to rush the growler. He stuck his head in the bar room door, and he heard somebody holler, "No beer today! No beer today! You can't get beer on Sunday. No beer today! No beer today! Just bring around the can on Monday."

I did a Google search to see if I could find out the name, author, or any other information about the song. Several links came back, but no additional information was given. In case you are interested, however, some of the links that came back included the original article, this one, this one, and this one.

The article continues on about the history of growlers, suggesting that they date back to at least the late 1800s. In addition, it talks about common sayings at the time like "rushing the growler" or "working the growler." Along those lines, it quotes a Harper Magazine article from 1893 that says that "working the growler" refers to the "act of sending [a] can from [a] private house to [a] public-house and back," something very much like what Fran's father did when he was a child, as I mentioned in my last growler post. In fact, the article even says that the job of working the growler was often given to children.

If you are interested in beer history, the article is a fascinating read.

A Response To "Miller and Miller"

After posting a similar question to the one in my Miller and Miller post to the Homebrew Digest (HBD), Jeff Renner, a regular on HBD and a well known figure in homebrewing circles, gave a response to it with some interesting insights. A reminder: the post was about Thomas Jefferson's brewing buddy Joseph Miller and his possible relation to the Miller's of the Miller Brewing Company.

Jeff is someone that I respect very much. I asked him if I could re-post his response here. He said that that would be okay. Thanks, Jeff.

Here is his response to the question, "Was Joseph Miller one of the Millers, as in The Miller Brewing Company?"

It seems highly unlikely. Miller is a very common name, I don't think there is any reason to think it's the same family.

The article says that Joseph Miller had a daughter and a son. His son is described as "a successful inventor and engineer." He eventually settled in Virginia, and the article says that his descendants still live there. So the brewing line would have stopped with Miller, Sr.

According to the 1903 history of US brewing, One Hundred Years of Brewing, Frederick Miller bought the Plank Road Brewery in Milwaukee in 1955 from Charles Best. It doesn't say where Miller came from.

But the main reason for my post is to say that one of the books mentioned in the article, Michael Combrune's pioneering 1762 Theory and Practice of brewing, is available in reprint from Raudins Publishing http://raudins.com/BrewBooks/default.htm.

Glenn Raudins, the publisher, is a HBDer, and has reprinted this and other rare, long out of print books on brewing and distilling, in beautiful bonded leather bound limited editions on heavy, acid free paper.

They are printed in the (more or less) original fonts with original illustrations. As Glenn has explained it to me, he scans the original books into character recognition software, then painstakingly goes over the entire manuscript letter by letter to make corrections, insert the original illustrations, and set up the pages as original. They are printed in the original sizes, which are non-standard. In other words, they are virtually duplicates of the originals, but probably better.

If you are interested in historic brewing, you'll want to take a look at these books.

Jeff

The Old Tin Bucket

Julie and I went to Fran and Ron's house last night for pizza and a bottle of wine, as we often do. As we sat outside on the back porch, we were just reaching the bottom of a wine bottle when Fran turned to me, "I've got something that you might be interested in, since you are into beer."

She went inside for a couple of minutes. When she came out, she had a tin bucket with a lid on it. It was old and had areas of surface rust coming through the paint.

"I don't know what you call it, but when my father was a boy, he used to run to the local tavern around lunch time, fill it up with beer, and bring it to his grandfather -- my great-grandfather -- who worked for the railroad in Sleepy Eye, Minnesota," she said.

I recognized what it was right away, even though I'd never seen one in real life.

"We just call it the beer bucket," she continued.

"I know exactly what it is," I said, "It is called a growler. It's not like the gallon jugs that you or I get at the local brew pubs today. The old growlers were tin buckets like these. Back in the day, they used to fill them up so that they'd have beer for the work day. In particular, working folk used to use them, like construction workers, ditch diggers, or railroad people, like your great-grandfather."

She held it up for moment and then I asked, "Can I see it? I've never seen one in real life."

She handed it over to me. It was very light, made of thin metal and painted on the outside. Size wise, it looked to hold maybe a half gallon, if you were lucky. When I tried to pull the lid off it simply contorted the whole thing and would not budge.

"I don't want to wreck it trying to get the lid off," I said, giving up.

"Let me try."

I handed it over to Fran, and she worked the lid for about a minute. It suddenly popped off.

We passed it around to everyone, looking inside at the rusty bottom. Some people smelled it hoping to smell the remains of beer, only to smell old tin.

We spent the rest of the evening taking about Sleepy Eye and how it was founded by Germans, how it was the home of the Le Sueur Pea canning factory, its history during World War II as a POW camp, and, of course, we talked more about Fran's great-grandfather and father. We also tried to figure out when the beer bucket was used, looking at when Fran's father was born, settling somewhere around 1938.

It was truly a fine evening, contemplating the personal history attached to this one beer bucket.

Miller and Miller

I've talked about Thomas Jefferson and brewing very briefly before when talking about The Theory and Practice of Brewing by Michael Combrune. Recently, though, I spent some time on the official Monticello website, where they talk about Thomas Jefferson's brewing adventures. They speak quite a bit about he and his brewing buddy, Joseph Miller. That got me thinking. Could Joseph Miller be related to the Millers as in Miller Beer?

There are two quotes from various websites that tell me that they were not the same person:

From www.monticello.org they say, "On September 17th, 1813, Jefferson and Joseph Miller came together for the purpose of brewing beer at Monticello."

From www.millerbrewing.com they say, "Making the highest quality beer has been a passion of the Miller Brewing Company since its founder, Frederick J. Miller, began his brewing business in 1855."

Obviously, Joseph Miller is not Frederick J. Miller, and, in fact, they are about 42 years apart. I wonder, however, if they are related in any way. How may brewing Millers can there be?

Several Things

I've got several things to talk about. First, The California Common has finished primary ferment. I dumped off the yeast using the bottom dump of the conical fermenter, and took a gravity reading. The 1.014 reading I got is right in line with the 1.017 that I projected. After that, I dry hopped. Of course, I also did a quick taste, to see how things are coming. It was quite tasty, but still needs some aging.

Second, Julie is starting to get into cordial making. She infused pineapple into some vodka, let it age, and it turned out quite yummy. That makes me very excited for Estrella. We've always had a household of brewers in our SCA group. It is nice to see someone else get involved.

That is all for now. Keep on brewing.

Brewing Notes

In the latest Zymurgy magazine, September/October 2005, they have an article called "Serial Medal Winners," by Lew Bryson. There Lew interviews four brewers, Bob Beck, Jamil Zainasheff, Joe Formanek, and Pete Devaris, who consistently win AHA competitions every year. I found the article very interesting.

One of the things that I found most interesting is that the one and only thing that the four brewers have in common is that they all take copious notes for each brew session. About that Lew wrote the following:

They did agree on the importance of record keeping. Zainasheff not only records the brewing info, he keeps a detailed spreadsheet on where each bottle goes in competitions, and remarks he gets back. Beck's club-mates call him anal retentive; he writes down everything, including constant pH readings. He even takes notes before the brew. "I'm not a real seat-of-the-pants brewer," he said. "I'll make up a checklist for every step of the process, putzing around with recipe formulation, looking at old notes, tweaking and formulating. I write down every step."

"Copious notes," agreed Formanek, "on all aspects."

Devaris has gone beyond the notebook. "I use ProMash to design and build my recipes, I use it to keep meticulous records of brew sessions, bottling and competition results. I swear by it. I don't brew without my laptop anymore."

I too keep notes to an anal retentive level. Years ago, I made up a brewing sheet to take notes with. The sheet is broken down section by section according to the steps of brewing. I have a section for recipe formulation, water adjustments, mashing, lautering, the boil, fermentation, bottling or kegging, and, of course, aesthetic qualities of the finished product. Over the years I've perfected the sheet to where it is today.

Here is an example of one. You can click on it to see it in detail:


It was good to see something that validated my anal retentiveness. Granted, I'm not to the level as these four "serial medal winners," but I hope that I'm on the right track.