Brewvival Weekend Wrapup

Well I think I've finally recovered from what has to be the best weekend of beer events Charleston has ever seen. The Charleston Brewvival brought together about 30 breweries, 70-80 amazing beers, and over 1,000 beer lovers on Saturday for 6 hours of beer tasting, hanging out, and general awesomeness. The weekend started early with a Stone beer dinner at Chai's and a Foothills cask at Closed for Business on Thursday night. Sadly I was unable to go to either of these events as I was still trying to recover from the worst-timed head cold in history. Thankfully by Friday evening I was in good enough shape to head down to The Griffon for some special beers from The Bruery and New Belgium. Greg Koch, CEO of Stone Brewing, was also in attendance and we talked a little bit about the brewing business, which was super cool.

 Greg and Edward (me!)

 

We also made a contribution to the wallpaper.

 

 A good time was had by all, except for that creepy 

guy with the beard.

The next day we headed out to the big festival, stopping along the way at the top-secret Westbrook Brewing pilot brewery for some test-batch sampling. The Brewvival itself was amazing. At most of the other beer festivals I've attended, you can go down the beer list and quickly mark off which beers you want to try and which beers you can skip. No such luck here. Just about every one of the 70+ beers was a must-try, so we set to work. I didn't take any photos of my own from the festival, but you can check out some here,  here and here. My favorite beers of the day were the New Belgium Love, The Bruery's Oude Tart, and the Ommegang Rouge (I kinda like sour beers). All in all it was a fantastic festival and I certainly hope it becomes an annual event. If it is, you can bet that the Westbrook Brewing crew will be on the other side of the serving tables in 2011 dispensing our own crazy beer creations!

Beer Bill Progress!

Great news today - the microbrewery tasting bill was successfully amended and left the Judiciary subcommittee with a favorable report! This means that the bill could be on the floor of the House by the middle of next week. We still need your support for H. 3693 so keep an eye on the SC Brewers Association site for updates. Read the news article on H. 3693 here.

Another beer-related bill, H. 4572, also passed out of the subcommittee today. This bill will allow retail stores like The Charleston Beer Exchange to finally conduct beer tastings. This bill is long overdue and will go a long way towards educating people about good beer. Again, be sure to check out the SC Brewers Association site to find out how you can help.

SC Microbrewery Tasting Bill

H. 3693 is on the agenda for the Judiciary General Laws Subcommittee meeting tomorrow, 2/17. This bill is really important for the future of SC's microbreweries!

For more info on how to help check out the South Carolina Brewers Association site.

Stuff is happening!

So it's been almost 2 months since my last post. Sorry about that! It turns out that starting a brewery is pretty time consuming (who knew?!) and things like blogging have a tendency to get neglected. Anyway, things are finally starting to happen. Here's a quick rundown:

• Our building design was approved by Mt. Pleasant! Now there's just a few more permits that need to go through before we can start construction.
• We have a logo. Josh, Mason, and Helen over at Fuzzco did a great job creating a simple, but powerful logo for us. Check it out at www.westbrookbrewing.com.
• The brewing equipment has been ordered! Our 30 bbl brewhouse and 60 bbl cellar tanks from Allied Beverage Tanks are being designed and fabricated now, and should be delivered by the end of May.
• Our website is under development. Should be live in about 2 months. 

That's all the major stuff so far. From this point on there should be more frequent updates, so stay tuned. 2010 is going to be an awesome year!

Pilot Brewing

The pilot brewing system arrived about a month ago and I immediately put it into service brewing test batches. Here’s a quick rundown of some things we’ve been working on:

Thai/asian spiced Belgian witbier: The idea for this beer came to me when I heard about the Bruery’s Tradewinds Tripel, which is a tripel spiced with fresh basil leaves. I’m a big fan of Thai food, so I thought that ginger and lemongrass would work nicely in a witbier. For the spicing I used fresh lemongrass and ginger root, along with a blend of Indian coriander and normal coriander. The Indian coriander has a much brighter, fruiter quality than the regular coriander, which has a heavier, woody aroma. This beer turned out really well and there’s a good chance some version of it will make it into Westbrook Brewing’s main lineup.

Table Saison: Saison is one of our favorite beer styles, but most of the examples around today tend to be fairly high (7% or greater) in alcohol content. So, we thought it would be great to have a really flavorful saison that won’t knock you out if you drink two (or more) glasses of it. To make it interesting, we hopped it with the Sorachi Ace hop, which has a really great lemony, grassy character. This one also came out really well. I think it would make a good summer seasonal.

Belgian IPA: This is a tricky one. I’ve brewed several versions, ranging from a standard American IPA fermented with a Belgian yeast to a Belgian tripel with American hops. The problem is that Belgian yeasts have characteristics that sometimes don’t blend well with or get obscured by the assertive American hop varieties. The next iteration of this beer will probably be a strong golden ale base with mainly English/continental European hops. I plan to split the batch 4 ways and ferment it with 4 different Belgian yeasts to see what happens.

Quadruple/Belgian Strong Dark: This is a fairly standard quad, around 12% abv. Rather than use a lot of specialty malts like some recipes do, I stuck with mostly pale and Munich malts, with dark candi syrup added for dryness and flavor. A beer like this is a great base for experimentation, and right now I have some souring with a blend of cultures I’ve grown from various bottles of commercial lambics and other sour beers.

100% Brett Blonde: This is basically a Belgian blonde ale, but fermented entirely with Brettanomyces Claussenii, which is a strain of “wild” yeast isolated from an English stock ale. This beer smells extremely funky, but has a surprisingly mellow, pleasant flavor with just a hint of sourness. A lot of people who say they aren’t “beer drinkers” who have tried this beer seem to like it a lot.

Maximum Strength Golden Ale: South Carolina’s legal limit for the alcohol content of beer is 17.5% by volume, so naturally we need to brew a beer that’s right up there! The first version came out to a little over 16%, but can easily be bumped up on the next go. We added honey, Muscat grape concentrate, and unrefined dark sugar during the fermentation, which gave the beer a really beautiful deep gold color. There’s some honey-like sweetness up front, but the beer finishes dry enough to be dangerously drinkable.

Those are just some of the highlights; we’ve got a lot more up our sleeve!

Brooklyn Beer Dinner @ Chai's

Heard about this from the SC Brewer's Association site, reserved our tickets last night. Garrett Oliver wrote the book (literally) on beer and food pairing so this should be a fantastic event. Hope to see some of you there!

Biz Update

Thought everyone might like an update on where we are in terms of actually getting the brewery up and running, so here goes:

Location - We've narrowed it down to two possibilities, one in Mt. Pleasant and one in the upper peninsula area of downtown Charleston. We'll be making a final decision on this fairly soon. Once the location is nailed down, we can make plans for any necessary construction/renovation, buy equipment, and get the TTB approval process rolling.

Equipment - We know that we want to start with a 25 or 30 barrel (bbl) capacity brewhouse (1 bbl = 31 gallons). It takes the same amount of labor to brew 7 barrels (average size of a brewpub system) as it does to brew 30 barrels, so we figure it's best to get the biggest system we can afford. We've been looking at various sources of new and used equipment and are ready to go as soon as the brewery location is certain.

Pilot Brewing - I just moved down to Charleston permanently last month and have been brewing on the 5 gallon all-grain "system" I started with more than 3 years ago (system in quotes because it's not really a system at all, just a bunch of misc. stuff). I've brewed some great beer with that equipment but it's much too labor intensive and can only make 5 gal. at a time, so I've ordered a shiny new 20 gallon brewsculpture from MoreBeer, which should be arriving in about a month. This should help me be more consistent from batch to batch and also make it easier to split batches between multiple fermenters to experiment with different yeasts, dry hopping , etc.

Government approval - Alcohol producers are regulated by the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB). In order to apply for the Brewer's Notice (basically the federal license that allows you to operate a brewery) you need to have your location, your facility/equipment layout, and a bunch of other stuff. Once we get the Brewer's Notice, we'll be able to apply for a license from the SC Dept. of Revenue.

As you can see we have a lot of work ahead of us before we can actually start brewing beer. Our goal is to be open for business by this time next year, which I think is definitely possible.