Trillium Brewing

[link to podcast page]
WFMU's Beer Hear! with Bob W. and B.R. from 8/18/2012

When at The Festival in Worcester, Mass. in June, we met Zack, one of the volunteers who traveled from Boston to be part of the historic beer event. Zack, a homebrewer, has also been helping out at a new brewery in Boston that is set to open in the autumn -- Trillium Brewing Co. He's been doing everything from pitching in on the construction to lending a hand as they brew pilot batches of their beer.

Zack, on the left, at the after-party.

The brewery, located at 369 Congress St. in South Boston, is still being built. Progress can be seen at their contractor's website.

The concept of the brewery, according to Zack, is to offer farmhouse style and New England style beers -- maybe even New England farmhouse style beers! He said that they plan on having a wide variety of brews, from saisons to porters, and that they're already experimenting with barrel-aging. You can expect barrel-aged sours, Belgian styles and porters from Trillium!

The owners, Esther and Jean-Claude Tetreault, are quoted on their website saying that they intend on using as many local Massachusetts hops and grains as possible. I'm sure that Valley Malting will be an important supplier! They'll be using hops grown on a relative's farm in south-eastern Mass., as well. The brewery is named for a hardy native New England flower.

Our brief interview with Zack is a window into how beer and beer culture inspires, and shapes and is shaped by young beer enthusiasts. Asked if he sees himself as a professional brewer one day, Zack said that if he ends up working in and around craft beer and craft beer people, "I'd be happy!"

Evil Twin At Beer Street

  [link to Evil Twin podcast page]


Back in July, Beer Street in Williamsburg hosted a few Danish craft brewers for a tasting event, including Jeppe of Evil Twin, the identical twin brother of Mikkel of Mikkeller. Mikkel and Tør from To Øl were there, too. (Or tøø, if you prefer.)

Both brothers have a similar type of brewing company -- they're gypsy brewers. That means that they don't have their own brewing facility. Instead, they brew their beers, or have them brewed, at different breweries, all over the world. Though, Jeppe does most of his brewing in Europe.

Jeppe is 2nd from the left.

This method has a lot of advantages over a "brick and mortar" operation. First off, there is nowhere near the incredible financial obstacles of buying or even leasing a commercial brewery, and all the complications, government licenses, taxes, etc. that an owner of a brewery has to deal with. No worrying about equipment maintenance. There is no rent. There are no labor costs.


Basically, you have your recipe, you book a brew date with a brewery that has extra capacity (as most do -- few breweries are brewing 24/7), you order your materials to be delivered, then you go and brew! Or you can direct the brewing to the trusted master brewer of that particular brewery.

The brewery takes care of bringing the beer from raw ingredients to bottles or kegs shrinkwrapped on pallets. You don't have to fill a hot liquor tank, couple a hose, shovel spent grain or do any of the other inglorious work involved in brewing. They take care of the dirty work, and you pay them the wholesale cost of the beer, just as if you were buying the brewery's own product. And then you distribute, promote, sell and enjoy!
 

Aside from the obvious advantages of not having all the hassles of owning, paying for, and managing a complex business like a brewery, it also frees up a gypsy brewer to be very creative and flexible. The brewer can use different facilities that are best suited to which ever particular style of beer which he wants to brew. Brewing systems, though technically much the same, can have significant subtle differences that can affect everything from mash efficiency to yeast flocculation, depending on the type of beer and its particular ingredients.

Gypsy brewing is growing -- even The Atlantic wrote about the subject! Jeppe and his brother have been gypsy brewing leaders, joined by other high quality, accomplished brewers, such as the boys at To Øl, Brian of Stillwater, Dan and Martha of Pretty Things, among others -- often times collaborating with one another,  This innovative generation of hyper-creative, quality-minded, imaginative young brewers are blazing the way and making the craft beer world all the more interesting, exciting and delicious!

Le Trou du Diable

  [link to Le Trou du Diable podcast page]



On June 24 at The Festival in Worchester, Mass., we spoke to Isaac Tremblay of Le Trou du Diable, a Shawinigan, QC based brewpub/brewery.

In the main podcast, we talk about the general details about the brewery, which is located about halfway between Montréal and Quebec City. But in the supplemental podcast, we speak specifically about the "Shawinigan Handshake" story. That short but entertaining podcast is linked directly below.

[link to Shawinigan Handshake podcast page]

Brewer Isaac, second from the left.

The origin of the term comes from an incident in 1996 when Prime Minister Jean Chretien was confronted by a protester. Chretien, who lives in Shawinigan, was likely a bit on edge, his home having been broken into around the same time (his wife chased away the would-be burglar with a piece of Inuit art!), and when the protester got up in Jean's face, Chretrien throttled him and pushed him away. A reporter joked that Chretien simply greeted the protester with a "Shawinigan Handshake", and the legend was born!

Prime Minister Jean Chretien gives Don Cherry a "Shawinigan Handshake"

In 2012 Canada's Junior Hockey championship, the Memorial Cup (the Stanley Cup of for the best 20-and-younger players playing in Canada)m was hosted by the Shawinigan Cataracts , so the brewery did a re-design on the original artwork of the Shawinigan Handshake beer, replacing the devil with Don Cherry. Cherry, an outspoken hockey commentator on the CBC, was the first public figure to support Chretien for standing up for and defending himself when he was confronted. Apparently, Cherry was happy to be depicted in the illustration, which shows, if nothing more, that the guy has a sense of humor. By the way, the hometown Cataracts ended up winning the championship!

Clearly Canadian... ou Canadien!

The Shawinigan Handshake is a 7% top-fermenting wheat beer, inspired by the Brooklyner-Schneider Weisse. They use a German yeast strain and Chinook hops. 

The brewery lists over 60 beers in their repertoire, many with amusing names, such as the La Schieve Tabarnak! Well... amusing if you understand Quebecois!

At The Festival.

Brooklyn Contest Voting Closing!

Apparently, Brooklyn Brewery has a lot of fans in Sweden. So, they decided to send a pile of some of Brooklyn, NY's best indie rockers to Brooklyn, Sweden for a festival over Labor Day weekend, Aug. 31-Sept. 1!

They also created a contest for local independent songwriters, challenging them to write a song about the G-train (also known as "the G-pain", "the gee, there's no train", "the 'G'-is-not-for-go train," etc. You can hear all the submissions and vote for your favorite on the contest Facebook page, helping to send some lucky up-and-comer to the festival with passes, airfare, lodging and more.

There's also a send-off party with some of the Brooklyn-based bands who will perform at the festival in Sweden. The party will be at Rock Shop on Aug. 28 in Brooklyn (New York).

Check out the entries and vote HERE -- but get to it, as voting closes on Aug. 1!

Beer Bloggers Event Southstreet Seaport

Photo courtesy of Juren David.

July, being "Good Beer Month", has seen a great number of different craft beer events take place throughout New York. On Wednesday July 25, a number of beer bloggers, podcasters, writers and film makers assembled on the 5th floor gallery of the South Street Seaport Museum to show their stuff.

Beer Hear mugshot.

 Jimmy Carbone of Jimmy's No. 43 and Beer Sessions Radio™the organizing force behind the event, and his bistro had a table offering pork sandwiches, buttery button biscuits and rich, dense chocolate fudge. Also on hand to feed and water the attendees was Sigmunds Pretzel Shop and Long Trail Brewing.

After party at Jimmy's No. 43.

At our table we conducted two beer tasting challenges for participants. One was "Can You Guess Which Kölsch Is From Köln?" in which challengers were given two unmarked cups of Kölsch-style beer, one containing Gaffel (from Germany) and the other with Captain Lawrence. Out of about 10 challengers, all but one got it right! Some people were pretty certain about their choice, but many others were clearly not so sure.

Jim's new friend.

The other challenge was pretty straight forward. For those willing to play, a cup of beer was poured from a hidden stash under the table and the challenger was asked to either guess the beer style or the main flavor-defining ingredient of the beer. Styles included Rauchbier, Berliner Weisse, Pilsner, Saison, Hefeweizen, Chocolate Stout, British Bitter, and others. Many folks who had never tasted a smoked beer were shocked and mind-blown by the Spezial Rauchbier when tasting it blindly. But, by far, the one beer that stumped everyone was the Bourganel Nougat Beer!

It was the biggest taste tease we could come up with, and, in fact, was the inspiration for the entire idea of a blind taste challenge! But people were further pleasantly tongue-baffled when their Nougat beer was augmented with a splash of Young's Double Chocolate Stout! People seemed to really enjoy the beer tasting games, and Jimmy insisted that we reprise the concept and expand on it during Craft Beer Week!

Farewell To A Monster Of A Cat

We're very sad to learn of the passing of one of our all time favorite brewing personalities, Monster the Brooklyn Brewery's resident greeter and environmentally friendly exterminator. We've enjoyed Monster's company many times over the years, often times sneaking him some high grade homegrown organic catnip!

One of our favorite "Monster moments" was when setting up for a Malted Barley Appreciation Society homebrew contest at the Brooklyn Brewery. We had just finished placing fresh pitchers of water at about 20 tables for the judges, only to turn around and see that Monster had followed behind us, "testing" each pitcher!

Refilling the 20 pitchers would have ecologically imprudent (and a pain in the ass!), so, on that day, there was a little Monster in all of us!

You'll be missed, Monster.

Beer Bloggers Event

This Wednesday July 25, 2012, the South Street Seaport Museum will host a "beer book, blog and video fest" starting at 6:30pm at 12 Fulton Street. As their webpage states, "Join the South Street Seaport Museum to celebrate Good Beer Month! We are hosting a gathering of top authors, beer bloggers and filmmakers - both established and up-and-coming talent. These innovators are changing forever the world of craft beer. Join this historic gathering of Northeast beer media for an evening of discussion, expositions and over two hours of beer tasting in the museum's galleries."

Beer Hear! will be participating with a "guess the style" beer tasting challenge, and will give out our first ever Beer Hear "product" -- a Beer Hear bottle opener -- for free for the first 50 visitors! The exhibit/event has a $15 ticket price (but only $10 for museum members OR if you use the code "Beer725" when purchasing), which, we're told, includes "2 hours of beer tasting". The event is presented in conjunction with Jimmy's No. 43.