21 Years Of Mugs

  Interview with Eddie of Mugs (Flash version)
  Non-Flash podcast

Mugs Alehouse is a true pioneer of the craft beer scene in New York City. Owner and founder Eddie Berestecki spoke to us about the then and now in Williamsburg on the 21st anniversary of his wonderful neighborhood bistro, which also happens to be one of the oldest fixtures of the modern NYC craft beer scene.

L-R: Bill Coleman of MBAS, Eddie, Warren Becker of MBAS.

As B.R. notes in the podcast, Mugs is a great neighborhood bar -- which also happens to have a great beer list. That's one of the things that sets Mugs apart from the newer breed of beer bars. The place has that warm, authentic feel of the, sadly, vanishing local pub. You can get a solid and reasonably priced meal, excellent and friendly service, along with a great selection of craft beers at a fair price. How many places in NYC, let alone trendy Williamsburg, can you say that about?

Bob, Eddie and B.R. enjoy some Beer Geek Mus.

Eddie has been a staunch supporter and patron of the local beer beer scene as well, hosting the Malted Barley Appreciation Society since its founding, giving up his entire backroom dining area to the club every 2nd Wednesday of each month. He's helped establish and has been host to numerous beer events that bring the beer community together, from the annual Split Thy Skull fest to the yearly Belgium 2 Brooklyn event, and scores of others.

Photo credit: Kristopher Medina of pinballnyc.com.

We congratulate Eddie and Mugs on reaching the age of majority, and we look forward to many more years of friendship and beers!

Noble Experiment Owney's Rum At MBAS Meeting

 

Noble Experiment's Bridget Firtle at MBAS meeting podcast

What would President Herbert Hoover -- who coined the term referring to a certain contemptible constitutional amendment  -- think about Bridget Firtle naming her distillation operation "Noble Experiment"? We're not sure if making rum is particularly "noble", but it's certainly appreciated!

Bridget and Bill.

Bridget was a guest speaker at the June 2013 meeting of the Malted Barley Appreciation Society, which is a slightly funny coincidence, since she, herself, holds an MBA. Until recently, she was using her degree working as a global alcoholic beverage financial analyst for a hedge fund, researching and investing in beer, wine and spirits companies. In that capacity she was introduced to the world of craft spirits and, inspired by some of the finer artisans, she decided that it would be more satisfying to become a maker of fine spirits than simply to invest in them.

Column still on the left, pot still on the right.

Presaging her radical career swing, her childhood home in the Rockaways was also home to a basement speak easy during Prohibition. The original bar still stands to this day -- despite extensive damage to the house during hurricane Sandy! And it was in her Rockaways neighborhood where notorious bootlegger, Gopher Gang member and rum runner Owney "The Killer" Madden had an estate near the water, which facilitated his conveyance of illegal booze from ships off shore to places like the Cotton Club, which he ran during Prohibition.

A homage to Madden, Noble Experiment's first commercial offering, released at the end of 2012, is a white rum called Owney's. White rum is not aged in wood. It's the wood and wood alone that gives spirits their color, unless, of course, caramel or other coloring is added. Hers is made with all natural, non-GMO, grade-A molasses (about 70% sugar content) from Louisiana and Florida, and fermented with a propitiatory yeast strain. It undergoes a five-day cold fermentation in temperature controlled tanks, as opposed to a 48-hour, hot fermentation, which is the common method. Then the beer/wine-like liquor is distilled in a pot-column hybrid still to about 80-85% ABV before being brought down to 80 proof, or 40% ABV in the bottle.

Video About Noble Experiment

During her talk, she explained that rum is the most loosely defined spirit. To be called rum, a distillate need only be made from the sugar cane plant. Rum made from sugar cane juice, as opposed to molasses -- a by-product of sugar refining -- is called "Rhum Agricole". The juice ferments on its own within three days, so it can't be shipped or stored, making molasses a more logical choice for making rum in New York.

Bridget has plans of aging her rum in various different barrels: new whiskey barrels, used whiskey barrels, wine barrels, different types of oak. In addition to the rum, she plans on also distilling whiskey, and already has one barrel of rye now aging in the barrel.

With Noble Experiment, and Owney's in particular, Bridget is trying to bring back good ol' American rum, which was the first spirit distilled in New York in the 1600s on what is current day Staten Island. And she's not the only one trying to revive local distilling. In 2002 -- the first time that New York State even offered a small distiller's license -- four distilleries operated in the City. Today there are at least 10 distilleries in Brooklyn alone!

  Noble Experiment non-Flash podcast

Jakob of Mikkeller, Bill and Bridget.

Mikkeller At MBAS Meeting

Mikkeller At MBAS Meeting podcast

Jacob Gram Alsing, the Operations Manager of Mikkeller, was the guest of the Malted Barley Appreciation Society homebrew club in June 2013 at Mug's Alehouse. Jacob, who works at the company headquarters in Copenhagen, was passing through town and gave us the short history of the company, as well as insight into some new developments.

How did it all start? Mikkel Borg Bjergsø was a high school physics teacher in Denmark who, in the early 2000s, began homebrewing 13 and 26 gallon batches with his pal Kristian Keller (Mikkel + Keller = Mikkeller). He figured that with his science background he should be able to make better beer than what was then domestically available in Denmark. In 2005 he began selling his homebrewed beer though his brother Jeppe's bottle shop and entering his creations in competitions. 

Hangin' with the homie...brewers. Photo Warren Becker.

Apparently, he was able to brew better beer, as the awards and accolades began to roll in! Since founding the company in 2006, Mikkeller has won the Danish Brewery of the Year award three times -- in 2006 and 2008, and in 2009 sharing the honor with Hornbeer.

The Mikkeller empire has expanded to include the Mikkeller Bar, Mikkeller And Friends bar and the Bottle Shop, all in Copenhagen. They're also in the process of launching a Mikkeller Bar in San Francisco, due to open on July 4, 2013, and one in London, England. Additionally, they've begun to make and sell spirits, including a "beer brandy" made from distilling the 17% Mikkeller Imperial Stout called Black. If that's not enough enterprise for you, Mikkel and company also organize the best international beer fest in Denmark on the first weekend of May -- an annual fest that began in 2012.

Beer brandy.

Black.

Most folks familiar with Mikkeller know that the operation is a "gypsy brewery", meaning, they don't own a brick & mortar facility. They brew their beers at various breweries around the world, though brew most often with a few trusted facilities, such as De Proef in Belgium. Mikkel specifies the ingredients, brewing process, target volume, etc., makes his own artwork, and pays the contract brewery wholesale price for the end product. That then gets shipped off to distributors and importers around the world. Jacob said that the U.S.A. was the biggest market for Mikkeller, but recently Sweden has been taking over.

Photo W.B.

In 2012 the brewery made 8500 hectoliters (9,700 bls) of beer, with 91 different new beers, currently selling in 42 countries.


For those lucky to be in attendance, Jacob poured draught samples of Orange Yuzu Glad I Said Porter and 1000 IBU. He also shared two different bottles from the "educational wood series" Mikkeller released, Forêt Limousine barley wine, aging a single batch of beer in various different types of barrels, to illustrate how different barrels can impart drastically different characters to a single brew. This is similar to the other series that Mikkeller has released, such as the hops series and yeast series. Learn more by listening to Jacob's complete address on the podcast.

Forêt Limousine barley wine aged in wood.

Pour, pour Bob.  Photo W.B.

1,000 IBU.

Jacob, Bill Coleman and Bridget of Nobel Experiment. Photo W.B.

  [link to podcast page]

Big Alice At MBAS Meeting

  [link to podcast page]
Big Alice Brewing podcast

Big Alice Brewing's brewers were the guest speakers at the Malted Barley Appreciation Society on May 8, 2013 at Mugs Alehouse in Williamsburg. You can get the long story about how they got into brewing on their website, but the short story might begin with a homebrew contest hosted by Heartland in 2011. Kyle and Robbie entered two of their homebrewed beers into the contest -- a light Belgian ale and a dark Belgian ale. And while they didn't fare well with the judges' panel, one of the beers won the "people's choice" award, which gave them the encouragement to start talking about brewing professionally.

Kyle and Robbie.

In 2013, they applied for licensing and started up Big Alice Brewing in Long Island City, joining fellow tiny Queens breweries Rockaway and Bridge and Tunnel, and the not-so-tiny Single Cut. They brew on a .333 barrel Sabco system. That's just ten gallons! When planning the enterprise they thought, "we don't need to brew huge quantities, but we want to be able to play around with recipes a lot, and have other people pay for our hobby."

Their concept is to brew unique one-off recipes using organic and local ingredients as much as possible, often incorporating seasonal ingredients in the recipes. Rather than offer one consistent product, they will brew something different each and every time! Operating a ten-gallon system certainly allows for unlimited experimentation. They plan on making 72 different batches this year.

Kyle, Felice and Robbie.

There's got to be some serious hurdles for a brewery that brews a different style each batch, including having to design, print and register a unique label for each 48-bottle run of 25-ounce bottles. The labels alone could be very costly. So they devised an interesting answer to their labeling issues. They have the same exact label for all their beers, except for a blank space in which the batch number is indicated. To find out what kind of beer that batch actually is, one must refer to the brewery's website.

So, batch #0001 is a red ale brewed with Cinderella Pumpkin in the mash, and fermented with Belgian ale yeast. Batch #0002 is a Belgian I.P.A. with the addition of citrus fruit in the fermenter. #0003 uses barley, wheat and rye in the mash, and Flame Raisins, and is fermented with multiple Belgian yeast strains.

Even their sales concept is one of a kind. They operate a community supported agriculture model (CSA) for sales, selling "subscriptions" to their brewing projects direct to individuals, offering 2 bottles per month for six months. Their plan is to sell two-thirds of their production through "beer shares", 30% of which has already been sold to individuals who have been early supporters of the brewery. They're going to release the other portion of beer shares to the general public very soon. They hope to sell another third of their production through retail outlets.

One of the beers they poured at the meeting -- their second batch -- was a Belgian style I.P.A. featuring a unique ingredient: Buddah's Hand. The Buddah's Hand, which is a Far Eastern citrus fruit, is introduced in the fermenter, and imparts an exotic citrus quality to the beer. They also poured a wheat malt based coffee stout (50% wheat), which was dark, rich and roasty, utilizing Gorilla coffee beans ground up and added in the fermenter. 

Wheat malt coffee stout.

By the way, the brewery is named for the iconic Ravenswood No. 4 electrical power station which is located in their neighborhood. The plant was built in the early 60s by the Allis-Chalmers company -- thus nicknamed "Big Allis" -- and was the world's first million-watt generating station. The brewery's homepage has a very comical comparison of Big Allis to Big Alice!

Big Allis.

The brewhouse.

Setting up the system.

This is what nano brewing looks like.