Oktoberfest is Lagering

Last weekend I brewed an Oktoberfest and get to try out my chest freezer for the lagering process.  Unfortunately, the first smack pack of Wyeast 2124 Bohemian Lager yeast I had didn’t really seem to take off.  So I ordered a second one, which arrived on Thursday.  After smacking that one, it swelled up and I pitched it that night.  Now, two days later, there are some obvious signs of the fermentation process.

For the chest freezer, I picked up a Ranco temperature controller on Ebay for around $50 and used an old extension cord to wire it up.  At the last homebrewers club meeting, someone suggested putting the element in a bucket of water to simulate what the liquid temperature would be in the carboy.  It worked perfectly.  As the chest freezer turns on and off, and there’s a cooling element on the floor of the freezer, I thought it might be doubly good to put down the towel – to catch the condensation and keep the carboys from being in direct contact with the floor of the freezer.

My hope is to lager the beer in the cooler for 2-3 weeks, transfer it to new carboys, give it a diacetyl rest for a week, and transfer it into kegs for lagering for a couple weeks.

Seriously Miller Light?

Watcing the NCAA basketball tournament I keep seeing ads for Miller Light. What bugs me about the ads are Miller’s references to their “triple hops brewed, adding hops at three points during the brewing process.”. First, having tasted Miller Light, I’m surprised they would brag about this since the hop flavor is barely noticeable. Second, despite showing nice freshly grown hops in the ad, I’d be willing to bet you’d only find hop extract in Miller Light’s brewing process. Finally, being a homebrewer, the practice of adding hops three times during brewing is pretty standard, and is probably a claim AB, Coors, or your local brewpub could make… It’s really not a differentiating factor. With the growth of the craft brew movement, it just seems a little odd to try to promote your pilsner on the merit of hop additions.

Say No to Bud InBev Deal

I’m not sure if you’ve been following the news lately regarding Anheuser-Busch, but they could be taken over by InBev. Here’s the story…

Why discuss this in my media, marketing, advertising, online marketing, homebrewing blog?

Anheuser-Busch has been a pioneer within the digital media space. Despite the fact that Bud.tv failed, both AB and the online marketing community learned quite a bit from its branded online video effort. You can’t have continued success without a few failures, and AB took the failure in stride and appears to have grown to be better online marketers because of it.

From all accounts I’ve heard, InBev is good at making these types of companies work more efficiently. Most analysts are pretty sure that InBeb will implement its cost-cutting measures at AB if it purchases it. Most of the time, cost-cutting measures start with marketing budgets. You can be sure that if this is the case, you won’t see nearly as much experimentation coming from AB in terms of online marketing (and certainly not to the level of investment as Bud.tv). While it’s obvious that larger companies have still not completely jumped into online marketing, it will be disappointing if experiments like Bud.tv no longer allowed to take place.

St. Louis Brewers Heritage Festival

This past weekend I went to the St. Louis Brewers Heritage Festival (well, in St. Louis, obviously). There were 8 breweries (Alandale Brewing Company, Anheuser-Busch, Schlafly, GriesedieckBros. Brewing, Augusta Brewing Co., O’Fallon Brewery, Square One Brewery, and Morgan Street Brewery), with over 60 beers to sample. Unfortunately, I was only able to try about half of the beers. I’m only disappointed that I was not able to sample beers from Alandale, Square One, or Griesedieck (in all fairness, Griesedieck only had 1 beer to sample). One interesting thing about the festival is that the brewers did not give the “brand name” of their beers, only the brewer and the style. That’s why I made fun of my wife, since the first beer she “tried” was A-B’s “American Light Lager” (Bud Light).

I did enjoy the Schlafly beers alot, in particular the Bavarian Style Dark Wheat (which my friend who went with us tells me is their “#15”) and their Kolsch (for a winter day, I’d go for the Schwarzbier). I only tried two of Morgan Street’s beers, and one was good (the Dusseldorf Altbier) and one was terrible (Vienna Lager). Although each brewer brewed a St. Louis Dark Lager (with the same ingredients) and I have to say that my favorite there was Anheuser-Busch’s version. In the Witbier/Wheat Beer category, I enjoyed Schlafly’s (#15) and Augusta’s Blegian Witbier (A-B’s version was a little too lemon-orangy for me, and O’Fallon’s was a little bland). In the “alternative” (fruit beer) category, I still like Schlafly’s Pumpkin Beer. Although the version they had at the festival seemed to have more spices than the one i had at “The Tap Room” (their restaurant) last October. As far as “hoppy beers” I’d have to go with O’Fallon’s American IPA (I think it’s their “3-Day IPA”) which kicked in a minute or two after I drank it – followed closely by Augusta’s American IPA which had a little bit of grassy taste. The surprise of the day for me was A-B’s Sorghum Beer. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but it wasn’t bad – quite barleyey. Overall, if I had to choose a “Best of Show” I’d have to go with Augusta’s German Pilsner… but only because it was a Pilsner kind of day. Each beer was pretty good on it’s own and it was a pretty good day… and props to the staff at the festival for handing out huge soft pretzels and bottles of water as we left. I hope we’ll be able to go again next year.