Website is Live!

I don't even know what you people are doing here... 
Our website is up and running! 

Go check it out! 

HessBrewingCompany.com

I'll still be updating the odyssey regularly, but you can find out other neat stuff at the site as we continue to add content. In other news we are brewing up our Intrepidus IPA. It's a whale of an ale. 

Merry Christmas!

Happy Holidays from Hess Brewing!

Below I've loaded up a couple videos that should warm you up like a good holiday craft brew. So smoke 'em if you got 'em and drink your glasses to the bottom. I hope you enjoy these videos as much as I did.

Stay safe & warm and have a great holiday weekend!

Jimmy Fallon + The Roots + The Muppets Singing "12 Days of Christmas"

Special Agent Jack Bauer Interviews Suspect Smuggling Packages

"Do You Hear What I Hear?" by the Bowen Beer Bottle Band

Cold Room Set-Up

We finally got around to putting the cold room together. We got a little side tracked after finding out that we are going to have to install two more sinks in our space. Do you think it is a coincidence that the acronym for the Department of Health is D'OH!? I find it highly suspicious. Highly.

Anyways, we have to install a floor sink, so we had about six plumbers come in last week to give us estimates on how much it is going to cost to install one and it looks like it's going to be in the $1,250 to $2,700 range. The deal with a floor sink is when serving any sort of food or beverage to citizens of San Diego we need to have an air gap between the plumbing and the sewer, that way we don't get sewage backing up back into our sinks. A little something called "Backflow Prevention."

The cold room was really easy to assemble, it was like a gigantic piece of IKEA furniture. Just needed a bit of elbow grease to lug the pieces around into the correct position and a little deductive reasoning to determine where the ceiling pieces and voilà! Instant* cold room.

Here are some semi-timelapsed photos from the build out:

*Instant being about 4 hours + a 14 hour round trip to Phoenix.

The Cold Room.

I used to enjoy twitter, now I am a believer. It was through twitter I came across a listing on Craigslist for a walk-in cold room for cheap. It had fourteen tap handles (probably more than we'll ever need, but extra space can't hurt) and two glass door merchandisers. Really a prefect fit for our size of operation. Thanks so much @abeeraday for the heads up! 

I called up Iron King on a Monday to begin negotiations and figure out some logistics. We would probably need to rent a 26' truck from Penske and get a car trailer for the ride back. Luckily our good friends came through and we were able to borrow a 12' trailer + a full size pick-up.
He decided to take off some extra cash since we were going to drive out there and pick it up ourselves. So we began our 14 hour journey at 5:00AM on Friday.

Here are some pictures from the journey:

5:00 AM 

Don Quixote would love this place.

Raw Power.

Who?

Bummer!

Rising Up from the Ashes.

7th St, 11 AM.

Almost Full.

By the hair of our chinny chin chins.

Long Distance.

Getting Dark.

Sunset.

I'll be sure to post picture from the build out and the completed cold room. Unfortunately it is going to take us a little long to get everything up since we just talked to the DEH on monday and it turns out we need to install a floor sink, a mop sink, and a hand washing sink. So that will put as at a total of 7 sinks in our small space. We will be sure to have clean hands and pint glasses though!

Rye Imperial Stout - Experiment #1

Bottles of Rye Imperial Stout. 

Hand bottling 22 ounces of beer is a very time consuming process (even with Blichmann's BeerGun) it takes 1 minute 34 seconds to fill and cap each bottle on average. One of those $1,000,000 bottling lines is looking more and more enticing. We are probably just going to be filling kegs in the beginning anyways, so it wouldn't make too much sense. Plus, I don't have a million dollars laying around.

Appearance: Dark, almost jet black and turns a shade of coffee around the edges. It has thick, tan, bubbly head.

Aroma: Complex with a good amount of rye and hops.

Flavor: Many different flavors, standouts are dark chocolate, coffee, caramel, and toasted rye malt. Not aggressively alcoholic, but you can tell it is 7.9%ABV.

Mouthfeel: Full-bodied and moderately carbonated. This beer is thick, but not syrupy.

Overall: A very big dark intense beer.

We are still designing our logo/labels and creating a REAL LIVE WEBSITE at the moment. We are meeting with Mr. Patton on Friday to discuss this in greater detail.

I've also been discussing purchasing a used cold room from Phoenix, AZ with a man ominously/awesomely named Iron King. I'll keep you all updated on that as I find out more info, but I have to imagine that Iron King looks something like this.

All 60 Stouts in the Fridge.

Painted Shelves

Look at our shelves.

A big mess of unfinished wood and hastily organized grain bags, growlers, carboys, and other items... including our beloved dart board that we will need to get rid of once we are selling (we cannot have "fun" stuff in the brewery since it makes it too much like a bar.) No more pool table or shuffle board either. Just brewery related items.

I decided that it was about time to fix our organizational problems and put a nice coat of paint on the shelves as well. The first order of action was sanding. Lots of sanding and filling in holes with painter's putty. Lots of sanding.

Primed and ready for paint.

C-150 colored shelves.

Now I just need to devise a clever way to sort and store all of our grains while keeping plenty of room for other important stuff too.

Nice and Organized.

Carboys, Growlers, Malt & Specialty Grains. Now on to getting our Brewing System and Fermenters/Refrigeration Systems in a order. It's quite a difference between the first photo and this one.

The Double-Blind Taste Test

One month ago I posted about our "Experimental" Brewing Session; we recently dry hopped and kegged the two different IPAs. As you may recall one used the 1450 "Denny's Favorite" yeast strain that is known for low flocculation and not being very sweet. The other used was 1968 "London ESB Ale" yeast, which has a high flocculation and tends to have a fair amount of fruitiness.

We encountered a little trouble with these brews during the fermentation process, both of them stuck at ~ 68% attenuation. We wanted to get to about 70% for both of the IPAs, we needed some yeast, stat. Luckily our friend Johnny O' from the downtown Rock Bottom Brewery was able to hook us up with a big slurry from his propagation tank. We pitched it that afternoon and we finished out at 1017 and 1018. Right where we wanted them to be.

TASTING NOTES

1450: 7.20%
Aroma: Surprisingly light. Muted, esp compared to 1968.
Appearance: Dark & Cloudy Orange Amber. Light Beige Head.
Flavor: Tart. Crisp. Hoppy. Grapefruit.
Palate: Silky. Smooth & Light Carbonation.
Overall: This one has a bit of a bite. The tartness really stands out.

1968: 7.00%
Aroma: Strong scents of pine and citrus.
Appearance: Dark & Cloudy Orange Amber, clearer than 1450. Light Beige Head.
Flavor: Earthy. Full. Hoppy. Pine. Bitter.
Palate: Dry. Light Carbonation.
Overall: Mellower than the 1450, a fuller flavor. Not as sour.

It is pretty cool how much of a difference two strains of yeast will make on the exact same wort. The 1450 is quite a bit more sour than the 1968, which has more earthy mellow flavors. The difference in aroma is probably even more pronounced than the flavor. The 1968 has a strong scent while the 1450 is barely detectable.

The experiments and the taste tests continue! We'll be doing a much larger sample tasting on the 24th of this month at an event with about 30 volunteer tasters.

Really Expensive Beers

I was wondering what was the most expensive beer out there, and to be perfectly honest with you, it is not easy to find a straight answer. Even with all the powers of the internets combined! One site would list the price at $525 the other at $52, or $600 and $400. It took a lot of winding my way through these series of tubes that make up the internet until I could finally come to some sort of conclusion. Here is the list:

1. Carlsberg Jacobsen Vintage no.2 - MSRP $396.00
If you're wondering why the price difference between Vintage No.1 and 2 is only $1.00 (it's actually closer to 20 cents but I rounded up because I felt like it) it is because its actually price is 2,009 Dansk Krone. Since that is the year this barley wine was born. The No. 1 was price at 2,008 Dansk Krone for the same reason. The Vintage No.2 is a 8.7% Baltic Porter of which only 600 twelve ounce bottles are brewer per year.

2. Carlsberg Jacobsen Vintage no.1 - MSRP $395.00

I remember first learning about this beer on the Denmark episode of Three Sheets. This 10.5% Barley Wine is barrel aged for six months leaving it with a very cognac-esque taste. Each bottle of Jacobsen Vintage No. 1 is labelled with an original hand stilled lithographic print made by the Danish artist Frans Kannik (making the empty bottle worth $100) depicting Sif, the wife of Nordic god Thor.

3. Samuel Adams Utopias - MSRP $130.00

This is something. A 54 proof beer. There are hard liquors with less kick than that! At one point it was the strongest beer in the world, but has since slipped into the third place spot following Südstern XXL coming in a 27.6% and Schorschbräu Schorschbock weighing in at 31%! That is only 9% off whiskey. Personally I think the bottle alone is worth the money, look at that beauty. Production is limited at 3,000 bottles per year.

4. La Vielle Bon Secours - MSRP $795.00 / 9 = $85.00 per 24 ounce serving

This 6 liter bottle goes for £500. I could not find any explanation for why this beer costs as much as it does. It is only sold at the Bierodrome Restaurants in London. I really could not find anything on this beer, I know it's an abbey-style brewed in Belgium.

5. Tutankhamen Ale - MSRP $76.00

This beer is based on a archeological find in Egypt by the University of Cambridge. A brewery was found in a section of the Queen Nefertiti’s Temple of the Sun, which was presumably built by King Akhenaton who is King Tutankhamen’s father. From that find they were able to look at the residue on an old brew kettle and determine the ingredient list. This one remided me of Anchor Steam's Sumerian Beer Project. Where pretty much the same thing was one only instead of a 3,500 year old Egyptian temple brewery, it was based off of a 6,000 year old poem from Mesopotamia.

I did not include beers that were auctioned off for charity since that would not really be an accurate reflection of their price, if I did the winner would be a six pack of Stella Artois that went for $14,850, but was signed by various celebrities to support Wild Aid.

MSRP vs. Market Price
The question all this brings to my mind is whether those beers are worth the price of admission? The Carlsberg Jacobsen seems like it is artificially expensive since it's not too hard to find barrel-aged high gravity beers. While the Utopias seems more reasonable since it is such an unusual beer that weighs in at 27% ABV and only costs 1/8th the price per ounce of the Jacobsen. La Vielle Bon Secours seems a little gimmicky too, especially since there is really no other information available other than you can only get it at one restaurant in London. The Tutankhamen Ale just seems like a cool deal to support your local archeologists. I'd like to get my hands on the Sumerian Beer Project beer too.

I did a little sleuthing on eBay to see what the market was for unusual beers from some craft breweries. There are many "collectible" bottles for sale, they are not selling them for the liquids inside of course since that would be illegal. The highest asking price I could find was for a 4 pack of Dogfish Head for $400.00, the next closest was a Stone Vertical Epic 04-04-04 that was priced at $65. Still, it is not even close to the price people are willing to pay for wine.

Experimental Brewing Session #1

This is our first of many "Experimental Brewing Sessions."
Saturday brewing started at the crack of dawn today. 5:30AM and we had plans to brew an IPA split it into two batches and test two different yeast strands on it. In about three weeks we will be able to have a blind tasting of the two and see how they hold up against each other. We also wanted to brew a very BIG beer, we decided on a Rye Imperial Stout.
Pictued Above: IPA split in two batches, one with 1450 & the other 1968. Our second batch was a Rye Imperial Ale. This is going to be a heavy beer. Starting gravity of 1086, it should ferment down to about 10% ABV.
Pictured Above: The Mash Tun full of TONS of malts. 7 Different types!Mike trying an erlenmeyer flask full of the Rye Imperial Stout.

I can tell you that it is going to be a very full flavored beer. It has seven types of grains from Chocolate to Pale. This will be a beer that we are going to want to age. We'll likely put away 10 gallons and save it for our one or two year anniversary.

I'll be sure to update you on their progress.

This Storefront (is a figment of my imagination)

Imaginary Store Front.

This is my vision for a storefront in the near future. Since we are not on the street we are going to have to have a good amount of signage so people can actually find us in this industrial park. Once we finalize our logo and brand direction we can get a sign up there. I don't know whether I should make it by hand or outsource it to a professional... or have one of my art student friends make it? Too many decisions.

Today it got pretty darn hot in this joint, up to 135 degrees on the bay door. I need to figure out a way to harness all of that power.

We had the guy from Culligan's Water come in today to with our water test results and to talk about what kind of filtration system we are going to go with. Luckily our water is pretty good quality, not too hard and not too soft. It is a little bit salty though, which is odd but easy to correct.

We have a meeting with the Alcoholic Beverage Control on Monday. Hopefully all of our paperwork is in order and we can get licensed. After that only a couple more governmental agencies to work with and we can start brewing!