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Anchor Brewing Company ends national distribution, kills Christmas Ale

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Re: Anchor Brewing Company ends national distribution, kills Christmas Ale

#201

Post by wl »

cratermoon wrote: post #89
kevinmchugh wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's trivial and cheap to make water harder, home brewers do it all the time to replicate specific styles. It's more difficult to make hard water soft. Also while hops have terroir, hops are dried and vacuum sealed and kept cold so that they can be shipped with no change in flavor. (Except of course for once-a-year wet hop beers which truly are very local)

> t's trivial and cheap to make water harder, home brewers do it all the time to replicate specific styles I'm aware of this. I did it for my ribbon-winning brews. It is cheap at the home brewer scale, but at commercial scales, maybe not so much. > can be shipped Sure, it's possible to get genuine Saaz hops shipped from the Czech Republic to California. Again, A home brewer might be willing to shell out top dollar fo…

Adjusting the water for different styles or consistency across production facilities is a thing that is done at commercial scale. I had a professor in college who figured out how to do that for Bass' UK production facilities in the 1980s.

Re: Anchor Brewing Company ends national distribution, kills Christmas Ale

#202

Post by phillc73 »

eyelidlessness wrote: post #154
shaklee3 wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's absolutely not true. IPAs cannot be shelf stable past a few months if unrefrigerated. They start to lose the hoppy aroma and taste and taste more muted. The longer you go the more skunky it tastes.

It is fair that IPA hop aromas do diminish over time, it really depends on the beer how that affects its quality. But if you don’t expose them to light they definitely don’t get skunky, at any temperature over many years.

Which was of course the whole point of India Pale Ales. Chuck a load of hops in the beer, preserve it on a boat ride to India. Probably the hops aroma did diminish, but the beer didn’t go off.

Re: Anchor Brewing Company ends national distribution, kills Christmas Ale

#203

Post by _puk »

lamp_book wrote: post #189
ginnungagap wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I know there is no relationship between BrewDog and Flying Dog despite the names

Oh whoops I meant Flying Dog.

I think you can quite correctly substitute Flying Dog for Brew Dog in the "owner is an asswipe and I won't buy anything from him" stakes:

'BrewDog, the fast-expanding craft beer firm, has apologised to former employees who accused the company and its co-founder James Watt of fostering a “culture of fear” in which workers were bullied and “treated like objects”.' [0]

0: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/jun/10/brewdog-sta...

Re: Anchor Brewing Company ends national distribution, kills Christmas Ale

#204

Post by eyelidlessness »

brewdad wrote: post #160
shaklee3 wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, so this isn't confusing for anyone, this comment is totally wrong. Beer breweries do this because there's a clear change in flavor for beers left unrefrigerated and/or exposed to light.

Too deep in the chain to reply directly but I opened a 2009 Abyss a few months ago and it was still delicious. The label even tells you to wait about 18 months after bottling before even considering whether to drink it.

Was it skunky? ;)

Re: Anchor Brewing Company ends national distribution, kills Christmas Ale

#205

Post by eyelidlessness »

kodt wrote: post #121
xarope wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

17.2%?!? That led me down the rabbit hole to find out beers with very high alcohol content. Apparently Brewmeister Snake Venom, at ABV 67.5%, is the highest.

Yes those super high ones are usually freeze concentrated (partially frozen, then ice is removed which removes water, what is left is stronger) multiple times to reach such high ABVs. The highest you will see actually fermented is usually around 18-20%, but there are specialty yeasts that can get up to 25%. Then you can get even higher with extended aging in spirit barrels where some ABV is picked up by absorbing res…

Worth mentioning, freezing and skimming ice is a clever distillation process. It’s also illegal under any other circumstances that distillation would be illegal, but nobody much cares.

Re: Anchor Brewing Company ends national distribution, kills Christmas Ale

#206

Post by eyelidlessness »

phillc73 wrote: post #198
kodt wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes those super high ones are usually freeze concentrated (partially frozen, then ice is removed which removes water, what is left is stronger) multiple times to reach such high ABVs. The highest you will see actually fermented is usually around 18-20%, but there are specialty yeasts that can get up to 25%. Then you can get even higher with extended aging in spirit barrels where some ABV is picked up by absorbing res…

Brewing high ABV beers is actually quite the challenge, especially once it gets above about 10%. The grain to strike water ratio changes so much that lautering often gets “stuck” due to the thick consistency of the grain bed.

It’s pretty easy to get into the ~15% range with the right yeast (champagne yeast is the best starting point) and attention to sugar conversion (I wish I could remember the details here but I haven’t brewed for about a decade) and importantly for beer, good ventilation. I had a barleywine that should have been in this range ferment for about 12 hours and it clogged the airlock, exploded the carboy, and generally ruined everyone’s day. But not the way it was supposed to ruin anyone’s day.

Re: Anchor Brewing Company ends national distribution, kills Christmas Ale

#207

Post by eyelidlessness »

phillc73 wrote: post #202
eyelidlessness wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is fair that IPA hop aromas do diminish over time, it really depends on the beer how that affects its quality. But if you don’t expose them to light they definitely don’t get skunky, at any temperature over many years.

Which was of course the whole point of India Pale Ales. Chuck a load of hops in the beer, preserve it on a boat ride to India. Probably the hops aroma did diminish, but the beer didn’t go off.

And of course those beers were already way less hoppy. They weren’t for beer snobs, they were for colonizing.

Re: Anchor Brewing Company ends national distribution, kills Christmas Ale

#208

Post by eyelidlessness »

ojbyrne wrote: post #158
eyelidlessness wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> trying to out do one another across different dimensions (though mostly hops) In places with younger craft markets, it's like an even split between hops and extreme naming/label graphics. Here in Seattle, beer names are like Obscure Mythology Reference and you might enjoy the Wikipedia hole it starts you on while you imbibe. The first craft brew I remember seeing visiting my original home state, Virginia, was liter…

Pretty sure it’s an IPA. Sigh

You are correct

Re: Anchor Brewing Company ends national distribution, kills Christmas Ale

#209

Post by eyelidlessness »

eyelidlessness wrote: post #208
ojbyrne wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty sure it’s an IPA. Sigh

You are correct

I’m my defense I remembered the artwork then I bought their stout whenever I visited until I couldn’t find it anymore

Re: Anchor Brewing Company ends national distribution, kills Christmas Ale

#210

Post by inferiorhuman »

barathr wrote: post #172

Some of you may have had the experience of catching a show at Bottom of the Hill and reliving the NOFX song Scavenger Type: Gigin alone at the bottom of the hill / Our protagonist named Bill / Sets his sights on an anchor steam pint / All he needs is thirteen quarters / Congregated in his hat I swear they must have a pipe straight from the brewery for how fresh it is there.

BOTH and Anchor are about five blocks apart, so…
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