Valhalla's Firkin

The world of beer through my eyes.

About Me

Name:Kipp
Location:Winston Salem, North Carolina, United States

Wednesday, August 30, 2006

Politics, Policing, Progress (yeah right!), and IG Release


Imperial Gaelic release confirmed for Sept 24, 2006!

And we got the label! Thanks to a little research by BA nriech and the BATF we have the label. And damn it looks fine!

That's right folks. I just got off the phone with the brewery and all the permits have been approved and passed. The Imperial Gaelic will be sold on Sunday, September 24, 2006, at the new brewery only, starting at 12:00 PM. Keep checking here and Highland's website for updates on quanity limits and final price. (Limit will probably be 1/2 to 1 case {12 1L bottles} at around $10 per bottle) I haven't seen the label, but it is supposed to be embossed with the signatures of all the brewery employees in gold foil with a red label. I can't wait!

Couple Vows to Get Beer Flowing Again in 'Dixie'


Wow, shit still fucked up in N'awlins after Katrina. You mean Bush hasn't made sure that there as actually been real progress? And that the insurance companies are actually paying out claims? And the looting has been stopped? I find that hard to believe...(for those that can't read between the lines or don't know me, that was pure sarcasm laced with a little venom.)

Well at least Joe Bruno and his wife and his wife at Dixie Brewing are doing what they can to get the brewery back up and running again.

In a June article by NPR, Peter Breslow interviews the couple and tours the brewery to see the devestation that still has yet to be fixed. Why the delay?

  • Well let's see, little to no help from the Federal Government
  • Inept, corrupt, and/or completely overwhelmed and underfunded State and Local Government
  • No Tax revenue from all the off-shore oil production in the Gulf miles from the LA coast
  • Insurance companies denying any and all claims they can
  • Lack of police control (see reasons above)
  • Constant looting
  • Carpet Baggers
  • The list goes on.....

While I'm not the biggest Dixie fan, it was a medium sized, Regional Brewery that produced about 50,000 barrels of beer a year. Blacked Voodoo wasn't bad. And it's a family owned and run business. Oh, and a New Orleans landmark and part of the history there that has yet to be helped or healed.

They are supposed to be back up and brewing by October 2007, yes folks that's a year and a half from now. Here's to the Bruno's getting their brewery back up and running!

Tuesday, August 08, 2006

The IG Nears....

....the Imperial Gaelic that is...word on the street is that the release date will be the Sunday after Brewgrass festival in Asheville. So Sunday, September 24th. Why no offical date? Well they are still waiting on permit approval for on-premise sales. And I think we all know how fast the government works, I mean New Orleans is completely cleaned up right?

Anyway, I for one can't wait to see the new brewery and get a hold of this much hyped beer.

Oh yeah, apparently there is a great green spot at the new brewery for camping and people will be allowed to camp out there on Saturday night after the festival to be in line for the IG release on Sunday. Hmm.....I wonder were they get ideas like these?

And it looks like the tentative price will be around the same as the retail price of Cold Mountain. Or probably about $10 per bottle with a one (1) case limit per customer. I know I'm going to get a case. (Which will be 12 1L bottles)

and a Beer Dinner at Ganache to boot!

Along with the everything else that is going on with Highland there is a beer dinner tomorrow, Thursday, August 10, at Ganache in Greensboro. The cost is $30 per person and the Head Chef will be paring Black Mocha Stout, Gaelic Ale, Tasgall Ale, Oatmeal Porter, and St. Terese's Pale Ale with their great food and wonderful desserts. Contact Ganache for more information.

Magic Hat comes to the Piedmont Triad!

Once again, thanks to all the hard work that Pop The Cap and all the volunteers did, we have another fine craft brewery in NC and coming to the Triad. (One a side note, Sean that is a kick ass new PTC website!)

Seems the Burlington, Vermont based brewer signed a distribution deal with I.H. Caffey. WTF you say? No shit. Yes, I.H. Caffey, which according to their website is, "the largest Miller / Coors / Pabst distributor in North Carolina and one of the 'Top 25' Miller Distributors nationwide." Oh yeah, they also distribute suck other "fine" products such as Smirnof Ice, Heine-ina-can, Foster's (Australian for Crap!), Pabst "I'm going to milk an 1890's county fair" Blue Ribbon "for all its worth", Icehouse (Guarenteed hangover in a bottle/can), and Yeungling (which give me horrid gas).

I can only imagine that the guys at Magic Hat picked a distributor with no other craft breweries in their portfolio so they knew they would not have competition. However, in my opinion, that is a flawed choice because there is a good chance that none of their reps no dick about craft beer. But hey I've been wrong before. All I can say is welcome to the neighboro!

Magic hat will be having a kickoff party at none other than our good friend Chris Barnes and Winston Salem's own 6th and Vine next Thursday, August 17th. Contact 6th and Vine for more details.

Largest Brittish Brewer worries about margins cause stock to fall...

I gotta say, "Who gives a shit?" Try making some real British ales again and maybe your stock won't be falling because of a margin reduction during the World Cup. A time with nearly all of the World's productivity goes into the toilet faster than you would if you drank the water in Mexico while eating 5 bean burritos. But hey, don't worry about good ol' S&N, I mean they have control of Foster's in Europe. You know Foster's, the crap they don't drink in Australia; the land of very few good beers, they think this is crap. Hmm....I wonder if we're on to something here?

Greenland Brewhouse makes ale from ice cap

Greenland’s first independent microbrewery — Greenland Brewhouse — held its official launch this week at the Tivoli amusement park in downtown Copenhagen, Denmark.

And the Inuit microbrewery in the village of Narsaq has just released the first 17,200 gallons of a dark and a pale ale made by using water from Greenlands Icecap. The water is estimated to be 2000 years old, and from what I understand about as pure as you can possibly get. The level of micron particles is so low it almost does not register on any equipment.

If I thought the President could actually read or kept up with any news I might be concerned by this writer's closing paragraph. "I'm as concerned about global warming as everyone else but I'm pretty sure the brewery won'trun out of waterr anytime soon. Greenland's ice cap is up to 11,000 feet thick." Ok, I will agree with that, but lets not let the President hear this, as he apparently already doesn't believe that Global Warming exists.

When the brewery reaches full capacity, Greenland Brewhouse expects to produce up to 400,000 litres of beer per year, which, in a strange, but not all that surprising socalist twist for the time being, will be shipped from Greenland to Germany for bottling.

Why you ask? Well it seems that Greenlanders won’t be able to buy the beer in Greenland right now because the company Nuuk Imeq currently holds the monopoly for all beverage sales and bottling in Greenland. This means Greenland Brewhouse won’t be able to sell its product until the rules governing beverage sales and bottling are changed. (Um...as somebody who has some experience in changing alcohol laws...GOOD LUCK WITH THAT!)

Until then the beer will be sold in Denmark, other European countries and possibly the United States. The beer’s alcohol content is 5.5 per cent, and in Denmark will sell for about 37 Danish kroner ($7) for a half-litre bottle, about the same price as other similarly sized beers from microbreweries in Denmark.
“I hope by the beginning of the new year that we’ll be able to sell in Greenland,” Hand said. You gotta feel for this guy. The first mircobrewery in Greenland and they can't even sell in Greenland? That would piss me off! Can anybody say bootleg!

Japanese Brewmaster puts knowledge from Stone to good use.

So not only does Stone brew amazing beers and blatantly call the producers of assembly line, tasteless, fizzy, yellow beers to to the table; but they also share that knowledge for the betterment of us all.

It appears that Japanese Brewmaster Toshi Ishii learned how to produce real ales from none other than Stone Brewing Co. From there he took that knowledge back home to Japan where he began teaching other Japanese brewers how to produce real ale.

"We didn't have any breweries in Japan that could make cask ales," Ishii said. He also hopes that "Japan will become a nation of real ale drinkers."

Since coming back and brewing real ale at his Yo-Ho Brewery in 2002, there are now 15 breweries in Japan that can make real ale, along with 250 micro-breweries in Japan.

Ishii has unleashed his finest real ales on the discerning drinkers at the Great British Beer Festival, the first time that cask-conditioned Japanese beer has been available in the UK.

Ishii brought over a barrel each of Yona Yona ("Every Night" in Japanese) Ale and Tokyo Black Ale to the five-day London festival, which boasts the biggest range of beer of any in the world, and one this now thirsty blogger hopes to go to soon and repeatedly.


Where can I find Real Ale in here

Well that can be a little tricky. See cask or real ale is still some what of a novelty here in the States. But there are some places doing it and some doing it very well.

WARNING!Be careful and choose wisely. Just because you see a handpump doesn't mean it is true cask or real ale. There are some very large UK Brewers that are notorious for taking regular, CO2 presurized kegs, bleeding them (letting all the gas out), and then serving them via hamd pump as cask ales. COUGH, cough, cough...Fuller's, cough, Young's...cough...
But please don't let that discourage you. If you try one and it tastes sour or rancid, it has either set to long or was never a real ale to begin with. Tell management of your displeasure and try it again else where.

Now that we've set that warning, back to where to find it. Second rule of beer. Drink Local. If you can that is. This is not always possible for everybody. Hell until two years ago, drinking local meant either Red Oak (or Butter Oak as I call them) or drinking a beer produced in NC but not within 100 miles of my house. If you can't drink local then try regional and expand from there.

Shortest route to cask ale, start at your local brewpub. Which for me is Foothills Brewing Co. You see I simply asked Jamie when he was going to start serving cask ale enough until he said either shutup or fill the damn things yourself! (I am taking great liberties here as Jamie is so fricken nice I don't think he'd tell me to shutup even joking around, unlike some a-holes we know.) Foothills now taps a cask ale every Friday night at 6PM. They are usually kicked before 8PM.

See if you read previous posts, cask ales are served in firkins, which are only about 10 gallons, because once tapped they have to be consumed in 2-3 days MAX. Since only air pressure and gravity is used to serve the beer, and O2 oxidizes and ruins beer it must be consumed fresh. (Normal keg beer is sealed and uses CO2 which is heavier than air, which is why once tapped can last months in the keg. In the lines is a different story.)

Also try Natty Greene's in Greensboro and again your local brewpub.

If you are in the NYC area than you need to look no further than this man, Alex Hall, AKA The Gotham Imbiber! You see this UK ex-Patriot maybe the biggest reason that you can now find cask ale all over Manhattan, Brooklyn, and even some in the Bronx and maybe Queens. He's got the list of all the NYC places with cask. He's also got some lists and recommendation if you were to jump the pond and tour England.

Want cask ale in your home. Easy, start homebrewing or get your local brewpub to fill a firkin. You can find cask ale supplies all over the internet, include eBay; but if you want a trusted, reliable source I would recommend here, UK BREWING SUPPLIES, LTD.

Currently I'm working on Opie to have real ale at Finnegan's Wake, but we'll see if that can happen.

I think that more than does it for now. Cheers!

Friday, August 04, 2006

Friday, August 4, 2006

So what had happended was.....well I can't think of any one good excuse, but it's been a while since my last entry so here it goes.

Casks a success at Foothills!

Thankfully not only was tapping the cask much easier than expected, but I didn't cause any spillage. The cask was drained very quickly and Jamie will be tapping another firkin in a matter of hours. As long as the firkins are drained, Jamie will keep filling and tapping them. Look for another firkin of Hoppyum IPA tonight, with maybe another next week, then a different firkin every week following. The picture of me tapping the cask sucks. Which just means, as Jamie told me, don't hand Tim (the assistant brewer at Foothills) your phone and expect him to be able to take a picture with it, or even answer it for that matter.

Lenny Bruce still managing to brew up trouble

Seems the Shmaltz Brewing Co. that brought us He'Brew and other kosher and "Jewish" beers has produced a beer commemorating the late Jewish comedian Lenny Bruce on the 40th anniversary of his death called "Bittersweet Lenny’s R.I.P.A."

I love how the article reads; "Cowan is not observant but said in a telephone interview he takes religion seriously and keeps his products kosher.

'I’m not making fun of Judaism. I’m having fun with Jewish culture and tradition,' he said."

Not "observant" huh? Routinely you have to point things out to him and he rarely notices the little things. Just kidding, but seriously was the writer short on word space? Make it reads like he doesn't notice things, as opposed to the fact he is not observant in his faith.

Anyway, I would love to try it, hope it makes it to NYC, and think it is great to tribute and raise a glass to a pioneer and groundbreaking artist like Mr. Bruce.

Here's to starting off the night with a Bittersweet Lenny's R.I.P.A. and ending it with a Flying Dog Gonzo Imperial Porter. (Dedicated in memory to the late, great Hunter S. Thompson)

Stay tuned for more to come real soon!