Take heed dear glutton there is even but a refuge for thee amongst the beige bulging bastions of the western suburbs!

My wife and I took the brave venture into the western suburbs this weekend to knock some glasses with my folks. Determined to find a dining experience that didn’t make me want to gouge my eyes out with baby toys, I decided to use this here internets to aide in my acquiring a high-fat, high-calorie, high-delicious meal that would be served with a decent selection of carbonated beverages.

I turned to the trusty BeerAdvocate BarFly directory and looked for a well reviewed beer bar in the area. After reading several mediocre reviews that all mentioned the Bavarian Lodge as a preferred alternative, I looked it up.

My christ, I have seen the face of god and it smells like Schweins Hax’n!!!

Located unassumingly on Ogden Avenue just north of Yackley in Lisle, IL the Bavarian Lodge is a tudor-style house with room for probably 150 to 200 guests. It’s split evenly in half, the west side is a sit down dining area and the east side is a bar with plenty of tables to belly up to and dine as well. The walls are appropriately decorated in murals, mounts and glass cases full of beer steins and glassware.

They serve authentic german cuisine and serve it very ceremoniously well. Cabage rolls, potato pancakes, schnitzel out the wazoo, rouladen, saurbraten, schpaetzel, thuringer and, my favorite, which I’m not sure I’ll be able to go another full week without ordering again, the Schweins Hax’n properly crisped.

From their menu:

A two-pound boiled pork shank, served skin-on… the best Eisbein this side of Munich!

What’s more is that their beer selection would hold it’s own amongst the finer beer bars in Chicago, and is, hands down the best beer selection you will find anywhere in Illinois west of the city. On the night we were there I was able to sample the following on draught: Duchess de Bourgogne, Surly Smoke (amazing!), Founders Backwoods Bastard, and Dogfish Raison D’etre. And this was only a fraction of the options of their 29 pulls. Their belgian bottled section lists near 100.

Now I’m a guy who will speak with a certain amount of hyperbole perhaps a little too often, but believe me that I am not speaking with even an ounce of hyperbole right now when I say this was the best dining experience I’ve had in possibly my entire life. How about that? And I’ve eaten at the Publican, the Bristol, Aqua in SF, Sabatino’s on Irving and everything in between pretentious haute bullshit and low rent greasy spoons in the best cities around this planet. The Bavarian Lodge was authentic, delicious, warm, unpretentious and totally fucking educated about their food and beer. The setting was inviting and home-like, the staff was attentive and friendly and the bill was surprisingly low.

I’m all itchy and bug-eyed and I’m afraid I may try and start a religion or something. I’m prepared to offer my first born just to see how the chefs might prepare it.

And, if you haven’t already been tossed into a tongue rolling revelry of culinary and zythological ecstasy than how about a set of house rules that ban children and hollering dipshits from the bar area?

I now understand how movements are started and empires are built. I now comprehend how the mind can be enslaved to a world of senses for ever and, more than certainly likely, for the betterment of all.

Amen.

I made a meatloaf yesterday for the USA v. Canada game. The meatloaf turned out better than the game.

I used New Holland’s Dragon Milk Oak Barrel Ale to flavor up the sauce. I kind of realized it wasn’t the best choice while I was buying it, but I was tired of looking and wanted to get started cooking. In retrospect I think a smoked beer like Schlenkerla or maybe even New Holland’s Charkoota Rye would have been a much better solution. Doppelbocks always seem to work well when cooking with red meat.

Anyhoo, here’s the recipe:

1lb 85% Ground Beer
1lb Jimmy Dean spicy breakfast sausage (I will use 3/4lb next time)
1 cup Ritz crackers crushed up
1 small white onion diced
1/2 a green pepper diced
1/2 a red pepper diced
7 garlic cloves diced
1 tsp Worsteschire sauce
2 eggs
1 tbsp paprika
1 tbsp cayenne
1 tsp garlic powder
2 tbsp black pepper
2 tbsp Baldridge’s

Mix all that together and put into a loaf pan. Cook at 375* for 45 minutes. Then cover with this sauce and cook for another 15 minutes.

1/2 cup ketchup
1/4 cup Captain Curt’s BBQ Sauce
8 ounces of Dragon’s Milk
1/2 cup of diced onions
1 tsp paprika
1 tsp cayenne

Reduce the sauce until it’s nice and thick.

After the meatloaf is done, transfer that bad boy to a plate and let it sit for about 15 minutes or so. While it’s doing that why not crumble up some bacon on the top of it?

Delicious.

This is a great article on how to clean off your yeast to reuse in your next batch of homebrew.

This is one of several ways to drop your costs for making your delicious homebrew.

We recently brewed a maibock using Rogue’s Pacman yeast as distributed by wYeast that we picked up from the nice folks at Homebrewer’s Outpost.

Today when we checked our gravity after about 5 days of fermenting we were a bit below our goal of 1.016, coming in at about 1.023. Knowing that PacMan yeast is supposed to attenuate quite well I was curious as to what caused the yeasts to be so bashful at the dinner table. Our temperature was decent at about 68*, I made a good sized starter, so what was the problem?

I checked out the wiki at homebrewtalk.com and read over their page on attenuation. Using a formula I got from that page

Attenuation = 100 % * (starting gravity – current gravity) / (starting gravity – 1)

I realized that our attenuation was about 62% as opposed to the 74% we were shooting for. Further down the page I came across the following:

water to grist ratio: the enzymatic activity of the amylases is affected by the thickness of the mash. Thinner mashes enhance the maltose production and therefore increase the fermentability. See The Theory of Mashing.

We had indeed gone short on this. When we did our first few brews we followed Papazian’s recommendation of 1qt/lb of grain. After a few brews we started noticing that 1.5qt/lb was actually giving us a better brew. But, as is sometimes the case, we flaked on our math and wound up reverting to the 1qt/lb. We noticed this and took note, but had little idea how this would effect our beer. Now it’s clear that a higher water to grain ratio is preferred in order to increase the fermentability of your beer.

Duly noted.

Go here to read the whole comic by the Oatmeal.

My wife and I went over to Bluebird last night for a few beers to celebrate – I’m not sure – the ever grinding wheels of time as they continue to where down on the thinning teeth of our souls’ cogs, forcing us to move slow and want to move even slower? Yes, that’s probably a good approximation of what we were celebrating.

We started with a bottle of Saison D’Epeautre that was served at the perfect temperature. This was a tasty, dry, mildly-spicy beer with just the right amount of a fleeting sweetness to keep it interesting.

But where the evening really came into it’s own was with the ordering of a 750ml bottle of Jolly Pumpkin’s “La Roja”. Brewed in the “flemish style” this beer hit every note presently getting my fairly large panties in a bunch. Funky with a little sour and fruit on the nose the beer drinks creamy, full, and with the perfect balance of sour and spice on the tongue. My eyes grew wide with amazement every taste I took of this well-crafted brew. I bowed in reverence and saw, perhaps, just a shimmer of light from the future radiating back onto my present self, beckoning me down a road of better living and finer brews cobble-paved by a deeper exploration of the flemish reds.

I was pleasently surprised to find that the unfortunately named Jolly Pumpkin brewery is not far from home, just over a couple borders in Dexter, Michigan. I will definitely be paying them a visit this summer. Too bad the motorcycle riding between here and there is pretty crummy.

On our way home the wifey-poo ducked into Hot Chocolate and picked up a baker’s dozen of Mindy’s cookies. All the cookies were insanely delicious though the molasses seemed to actually defy certain laws of physics.

Tim Webb, probably the most prolific writer on Belgium Beers and author of Good Beer Guide Belgium
, has a new TV series that is hopefully going to make it to a market near me (and you) sometime next year.

Belgium Beer Boner… Engaged!

Anat Baron’s “Beer Wars” is finally available to stream on Netflix.

“Beer Wars” attempts to give the general consumer an insider’s look into the politics and pitfalls of the beer industry. With a couple of case studies, the most interesting being Sam Calagione and Dogfish Head, Baron shows the sysophisian struggle of the passionate craft brew industry against the monolithic big 3.

While not always successful “Beer Wars” does manage to illustrate many of the economic sleeper holds multi-national corporations have on America’s present interpretation of capitalism using the craft beer underdogs to help define and defend the more satisfying role in this battle of good versus evil. The film is at it’s best while exploring the passionate craft beer enthusiasts drafting them as the high-minded Robespierre’s pursuing great beer as both the finest weapon and the ultimate prize of this heated and holy war.

Baron has taken some annoyingly unsurprising criticism from beer geeks posturing as arm chair film critics, though typically these critics can’t seem to get beyond editorializing on the beer and brewers as people and recipes and miss the forest for the ultimately, in the context of what the film is exploring, not-very-important trees. In that way, “Beer Wars” works also as a successful mirror for craft beer enthusiasts to stare at themselves, smug and contemptuous, for a little while longer.

So we bottled what may be our best (3rd) batch of an IPA yesterday. The whole process went incredibly smooth from sparge to bottling. We were so happy with ourselves that we felt a celebratory beer was in order. We put the beer in the back of Matt’s car and headed over to the Small Bar.

They had some great pulls yesterday: Surly Furious, Bockor Cuvee Sour Ale, Victory Prima Pils, Half Acre’s Baume, Tyranena’s Dirty Ol’ Man. It was a fine, fine celebration indeed, well armed and strategically executed. We even tried some of Rogue’s Whiskey, which, like Stranahan’s Flying Dog, they make from left over mash from their Dead Guy Ale. Rogue’s Whiskey was remarkably smooth with a touch of sweetness and a salty back end that is probably from them aging it in oak barrels by the Ocean. Though they only age the stuff for a week, so it’s also possible that salty flavor is from their talented marketing department as well.

But I digress. It was a monumental celebration. And goddamn, the Victory Pils and Dirty Ol’ Man were fantastic. Of course, all the beers were great, especially the sour from Bockor, a pitch-perfect modestly bodied sour that makes instantly weak any devotee of the flemish sours. But I hadn’t had the Victory Prima Pils until yesterday, so it really stood out for me.

Victory refers to it’s Prima Pils as a German Pilsner and though it may come off sounding initially a bit derisive, I would call Victory’s Prima Pils an American Pilsner, or maybe a New American Pilsner as I feel this is the first beer that actually deserves it’s name. It’s hop heaviness serves as a refreshing compliment to the crispness of the beer, the stuff practically snaps off and crunches in your mouth. There is some discussion amongst the beer geeks as to whether Victory is stretching the truth claiming they only use German malts in the Prima Pils. Some brewers are convinced the slight sour apple taste – the often undesirable acetyldehyde – on the front end is derived from wheat. There’s also some discussion as to whether this is an all Saaz brew or if there is some Northern Brewer at the bittering point. Wherever the flavors are coming from they are well proportioned. This beer is crisp, bright and hoppy enough to keep my filthy fingers digging back in for more. And I will.

This may be one of only, oh, three or four times I will say this in my life, but… that Dirty Ol’ Man, he was very good to me last night. Strong chocolate notes in a creamy body with just enough roasted character and hopiness to keep the stout from going past it’s surprisingly sessionable self.

And, as always, the food at the Small Bar was great, too. The pork nachos are incredible, the poutine is fucking trascendental, but yesterday we started with their Buffalo Chicken Spring Rolls:

chopped chicken sautéed in our house buffalo
sauce then wrapped with crumbled blue cheese
and fried in a traditional spring roll. served
with carrots, celery, green onion and blue
cheese for dippin

They’ve somehow managed to achieve the impossible and improve upon buffalo wings, making them easier to eat, and crunchier with a deep fried shell to safely transfer them from plate to face.

And as always the staff at Small Bar are some of my favorite people in the world, they always take good care of us.

But, OH SHIT! I forgot! The whole reason we came into the Small Bar to celebrate in the first was because of our beer. That we left in the car. In 20* weather. For now almost 24 hours.

Shit.

I woke up this morning, and while sharing a lovely breakfast with my equally lovely wife she off-handedly reminded me of my orphaned babies in the truck. This is, perhaps, as good as any argument for why I shouldn’t father children as well. It would be a shame to go out and properly celebrate my kid’s learning to ride a bike, or learning to read, or using the toilet only to come to the stark realization the next day that I would up leaving him in the car for 24 hours while I proudly drank in his honor.

But, in my defense, children and yeast are pretty resilient. After moping for a few minutes I hit the Beer Advocate forum and queried the geeks. And in under ten minutes I had 2 responses that put my mind at ease. Essentially, all I needed to do was give the beers a god swirl or two, put them back in the crate and expect full carbonation as if nothing had happened. My fear was, leaving the beer at around 35* for about 10 hours (20 hours in the car in 15-25* weather) that the yeast had gone dormant and wouldn’t get back up anytime soon to eat. But apparently, I have more than one thing in common with yeast, not the least of which is the will to perservere through a decent night’s rest with more than a little bit of snacking.

So, our team of crackhead brewers here at OA have found a new and interesting way to try and ruin our beer. Fortunately, this attempt was a bit easier to recover from than some mistakes of the past have been. I now wait patiently for the next manner in which we can subjugate ourselves on the road to delicious and plentiful beers.

I’m just learning this brewing process and it’s about one of the most enjoyable problem solving exercises I’ve tackled in my life and I’ve tried a few.

This morning on the bus I was trying to walk my amateur self through the process of how I would modulate my beer’s alcohol level either higher or lower. My mind slowly, and stickily dragged it’s wheels back to information on Enzymes and how they effect the starches in the beer. I then remembered that, of course, more sugars in your wort equals more alcohol in your beer and vice versa. I then wanted to remember how specifically I could create more or less sugars in my wort.

When I got to work I googled this quandry and came across the on-line version of John Palmer’s “How To Brew”. It was exactly what I needed. From what I can tell just about every question a budding brewer might have is answered clearly, specifically and thoroughly.

The short answer to my question of how to control the sugar content in my homebrew was found on page 5 of Chapter 14:

A lower mash temperature, less than or equal to 150°F, yields a thinner bodied, drier beer. A higher mash temperature, greater than or equal to 156°F, yields a less fermentable, sweeter beer. This is where a brewer can really fine tune a wort to best produce a particular style of beer.