Everyone likes root beer.  Its distinctive taste is comforting yet entirely mysterious and unique.  There are many kinds to purchase at the store.  A&W, Dad’s, Hires, and my favorite, Virgil’s, are all unique and delicious.  Buying root beer, like buying beer, is convenient.  However, it just doesn’t seem right that this king of non-alcoholic beverages remain a commercial product.  I, Justin Garrity and friend of Dave’s, decided to brew my own batch and tear down the wall that separates teetotaler mice from teetotaler men.

The Recipe

The first thing I did was search for the perfect Root Beer recipe.  This sounded easier than it turned out to be.  So many recipes included water, carbonation, and root beer extract.  It seemed like a joke.  Root beer from extract was not what I had in mind when I thought of making my own home brew.  I heard from Dave that a brewing store close to my house, Main Street Homebrew, in downtown Hillsboro, Oregon may have some recipes.  I found a great book there called, “Homemade Root Beer, Soda & Pop” by Stephen Cresswell.  The book has numerous root beer recipes.  The main ingredient called for is sassafras root bark.  The problem is, sassafras root bark is very hard to find.  So, while still in the store, I decided to purchase some extracts AND stop by New Seasons to purchase some herbs called for in the various recipes.  I figured the beverage would have my own unique herb twist on it this way and I wouldn’t risk ending up with something undrinkable.  So, I picked up some extracts and Main Street Homebrew and asked them if they sold any yeast for the carbonation process.

Making Bombs

When I asked them about the yeast, the man behind the counter gave me a dreadful warning that making root beer with yeast is like making bombs.  He said it was too dangerous as the bottles have a high likelihood of exploding.  He also said that they had a high likelihood of fermenting the root beer and so it was a very poor way to make root beer.  The method he suggested instead was carbon dioxide infusion.  This required a carbon dioxide tank and regulator (I borrowed this from Dave) and a cornelious keg, which I purchased from Main Street Homebrew.  It was used and set me back about $45.  With the extracts and the book, I spent about another $25. More on the carbonation technique later.

Herbs

I’ve always been mesmerized by the list of ingredients on the Virgil’s root beer packaging.  I’ve tried to let the root beer slowly pour across my tongue to see if I could taste each of the many ingredients.  I knew that I wanted my root beer to be just as adventurous and diverse.  I stopped by New Seasons on the way home and they had almost everything I was looking for.  I purchased dandelion root, licorice root, star anise, cloves, cinnamon sticks, juniper berries, and wintergreen.  This set me back about another $20.  Man, this better be some good root beer.

At home, I added all of the ingredients to a pot of water, brought it to a boil, and then let it simmer for an hour.  It smelled really good!  Even without the sassafras, it smelled like a rich, full bodied root beer.  After it had simmered, I added in raw sugar to sweeten it.  It tasted good.  It was very herbal but needed that root beer flavor.  I added in a half bottle of the Zataran’s extract, a quarter of the birch beer extract, and a quarter of the cream soda extract.  The mixture was thick and tasted great.  Now for the carbonating.

Rock and Roll

I poured the root beer brew into the keg and then added four more gallons of water.  This filled up the keg.  I closed it off and then set it in a cooler filled with ice and salt.  I don’t have an extra refrigerator so this was the best way I could chill it down.  Once the mixture was quite cold, I hooked up the carbon dioxide tank, set it to 30 psi, and bled out the oxygen from the keg.  I closed up the keg and then set the regulator to 30 psi again, set the ice cold keg on my knees while sitting down, and rocked it back and forth.  This process is what carbonates the root beer.  After about 7 minutes, I tasted the root beer and it was PERFECT.

Rich, Creamy, and Frothy

My friends and I got together that weekend.  I brought over the homemade root beer and it was a hit.  The root beer poured great.  It was rich and dark, and created the perfect amount of creamy froth.  It tasted great as each herb could be tasted every so slightly while leaving a nice wintergreen finish.  The root beer lasted another few weeks as the keg provided a never ending supply.  I re-carbonated it a couple of times but it always had a nice pour.  Even thought I did use some extract, as the sassafras root is a bit elusive, the beverage was great and I dare say even better than Virgils.

Today, Sarah and I attended the reception for entrants in the 2008 BridgePort Hop Harvest Homebrew Competition at Bridgeport’s Pearl District Location. Faithful readers of the blog may remember the sad fate of my intended entry, whose over-hopped-ness resulted in what may be the bitterest liquid to have ever passed my lips.

In hopes of entering the contest again this year, I attempted redemption, remembering something I read awhile back in “Beer: The Story of the Pint ,” an out of print history of beer. According to the book legend, the Porter style was born in attempting a re-creation of “Three Threads,” a labor-intensive 18th-Century beverage combining equal parts ale, beer and “twopenny,” aka strong ale. The author doubts have been raised as to the veracity of this legend, but the idea of mixing different beers to create something better appealed to me.

To that end, I decided to create a new beer based on the hyper-bitter fresh hop beer combining the uber-bitter with a second batch of beer, this one with no bittering hops at all. I brewed a very simple five gallon batch of wort using 6 pounds Extra Light dried malt extract that I dry-hopped with 2 ounces of Amarillo pellets.

On bottling day, I siphoned off the bitter brew into my bottling bucket first, bottling a few bottles at 100% strength to see how they’d change with some age (I suspect they will be no more drinkable in a year, but who knows?). The bitter beer filled the bucket about halfway, and I topped off with the non-bitter beer. After gently stirring a few minutes, I bottled with that mixture until the bucket was half empty, and I again topped off with the non-bitter. In this way, I created three different blends of the beer, which was kind of fun.

After letting the different blends percolate in the bottle for 10 days, I sampled the 50% bitter and 33% bitter mixtures, eventually selecting the least-bitter beer for my entry. Last Sunday, I dropped off three 12-ounce bottles and my completed entry form.

Karl Ockert (Bridgeport’s Brewmaster) and Jeff Edgerton (Assistant Brewmaster) greeted Sarah and I when we arrived at noon, and presented us with a souvenir gift bag as thanks. Sitting down at one of the linen-covered, candlelit tables, I pawed through the bag’s contents: a “Keep Portland Beered!” bumper sticker, the ubiquitous Bridgeport keychain, and three custom golf tees. The highlight was definitely a 22 ounce bottle of the 2008 Hop Harvest Ale. “A pretty good exchange for three bottles of poorly-made homebrew,” I thought to myself. A few minutes later, Jeff sweetened the pot still further with a “Keep Portland Beered” t-shirt that he forgot to add to the bags on first pass. Score!

I made my way to the bar and ordered a Hop Harvest. At last year’s reception, they had several vintages of Hop Harvest on tap, which was fun to compare, but this year they had just the 2008 version (in addition to their regular lineup).

My first sip was somewhat reassuring – the Hop Harvest this year has a pretty bitter kick, with 70 IBUs, and an alcohol backbone to handily deliver the blow. My beer, “Two Threads IPA,” had bitterness and alcohol, too! But, there was a fresh, “green” quality to the Bridgeport version that mine was lacking completely. My beer was pretty one-dimensional, while theirs had complexity and some depth.

At 12:45 or so, the complimentary buffet was unveiled. Last year’s spread was pretty incredible to this bunch of unshaven beer nerds, and this year’s smorgasbord was no different. I loaded up my tiny plate to overflowing with homemade pretzels, various works of charcuterer’s art, chicken skewers, baked brie and Old Knucklehead BBQ meatballs. I’d have taken pictures, but my hands were pretty full trying to keep the free food on my plate!

Once the crowd of 25 brewers and companions had been through the serving line, Karl gave a photo slideshow on the hop harvesting process as well as their fresh hop brewing process. This year’s Hop Harvest gained its fresh hop flavor using a hopjack/hopback exclusively, filtering the cooled wort through 220 pounds of fresh Centennial cones before diverting to the fermenter. Last year’s version got its fresh hops after primary fermentation, injecting 250+ pounds with a fresh dose of sugar and letting the beer further condition in the fermenter before bottling. It was really interesting to hear first-hand how they approach the problem, and tinker with the recipe. Apparently, this year’s version is based on an old version of Blue Heron, amped up a bit to get to 7% abv.

Karl sat with Sarah and I before the slideshow, and he mentioned his frustration with some of the blogs’ Diageo bias. According to Karl, Diageo is just 20 people in an office in Texas, and he has complete freedom to brew whatever he wants. The only limiting factor is the size of their brewing setup: Bridgeport brews in such large quantities it can be hard to “fail.” Every new beer they make is a “live fire” at full scale.

Through the slideshow, he dropped a few more tidbits, talking about the severe, and largely silent malt price increases (doubled in 2008 and will likely double again in 2009), as well as the his prediction that the hop shortage should be largely over in 2009 as new acreage comes online.

Finally, it was time to reveal the winners. From 28 brewers and 41 entries using 12 hop varieties, the folks at Bridgeport selected 5 prize winners:

• Honorable Mention: Mark Easton, “IPA Lot,” featuring Cascade, Crystal and Willamette Hops
• Honorable Mention: Steve Brainerd, “Wet Cascade IPA,” featuring Cascade Hops
• Third Place: Tom Litwin, “Chicken Creek Fall Classic # 2,” featuring Cascade, Simcoe and Amarillo Hops
• Second Place: Steve Munch, Ray Berardinelli, Dean Duncan and Steve Carter, “Harvest Gold,” featuring home-grown Cascade and Willamette Hops
• First Place: Krisen Lunden, “Felony Flats Fresh Hop Ale,” featuring home-grown Goldings and Willamette Hops

Predictably, my beer was not selected as a winner, but it was again a lot of fun, and I really thank Bridgeport for putting such a cool event on. I will definitely enter again next year.

If I could provide one critique (since they apparently listened last year and pushed the entry deadline back!), though, it would be this:

Sam Adams’ Longshot contest is not as awesome in either the prize or reception department, but one thing I do like is that they provide entrants tasting notes and feedback. It’s not often we get direct access to some of our favorite brewers, and it would be nice to hear some tips from the Bridgeport gang on where we went south. To Karl’s credit, he took notes on the beers he tasted and willingly shared his thoughts after the presentation to those who asked, but he only tasted the top 12 entries and so had incomplete notes. Of particular interest, Karl mentioned in his presentation that there were some infected beers and some that went too far in the opposite direction: they were infected with sanitizer. I hope I wasn’t in either category, but I don’t have any good way of knowing.

As the days get shorter and the hop cones start to weigh down your vines, it’s time to plan your fresh hop homebrew. A few tips from the woefully ill-informed and hungover.

Just to set the scene: We met over at Dave’s, since he has the most mature vines. We also made the second voyage of the converted-keg, all-grain homebrew set up. The false-bottomed all-grain was our brilliant downfall.

Tip 1: Bag the fresh hops. Unless you have some brilliant method for avoiding the stuck run-off, (Yes, we had a false bottom. Yes, we tried stirring.) the fresh cones come apart and clog your drain. We ended up pouring it out of the top of the keg into the carboy, which was pretty lame, messy, and probably unsanitary. If you DO know how to let the cones swim free in the false-bottom keg conversion without causing a clog, please leave us a comment below. Seriously.

Tip 2: Pace your drinking anytime you’re brewing all-grain. Extract brewing takes what? Two hours? With all-grain, you could be out there six hours or so. Mix in some highly potent homebrew and archive beers, and when those hops get stuck, you’ll be in no frame of mind to figure a smart solution.

Tip 3: Don’t plan anything for the next morning. I think this tip comes from Dave.

Tip 4: Don’t talk politics, especially at the end of the night.

Tip 5: Don’t be afraid of the canned bacon. As the fresh-hop homebrew festival fell at the end of Bacon Week, we sampled:

• Bacon brittle
• Bacon cookies
• BBQ bacon
• BLTs
• Bacon burgers
• Canned bacon

Tip 6: Do be very, very afraid of the intestinal aftermath of combining lots of homebrew, BBQ bacon, BLTs, bacon burgers, bacon brittle, bacon cookies, and canned bacon. Be prepared to sleep on the couch.

Tip 7: Do not use homebrew to put out a BBQ bacon grease fire.

Tip 8: Use the mostly green hops. The scent was not as hoppy as I would’ve expected considering we picked and dropped fresh hops into the boil for nearly the full hour. What type of hops were they? If you know how to identify hops, please call us. Operators are standing by.

In all, another great day in Dave’s backyard. I believe the girls from FU Cheese even made a cheese press in Dave’s woodshop, but that tale will have to wait for another day.

At a going-away party for a co-worker last night, I found myself at a sports bar in the pearl district whose name rhymes with “Schlitz.” It’s not my favorite place in the world, but they do have a lot of cheap bar games (plastic darts, pool, shuffleboard, air hockey, etc), which makes it great for big groups and office parties. Their beer selection is a bit lacking, though they do carry Lagunitas IPA, so I’m usually fine.

This trip, I spotted something unusual amidst their already-limited macro-ish taps: Budweiser’s new American Ale. The things I do for science …

I’m no Bud-hater, but I’m not a lover, either. I drank a lot of Budweiser in high school and college, and still reach for one in certain situations. It’s more flavorful than its “lite” counterparts, and it brings some nostalgia along with it. Still, I have developed a reputation as a beer snob around the office, and this wasn’t the only picture taken of me swilling a macro.

How’d it taste? Like Bud, but Bud-ier. I actually got a Bud bottle for comparison’s sake. The lager was more effervescent, and certainly lighter in color, which you could tell even through its brown bottle. The American Ale was a bit less carbonated, fuller bodied, and definitely left a hop-ish finish in my mouth, which the lager has never done.

I read some books when I was a kid about a boy named “Homer Price” that were amazingly-illustrated and full of fun. In one story, someone brings an automatic doughnut-making machine to town, and it runs amok, making WAY too many doughnuts. In the one that I loved best, a salesman comes to town selling vials of a product called “Ever So Much More So.” The idea is that you sprinkle a bit of it on things you already like, and it makes them taste like that, but ever so much more so. That’s what American Ale is like to me: it’s Bud, but Ever So Much More So. More flavorful, more deeply colored, and thicker. But it’s still Bud.

I would drink both beers again, but I’d be less likely to seek out the American Ale than I would the Bud lager. There are too many other ales widely available that I’d prefer (even Fat Tire) to this one. But Bud is … well … Bud. Always has been. Always will be.