Porterhouse Brew

I put another Lager in the fermenter at Porterhouse yesterday - a pilsner brewed with malted wheat and a mild but noticeable hop flavor. Nice and balanced; I'm looking forward to this one. You'll see a lot more lagers coming out of my brewery at Porterhouse. Our well water is much more suited to the flavors of lagers than traditional ales.

Gabe dubbed the lager currently on draft "Left Field Lager" in honor of spring, opening day, and just plain off centered behavior. Left Field is a dark Marzen style with an aggressive amount of west coast hops - it's very drinkable and is just the thing to go with a Porterhouse burger, hand-cut steak, or a bowl of our award winning chili.

Here's what's on tap at Porterhouse now:

House Brews:

• Skye Dew Scotch Ale
• Red Rye
• Thug - Belgian Style Stout
• Left Field Lager

Guest Taps:

• Philadelphia Brewing Co - Kenzinger
• Philadelphia Brewing Co - Walt Wit
• Philadelphia Brewing Co - Newbold IPA
• Oskar Blues - Dales Pale Ale

Porterhouse - New Lager On Tap

I just transferred a new lager over to a service tank at Porterhouse Pub yesterday. It's conditioning now and should be ready to drink by Wednesday. I had a hard time thinking up a name for this brew - it's been a weird couple of weeks and I'm still a little brain dead so I left the naming up to Gabe.

Anywho; after two months of lagering, this is a malty, copper colored brew with a load of west coast American hops - very drinkable and quite complex. Next up will probably be a farmhouse style pale ale brewed with oats and European hops, but, I reserve the right to change my mind on this one. I'll let you all know what it is after brew day. :-)

Our tap list at Porterhouse now includes two of our beers from Philadelphia Brewing Co. - Kenzinger, and Walt Witt. Once the Lagunitas kicks we'll be adding the Newbold IPA as well.

Cheers!
Dean

Philadelphia Brewing Co - Beer on Tap!

Wednesday March 5 marked the day when PBC began distribution of draught beer. Close to thirty customers received kegs of Kenzinger, Walt Wit, and Rowhouse Red yesterday - with the majority of them tapping up and beginning service immediately. Our Newbold IPA will start to be delivered next week. Newbold, by the way, is tasting great - think American IPA with traditional European hops. The PBC IPA has much less of the citrus notes typical of the west coast US strains of hops and a lot more of the earthy, spicy, floral tones going on.

Naturally, the PBC crew spent the evening last night visiting customers and drinking our own poison - as is our custom. It's nice to once again be able to quaff your own beer whilst bending the ear of one of the usual suspects. All of the beers are tasting great and, happily, folks are lining up their favorite PBC pints. The enthusiastic support that we are receiving from bar owners and drinkers alike is great.

I'll be posting a simple page on www.philadelphiabrewing.com listing locations where PBC brews are on tap.

Cases of bottled product will be available close to the end of March.

Hope to see you out there!

Cheers!

Kenzinger is in the Tanks!

What a weekend! After so much hard work and seemingly endless delays, we've got the first Philadelphia Brewing Co. beer in the fermenter.

Name: Kenzinger
Sex: Why Not?
Birth Weight: 10 Plato
Birth Length: 30 Barrels

Mother and father are pleased as punch and all three brewers are doing fine. John and Josh will be posting pictures to their blog shortly. Walt Wit is up next; we plan to brew up a small (30 bbl) batch of each of the four initial Philadelphia Brewing styles before swinging the yeast into full production.

There was definitely a palpable sense of relief and contentment in the brewery and on everyone's faces yesterday. Every PBC employee in the house had a hand in pulling the first batch of spent grain from the mash tun.

What a day!

On Tap at Porterhouse

House Brews:

Skye Dew - Mild Scotch Ale; brewed with peated malt, round and smokey

Browne Mild - English Dark Mild; brewed with brown malt, nice and roasty

Dark Wheat - Weird, dark, red wheat beer; a real phenol bomb

Thug - A dry Irish stout malt bill fermented with a Belgian yeast; starts like an Irish stout and finishes with a Belgian tang.

Guest Taps:
Dales Pale Ale
Stone IPA
Ommegang Witte
Sly Fox Pikeland Pils

Another Brew Session - North Lager

This brew continues my pursuit of the perfect (in my mind) dark lager at Porterhouse. Before they were acquired by a Canadian mega-brewer about 3 years ago; Creemore Springs brewery in Ontario brewed an exceptional lager. It's still good but it's lost something. The current version is not as malty; not as hoppy; not quite as inspiring. The original brewer actually skipped out of Creemore and landed with a tiny brewery in Burlington Ontario (west of Toronto) called Nickel Brook. I spoke to both the owner of Nickel Brook and the brewer whilst buying a stack of their beer. They probably would have shared the recipe with me but where's the fun in that?

Any-who; this round of North Lager is a perfect dark copper color (lighter than the last batch); with a load more aroma hops. I should start lagering this batch in another four days of fermentation. It'll go on tap some time around March.

Thug on Tap

Thug stout is now on tap at the P-House Pub. I don't like to brew stouts very often; so when I do, I want them to be special. This one is put together like a typical Irish stout but I knocked it around a wee bit and fermented it using my house Belgian Ale yeast.

The result?

It's dark as a northern Canadian winter night; it's got a load of roasted malt bitterness, a Belgian nose, and a sour finish. My kind of "stout". I'd bet a pint that it'll go great with any one of the P-House's signature burgers too.

Check it out for yer-self.

Cheers!

Wee Yeasty Buggers

I'm finally getting around to posting an update about our yeast trials. It's been a fun experiment and well worth while - even though we ended up selecting the strain that we (John, Josh, and I) felt would be most suitable from the start. There is a load of good information out there about the fermentation characteristics of different yeast stains. What we ultimately proved to ourselves was that you can trust the descriptions provided by the yeast lab folks - we're using BSI.

To re-cap; we brewed up a recipe that will be the basis for Rowhouse Ale using my brewhouse up at Porterhouse Pub. (that was a lot of 'houses' for one sentence eh?) BSI kindly provided us with 5 gallon pitchable samples of four different Belgian yeasts: Westmalle, La Chouffe, Celis wit, and the Forbidden Fruit strain from Hoegaarden. We fermented each yeast in 5 gallons of Rowhouse, kegged them up and ran blind taste tastes with our extended PBC family. Forbidden Fruit and La Chouffe overwelmingly garnered the most praise from our PBC menagerie.

Forbidden Fruit actually got most of the votes for flavor and aroma but this yeast likes to work long and steady. A fact that may present problems for us in the initial phases of getting our brews up and running. In the end we may go with a blend of the two.

We still have more trials to run, but we hope to have beer ready for sale in February!