Tomme | January 21, 2010

When we opened our doors back in May of 2006 we knew barrel aged beers and blending of barrels was going to be a big part of our long term strategy. We built a dedicated barrel room for aging our beers and invoked the expression “In Illa Nos Fides” above the threshold for the room.

A modest 100 bourbon, brandy and wine barrels were procured as we set out to build one of the largest barrel programs in this country. During the four years, our barrels have been the source of enormous success and experimental failures as well.

It’s one of the hallmarks of using wood for brewing purposes. There is a certain lack of control within the process. It certainly appeals to us which is why today our barrel program has expanded (with a new warehouse) to over 600 barrels full of beer.

Stepping into the corridors of our barrels is a trip down memory lane. The original 8 barrels which I used back in Solana Beach in the late 90′s and much of the 2000′s to age and bugger up beers are still with us today. They may not make the same epic batches that they used to kick out but Nostalgia is a powerful tool and I love that they are still a part of our makeup. Every so often, we find barrels that have been misplaced literally in a Lost and Found sort of way. Other times, we have barrels that we squirrel away for “what if” type discoveries.

This process of stashing barrels started back in November of 2006 when it came time to release our first batch of Brandy Barrel Aged Angel’s Share. The original barreling produced 11 oak barrels of beer. When we went to package the beer, I decided that we should keep one of the 11 behind to see what extended aging would do for the evolutionary aspects of the beer. And for the past four years, Brandy Barrel # 184 has been in our warehouse since we originally loaded it in March of 2006! During this time, we would sample small portions of the beer to see what longer contact times with the wood might produce. It’s been a fun experiment.

Yesterday, we emptied barrel #184 and married it with 5 other barrels of Angel’s Share producing batch #1 of Angel’s Share Grand Cru. This promises to be one of the best batches of beer we have ever blended here at The Lost Abbey. Besides the original barrel which spent nearly four years in the oak, we also have an original barrel from the 2007 Bourbon Angel’s Share (never released in bottle form). To this, we also have added three barrels from our newest 2009 Brandy Angel’s Share release. One of these barrels (#292) even featured the addition of Cabernet Franc Grapes last fall adding a very nice layer of sweetness as the grapes did not ferment in the barrel. The 6th and final barrel in the blend is barrel #375 from our impending Bourbon Barrel 2010 Release scheduled for March of this year. It was brought to the blend to give it some fire and ice if you will. The new, raw spirited Bourbon character, produced the fire with the Vanilla and caramel notes bringing the “ice” and smoothness to the blend.

This has the potential to go down as one of the smoothest batches of Angel’s Share we have bottled. It’s an epic blend of about 250-300 gallons of some of our best barrels. Those of you who renewed as Patron Sinners will see this in your first shipment of beer. All told we’re expecting between 150-200 cases if this beer to jump into the bottle tomorrow. It will head across the street and into our new hot box. If all goes well, it will go on sale on February 13th along with 2010 Red Poppy batch we’re bottling on Monday… see you then?

ps- We didn’t start numbering the individual barrels until 2008. This may help explain why one of our original 100 barrels is labeled as barrel #184 and the 2007 Bourbon Angel’s Share is from barrel #117.

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Tomme | January 9, 2010

It’s a Saturday in January which means there’s snow on the ground in most of the country, NFL playoffs on the TV and a bunch of people enjoying our tasting room at Port Brewing. In case you haven’t visited us in a while you may not know that Saturdays have turned into quite the place to be. Bus load after bus load of beer thirsty zymurgists(well, not all of them) have descended on our building yet again. It’s pretty cool. And they all seem to enjoy the changes we made to the tasting room to accommodate more patrons.

Across the bar from me, there’s a table of 8 discussing the merits of Bourbon Barrel Aged Santa’s Little Helper from this past Christmas in July. They’re wondering out loud (or loud enough that I can hear them), whether the next batch scheduled for July 24th of this year (announcement forthcoming) will be better. Off the record (and no I haven’t tasted it yet) I think it will be. Given how stupid good the current batch of Santa’s Little Helper on tap tastes, I can only imagine how naughty but nice that party is going to be.

This past week,Sage and I had lunch at Churchill’s to discuss the beer calendar and release schedule for the first half of 2010. It’s not my job to steal his thunder but I thought I would lay out what is in the works. Check back to the website for the exact schedule and bottle limits in the not so distant future. As many of you already know, next Saturday we’re releasing the latest installment of Brandy Angel’s Share. This will be the 2009 Vintage as there is another release slated for later this year.

The 2009 Vintage marks the transition to our new 375 ml bottle shape that was produced for us, Russian River and North Coast Brewing. It’s very cool and I for one am excited as it means for the first time we’ll be able to send more of this sized bottled beer out into the market. The first bottling run went very well as 800 cases were produced. Labels arrive on Monday and it heads out to market at the end of this week.

In February, we’re targeting the 2010 release of Red Poppy Ale. This years batch promises to be as great if not better than the one we released in 2009. As we get more familiar with this beer, we can make subtle changes in the blend allowing the different barrel flavors to shine through. On release day, we’re also going to preview a draft keg of Framboise de Amarosa. This is a barrel aged raspberry beer that has been aging in our distribution warehouse since last summer. In July, we had farm fresh raspberries delivered to our brewery and they went directly into all manners of barrels. And because it didn’t have enough Raspberry character, we added more fruit to the barrels in November.

Since we seem to be focusing on fruit beers, we should mention that sometime in the spring, we plan on releasing a batch of Veritas 005 (In Veritas Vino). I’m sure that some of you are probably in possession of bottles of Veritas 004 and Veritas 006. But what about batch 005 you’re wondering. Well, in the spirit of the Veritas series and experimentation, we only produced 6 cases of the original batch of Veritas 005 (featuring native Southern California Grapes as the fruit). That batch was a success so last fall, we sourced some Cabernet Franc grapes from Temecula in hopes of making Veritas 005 a reality on a larger scale. We can’t say when it will be ready or when it will be released but we know it will jump into the bottle in the next month or two.

Lastly we have a batch of Amazing Grace that has been slumbering away in French Oak barrels for almost a year now. Many of you might have missed the original batch of Amazing Grace as we didn’t produce a ton of it in 2007 for the initial release. Seemingly, we have 6-8 oak barrels worth of beer that we’ll get ready for sale at some point this spring so stay tuned.

A little housekeeping before I go as well. First, Santa heard my cries and decided to bring me a new hood and wire unit for our bottling line. This means that in March, we expect to be ready to increase the output of our Lost Abbey bottles. It’s been a long time coming. Currently the guys have to bust ass to make 18 bottles of beer an hour. The new unit will do 50 per minute. And they say I’m a slave driver…

They also finished our new cold box over the holiday break and next week I hear my new hot box will even be ready. This is a good thing. We’re getting ready to package Serpent’s Stout and it will be nice to be able to get that beer up to temp quickly. And given how much Serpent’s we made this year, it will be nice to see bottles everywhere. We’re also holding back a significant volume for Bourbon Barrel Aging. Look for this to be released later this year.

We’re opening the doors next Saturday for our first release since July of last year. It will be the first time that some of our patrons see the new tasting room. It also marks the 6th batch of Angel’s Share to be released since we opened. Sometimes, the more things change the more they stay the same. Given how much Angel’s Share I’ve been drinking lately, I thought I would share, this one reminds me of batch #1 and for that I am thankful.

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Tomme | December 21, 2009

It’s Monday of Christmas week. It’s finally here! I’m sitting at my desk staring at the box with Sydney’s new Princess Scooter in it. I need to put it together. It’s pretty much the only thing she asked Santa for this year. As I stare at the box, I am reminded that there are a bunch of kids out there who have asked Santa for presents this year and may not get anything. It’s enough to make a grown man cry.

Somedays, I am reminded of how blessed we are at Port Brewing and The Lost Abbey. Last night, we held our Chirstmas Party for our employees and their families. It was a chance to reflect on where we have been and to give them hope for the places and direction we wish for in 2010. All told it was a great evening. Vince cooked. We drank and there was even festive music in the background. It was a great way to start this Christmas week.

This Christmas week is very exciting for me. First, I am happy as a pig in you know what since it looks like the new cold box I asked Santa to bring me for Christmas will finally be completed. At over 1200 square feet, it will triple the size of our old unit and make things so much easier on the distribution side. I’m thankful(and so is David) that our warehouse will also stop looking like a bomb exploded in there. For the past two months, we have been storing all manner of kegs, barrels, bottles and cold box parts waiting for the new unit to be completed. Now that it’s done, we can all breath a sigh of relief.

As part of the cold box expansion, we’re also going to finish our new Hot Box for Bottle Conditioning. This will give us much better consistency. In terms of our process, this is one area we have been negligent as the weather in San Diego is pretty stable year round. However, we are entering that time of the year when the warehouse stays a bit cooler than ideal and as such, we need this warm room.

I’m also thankful that our new custom 375 ml bottles have arrived from China. This new bottle mold(that we’re sharing with Russian River and North Coast Brewing Company) is a proprietary shape and will give us better flexibility to ship our small batch beers all over this great country. Look for 2009 Angel’s Share Brandy Barrel to hit the shelves as our first release. Last week, we packaged 800 cases of the beer and it’s conditioning as we speak. These bottles were run on our New Bottling Line and the process went incredibly well. We also have run cork finished Judgment Day and Gift of the Magi bottles on the line with no issues. It’s nice to know that the only piece missing is a wire hood unit that can keep up. Santa can I get one of these for Christmas too?

Lastly, many of you were with us for Christmas in July. I know because we have all these amazing pictures of our patrons sitting with St. Nick. They’re some of my favorite pictures around the brewery. They also remind me that we’re about to make a difference in some young lives this weekend. As many of you recall we donated a ton of presents to the Toys for Tots Foundation back in August. This Christmas (because of your generosity) smiles all over San Diego will break out. And that my friends is the spirit of Christmas. Now, if you’ll excuse me. I have some princesses who require my attention.

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Tomme | September 18, 2009

It’s Friday and the Ramones are jamming on the CD player. Me, I’m hunkered down in my office. The tasting bar is packed and Marty is doing a brisk business of selling pork products from his hot dog cart out front. What beer am I drinking as I type this? The clear alcohol free kind known as Holy Water. You see, two days ago, I woke up feeling a bit under the weather and no, I didn’t have the botella influenza. Seems that I am the victim of either too much work or perhaps my 3 year old petri dish known as Sydney who just started preschool last week might have infected daddy. Sucks but I am definitely not 100% right now and with Denver next week, I am trying my best to lay low so that I can get well.

I am on my third set of Cough Medicine and hoping that by the time I am done swallowing these orange pills, I will feel better. As we just tapped the High Tide at 4 PM today, I would REALLY like to be having one right about now. I also would very much like to be downtown at the San Diego Festival of Beers. Haven’t missed one of these in a VERY long time! But such is life. In spite of all my woes, I will say that last night (before I broke down and started pumping my body full of meds) we had our annual tasting for our GABF beers here at the brewery.

This is the first year that we have done this outside of the Pizza Port beers but since the three locations are sending a total of 34 beers this year and we’re sending 8 from Lost Abbey and 5 from Port Brewing, it was just impossible to do them all in one night. Jeff came out from Carlsbad last night and we ran down the list of beers that we’re sending to Denver. Not everything scored highly but that’s to be expected. Bottling does weird things to beers.

We started with Midnight Sessions and Hot Rocks. Neither really WOWs me at the moment. They were bottled so long ago that I just kind of throw my hands in the air and hope. Not expecting this to be part of our year. Moved sideways and had some Carnevale and Inferno. Both of these are awesome drinking beers. A brett based Saison has never done well in the category we enterered so we’ll see. The Inferno may just be the most stylistically perfect beer we sent. It’s fluffy and smashingly drinkable which is awesome. And, this Pale Strong Belgian Ale type beer usually does very well in this category. High hopes for this one.

We opened some Wipeout, Panzer Pils and Hop 15 next. It’s funny because the Wipeout is so incredibly clean. But there seems to be this notion that the hop aroma should be more over the top. It tasted amazing but Aroma is very important. Well built either way and a beer we make and drink a ton of around here. The Panzer really has all the essence of a great Imperial Pils and I hope for Julian’s sake it scores well (read medals). This is our Pro Am entry. Basically a homebrewer and professional brewer collaborate on a homebrewer’s award winning recipe and brew it for commercial sale. This year we nailed the parameters for Panzer and Julian agrees. The Hop 15 won a bronze medal last year (don’t ask me how). None of us scored it well during the tasting. Yet there it was winning Alpha King and a bronze GABF medal. Weird. This years batch has nice flavor and it’s no slouch in the hops department. But then again this is one of the hardest categories at the fest to win. So…

Post Hoppy beer land, we turned our attention to Sour beer land (it’s like Candyland for adults). In Sour Beer land, we didn’t see any Oompa Loompahs but we did find some Duck Duck Gooze, Cuvee and In Veritas Vino 005. The Duck Duck has the necessary Acetic character to win and the depth is great. Jeff says maybe too sweet? The Cuvee is the best bottling we have ever done. Sure, there have been better kegs and single barrels but as a matter of course, this is just a nice blend of barrels. Cuvee didn’t win last year but this year the beer isn’t a shadow of its former self. Nope, it’s the paradigm of blending for us.

In Veritas Vino is an experimental beer and we think it has awesome character. And that’s all I have to say about that… We also opened a bottle of Red Poppy. This was the third year we have made Red Poppy and it’s clearly the best batch as well. The oak might be overstated for style but not in my heart. So tasty. The beer will be on the festival floor which won’t suck.

Lastly, we moved into Black beer territory with some Serpent’s Stout and a wee bit of Older Viscosity. I love me some Serpent’s but this batch didn’t sit well in the bottle and I’m not feeling it. The Older Viscosity has all the depth you would expect of a bourbon beer. The only issue we could ding it for was that the body seems too light. I mean the beer is 11.5% ABV so how light can the body be? Yet, it just doesn’t have “that” chewiness thing going on in the beer. Drinks like it’s so much lighter. You know the way we want it to be.

So that’s it for now. One week from tomorrow, we’ll be in Denver. One week from right now, the Judging will have officially have ended and the trophy people will be busy working on their part. It would be great to add some more hardware to our collection. This year there are over 3200 beers entered in the competition. That’s beyond comprehension. So many beers so little time. And to think, I’m on drugs right now.
Who knew?

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