BamfBeer Blog

I went to the Glendale Liquors store in Kendall Park, NJ yesterday. I spent $23.11 (if memory serves) on beer there. I bought one large bottle each of Bluebird Bitter, Sly Fox Saison, Stone Ruination IPA, and I also bought a six pack of Stone Pale Ale. I bought the Bluebird cold, for sure, but I believe I bought everything else warm. After my purchase I went straight home and opened the Bluebird. It was skunked. I also opened one of the Stone Pale Ales. Also skunked. I gave up for the night, and today opened up the rest of the beers - ALL SKUNKED. However, this is not even the real reason I’m saying not to go to this store or any of its branches.

When I called to see if there was any refund, exchange or any kind of store credit type policy for bad beer purchased at the stores, I was completely lambasted by two different employees there. Note that I wasn’t pissed off or aggressive when I called - I was pretty matter-of-fact about the whole thing. I didn’t even have any expectations when I called because I have never returned beer before, and didn’t think it was something that would be taken back, because if you leave beer sitting on the seat of your car in direct sunlight, it damn well *could* be your fault that the beer got skunked! And why *should* they be held responsible for that?

Anyway, after the first person started telling me that there was no return policy on bad beer, I was abruptly put on hold, and then someone else came on the line and basically accused me of not knowing Stone products. Of course, this doesn’t explain why the Bluebird was bad or the Sly Fox was bad. It also is a little detached from reality because oxidation tastes similar no matter *what* beer you’re drinking. If you know what oxidation tastes like, you can pick it up in things you’ve never had before. However, I’ve had *plenty* of Stone products in my day, and I’ve had it in several locations, I’ve had it on tap, and I’ve had it in bottles.

Nevertheless, I was willing to gamble that there was more bad beer in the store, and so told the guy “look, just go open a bottle of it there in the store. It’s bad”. I figured if nothing else I’d help him get the bad beer off the shelves and avoid more phone calls. I don’t know why I’m doing him favors at this point, but whatever.
So at the end they guy says to bring in the bottles and if *he* thinks they’re bad, he’ll give my money back, and we hung up. Of course, his tone was so overly defensive, and he treated me like I was such total pond scum that I decided to write of the $23 as the cost of finding out where *not* to go for beer.

A few minutes later, the guy calls me back and wants to know when I’m coming and says he wants to call me out because he doesn’t think I know my beer. At this point I couldn’t resist telling him that I BREW BEER! In fact, not only do I brew beer, I have, in the past, brewed beer that has been oxidized during the bottling process, and it tastes (gasp!) just like the bad beer I got at Glendale Liquors.

So the Glendale Liquors representative (he never gave his name) is clearly not buying this whole “I brew my own beer” thing, and tells me I’m a “fucking asshole” and never to come back into the store.

So, I will happily not be returning to the store. Unless you’re buying BMC products in cans, I recommend you stay away as well. These people need to understand that business is not about insulting and berating your customers. They need to realize that I have family, friends, and fellow brewers (who spend *lots* on beer *weekly*) who will *also* not be returning to any of their branches.

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First, we’re brewing the bitter this coming weekend - on Saturday, July 1st. The recipe will be written by Matt tomorrow. Matt generally writes all of the recipes. We occasionally haggle over minor details, but we haven’t made a beer so disgustingly bad that I have any reason to question Matt’s skills In fact, we both like all of our beers….. Including, I’m happy to say, the Red Ale.

The first bottle of Bamf “Sluttypants Irish Redhead” Ale was opened just a couple of hours ago for the first testing. Once we bottle the beer, it’s kept in my basement - not refrigerated. We’ve never used a yeast that required refrigeration, and my basement generally doesn’t ever get to 75F.

This batch yielded 26 22-ounce bottles from a batch that, after it was racked off to a secondary fermenter, was just barely over 5 gallons (it went all the way up the neck of a 5-gallon carboy). There was more spillage than normal during bottling, partly because it was the first bottling of the season, I was doing it alone, and I didn’t have any kind of shutoff valve - I siphoned straight from the carboy to the bottles without an intermediary. I was also kind of conservative and left a bit of beer in the carboy to avoid having a lot of trub wind up in the bottles. Common calculations say 5-gallons should yield 29 22-ounce bottles. We’re 3 bottles short, but they have almost no sediment on the bottom from what I’ve seen so far, and the beer is pretty clear.

It *is* clear. The clearest we’ve ever made. Of course, the beer, being in the bottle for only about a week, and being warm, was a little fizzy. However, once it calmed down, the head retention was excellent, the beer was crisp and tasty, and it had all the flavor I was hoping for.

More than all of this, though, what shocked me was the incredible, incredible mouth feel. I’m not a professional judge, but I want to go look at the beer judge websites just so I can describe the mouth feel. Matt didn’t think it was a big deal. I, for some reason, was floored.

The color was actually darker than I thought it would be, but was deep reddish-brown. I’ll mention again that I was thrilled with the clarity of the beer, being that we didn’t (and don’t, ever) use any kind of clarifying agents in the beer. All we do is filter it back through the grain bed.

This beer might be less impressive for someone who didn’t go through the process of brewing it. Regardless, I really like it a lot, and I’m going to have another one that’s been sitting in the fridge for about a half an hour now.

‘Til next time.

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I had occasion to spend some time in New England recently, and my father-in-law Mike found this beer called “St. Peter’s”. He had bought their cream stout, porter, and english ale, and we tried all of them.

I liked the english ale the best. It had a hop flavor to it that I liked, but was kind of annoying to me because I couldn’t place the hops to save my life. They certainly weren’t cascade hops (which I wouldn’t really expect from a UK-brewed english ale), but I didn’t think they were fuggles or goldings or any of the more predictable hops either. It still bugs me that I couldn’t figure out what they were, but I’ve never touted my skills as a beer connoiseuer anyway. I can’t even spell the word. I’m a beer enthusiast, and I can pick out certain hops and some of the more popular grain bill ingredients, but that’s it so far.

Anyway, aside from the hoppiness, the beer is marked by a rather long-lasting, somewhat astringent aftertaste. The only way I know to describe it is that it tastes a lot like a brand new tennis ball smells. It wasn’t a strong enough aftertaste to keep me from drinking several 16.9oz bottles of the stuff, but again, it was the fact that I had no idea what accounted for the flavor that bothered me.

The first porter I tried had absolutely zero carbonation and the flavor and mouthfeel both suffered, presumably as a result of the flatness. I concluded that after trying another one, which had not lost its fizz, and it was pretty good. It’s unusual for me to like a beer that has such a small hop presence, and this isn’t a beer I’d seek out in a liquor store, but it’s not bad.

Cream stouts are not my favorite beers, and the St. Peter’s offering is a well made cream stout that I don’t like for no other reason than because it’s a cream stout, and I don’t really like cream stouts. Occasionally, a well-timed cream stout can make for a nice substitute for “death by chocolate mousse”, and the few times where that substitution has been made in my life, I’ve enjoyed it, and would enjoy this beer in that role. Summertime in New England, however, is not the best time for any cream stout.

In short, I think St. Peter’s brewery makes good beers, and I think that the three covered here are not only excellent representatives of their respective styles, I think they all offer something interesting to the beer enthusiast while still managing not to offend.

That said, I’d like to try some of the more interesting brews they have shown on their website (http://www.stpetersbrewery.co.uk). Grapegruit, Lemon Ginger and Spiced Ale sound particularly interesting.

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The first day we used the Shirron Wort Chiller was the first brew day of the season. It was one of a number of upgrades we had applied to a pretty old, all-gravity system. By the time we got to the wort chiller, we were pretty hesitant, since equipment failures had forced our hand a couple of times already during the day. However, the Shirron did not let us down.

The hardest part of using the Shirron was the setup. We had to find some 1/2″ NPT female connectors with the PEX endings so we could connect the hose easily, and we got quick disconnects for the garden hose. If this sounds easy to you, you’re right…. and that’s the *hardest* part of using the thing!

We ran the wort straight out of the boil kettle at 212F, into the wort chiller, and it came out VERY cold. It was really kind of surreal. Here’s a unit that’s about 10″ x 3″ x 1″, it looks like nothing - and you can barely hold the hose bringing the wort from the boiler, and the hose coming out of the chiller is actually *cold*. We’ve determined that next time we probably should not run the garden hose at full steam, which means we can easily do the job without wasting near as much water.

Another worry I had was what the flow rate was going to be like, being that we were doing this purely with gravity - no pumps. We ran an entire 5-gallon batch right into the fermentor in under 10 minutes. Perfection has been achieved!

We bought the Shirron figuring that if it seemed like a workable solution, maybe we’d upgrade to the Therminator at some point. However, this worked so exceedingly well that we cannot imagine what the Therminator could possibly do to make it sell for over $100 more than the Shirron. At $85US, the Shirron seems like a no-brainer to me.

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