Howdy, Chris here.

In my last blog, I talked about the collaboration brew between Baird and Country Boy Brewing in Lexington, Kentucky, which happened near the end of March. After brew day, I joined my friends on a drive through the snow to Washington, DC, for the Craft Brewers Conference. Once the Country Boys got back to Lexington, however, the real fun started. Fermentation largely finished by the second week of April, and on April 12, the beer was transferred into Maker’s Mark bourbon barrels.

A quick recap: In December, DH from Country Boy was in Japan for a family visit. He suggested we do a collaboration when I visited them near the end of March. We decided to brew a “mash up” of our Angry Boy Brown Ale and their Amos Moses aged in bourbon barrles, and Brewmaster Bryan requested aging in Maker’s Mark barrels. DH pulled some strings and managed to get some barrels. Angry Amos was born on March 24, and my active part in the adventure ended.

On Monday, April 8, I got an email from DH — the Maker’s barrels had arrived. I have to add, arrived in true country boy fashion, in the backs of pickup trucks! Luckily the boys have a forklift to move the barrels around — even when they’re empty, those suckers are heavy!

Then a few days later, I got more pictures showing the barrels being filled. Man, I really wish I could have been there for that. We have done very little work with barrels at Baird, and I have absolutely no experience with bourbon barrels (with any barrels, really). It would have been worth flying back to Lexington to participate, if only I had any vacation days left. Hell, it probably would have been worth it just to sneak away and ask for forgiveness when I got back. Which would have undoubtedly been followed by a trip to the unemployment office, a desperate search for a new job, and a long spiral downward into a den of despair. But, as happens all too often in these blogs, I digress.

The barrels were filled with a special tool called a whatchamacallit . . . and a whole lot of pure magic. Yes, other than the pictures, I really have no idea how the barrels were filled. But I do know that once in the barrels the beer continues to ferment so the barrels aren’t bunged up tight, but instead are fitted with an airlock to allow the CO2 to off-gas. It would be a nasty surprise to walk into the brewery in the morning to find a barrel had burst the during the night. I would be even nastier if it happened during pub hours!

Once the barrels are filled, they are stacked and allowed to sit in a corner of the brewery to age and condition. When I asked how they’ll know when Angry Amos is ready for kegging, the answer was pretty much what I expected. Head Brewer Evan told me that at the two month mark, they start to taste the beer and once they think it’s ready, they will transfer to a tank to carbonate and then keg a few days later. I was a little surprised that the barrel aging adds around 2% to the alcohol content of the beer — I was expecting a much smaller increase. With the added alcohol, our Angry Amos will come in at over 10%! This is all part of the art of brewing that only comes with experience!

So there you have it — my first collaboration brew outside of Japan! It was a wonderful weekend of good friends, old and new, excellent beer and a damn fun time brewing. I’m looking forward to getting kegs of this wonderful beer sometime in late summer, along with some of the Country Boy regular beers. I’m also hoping to finagle a trip to Lexington on their release weekend at the end of August or beginning of September. I’ll have to make sure I make massive deposits into my Liver Bank over the next few months!

Cheers,

Chris

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P.S. I forgot to add the slogan for this collaboration: America! Japanese! Best of both worlds! Wooooh!

Howdy, Chris here.

In my previous blog, I wrote about Day One of my trip to Lexington, KY, to participate in a collaboration brew with my friends at Country Boy Brewing. Day Two was the collaboration itself. The whole idea came up back in December when DH made a trip to Japan for the first time after starting CBB. During his first jet-lagged night, he and his family made their way to Numazu to say hi, and during the visit, the idea of having me visit before the Craft Brewers Conference in Washington, DC, came up. A few beers later, DH said something like, “Hell, if you’re going to come all that way, we might as well put you to work.” And thus was born the idea of doing a Country Boy Brewing – Baird Brewing Collaboration (CBB–BB Collab).

In the months that followed, we exchanged emails back and forth. It quickly became clear that the collab brew would have to be some version of our Angry Boy Brown Ale — after all, the beer that turned DH on to craft beer was the pint of Angry Boy that he had at the Fishmarket Taproom several years ago. The Country Boy brown ale/porter hybrid is called Amos Moses, and combining their beer with Angry Boy seemed like the thing to do. So we came up with Angry Amos — a stronger angrier brown ale. And then to push the envelope a little more, why not age it in bourbon barrels! After all, this is Kentucky we’re talking about here!

At this point, Brewmaster Bryan piped in with a special request: if at all possible, let’s age Angry Amos in Maker’s Mark barrels. The initial response wasn’t very optimistic — Maker’s doesn’t release their barrels to the public, they send them all to Scotland to be reused there. Several days later, a simple message came from CBB: “DH says he thinks he can pull some Maker’s barrels.” Everyone at Baird Beer was smiling. DH had managed to charm some barrels out of the people at Maker’s!

So, we settled on a grain bill, and left the hopping for when I arrived. Here’s the recipe we brewed (for all you beer geeks out there), for each 10-barrel batch:

• 550 lbs Floor-Malted Maris Otter
• 100 lbs Munich 20
• 50 lbs Wheat malt
• 25 lbs Crystal 150
• 15 lbs Chocolate malt
• 10 lbs Aromatic
• 20 oz Columbus (first wort)
• 50 oz Cascade (20 min)
• 25 oz Chinook/Galaxy blend (10 min)
• 25 oz Chinook/Galaxy blend (5 min)
• 16 oz Apollo whole hops (knockout)
• 8 oz Millennium whole hops (knockout)
• CBB House Yeast, fermented at 68C/20F
• After fermentation, transfer to Maker’s Mark bourbon barrels and age . . . until ready.

When we arrived at the brewery on that cold Sunday morning, Head Brewer Evan had already gotten things ready and we were soon ready to mash in. Evan, being the strong young guy, did the heavy lifting while I lent a hand opening malt bags, setting them up on the brewer’s platform, and mixing the mash. All lots of fun — I love the smell of malt in the morning!

Then it was time to choose the hops and weigh them out. As I mentioned above, we largely decided the hops on the spot — a much different process than what we do at Baird, where every recipe is considered and decided in advance. But this made the collab brew even more interesting and exciting. Opening bags of hops that I’d never used before, giving them a good whiff and deciding if they’d be good in our brew or not was a lot of fun. In the end, we used a mixture of hops that regularly show up in Angry Boy and Amos Moses along with a few new and unusual ones. Like I said, lots of fun!

During the lauter/sparge, Evan and I compared notes about their brewhouse and brewing techniques vs what we do at Baird — fascinating stuff for me, a guy who has never brewed anywhere else other than Baird. And I loved that they were using first wort hopping, something that I always liked as a homebrewer and that we are increasingly using at Baird, especially in our hoppier beers.

Once the lauter was finished, it was spent grain time! Of course, being a professional, I volunteered to help dig the grains out of the lauter tun, but Evan, being a true gentleman, gently sent me away to the pub to get us some beers. By the time I was back, he seemed settled comfortably into the job, and I didn’t want to interrupt. So I took some photos, put DH to work and enjoyed the camaraderie of the CBB guys and the numerous other people who were hanging around.

Then it was time to christen the beer. This is a CBB tradition, where they pour a pint of the beer into the new batch as it’s boiling. Since they had a keg of Angry Boy on tap for the weekend, I poured myself a pint (which turned out to be the last one in the keg — great timing) and Evan poured himself a pint of Amos Moses. After sampling said pints, the rest went into the kettle, ensuring that the collaboration beer would have the beer gods watching over it.

Another CBB tradition, which unfortunately I didn’t get a picture of, took place at the end of the boil. Evan, like good brewers everywhere, took a sample, and once it had cooled down, commenced to getting a gravity reading to check the level of sugar (which in turn can be used to calculate the alcohol level of the beer and helps the brewer know when the beer is finished fermenting). As he did this, he shouted out, “Hey everyone, we’re doing science here!” Everyone in the brewery gathered around ooooh-ing and aaaah-ing over the magic of science while I just laughed my ass off. Country Boys indeed!

As I mentioned above, there were numerous people in the brewery: friends, family members, customers, bartenders, and even a couple of homeless people from the crack house down the road, I think. One customer heard what we were brewing, went into the pub, and came back with a glass of Angry Boy and a glass of Amos Moses. He mixed them into a pint glass, added a shot of bourbon, and declared that Angry Amos would be a major hit! Now that’s science I can really get behind. Another person hanging out in the brewery, who prefers to remain anonymous, grabbed one of the buckets of hops and dumped them into the kettle before anyone could stop him! Not that anyone tried, that’s just how they roll there at CBB.

Once the first batch was finished, DH insisted that I take a load off, so I hung out in the pub, talking to friends and strangers, and letting Evan take care of the second batch. Yep, do the math and you’ll see that we brewed 20 barrels of Angry Amos — and that’s a lot of Angry. Or Amos. While sipping on beers, large pickles appeared from somewhere, and empty kegs of Baird Beer started showing up in the brewery. It was almost like being home in Numazu, except I was surrounded by great old friends and having the time of my life!

The next morning, we woke up to drive through a late March snowstorm to Washington DC for the Craft Brewers Conference. Of course we stopped by the brewery to check on the fermentation and to fill up some growlers with CBB beer. I’m very happy to report that the collaboration beer was bubbling away like crazy. I only wish I could have stuck around for a couple weeks to see fermentation through and to work with the Maker’s Mark barrels. But I would have to leave that to Evan and the rest of the Country Boy Brewing people.

It was an eventful weekend, to be sure, and one that I will never forget — until I get old and the beer finally destroys my brain completely. Next up, I’ll write a bit about the transfer to the barrels and when we can expect to enjoy the release of Angry Amos, both in Kentucky and Japan! As our new buddy said on Saturday, “America! Japanese! Best of both worlds! Wooooh!”

Cheers,

Chris

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Howdy, Chris here.

As I mentioned before, at the end of March several of the Baird Brewing Family made their way to Washington DC for the Craft Brewers Conference. However, before the conference we all had different plans. Brewmaster Bryan, Beer Manager Chris and The Carpenter went to visit and study the hop fields of North Carolina, and GM John visited family in DC, which just happens to be his hometown. But I had arguably the best experience, heading to Lexington, Kentucky, to see our old friends at Country Boy Brewing and participate in a Baird Brewing Country Boy Brewing collaboration brew.

The story begins back around the time I took my new job at Baird Brewing. Two friends from Kentucky were working in the countryside of Aichi Prefecture, where they set out on a quest to seek out and drink as much good Japanese craft beer as they could. They wrote about their beer adventures in a blog called Good Beer and Country Boys. Of course, this brought them to Numazu, and DH and Nate became good friends overnight. Once their tour of duty in Japan was up, they headed back to Kentucky. Nate took a job brewing for Alltech’s Kentucky Ales while DH set about to learn the restaurant business. After a year or so, DH teamed up with Nate’s brother Evan and another friend Jeff to create Country Boy Brewing, which opened in Lexington in early February 2012. But I digress.

After a long bus ride through Tokyo, John and I flew out together from Narita Airport in the hinterlands of Chiba. Note to self: ALWAYS take a beer or two on the bus — a person gets mighty thirsty during the traffic delays that the bus inevitably runs into. But after checking in, we found a Sapporo Lion beer restaurant and made up for lost time. Several beers later, we looked at the time and decided we should make a dash for the security checkpoint. And for the first time in my 30+ years in Japan, I was rushed to the front of the line because our flight was in final boarding. (You know the routine, where the ground staff from United comes around holding a sign with the flight number of the plane that’s about to leave without you!) Soon after we sat down, the plane was pushed away from the gate and we were on our way.

Once in DC, I hobbled through one terminal, onto a train, and through another terminal to make it over to my connecting flight — damn those long flights really take a toll on my knees! Once in my terminal, I found a very bleak sight — not a single place serving beer anywhere! But never fear, my next flight was a short hop to Charlotte, NC, where I had enough time to reacquaint myself with an old friend, Sam Adams Boston Lager. At the airport bar, I shared a table with a nice gentleman, and we started talking about NASCAR — yep, I was definitely in country boy territory! Luckily, one of my guilty pleasures is watching NACSAR races, so I could talk somewhat cogently — unluckily the gentleman didn’t buy me a beer. Then it was off to Lexington, where Nate and Evan were waiting.

Evan’s first question: Do you want to go to the pub or are you too tired? Dumb question, Evan! Even if I had been totally wiped out by the flight, I wanted — no, I NEEDED to see their brewery. And it didn’t disappoint. Even at 11:00 PM, it was still rockin’. The people were interesting, the beer was great, and I was in heaven — admittedly, a blurry heaven, but heaven nonetheless. Two of my old high school friends were also due to make an appearance (one flying in from San Diego, one driving up from Tennessee), so we sat around, sipping on beers, catching up on old times and waiting. While waiting, I caught Nate doing what a good ole country boy does best — disrespecting craft beer. I mean come on, drinking directly out of the bottle! The shame!!! My evening ended with me passing out on Nate’s sofa, with both of my high school mates not having arrived yet. (They did eventually arrive, Bill after a major flight delay, at about 2:30 AM, and Tom the next morning because of working late.)

The next day, after a wonderful breakfast at DH’s house — complete with a tour of the amazing upstairs bar — Country Boy Brewing hosted a meet and greet in advance of the collaboration brew on Sunday. Three kegs of Baird Beer were on tap: Yabai Yabai Scotch Ale, Rising Sun Pale Ale and Angry Boy Brown Ale. While the party was going on, DH and I gave a little talk about the history of Baird and Country Boy — and the best part was that people, for some reason, kept giving me beers! I got to meet several people who had ties to Japan, and one amazing fan who kept shouting, at random times while DH and I were talking, “America! Japanese! Best of both worlds! Wooooh!” Indeed, that summed up the entire experience — good friends, good beers, America & Japan, best of both worlds. After the talk, we hung around for the rest of the day and night, gabbing to whoever wanted to gab, drinking fresh Country Boy Beers, and just having a great time.

Next up, the collaboration brew itself. But that’s going to have to wait till the next blog.

Cheers,

Chris

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