Brewing with Ska

Soggy Coaster Imperial Red Ale is fermenting as you read this.

My collaboration beer with Ska Brewing Co., Soggy Coaster is sitting in a little fermenter next to much larger fermenters holding Ska beers like Decadent Imperial IPA and True Blonde Ale. My little 10-gallon batch is dwarfed by the neighboring 90-barrel (2,790 gallon) tanks. It appears to be holding its own, but who knows what bullying it endures from the bigger tanks after the lights go off at night.


I met with Ska Head Brewer Thomas Larsen on Monday to brew the beer on Ska's pilot system. It was a time-consuming task that essentially took a full 9-to-5. We started out scrubbing everything with a chlorine solution.

"We do a lot of cleaning," Larsen said. "We're really just glorified dishwashers, with bigger dishes."

We then boiled water, added the malts and heated them up. We stirred the wort and then transferred it into the fermenter via a super-fly coil system.

Aggravatingly, our wort came in with a much-too-low original gravity of 19 degrees Plato, giving the brewing system an inexplicable 43 percent brewhouse efficiency. So Thomas and I started dumping in amber malt extract. We overcompensated, leading to a 20.8 degrees Plato OG.

This means Soggy Coaster should end up around 8.5 to 9 percent ABV, when we were shooting for 7 percent ABV. Hopefully, it won't be overpowering, but there can now be no doubt that it's earning its "imperial" name.

I was aiming to approximate Ninkasi Believer (6.9 percent ABV, 60 IBUs). It looks like it's going to be closer to Oskar Blues Gordon, (8.7 percent ABV, 60 IBUs), another imperial red I greatly admire. The point was to brew a beer unlike any brewed in Durango, and in that, it looks like we'll succeed.

This proves that brewing is both art and science. No matter how many calculations you do or how advanced your equipment is, things can go wrong. I bet it'll still taste good, and maybe even great.

I asked Ska President Dave Thibodeau about what might have gone wrong. He replied: "Not sure, except that it’s just not as efficient as our big system. The question is why did other recent batches vary so much? Regardless, you get the character you were after as far as color and flavor, because the volume didn’t change - adding the malt, assuming it was light, will pretty much just create alcohol and body."

The most fun part was hopping the beer. Each time we threw a batch in - first German Tradition, then Crystal and finally Cascade and Willamette aroma hops - the wort boiled up with a green appearance like split-pea soup. It was beautiful, and the Hop Union pellets had an incredible aroma.

It was also fun to meet the full roster of Ska employees. I have known Thibodeau for years through my work at The Durango Herald - he's Ska's designated media liaison - but it was intriguing to finally meet Ska co-founder Bill Graham and Matt Vincent, who bought in when Ska was only a year old, completing the ownership triumvirate. Everyone at Ska has been warmly welcoming. (Vincent said he's an avid Beer at 6512 reader, which greatly pleases me. I appreciate all the industry folks who read my ramblings).

Wandering around the brewery, I was impressed by how big Ska has grown. In 2009, Ska brewed 11,682 barrels - tiny in comparison to New Belgium or Sierra Nevada, not to mention Coors, but a lot bigger than it used to be.

Throughout the day, young men - and it is mostly young men, although there are women to be found - were clanging kegs against the ground, filling True Blonde cans that whirred into place and, as always, brewing massive batches of Pinstripe. The activity is nonstop. Meanwhile, the huge fermenting tanks loom like Ellis Island statues.

Behind the scenes, Ska HQ is reminiscent of a science lab. There are spectrometers, thermometers, test tubes.

I was also struck by how industrial - dirty, if you like - brewing is. Brewing isn't office work. It's stainless-steel clamps and rubber hoses. It's chlorine and hot water. It's cigarette breaks and swearing when something goes wrong.

Despite our original gravity mishap, I'm excited for the beer to come out. It should be tapped in mid-to-late February, along with Jeff's beer. (Jeff Hammett of Beer N Bikes is brewing a Belgian-American IPA).

My remaining quandary is whether to dry-hop my beer. On one hand, imperial reds are mostly about showcasing the malts, I feel there are plenty of hop bombs out there, and it's not like we didn't hop it in the first place. On the other hand, it could be fun and may add some complexity to the beer. What do you think? Leave a comment.

Our little collaboration is gaining a little media attention. A Durango Telegraph writer interviewed me, my first experience being on the other side of the tape recorder. Hopefully we'll see a story out in February.

Most of all, though, I just want the beer to taste good. That's really what craft brewing is about. I'll let you know when a firm date for the keg-tapping is set.

Photos: At top, Ska Head Brewer Thomas Larsen (left) and Chuck Slothower, taken by Ska President Dave Thibodeau. Middle and bottom: The inner workings of Ska, photos by Chuck Slothower.

Review: Oak-Aged Orange Cream Stout (Ska Brewing)

Thomas Larsen, head brewer at Ska Brewing Co., had a sore throat last spring. He wandered the grocery store aisles looking for ice cream. He ended up with Swedish sherbet, an orange sherbet with chunks of chocolate.

It was good, and Larsen thought, “I’ve got to make this a beer,” he recalled.

Months later, Local Series #14 is born: Oak-Aged Orange Cream Stout. It appeared on the shelves in Durango last week.

Orange Cream Stout is based on Ska’s Steel Toe Milk Stout, a bronze-medal winner at the 2009 Great American Beer Festival and an old mainstay in the Durango brewery’s lineup.

Orange Cream Stout was aged for three to four months with sweet orange peel in Peach Street Distillers’ Colorado Straight Bourbon barrels (Ska and Peach Street in Palisade have some overlapping ownership).

Given its Steel Toe relation, it’s no surprise that Orange Cream Stout is quite good. It pours black, with little head. A roasted coffee taste yields to a mellow sweetness from the orange peel. It gets better as it warms, allowing the flavors full expression.

I would imagine it pairs well with all sorts of desserts. I split a bomber, drinking one glass with the beer alone. With the second glass, I made a float with vanilla ice cream. It worked well.

Ska’s Local Series comes out a few times a year with something new. The mad brewers have made everything from a pilsener to a fresh-hop IPA in this limited-distribution series, always packaged in 22-ounce bomber bottles. Orange Cream Stout is particularly limited; Larsen brewed only 75 cases. He gave me a bomber to sample and we split another at the brewery. Ska employees kept coming up to taste it. It was an admittedly biased audience, but everyone seemed to like it.

The brewery ought to be proud of Orange Cream Stout. It’s really a pleasant beer, not overpowering with booze or hops (5.5 percent ABV, about 30 IBUs). The orange taste is a natural fruit flavoring, not the uber-sweet artificial taste we’re used to from orange sodas.

I love imperial stouts, but sometimes it’s nice to drink a stout that’s not overpowering. I’ll be restocking my fridge with this one. Besides, it’s winter, and during winter, dammit, I want to drink stout. A-

The beer will get through

Thursday, I had to walk into work because of this absurd snow storm. Few cars trickled down the roads. I did, however, notice a Coors truck, chained up, making its way to a liquor store.

Then, today, on my way to work, a guy was tromping through the snow - at 9 a.m. - with a box of Coors.

The Post Office likes to talk about its "neither sleet, nor snow" capabilities. But when have you ever seen the shelves barren of beer?

Beer retailing is such a low-margin business that stores need to stay open to turn a profit. So they do.

Shifting gears, Ska Brewing Co.'s Local Series #14, Oak-Aged Orange Cream Stout, is on the shelves. My review is almost complete, but I just haven't had time to post it yet. Suffice it to say for now, it's quite good.

Ska–Beer at 6512 collaboration: The recipe

Designing a beer recipe with Thomas Larsen is a snap. There’s nothing to it. You tell the guy what you want, and he does it.

Larsen, head brewer at Ska Brewing Co., clearly knows what he’s doing. Asking him to design an imperial red ale is a bit like asking a short order cook for scrambled eggs: It’s not exactly stretching the guy’s creativity.

That said, I had a great time working on the recipe, the last step before brewing.

A few weeks ago, Ska President Dave Thibodeau invited Beer at 6512’s own Soggy Coaster and Beer N Bikes blogger Jeff Hammett to collaborate with the Durango brewery, each brewing a beer.

We tell Ska what style we want to brew, we work with them on a recipe, then we actually brew it on Ska’s 10-gallon pilot system. Ska supplies the ingredients and puts it on tap at the brewery. We get to blog about it, with no restrictions from Ska, and bask in the brewery’s reflected glory.

I met with Larsen on Monday to devise the recipe at Ska HQ, with music pounding from the ether above. I’m brewing an imperial red ale based on Ska’s Pinstripe, essentially taking the popular red ale up a few notches in malt body, hop taste and aroma and alcohol. I was inspired to brew an imperial red by an Oregon beer, Ninkasi Believer.

Larsen uses a software program called BeerSmith to design beers. He started with the Pinstripe recipe and did a lot of clicking the “increase amount” button.

The challenge with this beer is to make it different enough from Pinstripe to be interesting, but not so big and boozy that you can’t have a few pints.

This is why I appreciate the Ninkasi beer, which comes in at 6.9 percent ABV and 60 IBUs. It strikes a good balance. I’ve had imperial reds of 10 percent booze that were thick as syrup and not much fun to drink.

Soggy Coaster Imperial Red Ale, as I’ve come to call it, shoots for 7.95 percent ABV and 60 IBUs. (Pinstripe, by comparison, is 5.6 percent ABV and 27 IBUs).

Larsen said Ska’s pilot system is not as efficient as its big tanks used for commercial brewing, and we can expect the ABV figure to fall short of what we design. It all depends on how hungry the yeast are. Aiming for 7.95 percent ABV gives us some room. If the beer lands between about 7-8 percent ABV, that’ll be fine by me.

We brew Monday. I’ll put in essentially a full day of work at Ska. The beer will have to sit for awhile, but I’ll let you know when it goes on tap.

(Jeff, by the way, is brewing a Belgian-American IPA. His beer was brewed first and will go on tap first).

Now, to the recipe. The Soggy Coaster recipe is essentially Pinstripe taken up a notch, with a few tweaks. Pinstripe is typically spiced with Liberty hops, but apparently they are not to be had. So we’re using German Tradition and Crystal hops instead.

I also asked Thomas to get Willamette hops in the recipe somehow because I’m from the Willamette Valley in Oregon – Corvallis, specifically - and the town name translates from Latin as “Heart of the Valley.” So I wanted to represent for the home team, as they say. The Willamettes serve as aroma hops, replacing Tettnangs in the original Pinstripe recipe.

(I also considered calling the beer Hellafied Gangsta Lean Imperial Red, in homage to that secular prophet of our time, Snoop Dogg, but I figured that would just be confusing. Soggy Coaster is my nom de plume, the result of happy hours with happily overfilled pints soaking the cardboard coasters used by all the Durango breweries).

Without further ado, the recipe for Soggy Coaster Imperial Red Ale:

Grain:
32.5 lb. Two-row pale malt (2.0 SRM)
2.75 lb. Cara-Pils/dextrine (2.0 SRM)
2.5 lb. Caramel/crystal malt 80L (80 SRM)
1 lb. Caramel/crystal malt 120L (120 SRM)
1 lb. white wheat malt (2.4 SRM)

Hops:
4.5 oz. German Tradition (90 minutes)
4 oz. Crystal (30 minutes)
3 oz. Willamette (5 minutes)
2 oz. Cascade (5 minutes)

Yeast
Like Pinstripe, Soggy Coaster Imperial Red will use Ska’s version of Ringwood Ale Yeast 1187.

Hilariously, this beer is going to come in at 364 calories per pint. If you want diet beer, look elsewhere. If you want tasty beer, keep your eyes on this blog for news of the keg tapping.

Various curios for your reading pleasure

There have been a number of interesting news and blog items I've been meaning to catch up on:

- Ska Brewing Co. will enter Missouri some time in 2010, reports the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. The Show Me State, gateway to the West, is looking better. Maybe Ska should get Albert Pujols to be its spokesman. He's a great ballplayer and a Missouri icon who hasn't run over any fire hydrants lately, unlike this guy.

- Here's a sonnet from the One Good Beer blog to Steamworks Ale Diablo, a fine Belgian-style ale. (A few bottles remain in the fridge at the brewery). If you're curious, my review from November is here.

- A new brewery in Fort Collins, Equinox Brewing, will open in April next to a homebrew shop, reports the Fort Collins Coloradoan. The owner, Colin Westcott, plans to allow people to brew their own beers and sell them on-premise.

This seems to be an emerging trend, and a good idea. The quality of homebrews may occasionally be uneven, but there promises to be plenty of variety and experimentation at such an establishment.

- Jeff Hammett of the Durango beer blog Beer N Bikes is brewing his Ska collaboration beer. Jeff chose to brew a Belgian-American IPA. He posted his whole recipe, as well as sexy photos of Ska Head Brewer Thomas Larsen. Go check it out.

This is part of the Ska-Durango beer blogger collaboration of which I am also taking part. I will meet with Thomas on Monday to figure out a recipe, then we'll brew the following Monday. After that, I will drink it all, and you will have none. (Actually, it will be on tap at Ska - I'll let you know when).

My beer will be an imperial red ale based on Ska's own Pinstripe Red Ale and inspired by an Oregon beer, Ninkasi Believer. I'll write a more detailed post about the recipe early next week.

- Beer blogs are being born at an increasingly rapid rate. Check out my "Other Beer Blogs" section to the right and down for some good new blogs. I'm not the only one doing this, just the best. :)

- Today is Beer at 6512's first birthday. Ain't it cute?

Review: Ska Sour

Sour beers are the latest craze to hit the American craft-brewing scene. A number of breweries, like New Belgium, Avery and Deschutes, like to stretch their creativity with sours. Others, like Russian River and Cascade Brewing, make it the core of their offerings.

It's a time-consuming, labor-intensive and expensive brewing method. The Belgian souring yeasts used to give these beers their character are cantankerous and can cause havoc if not properly restrained.

Ska Sour is Ska Brewing Co.'s aptly named entry into the category, and it is the first Durango beer to tackle this style of brewing. The beer spent the better part of a year in Heaven Hill bourbon barrels with Brettanomyces and Lactobacillus yeast knocking around.

Head Brewer Thomas Larsen said Ska simply wanted to experiment with the brewery's first sour beer. Ska unleashed it at last weekend's Big Beers, Belgians and Barley Wines festival in Vail.

Ska was exactly right to call Ska Sour a "Belgian-inspired sour pale ale." It may be inspired by Belgian brewing traditions - the Belgians have used Brettanomyces in beers like Orval for quite some time - but it is not brewed to any classic Belgian style.

Ska Sour comes in sizable brown glass bottles that top $9 each after sales tax. The stout price reflects the intensive brewing process.

The yeast are eager to play. As soon as I popped the cork, foam peeked out of the bottle top. When poured, the white head settled quickly atop a copper-amber body. It's a pretty beer.

Ska Sour landed at 6 percent ABV. More notably, it's aggressively hopped to about 62 IBUs. That's IPA territory. (By comparison, Ska's Modus Hoperandi IPA is 65 IBUs).

Ska Sour is dominated by two tastes: sour and bitter. The souring yeasts are readily apparent, but so are the aforementioned bittering hops. This is a peculiarly American creation. The Belgians would not hop their beers this aggressively, nor would the English mess with souring yeasts.

These flavors - sour and bitter - seem to be at war with each other within the beer. Some craft beer fans seem to love the combination of West Coast-style hopping and funky Belgian yeasts. Try as I might, I'm not one of them. I find the flavors not at all complementary.

Ska Sour is worth trying for the novelty, and to support the extraordinary time and effort that went into creating this beer. The brewery is in the middle of a flood of releases, with Snowdown's Hyper Fierce Gnar Gnar Hefe only recently unveiled and Orange Cream Stout and DIFF, a recurring seasonal witbier, soon to come.

And actually, Ska already brews an impressive Belgian-inspired ale that is too often overlooked: True Blonde Dubbel.

As for Ska Sour, I give it a C+. I'm curious how others will react. It's not for the faint of heart, but it might win some acclaim from the beer-geek set. Some beer drinkers, with apologies to George Clinton, will surely want to make their funk the Ska funk.

Please tell me your impressions by leaving a comment.

Ska Sour hits the shelves

Just a quick note that Ska Sour, the new limited release from Ska Brewing Co., is on the shelves in Durango. Fair warning: it tops $9 a bottle after sales tax, and it's unlike anything Ska has brewed before. I'll post a full review as soon as I can. For background, check out "Ska Update" below.

Review: Ice Pick Ale (Silverton Brewery)

Silverton Brewery remains a relatively tiny operation. The Greene
Street brewpub has never brewed more than 200 barrels a year, said Head Brewer Colin Peterman, who I found tending bar on a recent visit.

That may be changing.

Peterman was hired in May to oversee expansion. He hand-built a canning line, and Silverton now sells six-packs of 12-ounce cans to go. Silverton Brewery cans are sold in liquor stores in Ouray, and Peterman said he hopes to begin selling to Durango liquor stores soon.

During my visit, only three beers were available: a brown ale, a red ale and Ice Pick Ale.

Ice Pick is a fairly typical American-style India Pale Ale. Peterman hops it with a Magnum hops extract that is used for all Silverton beers, along with some Cascades, and Palisades for aroma.

Ice Pick comes in at 6.5 percent alcohol by volume and 73 IBUs.

It’s really quite a good IPA. The hop bitterness is pleasant but not over the top. Some IPAs knock you back with bitterness. Silverton’s doesn’t. For an IPA, it runs toward the floral/fruity end of the spectrum.

Every town, I think, deserves its own brewery. Silverton can justifiably be proud of Silverton Brewery. Hopefully, the brewery will be able to expand its offerings. Three beers constitutes a fairly paltry menu; most brewpubs offer a dozen or more beers at a time. To be fair, though, January is not exactly high season in Silverton.

If you happen to visit Silverton, sipping an Ice Pick (now that’s an image!) ain’t a bad way to while away some time, and now you can bring it back to the camp site in cans. Silverton’s version is a worthy member of Colorado’s impressive roster of IPAs. B+

Review: Avery The Beast

The Beast is part of the Demons of Ale series from Avery, a Boulder brewery.

It’s styled a Grand Cru Ale, sold in 12-ounce bottles wrapped in red foil for about $8 each.

Avery Brewing Co. is one of my favorite breweries. I particularly like its India Pale Ale, Out of Bounds Stout, White Rascal witbier and Salvation, a Belgian-style golden ale. Much like Dogfish Head, Adam Avery and company brew interesting, innovative beers, put them on the market and hope people buy them.

The Beast is aptly named. It’s a 15 percent alcohol-by-volume bruiser. It pours a deep amber with minimal head and is similar to a barley wine in appearance.

The Beast smacks you over the head with a strong alcohol note and a thick, viscous body. It also carries a noticeable sweetness and warms your throat and chest like a whiskey as it goes down.

This very aggressive animal is brewed with two-row malted barley, honey malt, imported Belgian specialty grains (aromatic, pale wheat, roasted wheat and Special B), a variety of hops (Magnum, Galena, Saaz, Hallertau, Tettnang and Hersbrucker), raisins, dates, alfalfa honey, turbinado, blackstrap molasses, dark Belgian candy sugar, water and a couple of yeast strains, one of Belgian origin.

I like that Avery takes chances. However, the flipside of that is I sometimes find their beers not to my liking. The Beast is so strong that it blurs the line between beer and spirits. It’s decidedly a sipping beer, and even then, sipping becomes a chore toward the end of the 12-ounce serving. It’s all just a bit much.

I’ve found I don’t like most beers over about 11 percent alcohol. They become drinks to be conquered, rather than beers to be enjoyed.

I did not tame The Beast. The Beast tamed me. C

Ska update

Ska Brewing Co. has a couple of new beers debuting soon: Ska Sour and Orange Cream Stout.

Ska Sour is the brewery’s first attempt to make a Belgian-style sour (and, I believe, the first brewery in Durango to do so).

Ska Head Brewer Thomas Larsen introduced Brettanomyces and Lactobacillus yeast to the Belgian amber during barrel aging.

I’m officially excited. Some of the best beers in the world, like Deschutes' The Dissident and Belgium’s Orval, use Brettanomyces. Belgian souring yeasts are a rather beautiful, Old World way of introducing special flavors.

Avery Brewing Co. in Boulder has done similar projects, as with its Brabant release, but Ska is the first Durango brewery to take on the cantankerous Brett monster.

“Basically, we just wanted to experiment with our first sour,” Larsen told me. And good on 'im.

Larsen said the new beer has “a very nice sour aroma,” but is not excessively sour. The brewery will bottle a little over 100 cases of Ska Sour, which is expected to land at roughly 6 percent ABV.

It will debut at Vail’s Big Beers, Belgians and Barleywines Festival Jan. 7-9, and in local liquor stores soon after. Bottling is scheduled for today.

Secondly, Ska is also brewing Orange Cream Stout, to be bottled on Jan. 18 and released around Valentine’s Day. I know little about it, but consider: Orange … Cream … Stout. Is there anything about that you don’t like? Me neither.

Finally, the great blogger-brewer collaboration marches on. Larsen and I have a brew date of Jan. 25 for my Ska imperial red ale, essentially a double-Pinstripe. We meet a week before to hash out the recipe.

I’m thinking water, malted barley, hops and yeast will be key ingredients (I know, a bit opaque, but I’ll let you know when we hash out the recipe. It’ll likely be a high-octane version of Pinstripe, a red ale big on Liberty hops and caramel malts, with a classic English Ringwood Ale yeast).

Review: Hyper Fierce Gnar Gnar Hefe (Ska Brewing)

Snowdown is Durango’s winterized, but not at all sanitized, version of Mardi Gras. It fills the town with a parade and packs the bars with young folks eager to break out of the winter doldrums.

Despite the civilized veneer, it’s an unmitigated drunkfest. One of my favorite Snowdown memories is encountering a lonely Visa gift card sitting on the bar at Lady Falconburgh’s a few years back. A waitress asked, is that yours? No, I replied. A second waitress asked, is that yours? No, I replied. A third waitress asked, is that yours? Yes, I replied, and that’ll be two shots of Don Julio 1492, the most expensive drink in the bar.

That kind of thing just happens during Snowdown.

Ska Brewing Co. in Durango has been associated with Snowdown for many years, brewing a special release each time the winter fest rolls around.

This year, it’s Hyper Fierce Gnar Gnar Hefe, an unfiltered wheat beer brewed with toasted coconut and pineapple. Hyper Fierce is available in bomber bottles for about $4.99 each (featuring label art from local cartoonist Shan Wells), and on tap at Ska HQ. Expect it to show up in downtown bars around Snowdown.

The release brings Beer at 6512 full circle. A year ago, my first local review was of Ska’s 2009 Snowdown release, Royal Embalming Fluid (appetizing name, right?).

Ska makes an effort to tie its Snowdown releases to the fest’s theme, which changes every year. This year: “Life’s a Beach.” Thus the pineapple-coconut wheat.

Hyper Fierce (right around 5 percent ABV) is a medium-bodied wheat ale, thicker than Durango Wheat, for example, but lighter than Ska’s summer Wheelsucker Wheat release.

Ska Head Brewer Thomas Larsen seems to have a thorough understanding of what makes a good wheat beer. Wheelsucker was Beer at 6512’s Beer of the Year, and Hyper Fierce is only slightly less impressive. It goes down easy.

"Thomas earns high marks on this, " Ska President Dave Thibodeau said via e-mail. "I thought it sounded ridiculous when he first mentioned the idea, but Snowdown is a beach theme this year and it’s one of those great occasions where ridiculousness shines!"

"Thomas wrangled this original Bavarian Hefeweizen strain masterfully, letting the banana esters shine and keeping the phenols and clove flavors at bay. Both banana and pineapple really come through in the nose. The flavor is predominately pineapple, but the toasted coconut really comes through in the end," Thibodeau said.

I firmly believe every professional brewer needs a chance to play. It’s relatively easy for brewpubs, which can throw a few gallons of whatever on tap and hope to sell it. It’s a little more difficult for packaging breweries like Ska, which have more obligations. Ska seems to understand this, and the brewery has evolved its Local Series and Snowdown releases that give the brewers a lengthy leash to try off-beat recipes.

You also have to give Ska some props for releasing a pineapple and coconut flavored wheat in the dead of winter. It’s not exactly a traditional winter seasonal.

There’s also a bit of banana flavor in there. I had a sip from it in the tanks a few weeks ago, and the pineapple seems to have asserted itself a wee bit more since then vis-a-vis the coconut (for the sake of disclosure, the brewery comped me a pint and a bomber to sample).

It's an interesting beer and unlike any other you can buy in Durango. The emptier the glass gets, the more I like it. B+

Photo: Ska Head Brewer Thomas Larsen with a Hyper Fierce in the brewery's tap room.