Pink Boots at Uinta and at Portneuf Valley

"Hide not your talents; they for use were made. What use is a sundial in the shade?" ~Benjamin Franklin

October 16: Today was an insanely long day. Lots of things contributed to that. One was that my one day delay out of Denver meant I could only spend two hours at Uinta. Another was that today was the only day that Penny Pink would be brewing at Portneuf Valley Brewery and she wanted me to help her troubleshoot beer flavors that might be attributed to production and equipment changes. Another thing was that I really wanted to get home to see my honey.

I met Uinta's President/Sales & Operations Manager/Owner-Partner Steve Kuftinec at 8:30 am. Steve gave me a tour and I commented that Uinta had one of the best laid-out brewery buildings that I had seen. The production process went counter-clockwise and everything was completely logical. Steve told me that the building had been purpose-built for Uinta.

When Uinta opened their current location they only planned to have a tasting room. However, the first day the taproom opened, 40 people showed up at the door expecting a brewpub and wanting to order lunch. How can you say "no" to that kind of business? Uinta quickly installed a kitchen and now they are open for soup and sandwichs for lunch and early dinner.

Steve showed me the brewery offices upstairs and commented that CEO Will Hamill was the mastermind/genius that helped build Uinta from the new kid on the block to its current place as the largest craft brewery in Utah.

Steve introduced me to Cellarman/Lab QC guy Eric Baumann who was in the middle of a DE filter, Production Manager Kevin Ely who was busy planning the brew schedule, and Russ Webster. I'm not sure who has the title, "Brewmaster," but I think Kevin has it.

Steve told me that brewer James Smith was looking forward to my visit. I loved the title on his business card. It said, "James Smith, Passionate Brewer." I brewed with James briefly, then we sat in a quiet office where he could keep an eye on the brewhouse through the window and we talked shop for awhile.

James still homebrews because Uinta is a production brewery and not a brewpub so there's not much room for experimentation at work. He's got some beer in a wooden barrel at home and he wants to do more barrel aging. I told him about the crazy-fascinating lactic and brettanomyces beers I've tasted on my trip, and we talked about whiskey distilling, which James is also interested in.

The interesting thing about James' passions, is that he was raised Mormon. He said his mom had a little trouble with the brewing at first. She asked him, "You don't drink much, do you honey?" James said some Mormons didn't like that he was a brewers, and others thought it was interesting. All levels of reactions, just like the rest of life.

I really had a great time with James and wished I could have stayed longer, but duty and the road were calling me. Steve gifted me a mixed six-pack on my way out the door. In the photo at the top of this page, L to R (zigzagging up and down): Teri, James, Eric, Kevin, Will and Russ. Steve took the photo rather than be in it. He claimed he had "a face made for radio."

I took the photo at left of some autumn-tinged aspen trees in Idaho as I zipped up Hwy 15. Utah had lots of mesas, which are flat lopped-off high areas in the high desert.

I drove nearly straight north to Pocatello, Idaho. Penny Pink is the Brewmistress and Owner of Portneuf Valley Brewing Company there.

In the photo below, Penny and I are standing in front of her three-vessel brewhouse and one of her 2-barrel fermenters. Penny prefers the title Brewmistress over Brewmaster. She says it's just one more thing to "throw 'em off guard," along with her name (Pink) and height (taller than me). If you've read her entertaining posts on the Brewers Forum, then you know how funny she is.

Penny must be one stubborn woman. She just won't quit no matter how hard it gets. (That sense of humor comes in handy here.)

She's got the smallest commercial brewing system that I visited on this trip. Her batch size is 2 to 4 barrels, depending on the fermenter, and it takes her about 11 hours to brew it. That amount of time was just recently lowered from 14 hours by an equipment upgrade.

I had plenty of time while driving to ponder how brewing could take that long, and I couldn't quite figure it out. As I watched Penny's wort take about three hours to get to a boil, and then take about three hours to cool down and run off to the fermenter. Ah ha. I see now. If you are fighting your equipment, you could be in for a verrryyy looonnnnggggg day.

We discussed various things Penny could try. I checked emails during the run-off. (Maybe we should call it the walk-off because it took so long!) Finally the day was done, about 11:00 pm, and we sat down with Penny's son, Jeremias. (Not a typo. It's an old fashioned spelling for Jeremiah.) Jeremias is Portneuf Valley Brewing's art director, and his t-shirt designs are very popular.

We went through every single beer. I was so tired I had a hard time articulating my impressions.

I followed Penny to her house and parked in front. I told her I planned to sleep in a little tomorrow.

A Visit to Bloomington & Upland Breweries

"Goodness is the only investment that never fails." ~Henry David Thoreau

September 23-24: Drove from Lexington, Kentucky to Bloomington, Indiana. As I drove the limestone showing through where the highway was cut changed from shale-like to granite-like. The clouds were beautiful, numerous and fluffy white, just like they were in Kentucky. More of the trees were turning brown, with many leaves falling from the trees and tumbling across the highway in front of me. Across southern Indiana I found a lot of Country Music radio stations and had to keep searching for classic rock.

I arrived at the home of Bloomington Brewing Company's Owner/Partner Jeff Mease in the early afternoon. We connected right away and talked our heads off about brewpubs and restaurants.

Jeff got his start in the restaurant business by dropping out of college at 20 and starting his own pizza delivery company. He learned quickly at the College of Hard Knocks, and grew his pizza company to a regional (citywide) chain of five Pizza Express companies. More locations than either Dominos or Papa Johns has in Bloomington, a vibrant college town of about 80,000 people.

Jeff is very progressive and is passionate about sustainability. He's got one emission-free electric delivery vehicle, and plans to get another one within a year.

The photo above, at left and at right show Jeff, his electric delivery "truck," and me in the driver seat. I didn't actually drive it, but I can tell you it was a fairly quiet ride. The truck's top speed is about 20 miles per hour, and it is licensed to go on any city street with a 35 MPH speed limit or less.

In 1994 (not sure of the year as I memorize the info - I'll repost the correct answer later), Jeff opened Lennie's restaurant with his then-wife. Later he added the Bloomington Brewing Company and pub next door.

I asked Jeff if he had problems as a restaurant owner, selling beer to other restaurants. He said a few but not many. It helps that Jeff is a huge supporter of the local restaurant association and has built solid, positive relationships with the other restaurant owners.

Plus he's low key with his brewery signage in Lennie's. You may notice in the photo at the top of this page that the name "Bloomington Brewing Company" is not listed anywhere on the external signage. The tap handles are plain black without logos.

We went to the brewpub for dinner. It's connected to Lennies. Lennies has a more upscale feel, and the brewpub has a casual feel. While we enjoyed our beers and dinner, Brewmaster Floyd Rosenbaum dropped in. Photo at left is of Floyd and Jeff.

After dinner we wheelied in the delivery truck over to Upland Brewing Company to visit Lead Brewer Eileen (Ale-Leen) Martin. Eileen has 15 years of professional brewing experience. It just amazes me that there are women brewers out there with that depth of experience that I never heard of. Eileen had heard of me. I make a lot more "noise" out in the brewing world (writing articles, this blog, etc.) than she does.

Eileen is a petite blonde with a self-deprecating sense of humor and a lot of passion for brewing. (Photo at right.) Eileen spent most of her brewing career in Louisville, Kentucky. She's been at Upland in Bloomington, Indiana for the last two years.

Eileen gave me the full tour of Upland's brewpub. Upland is currently the largest brewery in Indiana, producing 5,000 barrels a year in bottles and kegs.

I was shocked to see how the management/owner team at Upland refused to separate the brewery and kitchen space. It wasn't just the serving tank cooler sharing space with lettuce and chicken breasts; all the brewery space was shared with the restaurant and kitchen. The staff's "break table," was right in the middle of the brewery. I can't blame Eileen; she's as much in favor of separate spaces for restaurant and brewery production as I am.

Eileen produces a full spectrum of beer styles and sent me packing with a beautiful 750-ml bottle of wood-aged Blueberry Lambic, refermented in the bottle. Then Jeff and I electrically motored back to his house.

Jeff recently bought a 69 acre farm with his ex-wife and current partner, Lennie. (She's now happily remarried.) I think it's great that Jeff and Lennie have a healthy post-divorce business partnership.

Jeff has big plans for his future farm(house) brewery and country restaurant. He wants to produce organic food for the restaurant, and some barley and hops for the brewery. We brainstormed "energy independence" for the project as well as other sustainability issues. We talked until 1:00 am. That's how much fun we had talking and brainstorming!

The next day I blogged from Jeff's big farmhouse-style dining room table until it was time for me to motor off to St. Louis, Missouri.

Pink Boots at Troegs & Visit to Appalachian

“The farther behind I leave the past, the closer I am to forging my own character.” ~Isabelle Eberhardt

September 19: Last night I rebelled against my own schedule and stayed up reading a novel until 3:00 am. Sometimes you just have to do that. Slept in and after my shower and a nice chat with Lauri Lebo, I got on the road toward Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, which was about 15 minutes away.

Troegs Brewery Sales & Communication guru Ed Yashinski was my contact at Troegs, but he was so busy getting ready for a Beer Dinner in Philadelphia that saw him only once.

Troegs is owned and operated by two brothers, John and Chris Trogner. Chris was out of town on a sales trip. John gave me the grand tour and then set me loose with brewer Chris Brugger for a few hours.

“Brugger” is really enthusiastic about Troegs’ BrauKon brewhouse. From what he tells me, among the German brewing equipment manufacturers, BrauKon seems most willing to work with Americans regarding our propensity for using huge quantities of malt and hops. Thus Troegs has an appropriately oversized mash tun and a hop jack. Interestingly, the Germans told Troegs that hop jacks are illegal to use in Germany. If you add hops after the kettle, you would have to label that beer as, “Beer Flavored With Hops.” I liked Troegs’ intelligently designed five-vessel brewhouse that combined new automated German BrauKon vessels with their manual JV Northwest system.

I walked around a bit to observe what the other crew members were up to. Troegs recently took over a new section of their building after the local hospital moved their storage to a larger unit elsewhere. John is enjoying the sudden luxury of space by experimenting with wood-aged beers, including a brettanomyces beer.

At about 3:00 pm, John had hamburgers cooking on a grill off the dock. The crew has had a crazy production push the last two weeks, and he wanted to reward them with a barbeque. (Photo below.)

We sat on stacks of pallets and enjoyed burgers and pulled barbeque pork and a few beers. Most of the crew was done with their shift. It was a hot sunny afternoon and we tried to stay cool in the shade of a small beer festival canopy.

I tasted several beers, including Troeg’s famous “Mad Elf,” at 11% ABV (alcohol by volume). The starting gravity was 22 degrees Plato – and that’s before the cherries were added. Troegs’ Mad Elf is so popular that they began brewing it in August in order to satisfy demand. John assures me that demand will not be completely satisfied this year, in spite of beginning production so early.

After the barbeque respite, the brewers and I lined up for the photo at the top of this page, L to R: Brooks Miller (whose wife had just begun labor, with first baby due tomorrow), John Trogner, Chris Brugger, Andy Dickson, Teri and Whitney Thompson.

Most of the crew departed right after that. I worked on emails while Whitney finished up the paperwork on the third and final brew of the day. It was nice to hang out with another woman brewer again. I was the first other woman brewer that Whitney had ever met. I added her to my Pink Boots Society list and we counted up the women brewers: Whitney was the 34th woman on the USA portion of the list. (There are six women former boots-wearers on the Emeritus List and eight women brewers on the International List.)

After work, at 7:00 pm, Whitney took me to nearby Appalachian Brewing Company where we met up with Chris Brugger. Appalachian's Head Brewer Jonathan Reeves and Assistant Brewer Jeff Jerman (photo right) set me up with a sampler set of all 18 beers that were on tap tonight.

They don’t brew all 18 here: Appalachian has two additional locations: a 7-barrel system in Camphill, PA and a 10-bbl system in Gettysburg, PA. (Yes – that Gettysburg.) This system in Harrisburg was huge, and Jonathan gave me the quick tour. If I remember correctly (and I rarely take notes, so I have to memorize the information, often under the influence of good craft beer), the system here had a 30-barrel brewhouse and they just took delivery on a whole bunch of 125-barrel fermenters. That’s pretty aggressive for a 2,500-bbl per-year distributing brewpub.

After our Appalachian beer sampler, Whitney, Chris and I moved upstairs to "The Abby," Appalachian's Belgian bar. We ordered some Oktoberfest seasonal dishes, grabbed a couple of Belgian beers, and moved to the patio.

Whitney’s boyfriend, Larry Horowitz, brewer at Iron Hill Brewery in Philadelphia joined us. The photo above shows the four of us posing and “doing the Garrett.” Left to Right: Teri, Whitney, Larry and Chris Brugger. After lots of laughs, it was time to head back to the brewery parking lot where I was camped for the night.

Had to wear earplugs as Troegs’ neighbor is a trucking company. Semi-trucks idled their motors and came and went all night. It sounded like a truck stop but I slept through it all.

Pink Boots at Stoudt's

"Dive into the sea of thought, and find there pearls beyond price." ~Moses Ibn Ezra

September 12-14: Basil T's Brewpub & Italian Grill had a very nice bathroom with a shower upstairs in their offices, so I was able to catch a shower there before I left.

My 12-Volt invterter had broken, so since my van and trailer were disconnected, I drove off in search of a new inverter. An inverter has a cigarrette-lighter plug that leads to a box, and on the box is a standard 3-prong household current outlet. I run DeLorme GPS Street Atlas on my laptop while I drive, and with a working inverter I can keep the computer battery charged. I found Automotive Electronics in Red Bank and bought a 400 Watt unit.

Rehooked my trailer to my Astro van and soon I was on the road to Pennsylvania. Thank you to Gretchen Schmidhausler for gifting me a Basil T's t-shirt.

Adamstown, Pennsylvania is in the middle of Pennsylvania Dutch territory. That means the folks there are mostly of German heritage. (Dutch is a misnomer for "Deutsch," which is German for "German.") Also there are lots of Amish folks of various sects in this area.

I arrived at Stoudt's midafternoon on a beautiful breezy and sunny day. Head Brewer John Matson got me hooked into electrical, and then Carol Stoudt arrived. Carol showed me around the expansive grounds.

Stoudt's quite a family enterprise. Carol and Ed started the brewery in 1987, and Carol was the boots-on Brewmaster for the first two years. Ed is an entrepreneur and has been Chef/Owner of Stoudt's restaurant since he was 22 years old. John Matson is their son-in-law, married to Carrie, Stoudt's Art Director. Son Eddie is Sales Manager and he's engaged to Jodi Andrews, a very experienced brewer who used to work at Boston Beer Works. Daughter Elizabeth is the Head Baker in the bread department, and she also administers the weekend Antique Shows. Even the grandkids get involved, helping where they can.

After the tour, Carol set me up with several beers to taste. Then we went up the street to "Stoudtville," where Eddie and Jodi live. Stoudtville is an actual town just up the street from Stoudt's large complex. It was Ed's vision to develop a European-styled village where the homeowners lived upstairs and had shops on the first floor. Ed's vision was a bit ahead of its time, and he needed cash for a brewery expansion, so now other developers are continuing the exapansion of Stoudtville. Most of the residents are second-career folks or semi-retired, and their shops may be open every day or just on weekends when most of the antique-hunters and tourists visit. There seems to be more antique shops per capita here than anywhere I've ever seen. Carol says its because the local folks are so thrifty they never throw anything away, and they fix the old stuff and keep it in good condition.

We visited Jodi at home, above her vintage clothing shop. Jodi (photo at left) began collecting gnomes when a friend of hers who owned a tavern in Boston gave her a LaChouf gnome. It's been gnomes ever since.

After tours of my trailer, we settled down with the whole family and a few grandkids outside on the new patio for dinner. Ed is famous for his steaks. He's so particular about his steaks, that he won't allow any one else to cut them. Carol laughs as she explains that they can only go away for ten days at a time, because Ed has to be back to cut the steaks.

The next morning I met up with Ed in the kitchen to watch him work his steak-cutting magic. Ed cuts the "chain" off the tenderloin, which many steak restaurants don't do. He also cuts the tendon sheath off the sirloins, so he's got the tenderest sirloins around. Photo at right is Ed cutting and weighing the steaks. When Ed and Carol do go away, like to the upcoming GABF in Denver, Ed vacu-packs the steaks and cryo-preserves them on ice in the cooler.

The first night I had the Filet Minon for dinner, and the second night I tried the Sirloin, and I have to agree: Ed knows his steaks. They were tender, juicy, and perfect at Medium-Rare.

After cutting steaks, Ed and I went to their house in downtown Adamstown where Carol whipped up a batch of her famous sourdough pancakes. Ed is a big believer in sourdough. He claims he lost 30 pounds on his beer and sourdough diet.

In the afternoon I hung out with the brewers. In the photo below, L to R, Top Row: Gary Gagliardi, Teri, John Matson and Matt Krasst. Bottom Row: Brett Kintzer and Joe McMonagle.
We tried plenty of beer my first night at Stoudt's. (I held off on starting "Happy Hour" too early on the second night.) In the photo at the top of this page, Ed is pouring their wood-aged Fat Dog. Their big bottles are rare and tasty treats. Photo at top of page, L to R: Ed, Jodi, Teri, Carol and Eddie.

On the second morning before my departure, I was able to spend some time in the bread bakery with Elizabeth. (Photo below.) Elizabeth is a self-trained bread baker, like myself. She has an instinct for it, and knows how much liquid to add be squeezing the flour and poking the dough. There is a very nifty bread mixmaster in the bakery. It's much slower than your standard huge Hobart restaurant kitchen mixmaster.

Elizabeth says she likes to start her day by mixing up some dough and she came in early that day and had some loaves proofing for when I worked with her. All of her breads use a sourdough culture that Ed procured from a restaurant friend in New York. I was told the culture is over 100 years old. It is the same sourdough culture that Carol used in her sourdough pancakes.

As soon as we got there, Elizabeth heated one of the three ovens to 450 degrees. She scored each loaf with distinctive cuts, and she put sunflour seeds on the Multigrain loaves and flour on her Rye loaves. The Beer Bread goes naked except for a wheat-patterned score cut into the top. With these distinctive cuts and toppings, the customers (and gift shop employees) can determine at a glance what type of loaf it is.

Elizabeth deftly popped each of the loaves into the oven and filled the oven right up. She shut the door, set the timer, and hit the steam button. Steam filled the hot oven and hissed out around the door's edges.

At this point the dough had been kneaded in the machine to the right texture. Elizabeth plopped a big wad in front of me on the wooden work table. It looked like about three gallons of dough! It was all Beer Bread dough, and she had put crushed Crystal malt and Scarlet Lady ESB beer into it. She handed me the table scraper and told me to cut off two pound hunks of dough. That's me in the photo below following directions. Elizabeth is in the background transferring finished loaves from the oven to the rack.

Elizabeth showed me how to roll the dough for the first rolling. It's all done by hand, and you roll the dough like you're rolling up a wet beach towel. She threw plastic over the loaves and we let them rest for 20 minutes, then we rerolled them longer and thinner. Elizabeth said I was a pretty decent roller. (My loaves were a bit too long at first, but we fixed them.) After the second rolling, we transferred the loaves to wooden boards covered with cornmeal, six to a board. Elizabeth put all the boards on a rack, and then they were rolled into a big proofing box to rise. Elizabeth favors a three-day proof at a cool temperature (36-38 degrees) so that the loaves can develop their sour flavor.

Believe it or not, we were so fast and Elizabeth is so organized, that I only spent just over an hour in the bakery!

After my bread baking experience, I rode with Carol back to their house for a shower and sourdough pancake and eggs breakfast with Ed. Whew! A full foodie experience at Stoudts' in Adamstown!

Then it was back to my trailer, pack up, and head back to New Jersey to visit relatives for the weekend. You probably already figured this out: I try to schedule breweries during the week when the brewers are working, and my relatives during the weekend when they are not working.

Pink Boots at Basil T's Brewpub & Italian Grill

"In attempts to improve your character, know what is in your power and what is beyond it." ~Francis Thompson

September 10-11: OK, I overslept. What can I say? Aunt Pat is such a party animal - she hardly goes to bed before midnight!

Then I realized I'd better do some laundry, and...

Michael and Ellen helped me plan the next driving section of my route. This is not as easy as it seems. On the west coast, if there is a highway, anybody can drive on it. Not so on the east coast! There are highways called Parkways, and sometimes only passenger cars can drive on them.

Because of the trailer I am towing, I can only go on the Parkways where commercial trucks can drive. Finding out which are which is not as easy as it should be. It's not on the maps and the Internet is not always accessible.

Michael called about four New Jersey state police offices and they kept passing the buck and telling him to call some other police department. Finally he called the local AAA office and we got the answer.

FYI: I know for sure that in NY a van and trailer cannot drive on the Bronx River Parkway nor the Hutchinson River Parkway. In NJ I couldn't travel on the Pallisades Interstate Parkway.

One funny thing with this situation, is that when I used my DeLorme GPS system that runs on my laptop, there is no option to force it to avoid these routes. Therefore the bloody system kept yelling at me all the way from Brooklyn to Scarsdale, and half of the way from Scarsdale to Red Bank, NJ. (And if you go to Basil T's, you want the one in Monmouth County, not the other Red Bank in New Jersey.) There is another Basil T's brewpub in Toms River in Ocean County that is not related to this one.

Luckily you can drive on the Garden State Parkway with a van and trailer, although I didn't see very many semi-trucks. It must cost a ton of money to ship stuff from New York to New Jersey because the truckers have to go so far out of their way.

Found Red Bank easy enough, but Basil T's is lacking in their signage. I finally spotted the brewing tanks as I rounded a corner, zooming right past the entrance to their parking lot. No left turn allowed and I was suddenly routed back over the river I just came over. It's not so easy finding a place to turn around when you're towing a trailer.

So what signage does Basil T's have besides tanks showing through windows? A letter "B" on the awning. That's it. That and a very cool photo of an Italian deli with an old bicycle and wine bottles, but how the heck would you know what that photo means? It's on a huge back-lit sign out front - with no words. If it weren't for those brewing tanks I never would have found the place. Luckily lots of locals know where Basil T's is - it's a very popular restaurant. They also apparently know this snazzy photo is "sign language" for Basil T's.

Parked across a few parking spots while I called Brewmaster Gretchen Schmidhausler to see where I should park. (It's a small lot.) Manager J.J. had me park in the corner in one parking spot, and disconnect the van and park that in the next parking spot. Luckily business is quiet for about one week between the busy summer season, and the busy rainy and winter season. It didn't look so quiet to me, but I didn't get kicked out of the parking lot either.

J.J. is a personable young manager, and he was most helpful in getting me set up at the bar with their ethernet cable. Basil T's free wireless Internet is more than spotty - it hardly registers. With a good ethernet connection, I blogged for several hours with some beers and lots of football fans to keep me company. Then I had a delightful lemon-caper-chicken dish and a glass of Sauvignon Blanc.

The next morning, I met Gretchen at 8:30 am to brew Basil T's 1000th batch of beer. Today is a milestone for me too: Basil T's is the 50th brewery that I have visited on my trip - the 27th I've brewed at, and I've also visited 23 others.

Because of the timing for Gretchen's GABF entries, she couldn't brew something wacky or unusual for the 1000th batch, just her regular Maxwell's Dry Stout. She's already won two GABF gold medals and one bronze medal with this Stout. She's hoping for another gold.

Most of the beers I've participated in brewing along the way I will never taste. However I will be attending (and judging at) the GABF this year, so I plan to visit Basil T's booth and taste Gretchen's 1000 beer that I was witness to.

I'd like to take a moment to clarify something. When I wear pink boots at a brewery and "help" them brew a beer, I'm actually not doing the brewing. Sometimes I participate very little. It depends on how automated the system is, and how much the brewers feel comfortable letting me help. I'm mostly there to observe, ask questions of them, and answer their questions. It's more about an interchange of brewing information and techniques. Generally I job shadow one or several people during the day. I find it fun to hang out for a little while in each of the departments. Every brewery has a specific way to "skin that cat," and far be it for me to tell another brewer that they should brew with my procedures on their system!

The interchange of ideas and brainstorming of solutions has been mind-expanding for me, and hopefully will turn out to be career-expanding for me as well. I think most all the brewers I've visited have found these conversations at least enjoyable, and hopefully a few found my suggestions helpful and on-target for solution finding.

So, Gretchen mashed-in her 1000th batch of stout, assisted by Leo the resident handyman and all-around most-helpful guy. I watched and tried not to get in the way.

That's not as easy as it seems. Gretchen works on a Pub mono-block system. Pub is on record as saying the Basil T's installation was installed into the smallest space they've ever put a system. Her combination brewhouse and fermentation room take up 10 x 20 square feet. There are walk-spaces that are 3-inches wide. I kid you not. Luckily several glass walls are actually glass doors, and they open to allow passage if needed.

In the middle of the afternoon Ale Street News editor and publisher Tony Forder dropped in to say, "Hi" and have a beer. Photo at top of page, L to R: Tony, Gretchen and Teri. Former brewer and owner of Heavyweight Brewing Company, Tom Baker, joined us for a beer. (Tom is in the photo at the bottom of this page.)

After Gretchen put the beer to bed in one of the four fermenters, she wrote on it with dry-erase marker. See photo above right.
While Gretchen worked on a few things in the brewery, I wandered around and took pictures of Basil T's impressive mug club mugs. They are up to over 1,300 mugs now, and they're shooting for 2,000 mugs before May 2008. They're already out of room behind the bar, so if the owner, Vic, reaches his goal of 2,000, then they will have to remodel the bar!

Their mug price is so cheap, I can't imagine that anybody in Red Bank wouldn't be a member. For $24 a year (for 2007), you get to keep the mug (you get a new mug each year), plus you get about 4 extra ounces, so instead of $5.75 for 16 ounces, you pay $3.75 for 20 ounces. And there are special "mug nights" where the price of a 20 ounce mug of beer drops to $3.00. The photos below barely register the impressive impact the sheer volume of matching mugs make on the bar scene.

At the end of the day, while Gretchen did "clean up," I borrowed a spot at a desk upstairs and actually connected to the upstairs wireless router. I spent several hours in the afternoon (and after dinner) finally catching up on blogs and photos. Yes!

Gretchen left for a few hours after work to go home, shower, and check her dogs. Gretchen is a newlywed - only three months. Unfortunately her husband Kevin couldn't join us for dinner.

Gretchen and Tom Baker returned at 5:30 pm, and we had a lovely early dinner next to a window beneath a beautiful mural in the dining room. Basil T's really is a classy Italian restaurant. We enjoyed several of Gretchen's beers with our meals and laughed a lot.

Then with Gretchen's award-winning Maxwell's Dry Stout in our hands, we posed for the photo below. L to R: Teri, Gretchen and Tom Baker. Unfortunately Tom's wife Peggy had a work committment and couldn't join us. Peggy contacted me a long time ago when I first announced this trip on the BA Brewers Forum. Even though her and Tom's brewery, Heavyweight Brewing Company, is now defunct, Peggy wanted to make sure that I was coming through Red Bank to visit Gretchen. I had met Gretchen as a GABF Judge, and I had definitely planned to visit her. After some late night blogging up in Basil T's office, I headed out to my trailer to talk to my husband to get an in depth rundown of how his first two days at his new job have been. I sure miss him! Good night.

100th Post: News From The Road

Welcome to the 100th post on this blog. Here is some news from the road…

1.) The bad news first: Some of you may already have heard that beer scribe and craft beer champion, Michael Jackson, died last week of Parkinson’s Disease. Google “Michael Jackson beer writer,” for more information on Michael and his remarkable career as everybody’s favorite beer writer. Here is one link: http://lifeandhealth.guardian.co.uk/food/story/0,,2161923,00.html

2.) The Pink Boots Society list of women brewers worldwide is growing every day. As of this post there are over 30 USA brewers and six international brewers listed. Please email any information you have about women brewers not listed here. Thanks!

3.) I’ve been collecting visitor statistics on this blog since August 13. The last full week I have statistics for is the week of August 27 – September 2. You might be interested to learn that during this period of time…

Unique visitor count was 856 during this one week of time!
Average time spent on this blog was 8 minutes 45 seconds per visitor.
Visitors are coming from the USA only at this time.
44% of visitors are typing in the URL directly.
30% are coming from search engines (mostly Google).
26% are coming from links on other websites.
63.2% are new visitors that have not visited the site before.

4.) Bust magazine (published out of New York) recently interviewed me and some other women brewers listed on my website for an article on… Women Brewers. The article will appear in their December-January issue. (Looking for a Christmas stocking-stuffer for yourself or a woman who loves beer?) The freelance author, Aimee Dowl, who interviewed me told me that the magazine is aimed at women who like to create and do things for themselves and who want to read about other strong women. She also interviewed some women homebrewers for this article, and there may be directions on homebrewing your first batch of beer.

5.) Aimee Dowl, who interviewed me for the Bust Magazine article above, asked me about my plans for after the Road Brewer trip ends. I thought you might be interested in my plans as well, so here they are:

a. My husband and I will be relocating to Portland, Oregon, so I will be looking for full-time employment as a brewer there.

b. While I am looking for a job, I will be fleshing out my blog into a book. The book will have additional information about the breweries and brewers that I visited, and it will have lots of maps, website URLs, and contact info for each of the breweries. If you know of a publisher that may be interested in publishing a beer adventure book, please drop me an email.

c. Also while I am looking for a job, I plan to continue to put on the pink boots and brew with brewers in Oregon and Washington. I hope to do this one day per week, so you can be assured that the Road Brewer’s adventures will continue. There are over 70 breweries in Oregon now (Steelhead was number 11 back in 1991), so I’ll have more than enough opportunity for adventure just in Oregon.

d. I hope to develop a radio show about beer, beer styles, and beer & food pairing.

e. Once I land my Portland brewing job, I plan to keep this Road Brewer blog going with whatever interesting brewing and beer adventures I can think up. Therefore, please stay tuned…

4.) In order to keep the dialog going with you, my dear readers, I want to begin an Email Newsletter. My plan is to send an email newsletter to the subscribers every 10th post on the blog, or quarterly, or whenever it is not too often nor a hassle to my subscribers.

The newsletters may include additional info not found on the blog, updates on the book and radio projects Pink Boots Society news, and other beer-related bits that I find interesting. Subscribers may unsubscribe at any time. Sign up box is at the top-right edge of this blog. Please sign up. Thanks!

Thank you to Southampton Publick House for letting me tap into their wireless network to update this blog.

Pink Boots at Smuttynose

"Make it a rule of life never to regret and never to look back. Regret is an appalling waste of energy; you can't build on it; it's only for wallowing in." ~Katherine Mansfield

August 27: I followed Tod out to Smuttynose where he loaded up the red pick-up with grain and hops for the week. Everyone here wears a uniform, so I changed into mine.

I worked with Dan Schubert on the brew, J.T. Thompson and Charlie Ireland in the cellar. Judi Keene collected yeast off the 200 barrel IPA fermenters. Executive Brewer Dave Yarrington kept things flowing smoothly. The photo above was taken in front of Smuttynose's colorfully painted horizontal ex-dairy conditioning tanks.

Photo above, L to R: Charlie, J.T., Teri, Judi, Dave and Dan. Missing from photo, Head Brewer
Greg Blanchard.

Dan brewed a couple of batches of Old Brown Dog today. This beer is named after Peter Egelston's beloved dog, Olive, who he got shortly after opening the Portsmouth Brewery. Smuttynose has beautiful photos and artwork on all of their beer labels, which were arranged by the talented JoAnne, Peter's significant other. I didn't get a chance to meet JoAnne, but I sure enjoyed the fruits of her artistic talents.

In the afternoon, when J.T. got off his shift, he joined me in Smutty's tasting room and tasted all their beers with me. I left at about 2:30 pm, in order to blog and go through emails in the afternoon.

This photo at right shows Smutty's employee basketball hoop. I thought it was a clever use for the silo supports.

I've noticed a few trends among breweries in New England so far, but there are plenty of exceptions to these trends: One is that they call 1/6-barrels logs. I like that. In Eugene we call them "one-sixth barrels" or sometimes "cornies." I think calling them "logs" fits the size and shape of these tall, skinny kegs well. Another trend is that many breweries produce predominantly English-style ales instead of lagers like I found in the Midwest, or American-style ales, like we have back home on the West Coast. A third fairly common trend is that New England brewers are less likely to use their own proprietary yeast strain, and more likely to use the Ringwood yeast strain.

Smuttynose gifted me a pink zip hoodie and a 22 oz. bottle of beer.

Pink Boots at Allagash and Visit to Shipyard

"Creativity is allowing oneself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep." ~Scott Adams
August 24: I arrived at Allagash just as their new 120-barrel fermenter was being moved inside the big roll-up door. I quickly introduced myself to Brewmaster/ Owner Rob Tod and Head Brewer Jason Perkins. I didn't want to miss any of the action so I got myself into a safe position to snap a few photos. Below are four photos of two men on forklifts, one forklift on each end, standing the fermenter up. A big steel red scaffold was attached to aid in manipulation.

Once the excitement of standing up the fermenter was over, Jason gave me a tour of the brewery. Then I worked with brewer Dee Dee Germain as she managed two back-to-back brews of Allagash White, their Belgian-style Wit and most popular summertime beer.

Photo at top of page, L to R: Rob, Teri, Jason and Dee Dee in front of the new tank.

I had fun talking shop with Dee Dee. I've really enjoyed discussing beer and brewing with women brewers on this trip. It's been a great opportunity for me to meet other women brewers, because I only knew a few before this. In the past I think I've been too busy with my responsibilities at conferences or judging events to seek out other women brewers to talk beer and brewing. I hope to partake of more girl-beer-chat in the future.

[Note: If you're a woman brewer (or you know of one), please see if your (her) name is on my list of women brewers, which I am calling the "Pink Boots Society." If not, please email me with your (her) name, brewery, etc., so I can add you (her) to my list. Thanks!]

Because of the tank delivery and installation, it was an untypically light day at Allagash. Rob bought ice cream sandwiches from the ice cream truck for everybody. They tell me Rob does that a lot. It started at their old location next door, which they just moved out of in April, because it got so darn hot over there in the summer.

Allagash has had a very busy year: They have doubled their production from 5,000 to 10,000 barrels per year in the last two years. They are nearly out of space in their new facility, and have to begin planning the next expansion almost immediately. That makes Jason a really busy guy, as his family is expanding and their children will double from 1 to 2 this month!

One of the highlights of my day at Allagash was in the early afternoon when Jason and Dee Dee invited me to join them on a barrel tasting of their three oldest wood-aged beer barrels. Jason drew out the beer with the glass wine-thief, and released a portion into each of our glasses. We tried one batch of the employees' favorite beer, Curieux (pronounced "curio"), and two samples of what is tentatively known as Gargamel; one with Raspberries and one without. Each of the samples was completely unique with Beligan yeast character, sourness and vanilla notes. The Gargamel had been aged in red wine casks from California, and I thought that was a great idea for the flavors and styles of beer that Allagash produces.

Afterwards, Jason opened a bottle of Curieux that had been blended with 20% un-wooded Triple. The dilution gave the beer just the right balance. It was a delightful blend of vanilla wood and Belgian character. I wouldn't have guessed that putting a Belgian Triple into a Jim Beam bourbon barrel would have worked so well. That's why it is wise to experiment.

Jason and Dee Dee gifted me a mixed case of Allagash beer for my collection. The lucky brewers on my route west of Allagash's distribution range will enjoy the benefit.

At about 2:30 I departed for Shipyard Brewing, down in Portland's old marine district, which is very close to where Gritty's is located.

Shipyard is a very big brewery, and it took a little while for the employees to track down Brewmaster/ Owner Alan Pugsley. Alan gave me a full tour of the extensive facilities including the finished beer warehouse expansion they are in the middle of.

Gee, is there any brewery in this country that is not either in the middle of an expansion, planning an expansion, or that has just moved into newly expanded facilities?

Shipyard owns its complex of buildings and a few other buildings nearby. The warehouse expansion is needed because Shipyard sold a portion of their complex to a hotel group that will put up a business-style residence hotel. Alan says Portland's nearby waterfront development has increased the value of Shipyard's land, and it made sense to sell a portion of it to finance further expansion.

Shipyard is the largest Peter Austin Brewing Systems brewery in the U.S. (Alan - please correct me if I am wrong.) In the photo above, Alan is standing in front of his twin 50-barrel brick-clad direct-fire brew kettles. The sweet wort is split up as it is transferred from Shipyard's 100-barrel mash tun.

Alan has several sizes of open-topped fermenters, from 100-barrel to 300-barrel. As we walked through the maze that is the four floors of Shipyard's brewery, Alan showed me two different sets of 300-barrel open-topped fermenters. The 100-barrel fermenters are round/cylindrocal, but the 300-barrel fermenters are square.

The photos below are of the exterior and interior of some of the 300-bbl fermenters. The photo on the right shows one tank, not four. The tank's side walls are supported by crossbeams across the top.

I asked Alan if the tanks have some kind of a CIP (clean in place) system, and he pointed to one of his brewers walking by and said, "There's the CIP system right there." The tanks are scrubbed and sanitized by hand, just like Gritty's tanks are.

I looked for signs of automation in the brewhouse and found a high-low level controller in the grant. Spent grain removal was also automated. I looked at the glycol lines as we walked by a fermenter, and there was a valve cracked open to trickle. I didn't see any thermocontrollers, either digital or analog on any of the fermenters, and I believe Alan when he tells me that Shipyard is basically a giant version of Gritty's extremely manual system.

Most of the automation was reserved for the darkly-lit packaging area, where Alan had recently had a bulk glass depalletizer installed. Hand-bottling is not an option at Shipyard. Ed Stebbins had guessed that Shipyard produces 60 brands of beer. Alan estimated it at 80-100 brands of beer, both in bottles and in kegs. Shipyard contract brews beer for lots of smaller companies. For example, they produce Gritty's 12 oz. bottles. (But not Gritty's 22 oz. bottles or kegs.)

Therefore Shipyard has to dedicate tons of warehouse space to packaging materials for all those brands of beer. Thus the recent addition of the bulk glass depalletizer. They just don't have storage room for 80-100 brands of pre-pack glass!

We wound our way through the maze back to Shipyard's extensive visitor center and gift shop. Alan gifted me a mixed case of his beer and a mixed case of his Capt'n Eli's Soda Pop. I thought the Ginger Beer was excellent. What I liked best about the Capt'n Eli soda I tried (Ginger, Root Beer, Lemon-Lime and Blueberry) was that they were not too sweet.

Shipyard had other soda flavors, but those are the ones I tried. The Lemon-Lime had more lime character. I wonder if it would make a good Marguerita mix? (Who says sodas are only for kids?) Retired to the Leavitt household, where Pete and Marie's Rhode Island friends were also visiting for the night. After our fabulous "lobsta" dinner steamed in ocean water (see August 22 post for photo), the four boys settled down to a movie and the adults settled down with cocktails outside. The weather was great and we all stayed up a bit too late and probably talked a bit too loud. You know how it goes when you're having fun! (Photo above, L to R: Christy, Marie, Pete and Geoff.)

Hello from New England

"When you see someone putting on big boots, you can be pretty sure that an adventure is going to happen" ~Winnie the Pooh

The above quote is posted on the wall in Paul Sayler's fermentation room at his Flatbread Pizza/Zero Gravity Brewing Company in Burlington, Vermont.

Sorry I am a bit behind on the blog, but sometimes I just need to rest and relax and read a good book and not go 70 miles an hour. I have been busy in Burlington where my trailer, Big Buddy, is safely parked in Greg Noonan's yard. Tomorrow I fly to Oregon for a week, and Greg will safeguard Big Buddy in my absence.

I am happy to report that I have been working hard at updating my website http://www.terifahrendorf.com/. There are now links to many of the brewing articles I've written over the years. If you have a hankering to see the Two Beer Recipes I've created/collaborated on with two breweries I've visited this summer, or if you want to learn more about Efficient Grain Handling, or about Jockeyboxes, or about brewing tools like the Mash Hoe or the Brew Clock, or if you need a Brewlog Template, or you want to read about the horrific burn accident I suffered at my first paid brewing job, or you're curious about what's on my resume, or whether or not your local female brewer is listed in the Pink Boots Society, please check out my website for those handy articles and more.

Tomorrow I fly to Eugene to attend the MBAA Hop Symposium in nearby Corvallis, Oregon. There's no really fast way to fly from Burlington to Eugene, so I think I'll have plenty of airport time in Chicago and Portland to work on my blog.

Besides, Greg and I have to eat lobster and drink really good beer tonight, so I can't guaranty the next post will be tonight.

Thanks for tuning in and I'll have more to report soon.

P.S. If you are a brewer at a brewery that I will be visiting on my trip, and you want me to come up with a formula for a beer for you, just ask. It's collaborative and it's free!

Pink Boots at New Glarus

"Let your dream lead you." ~Henry David Thoreau

July 18: Drove to New Glarus from Middleton. Kirby Nelson was kind enough to lead me about half the way there so I could take the local's secret shortcut. Parked next to New Glarus's horse field where their two Fresian horses were undergoing training to pull a beer cart. (Photo of horses below.)

Assistant Master Brewer Jean Hengstl met me and I shadowed her for most of the day. Jean worked at the old Val Blatz (now Leinenkugels) brewery in Milwaukee about 20 years ago. Then jobs in the brewing industry dried up and Jean used her brewery experience in various food processing jobs. About 15 years ago she overheard some people talking about a new brewery they planned to start in New Glarus, and 5 years ago she went to work for them.

Jean manages all aspects of production, and she had me work with various people throughout the day. I spent an hour or so with Stephen Itzenhuiser in the Brauhaus (brew house). Stephen used to work at The Grumpy Troll brewpub in Mt. Horeb, Wisconsin, where he was also a substitute teacher. Stephen needed one of those two careers to become full-time and lucky for us, brewing won out. I had a lot of fun discussing how we did things at Steelhead versus how things work at The Grumpy Troll and at New Glarus.

Owner-Brewmaster Dan Carey and his wife, Deb Carey, Owner-Mastermind, took Jean and I out to lunch at Puempel's Olde Tavern in downtown New Glarus. New Glarus is a Swiss-themed town that is cute without being cloying. I didn't see too many tourists, but I hear they are about. (Photo above, L to R: Stephen, Jean, Teri, Dan and Deb.)

Dan wanted to know what topics or themes were coming up for discussion during my tour. Only a few came to mind:
(1) The price of stainless is killing everybody.
(2) The loss/theft of stainless kegs is killing everyone.
(3) There is a lot of capacity being built: I'm seeing new breweries built by experienced 35 year old brewers, and small distributing craft breweries upgrading to 30, 50 or 100-barrel batch size.
(4) Some distributing breweries wanted to know if it was true that brewpub brewers cut corners on quality control because the beer is consumed so much quicker in a brewpub.
(5) Some southwest and midwest brewers wanted to know why west coast brewers are too lazy to filter, and how they managed to convince the public that unfiltered beer is somehow better for you, as if it was whole wheat bread.
I won't report on those conversations here. I'm just reporting that these topics have come up for discussion during my trip.

After lunch Dan and Jean took me on a tour of the new brewery they are building. The buildings' exteriors will show off the New Garus area's farming history and Swiss roots. Inside will be a state of the art 100-barrel brewery. Dan said he's keeping the batch size small at 100 barrels so that New Glarus can continue to produce its huge line-up of beers.

Dan is doing two very cool things in this new brewery: One is that he will be using authentic German open-topped hefeweizen fermenters with yeast-collection overflow tanks. The second cool thing is that Dan shopped around for some beautiful old copper brewhouse vessels, then had his stainless tank manufacturer make custom high-tech stainless tanks to fit exactly inside the antique shells.

Dan is all about tradition but he's not afraid to stretch outside the style box. New Glarus's beer line-up covers one of the broadest spectrums I've seen. (Photo above.) I really enjoyed tasting his "Unplugged" series beers that were aged in Bourbon barrels.

After a full day, Dan gifted me with two mixed cases of New Glarus beer and a bottle each of his two sour fruit beers. Then I drove off to Sleepy Hollow, Illinois (near Elgin) to visit my college roommate from my University of Wisconsin at Eau Claire days.

Double Trouble! Pinks Boots at Wisconsin Dells

"The main point in the game of life is to have fun. We are afraid to have fun because somehow that makes life too easy." ~Sammy Davis, Jr.

Note the "American Gothic" motif with garden hoe and squeegie above.

July 15: After spending about 2-3 days planning the details of my trip through October 14 and 4-5 days visiting my extended family in West Bend, it then took me most of today to rearrange the entire van and trailer before departure. I finally got on the road at 5:30 pm, headed into the Madison-area of Wisconsin. I arrived in Wisconsin Dells about 7:40 pm, after getting delayed by road closures that I had to creatively reroute around.

Brewmaster Jamie Martin was waiting for me, and she got my van and trailer set up in the back parking lot of Moose Jaw Pizza & Wisconsin Dells Brewing Company. Jamie emailed me back in February, as soon as my post hit the Brewers Forum announcing my trip. She told me she also wears pink boots. Let me tell you, I could not pass that up! I had to visit Jamie and meet another woman brewer who also wears pink boots!

Jamie set me up with a 10 beer sampler tray and explained all of her beers to me. My favorites were the Dells Chief Amber Ale (mellow-no bite), Kilbourn Hop Ale (peppery aggressive hops), and Dunkel Lager (smooth and roasty). We had tons of fun chatting until about 11 pm. Then she told me we'd be mashing in at 6:30 am. Yikes! Time for bed.

June 16: I showed up at 6:30 am in my white jump suit because Jamie wanted to check it out. She said she was constantly getting her street clothes full of yeast and other messy bits, and I extolled the virtues of the Mr. Goodwrench uniform. Not only does Aramark or another linen company do the laundry, but if you splooge yourself during the workday, you can change into a new uniform and look spiffy right away. If you splooge yourself several times a day, you can keep changing into as many fresh uniforms as the boss can afford.

It was really important for me to be present for the entire brew cycle today, because this is the first collaboration recipe of my trip. Jamie had asked me to provide a recipe of my choice. I picked her brain a bit to find out what she needed for her beer line-up, and found a dark beer was prefered. When I pressed further, "Porter? Imperial Stout?" Jamie went right for the Imperial Stout. I designed a recipe and emailed it to her. Jamie made some modifications to make the recipe work better on her system, including the addition of oat hulls to avoid a stuck mash in her tiny mash tun, and a change in some hop choices. We hit our target gravity within one degree Plato. Click here to see the recipe for Dells Imperial Stout.

Five years ago Jamie was a Biotechnology student at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. One of her professors was a homebrewer who designed a class yeast project where each of the students fermented a Nut Brown Ale (on the sly because Jamie and other students were underaged). Nobody drank the beer - but they tested for alcohol and all the other goodies in the beer (wink wink). The class target was 4.8% ABV, but somehow Jamie tweeked the yeast and got 5.8%.

Her professor told her then and several times after that, "You need tp be a brewer. You are too much of a wild child to become a genetic researcher anyway." Jamie took his advice to heart and studied fermentation before turning 21. Jamie did her 200-credit internship (5 months) of free labor at Moose Jaw/Dells Brewing. After Dells' Brewmaster made her scrub the copper and plenty of other yuck-jobs, she continued to try to get a paid job in the brewery. She bartended and finally got part-time work in Dells' brewery.

Two years ago that Brewmaster left and Jamie took over Brewmaster duties. Jamie is assisted in the brewhouse by longtime Moose Jaw/Dells brewer and maintenance guru, Mike Balda.

Moose Jaw Pizza is a huge 600+ seat restaurant with a local sister restaurant called Buffalo Phil's with 1000 seats. Jamie and Mike brew beer and tons of soda (16 barrels of root beer a week!) for both locations. Wisconsin Dells proudly proclaims itself the Waterpark Capital of the World. I asked Jamie if any people live in Wisconsin Dells, and she said only tourists. A grocery store would go broke here as everybody in the hotels and resorts is too busy golfing or water-tobaggoning to cook.

With restaurants that huge you need a Marketing Director to get the word out, and Jillian Murphy called the local newspaper, the Dells Events, and told them to "Get over here - we've got two women brewers in pink boots today!" They sent Trevor who took our photo. Maybe we'll even get an article in the paper! (I'll post a link if we do.) Honestly, I'm surprised other breweries haven't called their local news media. A visiting pink-booted Brewmaster on a 5-month road trip is sort of rare in my opinion, and certainly a feel-good story unless you are Mormon.

P.S. Thank you to Moose Jaw Pizza & Dells Brewing Company for letting me plug into their ethernet cable to update this blog and my website, and thanks to Jamie for gifting me a t-shirt.

Pink Boots at Four Peaks

"Self-confidence is the first requisite to great undertakings." ~Samuel Johnson

June 18: Last night Brewer-Owner Andy Ingram and his staff set me up with a prime parking spot right in front of the outdoor patio, and I plugged my 75 foot extension cord. Ahhh, air conditioning in the trailer. I wouldn't have had that in the teardrop!

As promised, here are the "washing her hair in a brewery bucket" photos. Andy was kind enough to set me up with 1/3 hot water from the liquor back and 2/3 city water for the event.

Andy manned the first of four batches of Arizona'a best-selling draft craft-brewed beer, Four Peaks' Kiltlifter Scotch Ale (6.1% ABV). Andy came in to start the brew at 4:00 am. Charlie Billingsley took over on the second batch.

Jim Roper handled their newish finicky filter. If any of you have a Velo FOF8, 8-meter horizontal DE Filter, please email Jim at brew@fourpeaks.com and give him your advice and secrets. Jim and Charlie have tried every variation suggested, yet still the filter wants to bleed through about half the time. I offered several suggestions based on my 3-meter vertical screen closed-erosion doser experience, but either Jim had already tried the suggestion, or we determined it wouldn't work on his open-dosing system.

Owner-Partner Jim Scussel joined us for lunch. (Photo above, L to R: Andy, Jim S., Teri, Jim R. and Charlie.) The food here is great. For lunch I had the Prime Rib sandwich with fried onions and red peppers on their house-baked beer bread (a thick soft pita-like roll-up bread made with their 8th Street Ale).

Four Peaks has swamp-cooler technology nailed down. Andy turned on the big cooler in the brewery at 5:00 am, and the brewery seemed to stay fairly cool until I left about 3:00 pm. Outside, the fog-misters made the patio feel like San Diego instead of 110 degrees.

Jim S. and Andy gifted me with a case each of their famous Kiltlifter and their 8th Street Ale. You know what makes the Kiltlifter such a great beer for Arizona? It tastes good cold and after it warms up. Unless you chug your beers, they tend to warm up quickly in Arizona. Four Peaks hopes to hit 16,000 barrels of production this year.

Pink Boots at Stone

"Don’t stay at home and putter around the house. You need a change of scene." ~David M. Ogilvy

June 16: Saturday morning and the kettle is burning at Stone Brewing Company in San Marcos. Brewer Jeremy Moynier was single-handedly manning the mash when I arrived. Jeremy is a former wine-maker with an interesting history that begins and ends in San Diego. And here he is, a brewer at Stone and loving it.

Brewer Laura Ulrich joined us at 10:00 am to begin her filter on the large Velo vertical screen open dosing DE filter. Laura worked her way up, unafraid of any of the boy's jobs, and I must say it was refreshing and fun to hang out with her. It is rare that I get to talk shop with another woman brewer, and Laura is totally into it. You go girl!

Laura was kind enough to treat me to dinner at Stone's Bistro. I asked her what she thought of my idea of gathering the contact info for all the women brewers I could find, and forming a "Pink Boots Society." (Sort of like the "Red Hat Society.") She liked the idea. We thought it would be fun to get together at a once-a-year event; maybe dinner during the week of the GABF. All us "Pink Boot Society" women could drink beer and talk about brewing, styles of beer, our experiences breaking into (and staying in) the brewing business, etc.

So, I think I'll do that. It will take a bit of time because I'm busy with this road trip, but eventually I will try to put together a roster of all the women craft brewers (not lab techs or marketing people, but actual brewers), and I will list these women (by state) on my website, http://www.pinkbootssociety.com.

It is 10:35 pm and I am working on this blog in Stone's brewing office, waiting for Kevin Gray to dry-hop the Ruination IPA so that I can take a picture. I'm falling down tired and Kevin won't be ready for awhile, so it's off to the trailer and bed for me. I've got a long drive again tomorrow.

P.S. Thank you to Stone Brewing Company for the free wireless in their Bistro.