BEER AND NOW
Local Flavor S
Jeff Hammett first noticed craft beer early in college when a friend introduced him to Stone Brewing Co.’s Pale Ale. After gradu- ating from UCSD with a degree in Philoso- phy, he moved to Santa Cruz where he frequented Santa Cruz Mountain Brewing and Seabright Brewery. Jeff would journey up to San Francisco to visit Magnolia and Toronado every chance he got. He started blogging about beer in early 2009 while living in Durango, Colorado. For a town of only 20,000 people, Durango boasts an impressive four breweries. Jeff quickly became a part of the brewing scene, and in January 2010 was invited to work with Ska Brewing Co.’s Head Brewer Thomas Larsen to formulate a recipe and brew on Ska’s pilot system. In addition to his love of craft beer, Mr. Hammett is an avid cyclist and can be seen riding on the road or trails most weekends.
SD Brewers create NHC commemorative beers By Jeff Hammett
an Diego hasn’t always been the beer mecca that it is today. It was just over fifteen years ago that San Diego brewer- ies started winning awards at the Great American Beer Festival (GABF). San Diego’s second-ever GABF gold medal winner (and only the third-ever GABF medal winning beer) was Makanudo Porter in 1996. Brewed by a downtown brewpub called Cervecerias La Cruda (loosely translated as The Hangover Brewery), Makanudo Porter is about to make its return to the San Diego beer scene as La Cruda Porter, and will be one of the commemora- tive beers for the 2011 National Homebrewers Conference (NHC). Cervecerias La Cruda gave Tomme Arthur, now of The Lost Abbey, his first professional brewing job, so when the NHC was slated to come to San Diego, Tomme decided to revisit the original recipe and brew it again for the first time in fifteen years.
Every year the attendees of the NHC receive commemorative beers with their registration. These are often homebrewed beers in keeping with the theme of the conference, but for this year’s record breaking, all-time-high attendance of ~1900 people, local professional brewers were asked to help out. This wasn’t the first time professional brewers had been tapped to brew NHC commemo- rative beers. For the 2009 conference in Oakland, Port Brewing Co. brewed Brother Levonian Saison, a tribute to deceased homebrewer and QUAFF member Dave Levonian. Pat McIlhenney of Alpine Beer Co. brewed a West Coast-style IPA as well. Even with professional breweries produc- ing the beers, they still wanted to keep things in the homebrew spirit. When Tomme Arthur decided to rebrew Maka- nudo Porter he approached two of the people that helped him get his start in professional brewing: Troy Hojel, who Arthur brewed under at Cervece- rias La Cruda and Skip Virgilio, founder of Ale- Smith (and who also brought home San Diego’s first GABF Gold medal in 1994 while at Pacific Beach Brewhouse). Neither Troy nor Skip are working in the beer industry any longer; Troy is a software engineer in Colorado and Skip is in real estate in San Diego, but both are still active home- brewers. So in late April the three got together at Port Brewing Co./The Lost Abbey and brewed the first batch of Makanudo/La Cruda Porter in fifteen years.
Port Brewing Co.’s La Cruda Porter comes in at 6.7% ABV and 25 IBUs, and is being bottle exclusively for NHC at- tendees, but should show up on draft around San Di- ego County for those of you not registered for the conference. No general distribu- tion is planned. In addition to
La Cruda Porter, NHC attendees
will also receive a 10-
bottle of San Diego Dark Session Ale, a San Diego-style English mild which is a collabora-
L to R: Troy Hojel, Tomme Arthur, Skip Virgilio. Photo courtesy of The Lost Abbey
tion between San Diego Brewing Company and AleSmith. Dean Rouleau at San Diego Brewing Company and Peter Zien of AleSmith are both longtime QUAFF members with homebrewing backgrounds. The San Diego Dark Session Ale, a hoppy, San Diego-style session ale that’s 20 IBUs and only 4% ABV is described by Harold Gulbransen, the QUAFF member organizing the commemorative beers for the NHC, as being “hopped like most beers in San Diego, very easy to drink during a long conference with lots of high alcohol beers.” The beer was created at San Diego Brewing Company in early May and drew on all the brewers’ homebrewing roots for in- spiration. “The result is a unique session ale that reflects San Diego’s creative brewing tradition and innovative use of ingredients,” reports AleSmith head brewer Ryan Crisp. Those ingredients include Amarillo, Simcoe and Cascade hops from Star B Ranch in Ramona which were used to dry hop the beer. It was bottled at AleSmith in 22oz bottles exclusively for NHC attendees. A few kegs and maybe a cask or two of San Diego Session Dark Ale will be available for tasting at San Diego Brewing Co. and AleSmith, but bottles won’t reach distribution.
Even though the commemorative beers weren’t made exclusively by homebrewers this year, that doesn’t mean homebrewers can’t get in on the fun. In true homebrew fashion, both recipes are available through the American Homebrewers Association’s May/June issue of Zymurgy.
Jeff writes for San Diego Beer Blog at
sandiegobeerblog.com, and you can also follow him on twitter @ SDBeer
Editor’s Note: The third commemorative beer for the NHC was originally go- ing to be the Stone Cherry Chocolate Stout collaboration (profiled on p.8), but the cherries dropped the pH and slowed fermentation dramatically. As of press time, the working idea for Stone is to send a new beer to the conference: Stone SoCal Hop Salute Double Black IPA - 9.9% abv, 110 IBUs, 24°P starting grav- ity, bittering hop: Columbus, flavor hop: Citra, dry-hopped at more than 2 lbs/ bbl with English Target and German Herkules hops.
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