Pooks Canyon

Today we learned, belatedly, that there has been a fire at the De Dolle Brewery in Esen, Belgium. Jon and I toured the brewery last year and consider the owner, Kris, a friend. Apparently a hot water tank caught on fire; one employee was seriously injured and is now recovering well. The brewery is still functioning but there will be some production delays. There is more info about last year's visit to De Dolle at this link . Best wishes to Kris, his wife, and the whole De Dolle crew. On the other recovery front, Axel's toe continues to heal and he seems to be getting around with little pain. Leah's doing some recovery as well, from the intense, daily, 90 minute track workouts. Jon gave her some muscle ice lotion and told her that she would adapt after a few weeks. We really work our youngsters out hard here in Boulder! It appears to be a Fall day outside. Something about the gray quality of the sky says Fall, despite some flowers pushing through. Another good day to ...

Warning- beer post. If you're not into fancy beer this will be boring. Tonight we attended the realease party of the Avery Brewing Brabant Ale. So now Brabant is a beer as well as a territory in the European lowlands and a draft horse. We bought six Brabants; five for the cellar and one to taste. A great with-food beer, maybe wild game or hearty soup. It is somewhat sour, dark as night, and smells of the oak wine barrels in which it was aged. The flavor was almost herby- like tarragon. It wasn't fruity and syrupy like alot of 8-9% dark ales I've had. The head was carmel colored and not super creamy. But it wasn't fizzy either and stuck around for the whole drink. It could be rejuvenated with swirling. Thanks Adam Avery et al for bringing great beer culture to Boulder. See you at the Strong Ale Fest next weekend!

Last night we opened the unlabeled bottle from De Dolle Brouwery. The contents were quite interesting, here is the breakdown... The pour First of all, I think it was a bottle fermented beer. It didn't have a spectacular amount of bubbles, which lends more credence to this theory - often bottle fermentation produces just a moderate amount of carbonation. It was clearly cellared for sometime, judging by the dusty bottle and great deal of sediment on the side of the bottle (see photo below). It was probably aged at one point in an old wine cask as it had lots of wood and wine flavor. The aged flavor and bottle ferment makes me think it was a Flanders Red Ale . This can be made by blending an older beer (barrel aged) with a younger one then bottling it. The sugars from the younger beer enable the bottle fermentation. Since OerBier itself is a sour red, this was probably the beer used in the mixture. Or maybe it was just a big old bottle of plain OerBier ;) Anyway, I'm tr...

What do an Israeli micro-brewer, an American GI fresh off a stint in Afghanistan, and the Baker family have in common? We comprised today's tour of DeDolle Brewery in Esen. The tour began in the hopkamer where a lively discussion about the merits of boiling yeast ensued. The Israeli micro-brewer contended that it was good to boil the yeast, our owner/founder/brewmaster tour guide, aghast, insisted the kettle was not the place for yeast. As an amateur bread maker and truster of Belgians in all things beer, I tend to agree with the brewmaster. This was made that much funnier having just watched an episode of Friends on Belgian TV in which Ross buys vanilla flavored Israeli champagne to celebrate a promotion. I kept my laughter to myself. The yeast debate set the tone all the way through to the bottling facilities and warming room at which time we were sent forth into the café to taste the beers. The kids, having bailed to said café sometime before bottling, were found helping th...

When Jon and I ate at the Hotel Erasamus restaurant in Bruges, we ordered an oude gueze off the beer list. It turned out they were out of that kind, so the waiter brought out this 2005 Oude Gueze from the 3 Fonteinen brewery instead. It was pretty good, nice and sour, and had an intresting hint of roasted bell pepper flavor to it. Gueze it not for everyone but I do enjoy a good sour gueze now and again. It took the waiter about 5 minutes to safely release the cork as it threatened to spray us all. I clapped when it was finally open.