After the ACBF last Saturday, I attended a session at my beloved local, the Sunset Grill and Tap and met Kate, a newcomer to the Bay State, who was also a fan of the brewery. We decided to take a trip out to see them. It wasn’t until I checked the times that I found they had finally starting offering not just tastings, but also tours as of April. Perfect timing!

The following weekend, after an arduous journey down town, including three transfers, a threat of thunderstorms, and a bitter cold wind that we were not prepared for, we arrived…and were promptly turned away, as they had just sold out the last tour. Defeated, we walked away from the brewery trying to figure out what to do now, when to our delight the guy at the door (our new best friend) chased us across the parking lot to inform us that they had just decided to run an extra tour that afternoon. Score one for Harpoon!

This was the first brewery tour I had been on since I started actively brewing, which I must say is a very different experience. In the past, being unfamiliar with brewing terms and the brewing process, I had a difficult time keeping up with everything and didn’t really absorb anything because there was too much new information to handle all at once; now having been engrossed in the process for so long, the terms were familiar, which left me with enough spare brain cells to actually think critically and ask questions.

The tour started out simply, with a typical overview. Taste the grains, smell the hops pellets, try politely not to laugh while the casual beer drinkers in the group taste the hops or cringe when the aroma burns their nostrils. This is the grain mill, that is the mash tun, then we lauter, boil, … None of this was anything I hadn’t seen before on other tours, or done on my own a dozen times. Then we descended to the floor, where we could see the lower parts of the conditioning tanks, and they did something I’ve never seen a tour guide do. They started pouring samples of the green beer.

For those who don’t know, “green” doesn’t refer to the color of the beer, it’s just what they call beer that hasn’t finished conditioning yet. This means it is the freshest beer you will ever drink; it hasn’t been filtered, it hasn’t been carbonated. It contains yeast, larger proteins and polyphenols, and possibly even some sediment from the spent hops and grains (though that seemed to have settled out of this particular sample). The reaction to this was even more dramatic than to the hops, with most of the participants actively seeking a trash can or bucket to spit into. It was nothing new to me, as I always sample what’s left over after bottling, and drink the samples I use for hydrometer readings (more on hydrometers in a later article). Frankly, it’s one of the things I love most about brewing, and something that until now you really had to be a brewer to experience.

But a few among the group did seem to enjoy the green beer, despite not being homebrewers (for the record, Kate was one of them). To anyone who takes the tour and likes the green beer, I recommend seeking out cask beers, which in many places are available (if at all) only at the finest beer-oriented bars, but are well worth the effort of finding. The only difference between the green beer served on the Harpoon tour and a properly served cask beer is that the flavor has matured slightly, and that cask beer is served warmer, at cellar temperatures in the fifties rather than the low thirties at Harpoon. Cask beers are among my favorite, so look for at least one later article singing their praises and explaining to you why on earth you’d ever want to drink your beer cloudy, warm, and flat.

Having passed the high point of the tour for me, they continued on to talk about how the beer is filtered, then force carbonated, and either bottled or kegged. Harpoon has two breweries, one in Boston the other in Vermont, apparently Boston is the only site with an automated kegging machine, so the Vermont brewery only kegs beer if needed to supply the tastings. The tour guide also related a story of how the mix packs are produced…apparently it is a manual process of filling boxes with two bottles of each variety, and occasionally takes place in the wee hours of Saturday morning.

Finally convinced that a career in brewing was not for me…we moved on to the warehouse, which was quite a site to behold, two long rows of palates stacked over 30 feet high with cases of beer. The brewery had just had an event, apparently, but when fully stocked, one can walk down the aisle and touch beer on either side of them; quite a sight to behold, I’m sure.

After about a half hour on the tour, we were brought back up to where we started for a half hour tasting, just like the old days before they started giving tours. It was here, staring at the wide selection of beer, made from a single yeast strain, that the brewer in me started to wonder how they do it…they even make lager beers (like their Octoberfest and Munich Dark) with an ale yeast! This is homebrewing 101, match your yeast to the style you are brewing, people…

In my next article I will explore how they did exactly that, the advantages and limitations that a single yeast strain creates for the brewer, and finally why that has doomed the UFO series to such low esteem among us Punks.

While traveling abroad I found myself in Korea for two weeks with no real agenda. So one evening I decided to take a friend’s advice and explore the city’s Apgujeong district, known as ‘Apgu’ for short. Apgu is known to be the city’s high end residential, fashion, and restaurant district. To my surprise, mixed in amongst Seoul’s numerous soju tents (quite an experience), trendy martini bars, clubs, and dives, I found two hidden gems. I was lucky enough to stumble upon not just one, but two microbreweries, and only blocks apart.

The first of the microbreweries was a bit of an eclectic establishment referred to, on their card at least, as Cafe, Pops Cool. The small staff consisting of a manager, a waitress, and a cook were all incredibly polite, and this was despite my lackluster Korean language skills. Communication at times was definitely a challenge, but all part of the local experience. Nevertheless, beer is a universal language, and once the staff recognized I was an advocate I was offered a tour of the premise, including the brewery. The brewery was quite small, but still impressive. That night they were serving two options a light beer and a black dunkel; I had both. The dunkel was definitely my preference, but both were vastly superior to the Korean mass-produced beer Hite or OB. Cafe, Pops Cool is definitely a good option for a quality brew from a friendly staff while touring Apgu.

Next on the list was Platinum Microbrewery also located in Apgu (there are apparently two in Seoul). This bar/restaurant was clearly designed to be more modern and high-end when compared to Cafe, Pops Cool’s, and this showed in the prices. It was a rather large dimly lit space that would be great for a date. The food and beer list was quite extensive with seven beers on tap. The food was decent, and the beer was satisfactory. However, I preferred the dark beer from Cafe, Pops Cool to any of Platinum’s selections. But, if you do find yourself visiting be sure to try the beer sampler, its the biggest bang for your Won. If my memory serves me correctly, then I believe Platinum’s Belgium White, at least to me, was the most impressive option.

If you liked this article then you would likely find this posting from seoulgirl discussing Seoul microbreweries, especially Platinum, an interesting read.

Also, I will soon be visiting the Seatlle area, and hope to do some beer related touring and tasting, so please email me or leave some comments to this post with any suggestions.

We arrive and after watching a quick introductory film on the DMZ, which oddly gives the impression that the place is something akin to Disney Land, despite the 10 million landmines. We start off touring the 3^rd infantry tunnel. This tunnel was secretly dug by the North Koreans to accommodate a potential sneak attack on Seoul, scary when you think about it. Hopefully one day these tensions ease and the tunnel can be used for something more worthwhile like beer running.

Outside the tunnel I notice a small gift shop; I start to wonder. However, as I walk through the door hope fades quickly. I immediately notice all the typical touristy wares: postcards, T-shirts, etc… One unique item was a small paperweight like object featuring a piece of barbed wire from the original DMZ. By this point I was sure even if there ever was North Korean brews sold in the DMZ they were long drank, it was time for me to just enjoy the day…

I called a last minute audible and decided to pickup some water before we left, so I headed over to the small fridge. My eyes lit up like Ponce de Leon discovering the fountain of youth; there it was… the prize, Taedonggang Maekju! I couldn’t believe it, there it sat unassumingly surrounded by bottled water and North Korean Soju. I immediately rejoiced and made the purchase. I didn’t however imbibe the beverage until I reunited with Hogan, so by this time it had become somewhat skunky, but was still rather refreshing; overall we both thought it would be a decent beer. But by this point it wasn’t about the taste it was about the journey.

Here is a great article from Reuters discussing the background of this beer in pretty good detail.

Now that we’ve gone over some of the practicalities, lets get to the beer. Remember, we were only able to cover a small subset of what was at the festival, and we were focusing on beer we can’t find locally, so New England microbrews will be underrepresented.

Last weekend, the Alstrom Brothers threw one heck of a party, and the Punks were in attendance. We thought we’d throw out a few quick thoughts on the practicalities of attending beer festivals. In our next post we’ll reveal some of the gems we unearthed. If we don’t get to your favorites, cut us some slack, with 300 beers at the festival, we could only cover so much ground. But we look forward to hearing comments from those in attendance.

The Trappist Punks are explorers of this vast world. We brew beer. We taste beer. We talk about it, drive hours just to find new ones, and try to learn more about this wonderful beverage, how it’s made, and the people who keep the beer world alive. The more we learn the more we find is left to learn. That’s why we’ve decided to share our journey with you, because together we can see further.

Like most things, it all started simply with a series of small, seemingly inconsequential experiences. A brewery tour here, and brewpub there, a failed experiment with a Mr. Beer kit. Over the past five years our interest has turned into a virtual obsession. We seek beer while travelling, from coast to coast, to our neighbors in the north, and even to North Korea. Hogan in particular is becoming frighteningly obsessed with the technical side of brewing and how the magic four ingredients – malt, hops, water, and yeast – can produce such a wide variety of different beers, and the imaginative mad scientists behind the creation process.

We are not beer snobs. I’m not even sure either of us have ever met a beer snob. We are, however, passionate beer people. Sometimes beer people can seem a bit unapproachable to newcomers, like they speak another language. This needn’t be the case; we feel you can geek out on beer without losing everyone else in the room, if you do it right. We also feel that while it is sometimes exciting to hear about strange local customs from around the world or obscure farmhouse breweries, what we all really need is a usable road map to navigate the beer world. That is what we hope to provide. And we look forward to the help of our readers on this one, because after all, we can only draw a usable map for our own little corner of the world, and the few places we’ve been.

So you have a choice. You can go back to the warm embrace of your fizzy yellow corporate masters, or you can look a little deeper and see what else there is for you, a little deeper in the cooler.