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The first batch of Johns Grocery White Ale is on tap. I compared it to a bottle of Stone City brewed beer, and was pleasantly surprised to find that they tasted nearly identical. But that is not what I was aiming for, I would like a beer a little closer to Hoegarten/Celis. So we are fermenting a second batch down stairs right now. I am fermenting it warmer, with a stronger culture of yeast. Also, I nearly doubled the orange peel/coriander. We’ll know in two weeks…

In the meantime we are still waiting on label approval. The ATF decided that White ale is wierd and demanded we submit a process approval form. I guess they want to know if we are adding orange flavored liqour to the beer like Smirnoff!! Well I wrote up the recipe, noting all the addition times of orange peel. We will see, I didn’t explain mashing or lautering… I sure hope someone at the ATF understands what those words mean!!

They are promising a speedy approval.. Hopefully we will have this beer in bottles by February.

Thurday and Friday Chris and I are taking a trip to visit some brewer friends in Wisconsin. I’ll be sure to give you a nice update of what we see up there.

Aaron

I had a bad restaurant experience this weekend. It shall go unnamed, but its a high end steak serving establishment in the Iowa City/Coralville area. We sat down to eat, and started to look at the menu. If you are like me, the first thing you do is flip the menu over, and look at the list of beers. If there is a bar in the restaurant, you might even walk over to it and glance at the tap handles. At this restaurant, there was nothing about beer on the menu. Then I saw they had a Wine list at the table. I flipped to the end of that, and was disappointed to see there was nothing about beer there, either. It was not a good omen of what was to come.

Finally the waitress came by and asked us what we would like to drink. I asked her what beers they had. She look at me like I was from another planet, and mumbled that they had ALL THE beers, domestic AND imported, and that if I wanted one, she could go all the way over to the bar and fetch me one. Now this place has a separate facility for the bar, like in hotel, so it really is a walk to go there. She made it sound like it would be a total hassle. I tried to get her to be more specific, but it was obvious that she really did not know what beers they had, and what a ‘micro’ beer was.

I caved in to expedience and got a bottle of wine. Its a shame, because everyone I was eating with was interested in beer, and would have preferred one. But we did not want to saunter over to the other side of the restaurant to figure out what was on tap or in bottles.

Its true that these restaurants make more on a bottle of wine, than on a bottle of beer. But what is also true, is that the customer is happy when he can get what he wants. I refuse to give in this haughtiness. I good piece of steak is a great match with, say our amber beer. As beer become more respected, these old restaurants will have to change their ways. I’m surely never going back to that place, and neither will anyone I was with.

Oh, and it was a bad omen. The food was tough and overcooked, and heavy on grease. I have never paid so much money for such awful food.

One more hint, this place has a great view of the Iowa River.