What's on Tap?

Wedge Brewing Company – Asheville, NC

October 29, 2017 by rachelle 5 Comments

Wedge Brewing Company – Asheville, NC

The first time I visited Wedge Brewing was during an Asheville brewery tour with the Carolina Brewmasters home brew club. I still have dreams about the dopplebock I had that day. It was November 2011 and I had just brewed my first beer – an Irish Red infuse with Jameson Irish Whiskey. We took a growler of it to share on the bus ride. Fortunately for everyone who was on the bus, I’m one of the lucky ones whose first home brew turned out awesome.

When we found out we would be in Asheville for a weekend in mid-October, I wanted to visit as many breweries as possible. The Wedge was at the top of my list and we actually managed to make it there not once, but two times, which made me very happy.

I could go on and on about The Wedge. It’s in a really cool location in the River Arts District. We discovered a glass blowing studio across the street when we first visited and were excited to find that it was still there and thriving. We spent a couple of hours in there just watching the artists doing their thing. It was super cool and the NC Glass Center has workshops available if you’re interested.

Wedge Brewing Company was founded by a metal artist named John Payne in 2008. The property is decorated with some really fun and interesting metal art works.

You have to go down some funky steps to the river basin area to get to the brewery and tap room.

There is plenty of patio space and outdoor seating. People were playing corn hole and a food truck was on site.

The Wedge doesn’t distribute. They serve their own beer in their own tap room. They have two locations in Asheville now – which came as a welcome surprise since the last time we were there. We went to the original location in the River Arts District in my quest to find the best doppelbock I’ve ever had. Sadly, it was not available, but there were a lot of really great beers on tap.

If you can’t get the doppelbock I highly recommend the dubbel. Wedge Brewing Company has a hip groovy atmosphere with the beer to make you want to stay.

The second trip to The Wedge on the same day involved a party bus. It was fun and I won at corn hole. That’s all I’ve got to say about that.

Seriously, if you can make it to Asheville you should check out Wedge Brewing Company.

This is not a sponsored post. I just like talking about good craft beer.

You can visit Wedge Brewing Company at these locations as of the date of this publication:

Wedge at Wedge Studios

37 Paynes Way, Suite 001

Asheville, NC 28801

Wedge at Foundation

5 Foundly Street

Asheville, NC 28001

Belgian Tripel – Home Brew!

October 19, 2015 by rachelle 22 Comments

OMG! We finally brewed and the beer is ready for consumption! Woo-hoo!

Clearly, I was consuming this one with my lipstick marks on the glass. Sorry! I couldn’t help it. We were tasting it and I just got so excited that we finally had some homebrew and I wanted to share!

We also brewed a Kolsch and took both kegs to a getaway in the North Carolina mountains this weekend.

Both were a hit! We rented a house with some friends and drove around doing the dorky look at the leaves touristy thing.

I’m not a fan of sharing personal space and my biggest fear on this trip was having to share a bathroom with someone other than my husband. When we showed up and were told that our bedroom was the pull out sofa bed in the living room I ~~threw a hissy fit and nearly had a heart attack~~ calmly voiced my objections and we were relocated to a better, but not ideal sleeping situation. Needless to say, there was a bunch of Belgian Tripel involved the first night. In preparation for the second night, Chris took me to my mother ship….

I had a great time, but I’m happy to be home and there are a bunch of reasons that we are drinking beer on a Monday morning. I’m so glad I had the good judgment to take a Monday vacation day. Because next time? I need my own house. Cheers!

P.S. Be sure to come back and visit tomorrow – there’s something special happening….

P.S.S. I took 537 photos this weekend and plan to share after I can sort them out. The NC mountains are beautiful in October!

Saturday Night Special – Women’s Brew

June 27, 2015 by rachelle 12 Comments

Every now and then I like to post something non-food/recipe related and talk about brewing. I’ve been hanging on to this one for a bit because I took about 435.26 bizzilion pics and needed to organize.

A couple of months ago I had the pleasure of participating in the annual Women’s Brew event. I’m fairly certain that it’s obvious I love craft beer and all things boozy. I’m not just a lush though – for those of you who may be new visitors to this blog – I brew beer (hence the blog name?). Chris and I both do.

Women’s Brew is an annual event that pairs up experienced women (no boys allowed) brewers with women who want to learn to brew. We, the experienced brewers, are mentors to women who are brewing for the first time or have little experience and would like some coaching. It’s very educational and a total blast.

I absolutely love this event and not only because I get to look like an expert in something other than law stuff and drink delicious craft beer provided to me by my mentees. It’s just a really fun event and I love seeing and helping women brew beer. The free craft beer is just a bonus. 🙂

Meet Lisa. She taught Chris and me (and many others) how to brew and she’s one of my absolute BFFs. (I always tell her that I “love her more ‘n my luggage” (Steel Magnolias) and she says she “would throw her pie for me” (OITB) – yeah, we’re disturbed). Lisa started the Women’s Brew annual event and used to host it in her back yard.

It started getting pretty big over the years, so last year our friends Suzie and Todd Ford generously offered to host us at their brewery – NoDa Brewing Company. Thanks Suzie and Todd!

That’s Suzie making sure Amy’s on track. That’s me in the Chucks.

Lisa always has some groovy aprons made. I find it hilarious that no dudes are allowed to participate and we wear aprons. I will say though that they add another layer of protection when someone gets the dropsies. You know what I’m talking about, right Lisa?

Another Lisa. Girl is getting busy with her fancy pants infrared thermometer!

The easiest way learn to brew is to start with an extract. The all grain process is more complicated and time consuming and one of these days I’ll talk about that – but not today. 🙂

The bare-bones explanation of the extract brewing process is that you have your base grains that have gone through some kind of magic and are turned into a powder. So you have the extract (base grains) and the specialty grains. You heat up some water, drop in your specialty grains in a mesh bag to steep (think about making tea), kill your fire, and after a certain amount of time the specialty grains are removed and discarded.

At this point you will start up your fire, add your extract and after a bit, start your boil. During your boil is where you do your hops additions. The type of hops and the number of additions will vary depending on the type of beer you are brewing.

When you are done with your boil (typically 60-90 minutes) you will kill your fire again – this is called flame out. The product you now have is called wort – it’s not beer yet because it has not fermented and has no alcohol. It’s very important to note here that once you flame out, you obviously no longer have a boil – EVERYTHING has to go through a sanitation process from here on.

Now you have to get your temperature from 212 (because we just finished boiling) down to 68-70 degrees because you still have to add your yeast. Like when you make bread, if your liquid is too hot it will kill your yeast and your bread won’t rise – here your wort will not ferment, you will not have alcohol and therefore no beer. Trust me – that will break your heart and make you cry. So you chill your wort (with a special piece of equipment), pitch your yeast, seal it up, and set your baby aside for a while until it matures into a delicious beer.

Ok. That was exciting, right? On to more pics and I’m going to stop talking and only interject some descriptions of what is going on in the pics.

First I have to say that Lisa totally called me out because I have almost no pictures of myself on my own website. There are reasons for that. 1. Go visit my About page and I’ll tell you that I absolutely despise having my picture taken and hate the way I look in pics. Always have. Probably always will. 2. Um… I’m usually the one taking the pictures?

So here I am with my friend and one of my mentees, Amy. I’m on the right.

We did not plan or intend to dress alike. Those shirts came from an even that I competed in at The Unknown Brewery. You can read about it here.

I’m adding the extract for Amy while she stirs it in.

Lisa, are you happy now?

Enough of that. Moving on. Here is the boil.

The chilling process.

The food truck. Yesssssss!

BTW – those to fellas on the right? The one on the left is Amy’s hubby, Brent. Steven is the hubby of one of my other mentees, Heather. They dropped off the girls and came back several hours later to dine at the food truck and transport their wives brewing accessories home.

Transferring wort into their primaries for fermentation.

Don’t fear the bubbles. It sanitizer and absolutely 100% necessary.

That’s Heather. Of course, there’s cleanup involved.

What in tarnation is going on here?

They are tasting the wort and taking a gravity reading. She’s not looking to see if land is in sight. That’s a fancy pants refractometer (not to be confused with the fancy pants infrared thermometer). The rest of us have glass hydrometers. We actually keep several on hand because… well, let’s just say accidents happen. The purpose of this process is to get an indication of how the beer will taste and the ABV – alcohol by volume – i.e. how potent it will be.

You go girl! That’s Bethany. She is the fearless leader of the Charlotte Beer Babes and teamed up with Lisa last year and this year to make this event happen. The Beer Babes are educators and aficionados of craft beer.

Now we’re just being silly.

I’m not getting in those pictures. 🙂

Weekend Brewing

February 9, 2015 by rachelle 9 Comments

It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything about brewing beer. We took advantage of the beautiful weather over the weekend and brewed two kinds of beer, so I thought I would give those of you who don’t brew an overview.

We brewed 5 gallons of Irish Red and 5 gallons of Belgian Tripel. Since we wanted to make 10 gallons and two different types, we decided to go with extract kits instead of all grain. This is comparable to making a cake from a box (extract kit) versus making a cake from scratch (all grain). An extract can be brewed in 2-3 hours (depending on the sophistocation of the equipment) where it takes about 6 hours for all grain.

The goal was to brew both beers at the same time, but one of us forgot to inventory the propane, so we ran out in one of the tanks. Ahem. You can draw your own conclusions as to who is the guilty party.

Regardless of which process you use, you start with base grains and specialty grains. In an extract your base grains come in a dry form – think boullion powder. This saves a lot of time on the front end.

So here is the down and dirty on brewing beer from an extract kit.

You start by heating up some water and soaking your specialty grains.

When that is finished you add your extract and keep heating your water to get your boil. You have to keep an eye on things here. Lisa likes to say that a watched pot never boils, but an unwatched brew pot always boils over.

It’s true! During the heating process, the proteins from the grains build up and create a foamy layer that kind of seals the liquid underneath.

That layer has to be broken up or when it boils the liquid underneath will break through and boil over. What an unholy mess. Not that it has happened to me. Cough cough eyeroll.

At some point hops are added.

The timing, type, and amount vary depending on what kind of beer you are brewing.

After the hops have boiled, they are removed and the fire is turned off. This called flame out and the product you have is not beer yet. It is called wort.

Now the wort has to be chilled to about 68 degrees ferenheight. The reason for this if wort is too hot it will kill the yeast, your wort will not ferment, there will be no alcohol, therefore no beer and you have just wasted a bunch of time.

There are different ways to chill. We have a system that pumps cold water through hoses and copper coils that sit in the wort. Another set of hoses pumps the wort to keep it moving which prevents pockets of heat from forming. This speeds up the process.

Finally, the wort is moved to a fermentation device and yeast is added. We have some pretty cool conical fermentors. One of the hoses is detached from the chiller and connected to the fermentor. The pump transfers it to the fermentor and at the same time splashes it around which adds oxygen. Oxygen wakes up the yeast. They then do their job of converting your wort to beer.

The amount of time this takes depends on the type of beer you are making. Ales (which are what we usually make) need to maintain a temperature of 68 degrees during this process and lagers ferment at 49 degrees. In the winter our house stays 68 so they just hang out in our guest bathroom shower. There is a resting period after the fermentation is complete, then it is transferred into kegs and carbonated.

Note: there is a lot more to brewing than what has beend described here, such as sanitation and gravity readings. This was just intended to be a high-level overview of how it is done, not a tutorial. Please consult an experienced brewer before attempting to brew on your own. In my experience home brewing enthusiasts love to mentor and promote their craft. I know we do!

Lisa is Redeemed

October 18, 2014 by rachelle Leave a Comment

Remember this?

My demolished brew pot.

Lisa ran it over with her truck.

Remember Lisa?

It was a total accident.

She loves me.

She would not kill my brew pot on purpose.

It is dead just the same.

But Lisa is one of my favorite people.

And she felt really bad.

She also thought I needed an upgrade.

So she bought me this!

I love it!

It has a spigot!

And gallon markers!

Thanks!

Oh. And Lisa?

We broke it in.

And brewed your favorite.

Here is a Sweet Oatmeal Porter in your honor.

Cheers Lisa!

Craft Chicks Hustle Harder

September 23, 2014 by rachelle 3 Comments

I was invited to participate in an all chick event at Unknown Brewing Company. There were women musicians, vendors and home brewers. Guess which category I was in.