Tap handles arrive!
I arrived home yesterday to 8 boxes of the final production MNB tap handles. From all I can tell these things look even better than the pre-production versions and can’t wait to get these out into the wild. What bar is NOT going to want one of these behind the counter is really the question.
From here they’ll join the thousands of MNB pint glasses sitting in my basement eagerly awaiting the launch…
No Brewing Tonight
With Jonathan heading out to the Great American Beer Festival we won’t be doing any brewing tonight. Jeff and I are just not able to brew ourselves without Jonathan’s strange music and inappropriate comments for inspiration.
If you’re going to be at GABF be sure to reach out to him, tweet him, re-tweet him or whatever.
http://twitter.com/mondaynight
Monday Night recap: the “postpartum” edition
As you may have read previously Jeff’s new child limited our ability to brew the last few weeks but thankfully we’re now officially back in the swing of things and into the postpartum days. I know you might be thinking about postpartum depression but actually it’s more like postpartum elation (for all of us…but especially for Jeff’s wife because she’s allowed to drink beer again).
Since Jonathan was gone (he allegedly had a date to the Patty Griffin concert) we made due and recruited my younger brother (in town for the week) to help us. It turns out he was just as good at all brewing related tasks as Jonathan with the only differences being:
- He didn’t post a new tweet ever 5 minutes
- He has better taste in music (we didn’t have to suffer through some random/terrible band from Jonathan’s music library)
- He didn’t make any offensive/inappropriate comments to our wonderful patrons
Oh, and the wort didn’t boil over like it does when Jonathan watches it. Wow.
Also, we brewed a pale ale…come back in 4 weeks to find out how it turns out.
Interview with a Retailer: Flip Burger boutique in Atlanta
One of my favorite neighborhood spots of Flip Burger boutique. It’s a mere block from my house and the landmark by which I reference where I live now (as no one seems to have heard of Berkeley Park but everyone seems to have heard of Flip). The place is mad crazy busy all the time (it’s business time all the time, you could say) but the owner Barry and manager Sebastian sat down with me during a slight lull one afternoon to answer a few questions.
1. We’ve all seen the tremendous success of flip, I go by here almost every day and it’s rare that during lunch or dinner there is not some sort of line spilling out the front door onto the sidewalk. What has been the biggest challenge of this success you’ve seen?
Barry: Typically a restaurant has time to get used to doing what they do and they can do that comfortably as they gradually get busier. Right out of the starting gates it was very busy and we had to learn quickly. Now the challenge is how do we keep this feel where it is independent and hip and the quality is there with the eccentricities that make this place great — how do we duplicate that and transition into another location. The lines are getting shorter as the kitchen gets better and the food has gotten better but it’s allowed us to shorten the lines.
How has flip marketed itself?
Barry: We’ve done zero marketing and I haven’t spent a penny on any type of advertising. And we like that grassroots approach because it’s genuine. There’s nothing worse than contrived advertising. That’s been the most rewarding thing as we’ve gotten busier and busier and to know that it’s because we’re doing a good job and people are enjoying the experience.
While you’re definitely not a beer place, you have a nice list that’s not standard fare. One of my friends (with inferior beer preferences) recently ate at flip, and while normally a Miller/Bud kind of guy, the waiter talking him into trying Three Philosophers and he loved it. What types of things do you take into account when building a beer menu?
Sebastian: Our first thought was to make sure we have the local Atlanta beers – Sweetwater and ABC, then we wanted to cover the oldest of US breweries, which is Yeungling, and really is considered a staple for many people. And from there our list is not that big so we looked for flavors that complement our food. I wanted to do it with as many craft breweries from the US as made sense. We have the Full Sail session, which is a lager but made to be a pre-prohibition style and they also put it in this stubbly bottle like it used to be. We’re not trying to be the cutting edge, but we want to give them some interesting beers.
Barry: My top priority is for everything to have synergies. I want everything including the beer to complement the menu. We try to keep it outside the typical box of what you expect in a restaurant, we try and do burgers that no one really has and have the beer menu complement thats. I want there be a wow factor behind everything we do.
Waitress pops in and says “So you’re saying I’m different than what anyone else has”
Barry: I know you’re different? in a bad way (Everyone laughs)
You seem to care about this community (Berkeley Park) and this city. They say location is everything but how did you pick this spot?
We know we wanted to be in some sort of up-and-coming area and in a free-standing location, but honestly it’s a bit of luck that we ended up in this location. It’s perfect though, and creates a bit of an oasis where you have all of auto repair shops and then there is flip and it just intuitively felt right. I’m super happy that the neighborhood has embraced it and that I see all of you in here and that we get that support.
Atlanta is a very loyal market. There are a lot of big New York chefs and they’ve really struggled getting into this market, but I’ve spent my whole career in this city and I think my time here has paid off, not only in how it’s helped us do things the right way but in the ways the community has supported us.
Flip has done a great job dressing up accessible fare, bridging the gap between the normal and the gourmet. It reminds me of what a lot of microbreweries are doing, creating accessible “stepping stone” beers, like Sweetwater 420. Have you seen a trend in Atlanta towards gourmet food, and if so what do you think is behind that trend and how do you see it evolving?
Absolutely. You have Top Chef, Food Network, and all of these things bring chef-driven dining, as well as more complicated foods to the masses. The whole idea behind flip was that I’ve got 15 years experience in fine dining (as does Sebastian) and it’s very disconnected from the mass market. But it doesn’t need to be. You know, it’s stuffy, it can be stale. There was this huge vacuum in the market. You have fast food and fast casual, and fast casual is really just food as cheap as you can make it that you just dress up a little bit. I wanted to create a restaurant that had, at its core, the hipness but with the ingredients of a fine dining restaurant, but making it all much more approachable. So instead of dark environment we’ve made this a really light high energy environment. Really flip isn’t about burgers. It’s about high quality fine dining food for $15/head vs. $40 or $50 a head. I just chose the burger because I thought it was a very approachable medium? It’s just two buns and what can you stick between them. Well you can stick lobster sorbet in there. You can do whatever and Richard [Blaise] really complements that because he really thinks outside the box.
What’s your favorite beer/burger pairing on the menu?
I’d say the UFO Hefeweizen with the tuna burger. You have that slightly citrus flavor that’s fresh and it complements the spiciness of the tuna perfectly. I like the nuttiness of the Newcastle with the RB que burger.
Barry: I’m a Stella drinker at heart. So Stella and any of the above.
When will we see more locations?
2nd one is definitely in the works and hopefully a 3rd at some point. Next one will probably be somewhere over on the Eastside.
Image courtesy of CodePoet5150
Monday Night Recap: “Not as funny since Jonathan is not writing it” edition
I’ll start with a disclaimer that this post will not be as funny as Jonathan’s recap, nor will you find any links to incredibly attractive pictures of me. What you will find is a fact-based dissertation of yesterday evening’s events. Finally.
1. Jeff was there the whole evening. For those of you who come on Mondays you’ll know that Jeff usually returns from his “day job” around 8pm, he strolls in, mumbles something about “attenuation, mash efficiency, blah blah blah” and then proceeds to mingle with people while Jonathan and I brew the beer. Yesterday Jeff was actually the first one there and while our gravity did end up closer to where we needed it, he successfully violated every SOP (that’s Standard Operating Procedure for your artistic folks) we’ve ever had in place. It was great to have you Jeff.
2. We fixed our chest freezer. OK, so since we didn’t find a chest freezer that fit our exact size requirement we had to go with the next best thing – which meant the new one was 6 inches too long. But no worries, I had a plan all along and when recent MNB attendee Andrew showed up first he went to town on the knocking out modifications with me. Within about a half hour our new fermentation chamber was fully operational (although not quite symmetrical). Basically we filled in the last 6 inches with some foam insulation and we’ll use the existing top for the time being.
3. We harvested our hops. I think we sat a new record for actual work being done by our Monday Night attendees (usually they just get in the way and drink our beer). Rob, Justin, Andrew and David (albeit in a more “supervisory” role) did an amazing job pulling down vines and plucking the pure goodness from our organic hop vines.
Rob adds value by harvesting hops. Kurt adds value by talking and watching.
4. We did a marketing survey. Yeah, we figured the least we could ask in return for free beer would be some marketing insights. So….we put our two versions of the Belgian Peach Dubbel on tap next to each other and asked for votes. This pic is from an early tally but I think the final ended about about 3 to 1 preferred “B” which is less peachy. We originally brewed something that was about 3x the “more” amount and it would have been called “too much” (although Jonathan and all the single ladies LOVED it…but I think Jonathan was lying to win the single ladies approval).
Who wrote "needs more body"? Our response: "So does your mom"
5. We brewed beer. Shocking. Who would have thunk we could do so much in an evening. We brewed a batch of our drafty Kilt scotch ale – the last two that were in the fermenter had to be dumped because it died on us. We used on our sweet new brewmagic and safely placed it into our new fermentation chamber. It better be good.
Photo credits: Jeanine
German Bierfest Tomorrow
Our friend and Monday-Night-attendee commonly known as John (frequent commenter) Alexander will be pouring beer tomorrow at the German Bierfest. Yes, the Germans did lose WWII but they nonetheless make some amazing beers (and cars) and you should most certainly plan to spend your afternoon there. If you’re so brave you can even come dressed up like this:
(I didn’t realize that’s what Germans look like)
If you’re smart you’ll get your tickets in advance here. Use code “BIER” to get $5 off
Lastly, I’ve discovered this great new thing called Twitter. I think it’s gonna be big. Follow me as I tweet the festival tomorrow.
Building a beer fermentation chamber
Jonathan and several other blog readers have been asking for this post for some time now. For those of you who don’t care about fermentation temperature controls this is going to be really boring (I’ve warned you). For those that do, hopefully my experiences can provide a nice blueprint for building something similar.
The goal of this project was to create a way to provide customized and stable fermentation temperatures for our beer. There are many great examples of converted chest freezers out there but we had a few unique requirements including:
- House our 2 sweet Blichmann conical fermenters
- Provide both heating and cooling capabilities so we could leave the whole setup in Jeff’s garage year round
- Easy access so we’d be able to take samplings for gravity readings
Our starting point was a freezer we found off Craigslist about two years ago. It has served us quite well, but the main issue with using it as is was that it wasn’t tall enough to fit a conical fermenter and the lip for the motor prevented us from fitting two in there. We began researching options for extending the freezer and there are many detailed tutorials from people who’ve built great “collars” that extend the height of the freezer. The key issue in our situation was the fact that if we increased the height too much we’d risk being unable to lift the conical fermenters over the lip and into the unit (at one point I actually exported a pulley/hoist system for this but it proved impractical the more I thought about it). After a few days of research I decided our best shot was to create a collar that could collapse on both sides and a platform on the bottom that would allow the fermenters to sit level with each other and high enough that they could be easily accessed.
You can see the piece of plywood which creates a flat surface in the bottom (and the holes allow circulation)
The collapsible sides allow us to (somewhat) easily lift the fermenters into the freezer despite the high collar
Our next challenge was temperature control and humidity. Since chest freezers are built to be below freezing (duh) they typically experience a good deal of moisture and then ultimately condensation. The solution we’re currently testing for this is a plug-in humidifier. It cost about $20 from Ace Hardware and seems to be doing a decent job so long as we remember to plug it in every week or two (for it to “recharge”). For temperature control we wanted both heating and cooling. I had seen an example here of a dual stage controller but unfortunately we had a bit of a tough time locating one online. We finally ended up buying it from here and it seems to be some other more official part that someone has wired themselves (notice the very professionally looking “stage 1″ and “stage 2″ notations). For the cooling needs, obviously the freezer is what we use, but for the heating element we have been using a 150 Watt infrared heat bulb. I found this at the pet store and thus far it seems to work really well at heating up the the freezer. Granted we don’t have the most intense Georgia winters but due to the fact that it’s a closed and sealed space we didn’t have any issues with it retaining the precise temperature (except for the time that we forgot to plug it in!).
The 2 Stage Temperature controller. The freezer is plugged into the top socket and the heat lamp into the bottom one.
For the overall construction I used 2x6s and 2x10s. I glued 3/4″ foam board to the wood for an added level of sealing and insulation. As you can see from the pictures I used weather proofing foam/tape and weather stripping to give it a full, tight, leak resistant seal on the seams of the collapsible sides.
Weatherproofing tape and piping creates a nice seal on the collapsible parts of the collar
The locking clasps on the front of the fermenter. These are nice and tight to provide a solid seal.
Honestly at this point there is nothing I’d change about the design yet. I’ve contemplated added some small fans inside to help circulated the heat (or cold) when either stage is operating but I’m not sure if that would be very useful (it seems like the temperature inside stays very consistent). We do have a sweet temperature/humidity sensor and plan to install that at some point for additional testing/monitoring. Eventually I’m interested in building a 2nd fermentation chamber off of this one somewhat similar to this. The 2nd chamber could potentially be where we place beers for additional aging or for bottle/keg conditioning when we need it. We’ll see.