During a commercial break during tonight's NCAA Tournament Final, I happened upon an article on the Toledo Blade website highlight the history of Buckeye Beer and its importance in Toledo history. It also has quotes from a number of brewerina collectors that have made Buckeye merchandise the centerpiece of their collections. The story also confirmed my suspicion that Maumee Bay's rendition of Buckeye Beer is not true to the original recipe. If you're interested in this part of Toledo history, I suggest taking a look at the PDF linked below.

Toledo Blade: Here's to Buckeye Beer

Speaking of brewing, it has been awhile since I've posted any Mad River Brews news. I'm in the final stages of cleaning out the kegerator, and I plan on finally getting my Northern Brown Ale on tap within the next day or two. After a week on CO₂, it should be ready for consumption. I've waited quite awhile on this batch just to see how allowing the ale to age longer affects the taste. I also have a Michigan Hard Apple Cider storage -- I'm going to backsweeten it this weekend let it sit on CO₂ for a little while longer. I'm trying to decide what the first batch of 2008 will be... it has been too long indeed.

From Michigan Beer Buzz:

Saturday, Rob and I drove up to Milan to check out the progress on Original Gravity, one of MI’s newest breweries. As you can suspect Brad Sancho, the owner/ brewer, was extremely busy but he still took time out to show us around. Sorry, there are no pictures. Since it was just a pop in we felt that we might be bothering him too much already.

All the brewing equipment is in and brewing starts this week, hopefully Wednesday. Soon the four fermenters will be filled with a Porter, Amber, Bitter and a light Belgian Ale that he said really doesn’t fit into a style category. The interior is spacious with an industrial look befitting of a brewpub. The long L shaped bar is impressive with it’s oak top and brick base.  A favorite feature of mine is the outdoor beer garden. He put a lot of work into the building and it looks fantastic. And since it is on the good side of County Road (just kidding) it is officially a Monroe County Brewery. I’m still researching it but I believe it is the first Monroe County brewery  in 99 years.

This is the first I've heard of a new brewery opening in the area; you can guarantee I'll be there opening night!

EDIT: They also have a website up -- www.ogbrewing.com.

Thanks to Jared who sent me an article from the Toledo Free Press. It talks about the Maumee Bay Brewing Company, the beers that they offer and a little history about how the current head brewer came to the brewery. While the article is an interesting read, I'm most excited about the following part as I've wanted to attend one of these for awhile now:

There are plans for Brew dinners to be offered starting in November. Pollick sees the events as a way to expose people to different brews.

He expects the meals will be about $60 with five or six beers paired with different courses. Maumee Bay Brewing would invite two other regional brews to participate.

“Pairing beer with food is a good idea, and with what they are doing at Rockwell's we can do some matchings,” Pillock said. Rockwell's is the fine dining restaurant that is also part of the Oliver House.

Click here to read the entire article.

This Saturday could be a pretty big one... all I can really say now is that I'll be brewing what could very well be the last beer in my apartment; a Belgian Wit styled after some of my favorites including Hoegaarden (of course). If everything else plays out as it should, I will likely have some big news to post here then as well. As for now, only one more week of MBA classes until I can finally take a little rest.

Keep an eye on the Mad River Brews page as well for more info on (and pictures from) the Saturday brew session!

With a pretty successful brew session over the past weekend, I went ahead and decided to purchase another kit to make my second batch in as many weeks. While I haven't had much experience with red ales besides Killian's, I have heard some pretty good things about this style being produced by some of the larger microbreweries and figured I'd give it a shot. Like the Lemongrass Wheat from last weekend, this one will be a mini-mash, although I hope to use what I have learned from the first batch to make some adjustments to my procedures in hopes of improving the overall efficiency and conversion rate. Hopefully things turn out well!

To celebrate the end of the semester, I'll be brewing my first beer since the beginning of the year coming up next weekend (May 12). This time, we'll be making a Lemongrass Wheat Ale from Austin Homebrew Supply. Hopefully things will go smoothly, and this turns out to be a great batch when it's ready in August. I think this will probably be my last batch until I'm able to move out of this apartment and into a house somewhere; it is simply too much of a pain doing everything in my small kitchen.

Maybe someone can buy me this as a graduation present? =)

I'm so in for this... it's about time good beer have its day here in Toledo. Who knows, in a couple years, you might be able to sample a few of my brews at an event like this =)

Glass City Beer Fest
Event will be held indoors at the Erie Street Market’s Civic Center Promenade, located at 237 S. Erie Street in the heart of downtown Toledo.

HOURS
March 9th (Friday): 5:00 – 11:00 pm

ATTENDANCE: This is an inaugural event. We hope to reach 500-1000 adults ages 21-60.

ADMISSION: Tickets will cost $25 pre-purchase; $30 at the door.
There is a “hero” discount ticket of $20 for all military, police, and firefighters.

TASTE TICKETS: Ten (10) tickets will be included with admission. Each ticket will allow for a taste not to exceed 3 ounces. Additional tickets will be available for $1.00 each. Food will be sold separately.

MUSIC: A wide array of music will be played by a DJ from 5:00-11:00 pm. Also may be live music.

More information, including a list of participating breweries, can be found at: http://www.arclucas.org/beerfest/glasscitybeerfest.pdf.

As some of you may vaguely remember, the last beer that I brewed (last October) was a milk stout. It has been on tap for a couple weeks now, and I must say the flavor is pretty good. It's not an overpowering stout, but still very dark and thick. The carmel cream ale has another week or two in the secondary fermenter before it gets transferred to a keg to condition. At some point during the conditioning, I plan on adding more lactose and vanilla extract to further enhance the flavor. At last check, the alcohol content was right around 5.6%, and it should finish slightly higher; I believe this will be the strongest beer I've made to date. I expect that one to be on draft by the end of February, and I'll hopefully be starting another one soon.

Today, after a two+ month hiatus, I finally was able to get around to brewing another 5-gallon batch of beer. It was a fairly easy recipe, and we didn't experience anything too out of the ordinary. The final smell and color of the beer is excellent and I can't wait to get a taste of it. The starting final gravity was 1.056, and will likely finish somewhere close to 1.020 due to the lactose used. It will spend approximately ten days in the primary, and another two or three weeks in the secondary fermenter before being syphoned into a keg. While lactose and real vanilla extract were added during the brewing process today, more will be added when the drink is finally kegged in a month or so.

As I said in an earlier post, it has been awhile since I've brewed anything, and my stocks are starting to run a little low. I'll probably be running out of both the Honey Raspberry Wheat and Hard Apple Cider any day now, and I only have one batch in reserve -- a milk stout. So, as I'm kinda bored today, I started looking around to try and find an interesting recipe to try in the new year. Below is one that caught my eye, and I'll be buying supplies sometime next week if I can find some time while I'm away on vacation. Sounds pretty tasty to me!

Carmel Cream Ale

Things have been quiet on the brewing front, but that's expected to change quickly in the new year! Once I return from my vacation (where hopefully I'll not only get to snowboard but sample a few microbrews from the northeast), Brad and I have already decided to start a Bells Two Hearted Ale clone, and probably another one before the end of the month. I'd like to do some recipe experimentation again soon, so I might play around with the second batch a little bit. Anyways, I just wanted to post a quick note in case anyone was wondering why I haven't had any brewing news on either this site or madriverbrews.com. Finally, I believe that I am going to just post any brew news/notes here instead of continuing to maintain the second site using iWeb. At some point, I'll try to transfer over some more of the info already posted there.

As this will likely be the last post here before Christmas (since my parents believe paying $19.95 a month for internet access is crazy... good thing they don't see my monthly bill), I hope everyone enjoys the holiday and a little time away from work. Check back early next week as I hope to film a test video just to see how well the iSight will work for making a video blog entry.