RMMS 2009 - Part 1

The 14th annual Rocky Mountain Microbrewing Symposium Was held February 20, 2009. Once again, the event was hosted by the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. The Symposium was founded by Dr. James Mattoon of the UCCS Center for Biotechnology & Bioinformatics. Dr. Mattoon helped host the event, and along with Jeff Biegert of New Belgium Brewing, introduced many of this year's outstanding presenters.

This year's sold-out symposium was a great success. The presentations were informative, breakfast and lunch were tasty and fortifying, there were dozens of excellent beers to sample, and the camaraderie among attendees was second to none. When a group of 120 brewers and allied trade professionals get together in one room, knowledge is shared, ideas are born, friendships are strengthened, and a good time is had by all. Thank you Chris Stubbs, RMMS Coordinator and the event organizers for another great year.

The morning session got rolling with Andy Parker and Matt Thrall, the wood experts from Avery Brewing. They discussed how Avery Brewing Company approaches barrel-aging beer. During their talk, Matt and Andy shared what they have learned about barrel-aging, and discussed some of the successes and failures they've had along the way. They talked about different types of barrels for aging beer: wine, whiskey, port, etc., how to care for barrels, sources of equipment, blending aged beers, and different types of bacteria that can be found in (or added to) barrels.

Andy and Matt shared some aged beer samples with us. Among those samples was Avery's recently released Brabant. Brabant was aged for 8 months in zinfandel barrels, and inoculated with two strains of Brettanomyces. This beer is dark, slightly tart, and immensely complex. It weighs-in at 8.65% ABV.

The next session was on beer stabilization, presented by Mustafa Rehmanji of International Specialty Products. He discussed the importance of stabilization in the production of beer. He explained that drivers for beer stability include:

* Increased competition from imports
* Expanded brewery distribution range
* Consumer expectations for better quality and product consistency
* Need to reduce costs from returns of beer

Mustafa talked about the benefits of clarification of wort in the brew kettle, and how it can simplify and reduce the cost of downstream processing before filtration. He discussed some of the causes of haze in beer such as oxalates in malt, tannins and over sparging, and the importance of proper temperature control prior to and during filtration. He compared and contrasted the benefits of various beer stabilizers and presented research to support his discussion.

Doug Odell of Odell Brewing Company was up next with a talk on pilot brewing and recipe development. He talked about the 5 barrel pilot system at Odell Brewing. They use the pilot system for testing ingredients, developing new recipes and training employees. Odell Brewing connects with home brewers through the GABF Pro-Am Competition and a CSU brewing class gets to brew their own recipe on the system each semester. Also, the brewers at Odell's get to use the pilot system to express their brewing creativity and produce single batch brews for the tasting room. Having an ever-changing variety of beers available in the tap room helps keep customers coming back to discover "what's new."
















Doug walked us through his new recipe development process. He explained how employees do a blind tasting of commercially available examples of the target style. From this tasting, they discuss the qualities of each brew and decide how the new Odell recipe will fill a niche within the style. After an initial pilot brew of the new recipe, all of the beers (including the new Odell beer) are blind tasted again, and recipe adjustments are made if needed. This level of refinement would be difficult and costly without a pilot brewing system.