Posts Tagged ‘the friday question’
The Friday Question
Friday, March 5th, 2010
Ah, Friday rolls around again so it must be time to foolishly give something away! First off a brief diversion. If you’re one of the facebook generation you may know that I’m giving one fan of Oliver Ales the chance to join myself and a number of local beer bloggers for a very special beer tasting . We will be sampling some of the strongest beers in the world from the BrewDog brewery in Scotland, Sink The Bismarck (41%abv), Tactical Nuclear Penguin (32%abv) and Tokyo(18%) as well as something on the other end of the scale, Nanny State (0.5%abv)! If you want to throw your name into the hat for the draw go to the discussion section of our facebook page but be quick, the draw will be at 1pm today. The beer itself won’t be here for a couple of weeks unfortunately. I just received word from BrewDog that shipping of the Bismarck has been delayed until the 16th.
On to last weeks question. This one was obviously wide open but here’s the actual bottle as displayed in our “Hall Of Fame” cabinet in the brewery….
and the winning number is ....
33, 417 it is. That makes Sandy Mitchell the winner (again!) but again, as it was a close run thing I would like to extend the invitation to the runner up as well so Mr. Graham Green you are also a winner. I will be in touch to organize a date and time for the tasting. Congratulations.
On to this week’s question. As I mentioned last week, Bruce at The Metropolitan Coffee House and Wine Bar has recently celebrated the serving of their 100th cask of craft ale, a fine achievement I’m sure you’ll agree. What I’d like to know is, how many of those casks were Oliver Ales? The prize is this… next week, at 6pm Bruce will be serving our latest cask ale, Three Spires Ale, a hoppy 5%abv golden ale and we’d like the winner to join us for a pint or two. We’ll pick up your tab to the tune of $40 so come along, eat, drink and be merry! As usual, post your answer via the comment section below. First correct answer posted wins. Cheers
Steve
The Friday Question
Friday, February 19th, 2010
Before I get on to the business of The Friday Question I would like to encourage you all to check out the new Oliver Ales facebook page that I set up recently and if you feel inclined please become a fan www.facebook.com/home.php#!/pages/oliver-ales/288496506028?ref=ts. I’ll be posting regular updates of brewery activities, releases etc so if you want to keep abreast of what’s new and where it’ll be pouring, join us. By way of some gentle encouragement there’s going to be a “prize” draw for fans only which may be of interest to some of you. Some time in the near future I’ll be receiving a bottle of the World’s Strongest Beer (at least for now), the 41% BrewDog “Sink The Bismarck” along with their 0.5% “Nanny State”. An interesting contrast I think you’ll agree! I’ll be getting together with avid local beer bloggers www.beerinbaltimore.blogspot.com , www.beerinbaltimore.com and www.baltimorebeer.blogspot.com to taste test and review these beers and I’ll be inviting one Oliver Ales fan, chosen at random, to join us and review the beers for my blog and facebook page. Check out the facebook page for details.
So, onto last weeks question. There are several sources of published data. For example online @ http://www.nickelinstitute.org/index.cfm/ci_id/12606.htm which gives the empty and full weights for a stainless steel kilderkin as being 51lb and 236lb respectively. The book “Cellarmanship” by Ivor Clissold gives the weights as 46lb and 226 lb for stainless steel and 32lb and 212lb for aluminium. Now, as you know, we here at Oliver’s don’t take these things lightly (ha,ha!), especially when there’s one of our cool new Hot Monkey Love t-shirts at stake so we weighed one and the result is ….. drum roll …..
The weight of a full Kilderkin is 220lb
Yep, 220lb so that makes Dan the winner and, for the first time ever the answer was spot on, congratulations Dan, let me buy you a beer as well when you come in to collect your prize. By-the-way, the empty weight of our kilderkins is 37lb if you’re interested.
So, this week’s question (sticking to a theme here) is how much would a Pin of Hot Monkey Love weigh? Said pin will be featured at our Cask Ale Festival to be held at The Pratt Street Ale House on March 20th (full details will be posted next week). The festival is going to be limited to 110 tickets but you can attend as our guest if you can answer the above question correctly. As usual please post your answer via the comment section below. In the event of tied winning entries, an overall winner will be made by a random draw from the correct entries. Good luck.
Please join us at Victoria Gastro pub on Monday evening for their beer club night where you can get a sneak preview of our Biere de Garde in cask. They’ll also be pouring The Bishop’s Indulgence, Strongman Pale Ale and Coventry Cream Ale. We’ll be there and if we’re feeling generous we might just buy you a beer!
Have a great weekend.
Cheers
Steve
The Friday Question
Friday, February 12th, 2010
Before I get on to the Friday Question I’ll just remind you that My Monkey’s Got Wood, the cask of Hot Monkey Love aged with American Oak since 4/30/09 will be on the beer engine on Valentine’s Day. Nothing says “I Love You” like a Monkey with Wood! The cask is vented, tapped and sampled and absolutely bursts with Oak flavors, more Oak than you could shake a big stick at! Despite it’s 10% a.b.v. the beer has a “soft” quality, with the underlying sweetness and oak flavors combining wonderfully and a gentle warm finish.
So on to the Friday Question. There was a good spread of answers given but, as I explained, I don’t know what the answer is myself yet. The test kit should be arriving today so we’ll send the samples off to the lab on Monday. Hopefully the turnaround time will be minimal. As soon as the analysis is back I’ll post the answer/winner.
This weeks question is a fairly simple one. As many of you know as well as distributing firkins of our ales we use kilderkins in house. A kilderkin is a cask with a volume of 18 Imperial Gallons (21.6 U.S. gallons). Despite the fact that I filled kilderkins every week when I brewed in the U.K., when I finally got some here it had been some 9 years since I’d handled one and I was shocked by how heavy they were. So, the question is this, how heavy is a full kilderkin of beer? For those of you who want to calculate the weight of beer we’ll assume that it’s Best Bitter with a specific gravity of 1.010. Obviously you’ll have to guess what the kil is made of ie stainless steel or aluminium to get an estimate of empty weight. Usual rules apply, one answer only via the comment section below, judges decision is final. In the event of a tie the first correct answer posted wins. Good luck. The winner gets one of the new Hot Monkey Love t-shirts (back print shown above) and the satisfaction that you know a piece of useless information that you’ll never get to use again!
The Friday Question (updated)
Friday, February 5th, 2010
Now if there’s ever a time to win a growler of The Bishop’s Indulgence this is it (if you can get to the Ale House before the snow comes)! I must confess (no pun intended), I think that The Bishop will be keeping me company over the weekend and probably the Scottish as well (mmm, The Scottish Bishop, that could be an interesting blend!) Anyway, Nick wins the growler with his guess of 30. There were actually 25 beans in the Bishop’s Indulgence. Ten were used in the brew, ten in the conditioning tank and five in the casks. Congratulations Nick.
Next on the beer release horizon is the Strongman Pale Ale which will make it’s debut on tap at The Pratt Street Ale House on Tuesday. You may remember from an earlier post that I’ve discussed the type and amount of hops that went into brewing this 8% a.b.v. English Pale Ale. As you may also know, throughout my brewing career I have never given an indication of the I.B.U. value of any beer I’ve produced, but this is about to change. I hasten to add there is no special reason for announcing I.B.U. values other than the fact that Whitelabs are running a special deal on beer analysis this month so I thought it’d be sorta cool to find out a bit about a couple of my beers. I’ve got to say I’m more interested in getting a lab analysis of specific gravities and a.b.v. but I.B.U.’s are included so what-the-heck, why not? Obviously then the question will be this…. what is the I.B.U. value of the Strongman Pale Ale? The winner will get a growler of the Strongman and a souvenir Oliver pint glass with which to drink it. As usual please post your answers via the comment section below. The competition will close next Friday but it may take a while to announce the winner as obviously I have to send the samples of to Whitelabs in San Diego and then wait for the results so your patience is appreciated.
By-the-way, I’ve finally set up the Brewery facebook page (Oliver Ales), please check it out and if you’ve got any photographs from past events/festivals, please feel free to post them.
I’ve just filled a Beaujolais -Nouveau cask with 3 Lions. It leaked a lot when prepping it but as the wood absorbs liquid it expands and the more major leaks have stopped. Hopefully it will seal completely soon, fingers crossed. If all goes well it’ll be sitting in the cask room for a couple of months and will then go out to Bruce at the wonderful Metropolitan Coffee House & Wine Bar. I’ll keep you posted.
At last, England and France in perfect harmony!
cheers
Steve
The Friday Question
Friday, January 29th, 2010
The time has finally come to reveal the winner of the Tactical Nuclear Penguin. There was an incredible spread of answers, from 9 pounds sterling at the lower end to over 60 at the other. A couple of answers were pretty close but one was the clear winner. The correct answer was …. bagpipe flourish & drum roll ….
If you can’t quite make that out apologies for the poor picture quality (you’d think i-phone could do better) but the answer is 17.32. By my reckoning, that makes “Red Rob” the winner with the answer of 18.86. Congratulations sir, I will be in touch to arrange collection of your prize. For those of you who may be interested, to have it shipped directly from BrewDog to the Ale House would have been 40 pounds! I had asked my Mother to ship it to me by the quickest method regardless of cost (within reason) but she, of course, being my Mother ignored this and just sent it regular parcel air mail. She didn’t even put a “fragile” sticker on it! Clearly no respect for beer there, even though her son has been a brewer for 16 years.
So, as you may know, on Tuesday @ 6pm we will launch our latest seasonal beer, The Bishop’s Indulgence, at The Cask Ale Social at the Pratt Street Ale House. As well as having the beer on tap and on cask (aged on a little American Oak) we will have a glass ended firkin of Best Bitter dry hopped with Maryland Chinook on gravity pour in the lounge so you can see how yeast settles in the cask. The Bishop’s Indulgence will be available in 10 oz snifters for $3 and our other cask beers will be priced at $3/pint. We’ll also have an informal discussion of cask ale brewing and handling so if you have any questions about cask ale come along, have a beer and we’ll do our best to answer them. You may have read in the previous posts about the Bishop’s Indulgence that it is an 8% a.b.v. stout brewed with cocoa nibs and vanilla beans. This week’s question is simple. How many vanilla beans did I use making this brew? I want the number of vanilla beans not the weight of beans and it includes any beans that may have been used in casks. As usual, answers via the comment section please, one answer per person only. The closest answer to the correct number wins and in the event of a tie the answer posted first takes it. The prize will be a growler of The Bishop’s Indulgence. Good luck.
For those of you in the DC area, look out for the Blonde Ale dry hopped with Chinook and Dark Horse mild @ RFD and Best Bitter and Dark Horse at ChurchKey. Next week we’ll also be sending casks out to both Pizzeria Paradiso locations and more to ChurchKey. Also mark your calendar for the Strong Beer Tasting at The Brickskeller on Tues 9th February where we’ll have our last sixtel of ‘09 Hot Monkey Love. Commonwealth Gastro Pub will be hosting an Oliver Ale Beer Dinner on March 2nd (t.b.c.), more details to follow.
Have a great weekend.
Cheers
Steve
End of week round up
Friday, January 22nd, 2010
Firstly, no Friday Question this week as I’m letting last weeks question for the bottle of Tactical Nuclear Penguin run until next Friday. It’s something of a relief actually as it’s becoming quite a challenge to come up with a question and prize every week!
I’m getting ready to move the Strongman Pale Ale out of FV and into conditioning tank. I’ve just weighed out hops for dry hopping the tank which I think will add an extra dimension to this ale (the “dimension” of aroma!!….I think my former Physics and Biochemistry professors might have something to say about that!) We’ll be doing a couple of casks which will be dry hopped with Maryland grown Chinook, hand picked and air dried in Frederick County, in contrast to the Kent Goldings which I’m using in the conditioning tank. I’d like to do more casks of this but we used so much cooperage on the Dark Horse yesterday that we don’t have any more available at this time. I’m praying that we get some empty firkins returned next week so I can fill them with the Biere de Garde. Speaking of which, that fermentation is being crash cooled at the moment. The Belgian Ale Yeast strain behaved very differently from my English Ringwood, fermenting well at a lower temperature than I am normally used to and with little yeast head accumulation, almost like a lager yeast. I had to battle to keep the fermentation below 70F whereas I’m normally trying to keep it above 72F! We’re expecting a grain delivery today so a second batch of Scottish Ale is on the schedule for Tuesday.
Have a great weekend.
Cheers
Steve
The Friday Question
Friday, January 15th, 2010
First off, before I get on to the Friday Question I just want you cask ale lovers out there know that the Scottish Ale is now the Brewer’s Choice beer engine at The Pratt Street Ale House, it’s big and bold, full of malt character with an underlying sweetness and hints of smoke and peat and is a little over 7% a.b.v.
O.K., on to last weeks question, what is the weight of hops used in producing the Strongman Pale Ale? Well Mr. Sandy Mitchell’s “price is right strategy” paid off this time as the actual weight of hops used is a little more than all of the guesses at 14lbs. For those of you interested the hop additions are as follows: start of boil… 5 lbs First Gold, after 1 hour of boil 1 lb Kent Goldings, after 1 hour and 50 minutes 1 lb Kent Goldings. In the hop percolator 3 lbs Kent Goldings and 2 lbs Bramling Cross and last but not least 2 lbs of Kent Goldings for dry hopping in conditioning. Congratulations Sandy.
As you know, this weeks prize is something a bit special, a bottle of the super rare and super expensive Tactical Nuclear Penguin, BrewDog’s “strongest beer in the world” monster. Because of the nature of this prize I’m going to let this Question stand for 2 weeks, the winner will be announced on Friday 29th January. As usual, answers must be posted via the comment section below, one answer per person only please and the closest guess to the actual answer wins it! In the event of a tie the answer posted first gets it, judges decision is final etc. Oh yeah and you have to be able to come and pick the prize up, o.k. So, the question …. this beer is well travelled. Firstly from Scotland to my parents’ house in Tamworth, Staffordshire, England. My mother then dispatched the 2 bottles to me courtesy of the Royal Mail. She posted it on 6th January and it arrived on 13th January. What I want to know is how much did it cost my Mum to ship these 2 bottles from England to Baltimore? Good luck, one of those bottles could be yours!
The Nuclear Question!
Thursday, January 14th, 2010
Unless you have been living under a rock you probably know that Scottish brewery BrewDog recently produced the world’s strongest beer, the 32% a.b.v. Tactical Nuclear Penguin. If you haven’t seen it yet I urge you to visit their web site and watch the promo video for the beer launch, it’s hilarious. Those guys are madmen and I mean that with the maximum respect! However, the chances are that you haven’t seen the beer, let alone tried it due to the fact that not only is it super rare (2 x 500 bottle runs so far) but it is not (yet?) imported into the States. However I purchased 2 bottles of the original 500 bottle run and I’ll be putting one of them up for grabs as The Friday Question prize tomorrow. Madness I’ve been told and I probably agree … this is a $60+ bottle!!! But hey, we here at your friendly local brew pub like to share the love so check out the blog tomorrow and it could be yours!
This bad-boy could be yours!
The Friday Question
Friday, January 8th, 2010
There was a good spread of answers for last weeks question and it was a close thing but CDoubleIPA came closest with his guess of 16, congratulations. The actual number of different seasonal / one-off brews that we put through was 15. This is maybe a little on the low side because of the refurbishments at the Ale House. I didn’t brew our first (in this case Strongman Pale Ale) until the last week of February. I’m pretty confident that we’ll brew a few more this year. The Hot Monkey Love is already in process and the Strongman Pale Ale is on the schedule next week. After that I’ll be brewing the Biere de Garde which I’m particularly excited about as I’ll be using a different strain of yeast for that one, which will be the first time for 10 years that I haven’t brewed with Ringwood yeast! I’ll probably be tweaking the recipe a little as well. I’m also still hoping to squeeze the Darkness (dark wheat beer) into the schedule if tap space allows.
Well on to this weeks question. Firstly the prize. Now, despite what’s been going on in City Hall recently I personally frown upon the illegal appropriation of gift cards so, dear readers, we here at Oliver Breweries offer you the chance to win a gift card ($25 value) for use at The Pratt Street Ale House legitimately. All you have to do is answer the following simple question and it could be yours. As I mentioned earlier, the next seasonal ale I will brew is the Strongman Pale Ale. Now, by my standards, this is quite a hopped-up beer although the brewers at BrewDog or Stone would probably regard it as a mild ale in comparison to some of their “off the chart i.b.u.” offerings. So what I want from you is a guess as to the total weight of hops that will go into this 7 barrel brew? As usual, please enter via the comment section below, judges decision is final etc. If anybody is interested, I will be avoiding Cascade like the plague, and instead will be using my old friends First Gold, Kent Goldings and Bramling Cross. You never know, maybe I’ll get the i.b.u. measured for this one, there’s a first time for everything after all!
The Scottish Ale
The Scottish Ale (the cask version pictured above in an original Oliver Scottish Ale thistle glass courtesy of Sandy Mitchell) will be on tap later today . I will post an update as soon as it goes on!
Cheers
Steve
The Friday Question
Friday, January 1st, 2010
Happy New Year everyone and welcome to the first Friday Question of 2010! There were some good guesses to last weeks question. I thought that it was a bit of a tricky one because it was a year unlike no other one for the brewery in recent times, with a lot of different factors coming in to play. Firstly of course the Wharf Rat /Pratt Street Ale House closed for 6 weeks for refurbishment back in January which was a major disruption for the brewery but the refurbished Ale House proved to be a great success with strong sales for our house brewed beers (though it would be nice if the Orioles could find some solid winning form!) Obviously the sluggish economy was a worry but was offset by our efforts, along with our distributor in the Summer to push out our brand to more outside accounts with new brewery design tap handles etc. We also recently started distributing to D.C. which has been a great outlet for us, especially for the cask beers. So, overall we had a pretty good year, a firm foundation upon which we hope to build in 2010. The final figure for the number of times we brewed in 2009 is …. drum roll …. 163 so congratulations go to Greg with his guess of 162. Greg wins growler fills of our upcoming 3 seasonal offerings, the Scottish Ale, Peeping Tom Porter and The Bishop’s Indulgence. Keep an eye on my posts to see when they go on tap. I’m going to stick with a seasonal theme as I’m happy to announce that we will soon be launching our “seasonal veterans club”. We will issue a passport of sorts that you get stamped the first time you try each of our new seasonal beers and rewards will be issued through the year as you accumulate more stamps. For example, if you have 5 seasonal stamps in your passport you’ll get a free beer, for 10 a free growler fill, 15 a limited edition t-shirt and so on. That first pint you buy of each seasonal will also be served in a 20oz pour for the price of a 16oz (obvious exclusions will apply to some of the higher alcohol beers which are served in 10oz snifters). Sound good? I think so! As soon as we get the the passports printed up I’ll post all of the details. I’m going to keep this weeks prize the same, growler fills of our upcoming 3 seasonal offerings. Here’s the question. How many different seasonal/ one-off offerings did I brew in 2009? I’m talking about individual brewing events here, not seasonal/ Brewer’s Choice casks. One entry per person only please posted via the comment section below. Good luck.
I tried the Bishop’s Indulgence from the conditioning tank yesterday and I’m very pleased with the results. It has pleasant notes of chocolate without them being overpowering and a smoothness from the vanilla. Some of the initial cocoa bitterness that I detected in fermentation samples has mellowed out so, all in all, I think that it is a well rounded beer. I estimate its alcohol content to be 8.2%.
Cheers
Steve