Monday, November 15 2010

Chicago, the Twins and Limited Edition on the Road

Man, these travel cutbacks are killin' me!

Note: This blog entry, like many others, is really, really late. It's that time of year when it gets difficult to find an internet connectiona and a couple of hours to format photos and upload everything, not to mention trying to remember just where I've been and who I've been talking to! I'll try to be more caught up in future, because there's so much going on that I want to talk about. Keep watching this space!

 

If this is Tuesday, this must be Illinois. It was another brisk week at the Chaos Corporation (aka my little corner of 'Technical Services). I flew out massively early (a pre dawn flight) to get to Chicago in time to hook up with my compadre Brian, from LD Carlson. I'm not a huge fan of getting up at 4 am to catch airplanes, but I do it fairly frequently. It's either that, or go in the night before to be there in time to have a useful day, something made more difficult by the fact that I live in Pacific time and an awful lot of my travel happens in Central or Eastern time, so I lose two or three hours just by virtue of the location.

Still, I'd rather go early than add an extra day. I get to sleep, albeit for a fairly short time, in my own bed, in the bosom of my family (a wonderful and understanding wife and two insufferable cats who are selfish blanket-hogs. This time I flew out of a monsoon in Vancouver to the mildest November I've ever seen in Chicago. Knowing that I'd be in Minnesota later in the trip I brought along my 'big' jacket, and fully-lined, rainproof monster that will withstand the harshest prairie winter. I never took it out in anger, what with the temperatures hovering in the mid-teens most days (low 60's for Americans) and I really enjoyed soaking up a bit of sun while I was there.

Because I've been out of the loop for nearly a month now, missing meetings and conference calls it was the perfect opportunity to catch up with Brian and sort out Technical Services programs and suchlike stuff about customer service issues and other stuff about wine kit and wine kit related accessories. 'Face-time' is the usual term, but since Brian was driving I mostly looked at his cute little shell-like ears. (Just checking to see if he reads this blog—actually his ears are kind of funny looking).

The ever-dapper Mr. Fischer. Winemakers always dress this way.

Much to my pleasure I got a chance to see Bev Art in Chicago and my old friend Greg Fischer. I've known Greg for a decade, but this is the first time I've ever had the opportunity to visit his store. It's an amazingly going concern with a thousand and one projects ongoing at any one time. While I was there Greg mentioned his 200 beehives, which he uses to make a line of commercial meads, including fruit-flavoured ones and even a chocolate mead. When I asked him who tended the hives, he looked at me like I was from outer space. Of course, he did it himself, along with managing the retail store, his commercial winery and his brewing concern, along with a million other things. I'd say he had a finger in every pie, but he'd need hands the size of battleships for that many fingers. I strongly suspect he is some kind of nuclear powered robot, because he never ever stops and is always moving on to the next great project. I get tired just watching him—good to see you Greg.

Mike, explaining the size of the last fish he caught. Really?

After Bev Art it was off to Indiana and Quality Wine and Ale Supply in Elkhart. It was great to see my old friend Mike. We wound up a little late to the show, as it turns out there are a couple of Elks Halls in the area and we drove about 20 miles to the other one . . . when the place we wanted was only two blocks from our hotel! Ah well, it all turned out, with a very patient crowd, comprised not only of Quality's customers, but also the local winemaking club, Sippers and Stompers. I had a lot of fun: when there's a bunch of club enthusiasts in the house the questions are very good and the mood is intense but fun—really engaged winemakers can make a whole evening pass in a few minutes.

Sippers and Stompers with Tim. Lots of sipping, no stomping that night!

I even got a chance to meet Walt, who has been corresponding with my staff for a couple of years. He's on his 160th kit! At that rate he's going to surpass me one of these days. I have to like him because he told me he follows my instructions precisely, omitting no detail however slight. Got to love a fellow like that!

The food pairings were great—a sausage and pepper combo with the Primitivo was out of this world, and a local blue cheese with the Pacfica White was to die for. Good job Mike, and I everyone there told me how much fun they had.

The beer is a job requirement. Seriously.Stay focused, fellas!

We headed over to meet up with the folks at Northern Brewer, at their second store location. NB is a very bustling and busy shop, doing a lot of retail and mail-order both in the greater Chicago area and across the USA. Juno manages it with a happy crew of really dedicated consumer beverage enthusiasts. Juno is a young guy, and after a while I had to ask if his parents were classicists or hippies with the naming thing. A pretty stupid question, as it turns out, because Juno is a Korean name. Paint me dumb.

I'll put in a word about mail-order here: we really don't get a lot of it in Canada. Distances are too vast (making shipping prohibitive) and we have a much higher ratio of stand-alone consumer winemaking retail shops than the USA, so there's almost always one in any community to serve folks needing kits, supplies and advice. The US is pretty under-served from a Canadian perspective (although perhaps not from the retailers there working hard to be successful, when extra competition isn't usually the first thing they look for) so mail-order makes a lot more sense.

The new location is dynamite, with lots of retail space, tonnes of storage in the basement and a freight elevator to service it and coolest of all, a teaching and demonstration area featuring a brewing kitchen, refrigerators, and draught beer systems filled with kegs and classroom tables and chairs. It's a feature that is extremely powerful for a retail shop. Most home brewers and consumer winemakers are itching to learn more about ingredients, processes and techniques, and they conduct frequent classes, bringing new folk and training up existing customers.

As for the shop itself, it made me all nostalgic to get back to all-grain brewing. That's the process that uses crushed grains steeped in heated water (specific temperatures and specific times) to produce to base 'wort' that is then boiled with hops to make the unfermented beer. It's a lot more complex and time consuming than using beer kits or extract syrups, but it's also more interesting in a lot of ways and gives the brewer extended control over the outcome. I used to be a pretty fanatical grain brewer back in the day, but between living in condos and concentrating mainly on the wine side of the industry I haven't had the time or focus to get back to it. Going into a shop like Northern Brewer ignited the fire again and I can see that I absolutely have to a) find and b) put into use my old grain brewing stuff.

Class is in session. Do I really look like a hippie linebacker?

After hanging out with Juno and the boys for a while at the store, seeing the operation (including their posters, graphics and catalogues, all handled by in-house designers and artists, a very impressive set-up) and doing biz-type stuff we got ready for the event. It wasn't quite my usual Limited Edition tasting. Instead I started with an educational component tasting program, something I've done a few times before. I got the fellows to make up solutions of distilled water with additions of alcohol, sugar, tannin, oak and acid, which I pitted against a fruity unoaked Sauvignon Blanc (in this case one from New Zealand called 'Monkey Bay', and absolutely terrible wine, perfect for my purposes) and an innocuous-but-over-oaked Australian Shiraz. The idea is to taste one wine, taste the component, and immediately taste the wine again, with the idea that there will either be a an effect negating the character of the component within the wine or adding to it, thus showing how each wine achieved it's overall flavour profile and balance.

The class filled up really rapidly, and by start time it was standing-room only in the back, just the way I like it! I do the presentation without a PowerPoint or any aids, making it more intimate and interactive, and I encourage questions throughout. For most winemakers a lecture like this is the first time they get to talk to a captive technical representative and ask every question they can think of, so we started off by announcing that the two best questions of the evening would get a free wine kit, on me! (Hey, bribery is a great trick to get people to really pay attention).

The demo/lecture went brilliantly, if I do say so myself. I'm fine as a teacher, but when you've got a really engaged and interested audience eager to learn, it's not really like teaching at all—it's like hanging out and sharing things with friends: easy, natural and fun. After torturing people for an hour by making them taste raw tannins and acids and such we did a Q&A session that ranged everywhere from corks to malolactic fermentation, and I gave away the kits to a couple of sharpies in the crowd. After that I did a short-version of the Limited Edition presentation, free-form. Quite a few of the crowd had not made any of the Limited's before, and we got some converts eager to try them out, always a nice touch since making converts is really my job. I know it looks like I just fly around and yap about wine, but honestly, at the end of the day I'm supposed to be working here.

Afterwards we hung out and I got the opportunity to taste a few of the beers that they made in the shop, some pale ales and Belgian specialties, and to my surprise, some mead that they made that I actually liked.

They've been making mead a long time. I've been avoiding it for nearly as long.

A sad confession: for the most part, I can't stand mead. Although I admit a lot of my early impressions were formed from some pretty rough and ready versions that were made by beginning home brewers, some of which, in the immortal words of David Wong 'tasted like a single plum dissolved in a fifty gallon drum of paint thinner'. I'll also admit that I've been pleasantly astonished at how good some of the meads I've tried in the last couple of years have been—a couple I got in Colorado were top-notch, and Greg Fischer's fruit mead was a really nice example. But I can't get away from the single fact that mead is made from honey, and honey is made from bee throw-up. I don't put it on my toast either.

One of my ongoing criticisms of mead is just one of preference. Many types of mead are designed very simply, to showcase the character of the honey they're made from. As a consequence they usually have a lot of honey, some water to dilute, a bit of nutrient, perhaps a bit of acid and then yeast. When fermented out they are usually quite alcoholic, sweet, and fairly one-dimensional. That's not a flaw, it's the style, but the style doesn't suit me very well.

I got a chance to try a couple of meads at Northern Brewer and they were exceptionally good—so good in fact that I think they were perhaps the very best I've ever tasted, enough so that I finished my glass, something I have never done with mead before. When I told Juno this the crowd grinned pretty hard. You see, there was something unprecedented about the mead-maker. He had recently won his category in a mead competition with a score of fifty points, out of fifty.

I've been a certified judge for fifteen years, and I've never even heard of a fifty point entry, much less seen one. I got a look at the scoring sheet, and there it was in black and white, '50'. That's some darn fine mead, man. Keep up the good work.

They really do.

Next day it was on to a plane and off to the wilds of Minnesota, the twin cities of Minneapolis/St. Paul. I really like the area, for a lot of reasons. First, there's the phenomenon of 'Minnesota Nice'. Folks here are really polite, warm-hearted and friendly. It's a real phenomenon and a little bit disconcerting at first if you're more used to brusque or goal-oriented folks going on about their days.

Second, the place has a real vibe of achievement, civic pride and forward momentum. We stopped in a kind of urban-renewal/mixed-used-residential/retail area that had apparently been a bit of a run-down neighbourhood only a few years before, and it was bustling, clean, well laid out and attractive. Except for the bone chilling, mind-numbing winters, I could really see myself living there, a compliment I don't hand out very often.

When's the hippie gonna shut up and let us taste? Patient attendees at Midwest.

We scooted over to Midwest Supplies for an evening of tasting and Limited Edition food pairing. Mid West is another retail/mail-order operation. They moved in the last year and their new digs are awe-inspiring. They have nearly as much floor space and inventory as a Home Depot or a Costco store. It's very impressive and definitely allows for an economy of scale for their operation.

And it was yet another opportunity to lament my lost grain-brewing ways. There were (quite literally) tonnes of grains, brewing pots and gadgets of all types and so many knowledgeable people running around I wanted to abandon my suitcases and take home a 3-tier brewing system and a kegerator. I wonder what Air Canada would say about that?

Dave, Brian and Tim. Why do Stooge comparisons come to mind?

The head dude is Dave, a most excellent fellow. It would be hard to call him the boss, or president or any title. He's got that great quality in a leader of being just Dave, all the while managing a very large business and a lot of people. His staff members are very impressive. There are brewers there who have done over 800 batches, both for themselves and commercially. That kind of expertise allows a level of customer service and added value that's unbeatable.

Dude, that's my lamb lollipop!

It was another fun event, with good questions, people polite enough to laugh at my jokes, and a good mix of old and new Limited Edition customers. The food pairings were great—the pork belly marinated in hoisin went with the Portuguese red perfectly—and my only regret is that I didn't get to find out what 'lamb lollipops in mint aioli' tasted like. Paint me sad. I hung out and answered questions and chatted with winemakers for a couple of hours, and then we had a post-event wrap and beer, but after that it was time to hit the hay, as another week loomed!

Next up, events in Metchosin on Vancouver Island and Kamloops in BC. I did these on consecutive days, and then immediately drove down to Washington State for a Pacific Northwest tour. Ay, chihuahua, a thousand miles in three days, by car. But that's another blog.

 

Posted by Travellin' Tim AT 11:02AM

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