GBC IN SPRING!

YIPPEE!!!

Well, I think I'm gonna go ahead and jinx it and say SPRING IS FINALLY HERE!!
We've had beautiful days lately. Perfect weather to indulge in my new specialty, WILD WOLF WHEAT! This is any American wheat beer that I filter to wonderful clarity! This beer is crisp, refreshing, and beautiful!
I haven't made this recipe in over two years so it's kinda fun to get back out again. Last time I made this beer, the filtration of it was a nightmare. It took me over ten hours and two-and-a-half sets of filter pads to get it clear! I swore I would never again make this recipe. Well, two years and a new filter later, this time around the filtration went like a dream: one set of pads and 40 minutes! Not only that, but I filter two other tanks of beer before I filtered this wheat, ON THE SAME SET OF PADS!! I LOVE MY FILTER!

Whenever you make a wheat beer, ya' gotta be careful during the mash. This is due to the wheat kernels, themselves. Any good wheat beer is gonna be made up of at least 50% wheat grain. The wheat, unlike barley, is huskless. The husk of barley, while basically inert in the brewing process, provides a very important anti-clumping action in the mash. The husks don't allow the wet, hot grain to clump up very easily. Now, when you reduce the husk content by at least 50% (remember the wheat), well, clumping and "sticking your mash" become very real possibilities. Sticking your mash means that the milled grains in the mash tun have basically loosely fused into a big dough ball on top of the mash screens. So tightly, in fact, that not even water can get through. NOT GOOD! So you must monitor your mash, stir it gently, talk softly to it, be nice.
If all goes well, you then get to run the malt sugars over to your brew kettle.

This is known as your first runnings of wort (pronounced "wert"). This is some very sugary hot liquid. As the hot water continues to sprinkle over the grains, more and more sugars are leached out and into the brew kettle. Once the kettle is full, the wort is boiled, hops are added (if you can find any!), and the hot, hopped wort is crash-cooled on its way to the fermenter. The fermenter is where the magic happens! The yeast is added and eats all the sugars. It then excretes (yup, pees) alcohol! After the yeast is done peeing in our beer, we filter it, carbonate it, and package. Last but not least, we drink it!
So, get in here quick because the Wild Wolf Wheat always goes quick. I'm not sure when I'm gonna make it again since there are so many other beer styles I want to try out.
Until next time,
Prost!
Your Humble Brewer!

Yup, here it is again!
EARTH DAY! This is the time for all of us to gather around our good intentions, turn off the lights, turn down the heat, recycle our newspapers and plastics (no glass, remember we're in Montana! No Glass Recycling Here!), make sure the dishwasher is full before running it, walk instead of driving, and on and on and on.
Except, is it really possible to reverse several hundreds of years of out and out environmental sodomy by taking these small steps? Is it possible to have any real-lasting effect on this enormous system we call "the environment"? I'm not sure.
I know, I know, "At least it's something." This is true. But the lifestyle changes needed should be all-encompassing and long-long-term.
Basic things, like when you use your car, need to be changed. The car, it seems, has become an extension of the body and this extension needs to be severed. Driving the car should become a unique thing.
Light usage: Next time you're in a grocery store, look up and try to count how many light fixtures are up there. I'm betting you get tired of counting before you get them all. Now think of how many stores use this many lights in your town, county, state, country?!? Holy Waa! How much light do we really need to compare two brands of pork rinds?
Excess is the credo of our society. I guess $3.50 a gallon and up is the price (literally) we pay for following this credo generation after generation.

So, what do we do? How about fuel rations? Everyone gets 35 gallons a month. Do with it what you can. When your tank is dry, you have to wait until the new month. I'd really make sure my "quick trip" to the store is worth it if this was the case. What else? How about sensors on lights so they can only be turned on when it's dark enough to need them? Graywater systems standard on all new construction. Municipal photovoltaic, hydro, and wind power-generating systems to supplement grid. Community food gardens instead of shipping food across the hemisphere. Ban NASCAR!
Oh, and everyone must fill their growlers at the Glacier Brewing Company!
P.S. In this vein, I'm thinking of collecting our beer bottles back so we can smash them and maybe use the crushed glass for landscaping or offer it to local builders as fill material. What do you think about this? Post a comment, email me (info@glacierbrewing.com) or come into the brewery and talk to me about it.

To know the future, look to the past....

Howdy all,
When I was doing some spring cleaning, I came across this old photo of my great-great grandfather (that's him with the mallet in his hand and the white beard) posing with the crew from the first Glacier Brewing Company. It was located on the lake where the old mill used to be before it burned down. His name was Otto Schaefer. He started the brewery two years after he arrived in the area with his old business partner, David Polson. They were originally going to start a business of hauling east-coasters around the lake in traditional dug-out canoes. But after miserable experiences with sinking canoes, Otto decided to pursue his grandfather's passion, brewing beer. His brewery saw much greater success than did the canoe venture. He was best known for hauling his beers over the Mission Mountains in the winter to the Swan Valley to keep the government elk-breeding researchers supplied. It was on one of these trips when he encountered a lost and starving group of hunters. He was able to get their fire going and got them fed with a bark stew. If not for his efforts and good timing, the whole group of fifteen hunters would have perished! This is where Schaefer Ridge got it's name.

Years later, he decided to sell the Polson brewery to his brewery manager, Derk Cleaveland and head out to eastern Montana. He reopened the Glacier Brewing Company and stage stop near Crows Bluff, Montana. He operated the brewery and stage stop singlehanded for many more years before dying at the ripe old age of 107! The family story says that he was too stubborn to die.
His original brewery in Polson met a similar fate at the hands of Derk Cleaveland. For years, Mr. Cleaveland had been scooping out dirt from under the brewery to mix in with the grains. He had scooped out so much, in fact, that one day during a fierce storm, the entire brewery collapsed into the lake! What little there was to salvage was used to build the Klondike Steamship. One of the kettles was recovered and used as one of Polson's first water towers.
I hope you've enjoyed this little-known family history as much as I've enjoyed telling it.

SPRINGTIME IN THE ROCKIES!

Howdy all,
There are few times of the year more soul-satisfying than the break of winter in the Rocky Mountains of the west. Life in Polson has been warm and peaceful. I've been spending this last week enjoying the vices of western Colorado, visiting with family and getting a few turns in on the mountain. I also got a chance to visit with the fine folks at the Aspen Brewing Company located (wait for it!) in Aspen. They have a 7bbl system with a couple of fermenters; a modest but attractive tasting room and plans to pour several different types of beers. They are located in a "working-man's" part of Aspen.
I know, that seems like an oxy-moron. But, beneath the glitz and fantasy-land persona, the gears of Aspen (and similar resort towns: Whitefish) are lubed and turned by people who do the manual labor jobs, the trash-hauling, the food-serving, the beer-making. Without this work force, these high-priced destinations would be nothing more than the ultra-rich standing in a field, throwing their money at each other. Okay, enough of the soapbox. The ultra-rich, and rich, and moderately well-off also contribute quite a bit to these areas. They provide the funds that provide the grease! Very important.
But I digress. The Aspen Brewing Company faces a challenge. Due to where they are located, the powers that be in the Town of Aspen have decided that the Aspen Brewing Company will be allowed to serve their patrons one pint of their beer in their tasting room, a restriction that any Montana brewery can understand. A specially-zoned area was created by the Community Development Department in Aspen to provide businesses with lower rents to facilitate more small, local enterprises. In the creation of this area, bars and restaurants were prohibited. Even though microbreweries in Colorado are not restricted at the federal or state levels on how much product they can serve in their tasting room, the Aspen powers have decided that a tasting room looks too much like a bar and have therefore placed the "one-pint restriction" on them as well as prohibiting the display of sporting events on their televisions!
Now, the principals of the Aspen Brewing Company are not taking this lying down. They will be attempting to change this ruling on the 24th of this month. They are asking for as much positive public comment to the Aspen City Council as they can get.
If there is a villain in this, it seems to be the Community Development Department. This department's aim, when they are placing the restrictions on the brewery, is to preserve the character of Aspen. Now, this gets a sarcastic-laugh out of me. I grew up in this valley. I attended first-grade through high school down-valley in Basalt. Most of my early jobs were in Aspen or Snowmass. The "character of Aspen", the true character of Aspen was bull-dozed, rebuilt, painted, bull-dozed again, rebulit again, and again and again. The "CHARACTER OF ASPEN" is "remodel-rebuild-inflated pricing". Any old-time Aspen charm is very difficult to find in town. Aspen is less a town and more of a corporation.
I wish Duncan, Brad, Rory, and Terry the best of luck with their venture. They have a great idea, pretty good location (zoning not-withstanding), and seem to have a lot of the true old character of aspen, the character that keeps this town running.
Prost!
Your humble brewer

(Photo courtsy of PlumTV: http://aspen.plumtv.com/stories/new_brew_town)

REMEMBER WHEN.....

This picture was taken back in February of 2003. This is the brewhouse and cellar vessels arriving at their new home via flatbed truck. Notice the yet-to-be-painted-white wall of the brewery. For those of you who have never heard the story, here goes:
The idea of the Glacier Brewing Company began several years ago, maybe almost a decade now. At that time, my wife (then she was my girlfriend), Christine was employed as a seasonal Ranger-Naturalist in Glacier National Park. The rest of the year, we both lived in Fort Collins, Colorado. I would drive up to Montana with Christine every May from Fort Collins to get her ready for the summer season in the park. For the rest of the summer, I would stay in Colorado and work at my job; keg washer and bottler for the H.C. Berger Brewing Company. It was on one of these trips up north that we were driving through Wyoming (just outside of Rock Springs, I think), Christine was asleep and I was trying to find something redeeming about Wyoming when, like a bolt from the blue, I suddenly had the idea of opening a brewery and restaurant (I didn't know any better back then!) outside Glacier National Park and call it........(wait for it!).........the Glacier Brewing Company!!! Now, not only did the name come to me right then, but also some of the beers: Golden Grizzly Ale, North Fork Amber, Back Country Bock (we can't legally make true bocks in Montana), and several others that either died a quiet death or were reworked into today's beers and sodas.

Well, upon returning to Fort Collins after that trip, I quickly set about to record my ideas on paper, including a full sketch of the outside of the brewery/brewpub and a layout of the inside. I still have them around somewhere. I would dust off this idea through the years and share it with those who are near and dear to me. The deeper I got into brewing, the more tangible this vision became. It wasn't until I had been brewing at a brewpub in Telluride, Colorado for a couple of years that "THE IDEA" really started to kick. It was early spring. The town was almost empty and Christine's brother Bob came for a visit as he was going on trip to Death Valley (if you know Bob, you understand) and he was going through some life changes, as well. Christine, Bob, and I were having lunch at the brewpub and were talking about the future. One of us brought up the idea of the Glacier Brewing Company and "what would be truly involved?" (in hindsight, none of us had a CLUE!!!!) After talking about it in detail for awhile, a strange quiet fell over the table. Then, one of us then suggested: "Why don't we just try it?"
Why, indeed.
I began to work on the business plan and started the search for a brewing system. The brewing system project was finished first. I found one on the Internet and we ended up buying it sight-unseen, as is said. I gave notice at my job and two weeks later, Christine and I had our house rented out, the moving truck loaded, our two-year-old strapped into her car seat and we were off to Montana!!!
We arrived on a Thursday, unloaded the truck that night, fell fast asleep, and I was on a plane for L.A. the next morning. I arrived in L.A. (my first trip to California) just in time for Friday rush hour! I made my way to Huntington Beach, found the brewpub (closed for almost a year), it was locked up. So, I found a cheap hotel and planned to meet the seller the next morning.
He assured me that two guys could remove the entire system in two days. A week and two rented grunts later, I loaded the system onto a drop-deck flatbed semi. I gave the drivers directions to the Flathead Valley and got on a plane for Montana. The system arrived in Montana about a week later and we stored it on my father-in-law's Christmas tree plantation in Creston. It sat there for almost a year as we scoured the area for a building to start our brewery.
Eventually, Bob called me one day to say he thinks he found our building. I drove down to Polson and had a look. This building was built in the mid 70's as a racquetball court and had since been used by a printer. His bus-sized printing press was still in it. This building was dirty, dusty, oily, and needed a lot of work.
IT WAS PERFECT!
Well, we started to move the equipment in around Halloween and almost five months later, we were brewing our first batch of beer, a very hoppy Golden Grizzly Ale.
We were soon picked up by Earl's Distribution in Missoula, now known as Summit Beverage. Since then, our market has been growing and undulating in some fun and unexpected ways. We've increased our product line beyond our original business plan, we've added bottle product to our line-up, we've added a beer garden, we've expanded our tasting room to an unbelievable size. Who knew that road trip all those years ago would yield such wonderful fruit!

I know it is a very corny thing to say, however, it's true: the longest journey begins with a single step.

Slaking the Soul's thirst.....

I feel that annual rebirth beginning. This magical time in northwestern Montana. This, after months of the clouds lowering, the temperatures skid-skittering, the light, the sky, the ground, all becoming the mono-palette of blue-gray. This wonderful time of the clouds thinning and breaking! The temperatures easing (a little), and the sun refilling the hope bucket! This is when the payoff begins. Nevermind the Snowbirds, flittering south when the first omens of the Montana winter begin (can't blame 'em, might do it to if I could. Naw, I wouldn't). This is when we "year rounders" start getting paid back for stickin' it out through the Montana winter. The fantastic dichotomy of the sun-filled, blue sky. The Mission mountains wearing a fresh coating of powder sugar, while basking in the evening light of alpine glow. This is when you can feel everything coming back to full. We know it's not Goldentime (summer) yet, but at least we're out of the grays. I always forget how many color are hidden or gone in the winter. Mono-palette: sky-is-cloud-is-mountain-is-ground-is-lake-is-air... Whew, not sure if it's getting harder to take, year after year, or if this year just hit me harder. That's the thing about the Montana winters: it's not the physical manifestations of the season, it's the mental game. Keeping some sort of light bright and hot inside your core. I do love it when the temperature free falls and the snow comes down so hard it swallows all sound. But the long term bleakness also erodes something. It gets hard to remember the days of long light in the summer, the never-ending cycle of mowing the lawn, harvesting cherrys, raspberrys, peaches, cherrys again, more raspberries. There's the full payoff. If you haven't spent a round year in state, I invite you to try one. Makes the colorful months that much sweeter when harvested!

'til next time,

your humble brewer

The Flu Sucks!

Sorry I haven't posted for awhile. As of late, I've been sidelined and bed-(couch)ridden with the flu. Sucks royal! What an amazing equalizer. It started earlier this week with a subtle round of body aches and this cough, cough, cough! By Wednesday night, the velvet hammer came down hard! It is now Saturday afternoon and I'm starting to crawl out of the hole! I went outside on our back deck earlier today and sat and just smelled the air. Wonderful. After over two days of flu-induced seclusion in the bedroom and living room, I didn't realize how stuffy they were.
Well, I feel like I lost two days in the brewhouse with a full schedule. So, I'm hoping this next week I can get back into the saddle and get some bottling done and brew some batches!

I'm looking for ideas for a new specialty brew. Keep in mind that we won't be brewing any highly hopped beers due to the hop crises. But, I would love to get imput from our customers (and also find out if anybody is reading this).



Speaking of the hop crises, one bright spot is firming up. Boston Brewing, a.k.a. Sam Adams, a.k.a. Jim Koch has offered up their excess hop inventories to the U.S. craft brewing community at their cost, NOT MARKET COST!!! Quite the show of commaradarie and community! Would be nice if some of the bigger players would do the same but there are those who claim this "crises" has been caused by the biggest players in the brewing world. War of attrition, cut the supply lines and watch your enemys whither and die!

Okay, back to bed.........