Amy, Scott, Fat Gary and Monkey Boy: A Night at East End Brewery

Eight inches of snow couldn't keep 18 hardy coffee pros from their appointed time and task last night - a tour and talk at Homewood's East End Brewing Co.

A few days ago, Amy Enrico (a.k.a. BFF) dropped us a line to invite us to tour EEB with her and Tazza d'Oro's sizeable crew of baristas on Thursday evening.  Tours of EEB are pretty rare and we're not ones to say no to free beer, so we readily accepted. 

UPDATE: Here's the post from Amy's blog, including photos.

At the time we had no inkling that a small blizzard was going to come through at exactly the time all of us would be driving to Homewood. And her crew obviously likes beer even more than we do as the TdO contingent numbered some 15 bundled-up baristas to our meager three.  Good thing so many of them braved the elements as we needed all the body heat that could be mustered up - inside EEB was pretty freaking cold.

Upon entering (no sign, just a snow-covered keg sitting outside the door), Brandon (a.k.a. employee #2) offered us a sample of Fat Gary, an amber brew named, appropriately, for a fat guy named Gary who wanted something less hoppy than EEB's usual offerings.

Taking our beers inside, Scott, the affable founder and brewmaster, greeted us with a tour of his compact brewery, perhaps not knowing that as geeky as he is about beer, we were about coffee.  The parallels between the beer and coffee worlds weren't lost on the audience, who peppered Scott with geeky questions on ingredients and processes as if cramming for an exam the next morning.

Samples of Bitter End, Monkey Boy (named for its distinct banana flavor notes gleaned from a specific type of German hops), Session Ale and Snow Cap followed until we found ourselves upstairs snacking on a half-dozen varieties of malts, and washing those down with a new cider Scott had been brewing. 

This was perhaps the most interesting part of the tour for us.  We tasted base pilsener malt (tasted like Grape Nuts), amber malts, sweet malts, smoky malts and chocolate malts. We also tasted pressed hops (looked like hamster food and tasted like the bitterest of herbs mingled with mint) and fresh hops (zingy like arugula on 'roids).

In coffee, we're using only two ingredients - a ground-up coffee bean and water.  You can eat a roasted coffee bean but in our opinion it's not all that tasty and doesn't give much idea of what the resulting brew will be like. However, in tasting the different malts and hops Scott had laid out for us, it was pretty easy to see how combining the ingredients in different ratios could result in a specific flavor profile of the finished brew.

Once the tour was done, Amy bought all her baristas a growler of brew. And she gifted us with a couple to celebrate our recent 5th anniversary, a gesture which elevated her status to BFF&E.  

Since the growler bottles are returnable, we see another trip up to Homewood in our future.  For refills.

Comments

[Tom Moertel]

Can you say anything more about the cider? Was it sweet or more dry? I've been looking for a good dry cider for ages. (Most mainstream fermented ciders are sweetened before bottling. They taste like soda pop.)

Cheers,
Tom

[rich]

It's definitely not pop. This one leans more to the sour side than sweet. I'm on this afternoon, so will bring it with if you want to taste.

[Tom Moertel]

I'd love to try it. Thanks!

Cheers,
Tom

[Amelie]

Too bad we couldn't go..we were knee deep in accounting papers. what a nightmare.

[rich]

Amelie,
You would've had fun, especially with the grain tasting. But hey, welcome to small business ownership ;-)

The good news is after a couple of years you figure out how to make it less painful so you can get through it faster. But yeah, the first time out was definitely a learning experience for us... grocery bags and shoeboxes with a year's worth of unsorted receipts and tax forms was not a good system!