The beer gods

Every once in a while, no matter what your true religious beliefs are you probably come back to the Beer Gods. At Papago this past Saturday I paid our homage to the Beer Gods by taking a shower. A shower of Uerige Dopple Sticke Alt to be exact in front of a full bar of disbelieving beer lovers. The only thing I can figure is that when I went to tap the first keg of this wonderful beer is that I pounded in the tap too hard. If you were lucky enough to be there you saw the outcome. Beer gushing from the keg with nothing but my German-American T-shirt, my mouth and the wall in its way. Reflecting on my travels to the Netherlands I quickly plugged the hole in the keg with my finger much as the little Dutch boy did with the dike until we could regroup and come up with another idea of tapping the beer. Once we reorganized with the help of Saint Barry Tingleff we were able to successfully tap the beer and everyone was able to enjoy a fantastic one of a kind beer.

The Uerige Dopple Sticke Alt was pretty much as the importer described it. It was a hoppy, high alcohol beer made in Germany that didn't taste like anything German at all and was more of a barleywine style beer than an alt. Since we donated a few gallons to the Beer Gods the first keg went pretty fast. Now the pressure was really on though when tapping the second keg. The tapping of the second keg, while it did not go 100% smoothly it sure went a lot better than the first with minimal waste. Some people commented that they thought the first keg and second keg tasted different. Knowing that it is the exact same beer I can only speculate that the taste difference was due to the level of CO2 in the beer. With the first keg, much of the CO2 left the keg and splattered beer on me, on multiple walls and on other thirsty beer connoisseurs while with the second keg it stayed in suspension in the beer to be enjoyed while drinking it.

The Beer Gods also paid us a visit a couple of days before the tapping. Zymurgy, which is the magazine that is devoted to the art and science of homebrewing came out with their "Best of" issue and the readers voted Papago in second place behind Portland's Hair of the Dog Brewery as the Brewery with the Spirit of Homebrew award. Alesmith, Stone and Rogue rounded out the top 5 places in the country. Pretty good company in my opinion and even though we came in second I am really happy about being in the top 5 and I'd like to thank everyone reading this who happened to vote for us.

The readers of Zymurgy voted Stone Brewing as the #1 brewery in the nation and Alaskan Smoked Porter as the #1 beer in the country. While it is not as rare as the Uerige Dopple Sticke Alt in which there were only 10 kegs ever produced, Papago is slated to get 6 out of the 7 kegs of Alaskan Smoked Porter that are due to come into the state later this year. Luckily for all of us, these are modern kegs where I don't have to tap them with a big wooden mallet, so no Alaskan Smoked Porter aurora borealis showers will be seen.

Papago wasn't the only Arizona entity to make the "best of" list in Zymurgy. Four Peaks and Nimbus both were named in the top 50 microbreweries based on number of barrels produced and BJ's in Chandler made the top 50 for brewpubs based on number of barrels produced.

Prost, Ron