WITBIER TIME!

In honor of the 1 year anniversary of our gold medal at the World Beer Cup for our Witbier (Belgian White Ale), we thought we’d share a little bit of history of this style, and provide proper homage to the man who brought it to America. 

It’s that time of year again, when everything becomes green and the weather starts teasing us with warm temperatures that we know will inevitably turn into Texas heat.  For the brewers at Community Beer Co., we also know this means we need to start brewing a lot more Witbier!  While we brew this refreshing wheat beer year-round, demand skyrockets as the weather warms due to its heat-beating and refreshing qualities.

Witbier was once a nearly extinct style, but now has become more common in the U.S., with dozens of microbreweries offering their own take on this classic beer style. 

HOMAGE TO PIERRE CELIS

Unlike many classic beer styles though, the popularity of witbier – or white beer – is tied to one specific brewer, and his name is Pierre Celis.   Without him, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.

Pierre was born in the 1920s in the Flemish region of Belgium in a small town called Hoegaarden, which had a centuries-old reputation for their locally made white beers.  He often helped brew at a local brewery named Tomsin that made white beer.  However, in the mid-1950s this brewery – the last one making witbier – closed, ceasing the existence of commercially brewed witbier.  Years later in 1966, determined and thirsty, Pierre opened up his own brewery and began brewing and selling witbier locally once again in his hometown of Hoegaarden. 

After a fire at the brewery, InBev offered loans to help rebuild his brewery, which he accepted, but years later decided to sell them the brewery and start anew in Austin, Texas.  The story goes that Celis chose Austin as the place to start his new brewery because Texans speak with a slow drawl, making them easier to understand.

In 1992 he opened his brewery in Austin and attained decent success, though he quickly met production constrictions and accepted a partnership with Miller Brewing Co. in order to expand his facilities.  Long story shortened, Pierre finally sold the brewery to Miller and they eventually scaled back the brand, reportedly changed the recipe, and removed it from many markets.

OUR VERSION OF WITBIER

As a craft beer lover, I have always been a fan of Hoegaarden white beer and initially brewed a single batch of white beer at my brewpub The Covey in Fort Worth.  I routinely brewed batches of beer there without experimenting on a small scale, and they generally turned out fine.  However, my first attempts at witbier were way off balance: too much orange, not enough coriander and a lack of yeast driven esters and phenolics.  Balancing spice character in a beer is tricky business!

Years later, in the summer of 2012, I began brewing small-scale batches for Community Beer Co.’s initial releases.  One of the beers we brewed the most on our pilot system was what became Community’s Witbier.  And we didn’t brew a lot of it because we were drinking it fast.  We brewed a lot of it because I was trying to get the damn spices right!  I tried chamomile and lemon grass amongst others, and eventually went back to the traditional additions of orange peel and coriander. 

A COMMON YEAST STRAIN

It was at this time that I tried a blend of yeasts.  One of which included the very same strain of yeast that Pierre brought with him to Texas, which we still use in the final version today.

The particular yeast that Pierre brought with him to his Austin brewery, is distinctly unique.  It ferments fairly clean, but with soft fruity esters and mild spiciness, which meld amazingly well with the witbier style of beer.  We also include another Belgian strain of yeast in the blend that adds complexity and helps make our Witbier at Community distinctly our own.

After five batches, I had my recipe, and in the spring of 2013 we brewed our first commercial batch of Witbier.  After years of trying to get a Witbier right, I felt I had finally brewed the perfect one, with a balance of the wheat, spices and yeast.

WORLD BEER CUP

I liked our Witbier so much that in the spring of 2014, I entered it into the World Beer Cup, the largest international beer competition on Earth, which is held every two years.  To our great excitement, Community Beer Company’s Witbier was awarded the Gold medal in a category of 61 entrants from around the world! 

A medal at the World Beer Cup is the most treasured award a brewer’s beer can receive, so it was a very special day and is our most meaningful award to date.  The panel of judges at World Beer Cup is composed of at least 2/3 non-American judges, so there is a very big difference in the tastes from Great American Beer Festival – also a prestigious competition - which is composed of mostly American panels. 

It was humbling to know that these international judges found our Witbier to be one of the best in the world.  Our little brewery's offering beat out the likes of Hoegaarden and many other international Witbiers we respect.  Very humbling indeed!

COMING FULL CIRCLE

While winning Gold at World Beer Cup was sweet, what was even sweeter was very shortly after the market release of our Witiber, we had a drop in visitor to the brewery from a man that had a history with Pierre.  He was a cellarman at the brewery in Belgium and followed Pierre to Austin to start Celis Brewery.  He was drinking our Witbier at a local watering hole and the woman he was with is a friend of our founder, Kevin Carr.  He insisted on coming by to talk to me about the beer, and she brought him to Community’s brewery.  He introduced himself and proceeded to tell me that our witbier was the closest thing he had ever tasted to the beer they were originally brewing in Belgium!  I got goose bumps!  What a flattering and humbling compliment, one I’ll never forget.

Next time you pick up our Witbier, think about the balance that’s achieved in that beer, with all the elements of a classic wit present, but none dominating.  It’s a truly sessionable beer, brewed with inspiration from the late and great Pierre Celis, and brewed once again locally for our fellow Texans to enjoy. 

Cheers to a rich heritage of select beer styles that are thriving in Texas!

What is a Session IPA?

By: Jamie Fulton, Head Brewer

The best part of my job as head brewer at Community Beer Co. is dreaming up and executing the next new beer release.  When it comes time to brainstorm and brew new beers I actively look for inspiration in many places, but it’s often by some chance encounter that an idea is born and a new beer begins. 

With Community’s newest seasonal release named Sundial, a Session IPA (India Pale Ale), this definitely rings true. 

It happened when I wandered into Freshcraft in Denver for lunch after having survived two days of Great American Beer Festival (if you have been, you understand!).  At this point in the trip, I was about tired of beer, and relayed this sentiment to our server.  He recommended something refreshing and lighter: an Easy Jack from Firestone Walker Brewing Co.  I’d never had it before and gave in to his suggestion, and I’m glad I did.  It’s an excellent example of how a session IPA can have big hop character, but remain balanced and refreshing.  While the beer was great, the best thing about it was that it inspired me to brew my own.  Just like any artist, inspiration gained though others’ works is often the impetus for new creation.

So What is a “Session IPA?”  

The Brewers Association, which sets the style guidelines for the two largest beer competitions in the world (Great American Beer Festival and World Beer Cup), just recently came out with the style guidelines for 2015.  New to the list, amongst others, is Session IPA.  New styles are not created on a whim and are the product of a viable trend of similar beers produced by craft brewers over years of time.  In other words, it’s here to stay and not a fad!  

Arguably, the most popular Session IPA currently made is Founder’s All Day IPA; the name pretty much says it all: it’s a beer that you can drink all day (when appropriate!) without the high ABV of most commercially available IPAs. 

A normal strength IPA can range from around 6-8% ABV, and some are even higher (considered double or imperial IPA).  But this range is not set in stone.  For instance, one of our best selling beers, Mosaic IPA, is 8.6% ABV... but we do not call it Imperial IPA or Double IPA.  I figure that in Texas everything has to be bigger, so when we do a double IPA, it’s gonna be big! 

A Session IPA on the other hand is meant to offer many of the same elements that people enjoy in an IPA, without knocking you down after a few.  The star of the show, as in any great IPA, is the hops.  There should be a very present hop aroma and flavor, usually of the American variety, so think big, bold, citrus, pine, resin, tropical fruit, etc.  The hops should be backed up by a decent amount of malt though, not sweet by any means, but enough to balance the hop flavor, aroma and bitterness.  Alcohol by volume is around 4-5%, and for you beer nerds, the IBUs (a lab measurement of bitterness) are around 30-55.  

All technicalities aside though, this is simply a damn tasty beer: it’s refreshing and crisp, and showcases amazing hops that are often grown right here in the USA.

Next time you’re packing your cooler for an all day excursion or camping trip, and want something you can enjoy all day and keep your wits about you, consider Sundial, the new sessionable and hoppy delight brewed and soon-to-be canned at Community Beer Company!

Fresh, Local and Here to Stay

By: Jamie Fulton, Head Brewer

When I operated The Covey Restaurant & Brewery from 2006 to 2010, I often thought that Fort Worth was the final frontier of craft brewing.  I had many die hard, loyal regulars that had their favorite beers and appreciated the variety that came out of my small seven-barrel brewery.  However, there were many more folks that were very suspicious of what was going on behind the glass walls in all those stainless steel tanks. 

“I think those are for making tortillas.” 

“If it was any better than Budweiser they’d be brewing it.” 

“I don’t drink brewed beer.” 

“You never know what these little breweries are putting in this stuff…”

The list goes on and on.  These are pretty hysterical comments, but not when you’ve got bills to pay and people are drinking macro-brewed lager at the restaurant next door.  Macro-brewed lager has ruined so many people’s conceptions of beer over the decades since prohibition, that it’s hard to blame any of these folks, as it is all many people have ever known as beer.

            What many people do not realize is that Texas had a very rich brewing history before Prohibition wiped the slate.  During the mid 19^th century, the south-central through north-central regions of Texas had one of the highest concentrations of central European immigrants in North America.  And as in other areas of the United States, seemingly before they even unpacked the wagons, they were brewing beer!  By the turn of the century there were nearly a half million barrels of beer being brewed in Texas.

            There were important breweries all over the state.  Dallas had Dallas Brewing Co. (1887).  Fort Worth had Texas Brewing Co. (1890). Houston had American Brewing and Houston Ice & Brewing Co. (both 1893).  The most important brewing town was San Antonio though, with San Antonio Brewing Co. (1883) and Lone Star Brewing (1884).  The span of all of these large breweries opening is only ten years! 

            It is no stretch to draw a comparison to the explosion of craft breweries opening today.  By my count there are nearly one hundred craft breweries and brewpubs in operation today in Texas and that number is exponentially increasing with many more in planning.

            Is this a fad?  Not a chance.  While I do think Darwin’s theory will take effect before long with some new breweries (hopefully not mine), many are here to stay.  And the great news for craft brewers in Texas and around the country is that the demand is higher than ever before and ever increasing. 

How could we have even thought of having North Texas Beer Week ten years ago?  That would have been a sad week indeed for craft beer lovers.  While there were a few breweries around, there is no comparison to the plethora in the current marketplace.  Just this past weekend, Texas brewers brought home ten medals in the biggest beer competition in the nation and the world!  It was unforgettable to see Texas represented so well, unlike any year past I have been.  The camaraderie is healthy too; nearly all the Texas brewers were sitting together cheering each other’s win.

As a seventh-generation Texan I am already proud of my roots, and now there’s yet another source of pride for me: our ever-strengthening Texas beer culture.  So I propose for North Texas Beer Week, let’s raise our glasses and cheer each other’s win as fellow Texans: having a righteous selection of amazing craft beer brewed right here, fresh and local, and here to stay.  

Cheers!!!!

Local, Fresh & Brewed with Tradition

By: Jamie Fulton, Head Brewer

Whenever I set out to brew a new beer, I put hours of research into the endeavor.   However, when I first brewed a hefeweizen on a commercial scale in 2006, I knew without research what the recipe would involve.  From my time in Germany, I learned that these beers have been brewed for centuries from a basic, simple formula: half wheat malt, half barley malt, a touch of bittering hops, and most importantly, an authentic Bavarian hefeweizen yeast strain to create the telltale clove and banana flavors for which these beers are known.  

Years ago before beers were distributed around the globe, you went to your local pub or restaurant to drink local beers, and many of these were probably using very similar recipes, albeit each brewer adds his/her own personal twist.  While there are obviously many variations in modern commercially available hefeweizens, this basic recipe is a good rule of thumb. 

To keep it traditional for that first batch of hef, I ran with the simplest version of that recipe: 50% wheat malt, 50% two row barley malt and 14 IBUs of bittering, noble hops.  It was an instant favorite of my customers and one of my all-time favorite beers we made at The Covey.  It goes miles to show that sometimes you just shouldn’t try to reinvent the wheel!  I tinkered with the recipe slightly over the years, but it never varied far from the time-tested, classic formula that’s been brewed in Southern Germany for many, many years.

I think the reason for the centuries-long popularity of certain, classic beer styles is plainly obvious: they are widely enjoyed by many people and there’s a certain catch to their flavor.  Just look at the impressive run for beers like English Bitters, Czech Pilsners, German Helles, Irish Dry Stouts, etc.  This is why we set out to brew the Witbier at Community Beer Co. as traditional as possible: we’re on a straightforward mission to bring our local community the freshest witbier around.  While witbier has not been around as long as some of the other classic beer styles, it has left its own unique mark in history. 

Historically some of the beers that fell into the category of witbier were sour to some extent; we decided to go a more modern route with the fermentation.  The late and great Pierre Celis – the godfather of modern witbier – brought his own yeast to America to make the now famous Celis White, the brand of which was sold and still brewed by Michigan Brewing Co.  (We've heard rumors that it might be coming back to Texas via Celis' family)  

We’re using that same yeast strain at Community, along with another select Belgian strain that adds its own unique “fingerprint.”  We’re gently spicing our witbier with California sweet orange peel, French bitter orange peel and freshly ground coriander seed.  We did keep the grist traditional, about half of which is unmalted wheat.  Anyone who has ever brewed with any appreciable amount of wheat in an all grain mash knows the challenges that usually ensue!  Thankfully, our state of the art, four-vessel brew house with a mash mixer gives us the capability to gracefully handle large percentages of unmalted grains.  This is a good thing, because I think we’re going to be brewing lots of Community Witbier! 

Go grab a pint at your favorite local watering hole and find out for yourself.  I don’t think you’ll try it and think it needs some other obscure ingredients to make it a standout craft beer.  Sometimes traditions are best kept in place, and I think our Witbier is a perfect example.