On Memorial Day, Anvil Celebrates with a Tasty Line Up of Limited Release Brews from Ranger Creek Brewstillery

RC Owner Mark McDavid and Brew Master Rob Landerman join Anvil’s Kevin Floyd to share their brewing knowledge and a pint [or two]

Anvil to feature the largest selection of RC brews to be tapped in Houston at one time, including multiple side-by-side tastings

Ranger Creek, a combined brewery and whiskey distillery in San Antonio, is one of the newest and most exciting craft brewers to emerge in Texas.  And Houston hasn’t yet tasted the full range of their brewing genius.  But all that will change on Memorial Day, when Kevin Floyd hosts a Ranger Creek tasting event featuring multiple side-by-side tastings to celebrate Memorial Day at Anvil Bar & Refuge.

“I’m excited to have so many of Ranger Creek’s beers available to taste at Anvil at one time.  Ranger Creek’s philosophy to make quality products in small batches by hand mirrors our craft approach to cocktails at Anvil, so it’s a great match for us,” enthuses Anvil partner Kevin Floyd.  “And I know that Anvil’s loyal beer regulars will enjoy meeting Mark and Rob to learn more about their brewing processes and taste some of the limited releases and side-by-sides we are tapping for the holiday.”

Here’s a breakdown of the stellar line-up that will be tapped as the doors open at 4pm:

South Texas Lager

The Ranger Creek guys think San Antonio deserves a craft beer it can call its own, and this is what they came up with… Made in the traditional style of a German Dortmunder-Export, this delicately balanced and refreshing beer is crafted to complement the hot Texas summer.  With earthy, spicy, and herbal hints of German Tettnang hops, the subtly sweet malt flavor and herbal hop character give way to a crisp, dry finish.

Side-by-Side Tasting Opportunities: La Bestia Amaible, Oatmeal Pale Ale and Mesquite Smoked Porter

La Bestia Amaible

Spanish for ‘the beast’ and French for ‘friendly’ in honor of Texas’ French and Mexican heritages, La Bestia Amaible is a traditional Belgian-style dark strong ale.  Crafted with Belgian malts and candi-syrup, along with Texas Hill Country honey and German noble hops, the beer offers a rich, complex nose of deep berry and fig with cinnamon, nutmeg, and black pepper notes, and a full-bodied brew of rich, dark fruit flavors.  Brew Master Rob Landerman has made two barrel-aged versions to compare against the keg in a rare three way side-by-side tasting:

–       a limited release Port-Barrel Aged version, aged for 5 months in a French Oak Port barrel

–       the only cask of the brew that has been aged for 5-months in a French Oak Cabernet barrel

Notes Landerman, “The differences between La Bestia and its barrel-aged versions are both slight and dramatic. The deep fruit character is played off by the wines used, adding more tartness, a deeper berry character, some more acidity, and increased dryness.”

Oatmeal Pale Ale

A second side-by-side features the Oatmeal Pale Ale and a cask-conditioned OPA.  Master Brewer Landerman reports that “We have prepared a firkin of cask-conditioned Oatmeal Pale Ale, our signature American-style Pale Ale made with floor-malted Maris Otter 2-row base malt, malted oats, and American Crystal malt, with US grown Centennial and Citra hops. This firkin has been dry-hopped with Cascade and Centennial whole hops.”

Mesquite Smoked Porter

Ranger Creek Mesquite Smoked Porter is brewed with Texas mesquite house-smoked malt for a special touch of local flavor.  In this side-by-side, compare the keg against a version that has been barrel aged for 6 months in a French Oak Cabernet Barrel from the Texas Hill Country’s Dry Comal Creek winery.  Landerman observes “The Porter is deeply complex, with roasty, smoky, chocolaty characteristics that blend well with the dryness, acidity, and complex berry and fruit character of the Cabernet barrel.”

Thinking that a Ranger Creek brew and a shot of their whiskey would have been fun?  Well, so do we.  We just need to wait for the hard stuff to be ready to sip!  Hopefully, soon!

The thought behind Anvil was to build a bar that no matter what kind of drinker you were you could find something to satisfy your thirst. While cocktails are what we are best known for, we sought out interesting wines and beers for the causal drinker and the enthusiast alike. The motivation behind our draft program is the pour some of the best beers you can buy in the city of and have them taste as close to brewery fresh as possible.

Bottled beer is easy, it’s bottled at the brewery at the proper pressure with the proper mix of gas, and, as long and the beer is handled with care during its journey from the brewery to the bar, all we have to do is open it and pour it into the proper glass. Draft is not the same story; there are a multitude of factors that influence the taste of a beer poured on daft. Beside the issues of handling during shipping, once the keg arrives in the bar, the most important factors we must consider are gas pressure, gas mix, keg rotation, length of draw, cleanliness of the lines and service procedures.

Gas pressure is an issue that many bars often overlook. Depending on the style of beer, the length of the draw, the temperature of the cooler, and the original keg pressure, the pressure a beer should be served will vary greatly. If the pressure is too low, the beer will pour slow and flat; if the pressure is to high, the beer will pour to fast and foamy. To give us the greatest amount of control at Anvil, we installed an individual regulator on every tap. The common practice is to run a regulator on a set of lines anywhere from 1 to 100. The problem with this method is that you have multiple beers running at the same pressure and no two beers run exactly the same. Even if you pour the same beer on the same line over and over again, opening cooler doors, brewery shifts, and shipping always create different circumstances for each keg. So, if you want to pour the best possible product, you must be able to change pressure depending on each specific brew. Our system allows us to adjust the pressure on every tap each time we change the beer or as needed, ensuring the best possible pour every time.

Gas mix is something that I had not given much thought to until recently. When we talk about gas in beer we are talking about Nitrogen, CO2 or a blend of the two. Most beers are carbonated at the brewery with 2 volumes or 3.9grams/liter of CO2. The volume of CO2 in the keg has a lot to do with how carbonated the beer is. In an ideal world, you would run a gas mix and pressure that is the same as factory original, giving you a more brewery true taste. But because of the length of some draft lines, you have to increase the pressure of the CO2 in order to push the beer, leading to over carbonation of the beer. The solution to the problem is blending in a high pressure, neutral gas to push the beer without over-carbonation. This is where Nitrogen comes into the picture. Nitrogen is not easily absorbed by beer and is less likely to change the taste of your favorite brew. As you increase the length of the draw, you increase the pressure and the amount of nitrogen in the mix. In order to custom blend the gas, you need a gas blender which allows you to mix CO2 with nitro as desired. Blenders are expensive. Most bars go with a pre blended gas known as beer gas. Beer gas is 70%-75% CO2 and 25%-30% nitrogen. The biggest problem with beer gas is that it might not be exactly the right blend for your draft system leading to flat or over carbonated beer. At Anvil we have a two zone blender that allows us to blend our gas mix to our needs; add the individual regulators and we have a complete the system helping to make a nearly perfect beer possible. One zone on our blender will be running a 70% nitrogen and 30% CO2 blend. This high nitrogen mix will push our big ales like stouts and big porters. The gas a bar uses to push beer from the keg is one the most import and least thought about aspects of the draft beer system. The purity of the gas that is used is very important because it will come into direct contact with the beer. You want to always use clean, dry gas, but sometimes, you might get a cylinder of gas that has been contaminated with back flow or something else. To avoid this, we have put in-line filters on the gas lines to keep the gas going to keep the beer as fresh and clean as possible.

When we talk about the length of a keg draw we are referring to the length the beer has to travel from the keg to the faucet. Long draw systems involve moving beer from a distant cooler (likely somewhere in the back of the building) to the tap (likely in the bar area). Long draw systems are very expensive, hard to maintain and unless you know exactly how to handle the gas mix and cooling system always lead to flat or over carbonated beer. Direct draw systems or short draw are used when the walk-in shares a wall with the bar, and, as a result, are the preferred approach to designing a beer system. The biggest advantage is that most of the beer lines are in the cooler so they are the same temperature as the keg, negating the necessity for costly and often unreliable line cooling equipment. Additionally, you have less line length and less beer sitting in the line this makes cleaning far easier. At Anvil we run a short draw. The tap wall is directly in front of our walk-in cooler, so there are no exposed lines, except for the shanks that run from the taps to the cooler, which are extremely well-insulated. This makes for the perfect line setup for serving the best beer possible.

You can have the best pressure, gas mix and draw length but all of this is for not if you don’t keep your lines clean. Most bars leave the line cleaning up to the distributor and don’t worry about doing it themselves. At Anvil, we have a great draft tech that works for one of the city’s larger disruptors but because we are changing beers so often we are going to clean our own lines as well. Line cleaning is pretty strait forward; using a special keg like object called a cleanout can you run a special chemical threw the lines to push all the old beer out. While beer is delicious beer is also a breeding ground for all kinds of un-tasty micro organisms. Often times, if you have ever had a poor tasting beer on draft, the cleanliness of the lines has a lot to do with it.

While although it might have taken longer than we thought draft beer is now flowing at Anvil. We have a unique approach to choosing beers that focuses entirely on the best beers we can get our hands on with a preference for local micro-brews and interesting beers you don’t usually see offered outside of the bottle. We never put the same beer on two times in a row, so when we change a keg, we change the beer. This guarantees that our selection will always offer something interesting, seasonal, and just down right cool. Here is a list of the beers that we will be offering over the next week or so, depending on how quickly you get out here and drink them.

Tap 1: Real Ale Devil’s Backbone
Tap 2: Lagunitas Shutdown
Tap 3: Victory Prima Pils
Tap 4: Dogfish Head 120 Minute
Tap 5: Oscar Blues Dales Pale
Tap 6: Real Ale Brewhouse Brown
Tap 7: Green Flash West Coast IPA
Tap 8: Victory Golden Monkey
Tap 9: Stone Smoked Porter
Tap 10: Dogfish Head Midas Touch
Tap 11: Real Ale Fireman’s #4
Tap 12: North Coast Old Rasputin

We hope that this list will inspire to you to think of Anvil as a great place beer as well as cocktails. We take as much care and time in tending to our beers as we do making a classic martini. We think that you will be able to taste the difference in the beers flowing out of our tap system. Great cocktails are a combination of lots of small little factors combining to form a unique taste experience; beer is no different. Have a North Coast Old Rasputin on high nitrogen at Anvil, and you’ll see what all this rambling was all about.

This idea was hatched a few months ago when I was exploring the concept of smoked cocktails. While I have refined the idea of incorporating smoke into cocktails quite well since those writings, I still wanted to try my original idea of smoking a bottle of liquor itself. The problem with most other methods for incorporating smoke into a cocktail is that the smoke must piggy-back on some other medium, like a syrup, fruit, herb, etc. This introduces an additional flavor to a drink, that while tasty at times, limits the element of smoke to cocktails that use these types of ingredients. Unleashing the full potential of smoke in cocktails requires the introduction of smoke into a spirit without altering the spirit in any other way.

Enter the fish tank aerator. This device is usually used to force air into a fish tank in order to provide fish with air. The aerator simply collects the surrounding air and forces it into an airline which is connected to an airstone or airbar placed inside of a fish tank. This aerator is generally surrounded by clean, oxygen friendly air, which makes happy, healthy fish. A deadly error made by fish keepers, however, is spraying Lysol or other aerosols around fish tanks or aerators. The Lysol is taken in by the aerator forced into the tank, and the owner’s precious fish die, because Lysol kills germs…and fish. They should put this whole sequence on a commercial and point out that if the fish don’t have a chance, neither do the germs.

Now take these same principles and place that aerator on a smoke stack. And, instead of running the airline into a fish tank, place the end of the line in a bottle of Sazerac rye. The aerator takes in the smoke and forces it into the rye. The smoke, which is alcohol and water soluble, takes hold of the spirit and slowly changes it over time into a tasty beverage even Samuel L. Jackson would be proud of. The only thing to watch for here is the potential for the aerator to overheat. Make sure that your stack is not too hot and use a smoker that has a large distance between the fire and chimney opening. Taste your rye or whatever you desire every 30 minutes or so and pull the line out when you’ve reached your desired smokiness.

Some have suggested using housemade liquid smoke instead of smoking a spirit as a method for accomplishing the same result. However, liquid smoke is far more intense and difficult to control. Air infusing a spirit takes time and allows for one to stop the introduction of smoke at any point, creating more control over the final result, and eventual cocktails. Moreover, smoking a spirit yourself allows for you to use any type of wood to obtain a more specific smoke profile. Our rye was smoked with the smoker at the bar for example, and we used the same wood we smoke all of our meats with, maple and red oak. Any wood would work so, the potential for using all sorts of different wood, like mesquite or some other crazy foreign wood I haven’t heard of, could create some extremely complex spirits with as much subtlety or boldness as one would desire.

I love smoke elements in cocktails, and I think that smoke properties are an overlooked trait in mixology. Between the air infusion presented here and my other posts on smoked cocktails, I think the methodology for adding smoke to cocktails has been presented somewhat extensively. I would love to hear what others are doing with smoke and find out if anyone has heard of any new smokey cocktails since my last posts on the subject. Also, please try this out and tell me how your air infusion works. I’m pretty sure this idea is a first, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there where other fish/cocktails fans out there.

]]> http://drinkdogma.com/air-infusions-smoked-rye/feed/ 14 http://drinkdogma.com/smoked-cocktails/ http://drinkdogma.com/smoked-cocktails/#comments Fri, 11 Jan 2008 08:11:00 +0000 http://drinkdogma.com/?p=63 Update: I wrote this several years ago before Anvil existed, and I have since smoked so many different things I’ve left the concept behind. I still get e-mails about this and would be happy to comment, but since Anvil doesn’t have a huge smoker, like my previous stomping grounds did, it’s not as important in our cocktail program. Still cool though…

I generally try and write about cocktails in a somewhat informative manner. In other words, I tinker with bottles and ingredients behind the bar and post the results of my efforts here for people to read if they desire. Sometimes, however, I am boggled by my own ambitions. This week’s project at the bar has been trying to incorporate smoke into a cocktail. Unfortunately, the undertaking has been hazy at best.

The concept of using smoke in a cocktail had been introduced to me by a friend who was considering using liquid smoke in a cocktail in small amounts, like bitters. I thought the idea had potential, but I never really got around to tracking down some liquid smoke and dropping it into my Manhattan. As any good bartender searching for new ideas would do, I shelved the idea, promising to come back to it someday.

Then one day I had a new job at a new restaurant and had to come up with a new cocktail menu.  A great house drink is all about utilizing the unique opportunities of the house of course, and well, our house loves to smoke stuff. This one could be a challenge; integrating a smoked flavor into a cocktail is difficult. We could opt for the liquid smoke as mentioned before, but I wanted to use the supplies at the restaurant to make a specialty you couldn’t find anywhere else. But, how do you smoke a drink? I didn’t really know where to begin so I asked our chef to smoke some fruit for me. The next day I had the gnarliest strawberry I have ever tasted in my life before me. Seriously, the strawberry had lung cancer.

I tried the strawberries in several drinks only to to get those “I’m only drinking this and telling you it’s good so you don’t feel bad” reactions. Man, I hadn’t got those in a while; it hurt my ego a little bit. This strawberry had me stumped. Finally, I tried muddling the strawberry with a small amount of simple syrup and pouring a Blood and Sand on top.

Blood and Sand

.75 oz Scotch
.75 oz Orange Juice
.5 oz Cherry Herring
.5 oz Sweet Vermouth

Shake and strain into an ice-filled glass.

Sure, this drink usually calls for a blended scotch, avoiding the overly peaty flavors of the Islays, but what the heck I thought. I was running out of ideas. The smoked strawberry Blood and Sand was the best attempt I had tried yet. It definitely had the flavor I was looking for. The only question I hadn’t answered was: Is this a good cocktail? I couldn’t decide. As one person described it, it was like drinking a cigarette. Not everyone agreed with this view, but man it was definitely like drinking smoke. It was a cool experience, yet it wasn’t something I could see enjoying after the novelty diminished.

For starters, the drink was obviously not balanced. The strawberries were oversaturated with smoke causing them to dominate anything they touched, including my hands. You should smell my keyboard (yes, I wash my hands). But, mostly, I just couldn’t decide how to use the smoked flavor correctly. What balances smoke? Should the smoked ingredient be treated like the charred flavors in some mescals or the Islays?

This would suggest that generally a lighter spirit should be used to allow the smoked strawberry’s flavor to speak in place of the mescals or Islays in conjunction with citrus of some sort. But, pending a more lightly smoked strawberry or another type of fruit, I still wonder if this will work conceptually. Maybe, I should just accept the cocktail for what it is, an expression of a smoked flavor, Like many extreme cocktails, found in some circles of molecular mixology, using flavors traditionally reserved for food can be an intriguing experience in which we confront a familiar flavor in a way we have never experienced before. The Smoked Blood and Sand certainly fits this description.

I have done some searching on smoked cocktails and a few results have appeared. Eben Freeman smokes coke syrup to make a smoked rum and coke. Kristin Woodward is using smoked pears, and a few have used liquid smoke. The most similar idea to my own seems to be a bar in India at the Smokehouse Grill that is doing a mojito with muddled smoked melon and a, dare I say it, a Smoked Apple Martini. You think you’ve gotten as far from the apple martini as possible with your smoked cocktail idea, and bam, it appears like another final Kiss tour. Either way, at least a few people are thinking like me. So obviously, the smoked cocktail has some degree of potential. Just where the road leads remains to be seen. I am going to see if different fruits work, and the thought of smoked citrus sounds cool because of the possibilities for a smoked zest. Other than that, I am still somewhat stumped. Any suggestions???