Beer and Brewing Journal

Last night I finished my last Jolly Pumkin. I originally purchased three different 750's and a single mentioned here.

Here's a quick review of their Oro de Calabaza:

color: straw to yellow with big, puffy, billowy head like duvel.

aroma: belgian characteristic, candy sugar, tart, fruit, wood? or was I expecting that...

taste: carbonation, tart/sour belgian goldon strong, pineapple and subtle wood

after: wood (subtle), dry
overall: I like my goldon strongs straight up and drinkable: prankster, duvel, and damnation.

While this is a very well made beer, all of the Jolly Pumpkin beers are well made beers, I don't like the play between wood and the golden strong style. I like the golden strong style straight up, smooth, and drinkable. There is a reason that it is known as a great "hair of the dog" beer. A little tart is interesting but also takes a little away from what I like from the style. I have to say my favorite Jolly so far has been the Noel beer. They avoided the typical holiday jacked up spice route and went with subtle cherries and wood with nice malt (as I recall). I just remember enjoying the hell out of that beer. La Roja is very nice as well. Of the three Jollies i've had, here is my personal ranking:

I have the highest respect for Dan Gordon. His mission in life is to bring the beers of Germany to the U.S. by brewing them here and serving them fresh. All done in accordance to Reinheitsgebot. 100% the way they are brewed in Germany. This includes a decoction mash for most beers that causes the brew day to be 10 hours. Dan backs up his strict guidelines with the highest level of brew education achievable in the world. His post-graduate work was at Weinstephan in Munich.....a demanding four year course where, " a passing grade is equivalent to A level work at UC Berkeley".
If you want to hear more about Dan, I highly recommend listening to any of the three times he visited the Sunday Session on The Brewing Network.

Dan's west coast man in charge of brew operations, including SF, the Northwest, and Hawaii is John Tucci. No slouch himself as he fleshed out his brewing education at Paulaner in Munich. He’s a perfect fit at GB. And thanks to a co-worker that grew up with John, we had the chance to take a private tour of GB-SF brew operations yesterday.
We started off with a couple of pints to warm us up….I had never tried the GB scharwzbier, so I did. Nice, mellow and obviously to style. I love Köstritzer and I would say the GB Schwarz is a hair mellower than that one. We were readied up to go tour the brewery and we were instructed by John to bring an empty glass with us for a tasting…most of us had one.


Down the stairs we went to the basement where all the fermentation and lagering takes place. BTW, GB-SF has a 25 barrel brew system….kind of unusual in that they have two kettles that do some back and forth. The mashtun also serves as the boil kettle. They mash, pump 80% of it to the lauter tun, then deconcoct the remaining 20% in the mash tun. When this is done, they bring the remaining, deconcocted mash over to the lauter and sparge. Then, the runnings get pumped back to the mash tun where they boil and hop. Back and forth. In the basement, we went through a VERY short door that led us to the bottom of the fermentation tanks (60 barrel tanks, they brew twice to fill it and have 10 barrels of headroom….and no kreusen blowing all over the place). I have to say, this is probably the most cramped setup I have seen. They fit this system in the spaces the best they could but there is a lot of bending down during the processes of brewing beer here. A tall guys nightmare.

From here, we went into the lagering space, in the basement right under the bar/eating area of the restaurant. Tanks were horizontal and tucked neatly into a space very short on headroom. Here is where the treat of the evening started.