MEET THE BREWER: FRED COLBY LAUGHING DOG

BREWING Ben, the golden retriever featured in the Laughing Dog Brewing logo, deferred to head brewer Fred Colby for the inaugural “Meet The Brewer”

feature. Idaho Brew Magazine asked Fred… What was the first beer you ever tasted? Coors. I was about 6 years old and was sneaking my parents’ beer at a BBQ. Why did you start brewing? A friend shared some homebrew with me I thought, wow we can make our own beer? It has to be cheaper! (It wasn’t, LOL!) How did you name your brewery? A group was sitting around drinking homebrew and trying to come up with names that involved the dog. A friend looked at a picture of Ben the dog and said, You know your dog is laughing at you, right? It clicked right then! How do you name your beers? We try to keep the dog in them if possible, but that doesn’t always happen. It usually requires a good bit of drinking as well. What's the strangest or most unique non-traditional ingredient you ever tried in a brew, and how did it go? A little weed with a friend, as a home brewer. It failed miserably! If you could literally do anything you wanted for a living, would you stick to brewing or do something else? If I had to do something other than brew, I would want to be a surgeon. What job(s) did you have before becoming a brewer? I worked for the world’s largest explosive manufacturer, designing explosive and blasting. After that I became a

computer system engineer. I ended up running the server engineering department for a Fortune 500 company before leaving to start the brewery. Corporate beer as guilty pleasure? Labbatts Blue. Can you share a true tale of brewing failure/disaster? Had a site tube rupture on a 15-barrel brite tank full of stout. This happened in the middle of the night. It was under pressure. Came into the brewery awash in stout. I think it took 2 days to finally clean it all up!

What’s your favorite sandwich? I am not allowed to eat them, but I love a McDonalds double quarter pounder with cheese. What’s your favorite non-beer beverage? I collect Bourbon. There is very little beer in my house, but a lot of bourbon. If you were to banished to an island with only one beer, what would it be? Allagash Curieux. If you created/discovered a

wildly popular new variety of hops, what would you name it? The Selkirk Hop. You’re commissioned to create a brew for Jeff Goldblum: what do you create & what do you call it? Hmm, tough one! Most likely a Pils, and call it Zissou. If you follow Jeff, you’ll understand why! 🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺

LAUGHING DOG BREWERY 1109 Fontaine Drive, Ponderay, Idaho

LaughingDogBrewing.com Facebook.com/LaughingDogBrewing

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MICHELLE AND FRED

COLBY

IN THIS ISSUE: Meet The Brewer

Homebrewer Self Exam ‘Tis The Season Monthly Events

Beer Poll

As the holiday season approaches you may be required to attend many monocle-mandatory social events. Recently, I was at just such a festivity drinking homebrew with a friend and he said, “You know the difference between an amateur and a professional photographer? An amateur shows you all his pictures and a professional only shows you the ones which are good.”

“What the hell do you mean by that?” I ask. What he meant was: I was presenting a selection of

beers, some of which were good, and some which sucked. He would have rather only drank the good beer. I thought making him get rid of some of my shitty beer was the price of free drinking. So, we were at an impasse.

Anybody who has spent much time around homebrewers has been faced with a crappy beer and a moon-faced brewer who claims they want your honest opinion. Probably 90 percent of the time they don’t, and will be offended if you say, “Are you trying to poison me?” or “This beer has as many infections as the floor of a peepshow booth.”

For the 10 percent to do want an honest opinion the best way is to coach someone to evaluate their own beer. Ask, “What were you trying to accomplish with this beer?” Most of the time someone has a pretty good idea what they wanted their beer to be: “A clone of Heineken,” “wine,” or “an oatmeal stout.” Once they reveal what the beer should be they should come to a conclusion on how close they were to the mark.

Brewers, let's be honest with ourselves, not everything we produce is liquid gold. One of the hardest steps in identifying how you need to improve is learning to be critical of your own product. It's difficult because you're pouring your heart into crafting something beautiful and it just turns out shitty.

Like having an ugly kid. The first step is asking, “Does this beer taste good? If

I ordered it at a bar and paid $5, would I be pissed off?” Sometimes, your brew may not be what you were anticipating, but still pretty drinkable. That is the real determination of quality, when you finish your beer you should want to have another one, not switch to a different kind or lick a cat butt to get the taste out of your mouth.

Don’t sell yourself short. Anybody can produce prison hooch, but you can also make commercial quality beer with a big pot and a bucket -- you just have to stay sanitized, don't be cheap, and control fermentation temps.

Stay away from excuses like: “It's only homebrew,” “toe cheese is my house flavor,” or “it'll get me drunk.” Hold yourself to a standard.

I have made enough crappy beer to fill a hot tub, which actually

sounds like a good time. However, I struggle with just dumping beer, so what do you do with the junk?

AGE IT. Some problems will clear themselves up. Hop bitterness, oak tannins and sharp roastyness will mellow with age. Occasionally, six months or a year will make a bad beer into a pretty good beer. But, like herpes, time will not clear up an infection of bacteria.

MAN UP AND DRINK IT. Stop being a baby and just choke it down. Punish yourself for those mistakes. You can drink a couple of

good beers and then switch to the bad stuff, put it in a beer bong, or mix it with Sprite.

Whatever it takes to put it down. GIVE IT TO GOOBERS. When people

find out you are a homebrewer, the first thing they always says is, “I want some!” If someone is genuinely interested, and I like them, I will put together a mixed six of quality beers for their enjoyment. However, it’s frustrating when someone says about an award winning porter, “I didn't like it. It didn't taste anything like Bud Light.” Give those people your junk beer. A Bud Light drinker won’t know the difference between a perfectly brewed stout and pond water.

GET FEEDBACK. If a beer didn’t turn out, and you’re just not sure why, take it to a homebrew club meeting and ask people to taste it -- but warn them it is off. These self-flagellating folks are glad to give other uses. Slugs are attracted to beer. So are wasps. You can use it to fertilize the garden or rejuvenate brown spots in the grass.

There are options to take care of less than stellar beer. However, under no circumstance, no matter how dire, should you give it to me. 🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺

Justin Baldwin once made a beer that made his pee smell like maple syrup. He thinks this makes him a wizard, but we think this makes him a crazy person. Follow him on Twitter @ScrewUpBeer

1,001 WAYS TO SCREW UP BEER: HOMEBREWERS: IT’S TIME FOR SELF-EXAMINATION

(No, not that way, you weirdo!) By Justin Baldwin

“Man up and drink it. Stop being a baby and just choke it down. Punish yourself for

those mistakes.”

To everything, there is a season, and the Brewniverse is not exempt from this inevitable changing of the guard. With certain beer

styles making their regular annual appearance at definite times of the calendar year, we are never more than a couple months away from some significant turnover at our favorite bottle shop and tap house. Sometimes referred to as “drinking in season,” it is a sort of “hobby within a hobby,” looking forward to and capitalizing on what is available at a given time of the year.

Winter is traditionally the time for Imperial Stouts (unless you are Stone Brewing), big thick Porters and malty smooth Lagers like Dopplebocks, Weizenbocks, and such. As the snow pack melts off and Spring kicks in, we see Kolschs and Maibocks, other lighter bodied brews that are often a little lower in alcohol. Summer brings Hefeweizens, Saisons, fruit beers, and crisp pale ales. But the best time of all is when Summer begins winding down… the days get shorter, the evenings cooler, and the beer options start to really explode.

The approach of autumn is hop harvest time and that’s when we start seeing “fresh hop“ or “wet hop” beers. Typically hops are dried after harvesting, since that cuts out about %80 of their weight and makes it easier (cheaper) to package, ship and in general, deal with. But about this same, a lot of brewers will make something, often one of their regular seasonal recipes, but when it comes time to add the hops, they will go with some that are still in their fresh, wet, heavy and cumbersome state. Sometimes cutting the time from when they are picked to when they were dumped into the kettle to mere hours. You can’t get much fresher than that.

This year, Boise Brewing hosted the first annual “Hoptober Freshtival,” a fresh hop festival celebrating the season. Several regional brewers were there pouring a few each of their current concoctions. Most had

brought one or two of their fresh hop brews, or a fresh hop variant of something they have done before. Brews like “Mr. Freshy” from Boise Brewing, “Free Solo Pacific Gem” from Sawtooth, and Sockeye’s “Fresh Hop Double Dagger.” The latter actually had bits of hop particles in it that settled to the bottom of the glass and had to be swished out before moving on to the next one. Now THAT is some serious hops.

Whether you consider yourself a “hop-head” or not, it’s interesting to see what comes from the imaginations of brewers in the area, during this time of year when

“Humulus Lupulus” is at its peak. Be it Cascade, Centennial, Mosaic, Magnum, or any other hop variety, it’s just a great time of year for beer enthusiasts like myself. So get out there and grab a pint or two of some local fresh hop beers before they are gone until next Fall. Letting some of the fantastic seasonal brews pass you by would really be for the Byrds (sorry)… 🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺

‘TIS THE SEASON By Ken Bates

Boise Brewing’s first annual Hoptober Freshtival

(photo by Ken Bates)

NOVEMBER BEER HAPPENINGS

Provided by BoiseBeerBuddies.com

Get the scoop on EVERYTHING happening in craft beer in Boise and beyond delivered to your inbox weekly. Become a Buddy and get discounts at Buddy Hubs all over town!

1ST: Learn to Brew Day @ Homebrew Stuff parking lot Holiday Ale release Party @ Grand Teton Brewing

3RD: Beer 101 @ Grand Teton Brewing 6TH: First Thursday downtown Boise! Boise Brewing @

Mixed Greens w/ Cake Ballers & Boise Beer Buddies 8TH: 3rd Anniversary Party @ Sawtooth Brewing

Food Truck Rally in Caldwell w/ Payette Brewing 13TH: Pinball Tournament @ Spacebar Arcade w/

Crooked Fence Brewing 14TH: The Brewer & The Cook Dinner @ Crooked Fence

Barrelhouse 18TH: Better Know a Brewer @ Brewforia Beer Market

Boise w/ Haff Brewing 20TH: Adult Night @ Discovery Center of Idaho 22ND: Pray For Snow Winter Ale Fest @ Tom Graineys 28TH: Black Friday @ The Linen Building w/ imperial

stouts & porters from over a dozen local & regional breweries

Details about these events & more: BoiseBeerBuddies.com

“You can't be a real country unless you have a beer and an airline - it helps if you have some kind of football team, or some nuclear weapons, but in the very least you need a beer.” ―Frank Zappa

Idaho Brew Magazine ©2014 All Rights Reserved info@idahobrewmag.com

Editors: Jim Lee & Daniel Foster Advertising/Marketing: Lindsay Malm

Ideas published herein reflect the opinions of the authors, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Idaho Brew Magazine or its Editors. This month’s header background features the Sawtooth Brewery taproom in beautiful Ketchum, Idaho. Learn more about Sawtooth at SAWTOOTHBREWERY.COM!

MONTHLY BREW-POLL! Last Month We Asked:

MORE THAN 20?! Okay, we wanna see some pictures! Line up all your growlers and take a picture. Post ‘em with the hashtag #HOWMANYGROWLERS so we can find ‘em online, and we’ll see who has the prettiest collection!

To see and respond to this month’s poll, go to IdahoBrewMag.com/polls now!