| Well, it's Been Ten Years and a Vat of Beers...
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July 1st, 1998. Where were you? I can tell you I
was still in my twenties and working for America West
Vacations. That is, until I began a new endeavor helping out
an old college chum, Randy, open up a brand new kitchen at the
brewery he was a partner in. The place was called Four Peaks
Brewing Company, perhaps you've heard of it. The location was
a converted creamery from the end of the 19th Century in north
Tempe, on 8th Street to be exact, ring a bell? I thought it
was an okay move, they were only going to be open for dinner
(4 o'clock to prep, 5 o'clock to serve), it was down on
University three miles from my day job, and they promised me
free beer! Who could've said no? Well, that was impetus enough
for me to say, "You know what, sounds cool, I'll hang around
until you're situated and then get outta your
hair."
Fast forward 10 years to July 1st 2008... I
don't think they necessarily need my help anymore, but I am
definitely still in their collective hair (or lack thereof...
insert rim shot! I'm kidding, please don't fire me!). I
remember people's first days and other memorable events,
that's for sure! Steve Lynch the line cook fresh from Balboa
Cafe, Pat Murphy from The Vine as a server, Matt McCormack the
door guy, Sarah Kelly known only as Melissa's sister, and when
Johnny Vegas had long hair to name a few. I remember when
there were no expediters aside from Friday and Saturday
nights, $6 growler Sundays, clam and garlic pizza, and gas
being 99 cents a gallon. I remember our first X-mas party in
the back bar area of the Brewery, Greg Snodgrass as our first
GM, Steve Lewis coming in with his "Bubbles of Joy" truck to
roll pizza dough for the evening, take-out from Bojo's during
the week, and when we had bubble hockey.
Do
you remember Valerie Hudson, Heather Crowley, Lindsey Larkin,
"little" Joe, Sean Nicholson, Aimee Koon, Jonathan "G" Lane
and the other fifteen Jennifer's we had working here? Back in
1998, there was a first year baseball team we called the
Diamondbacks, Cluck-U was on the corner of Rural and 8th, Jake
"The Snake" Plummer had just graduated from ASU, and the
Vikings just drafted this Randy Moss fellow.
Come to
think of it, I have witnessed quite a bit from my vantage
point at Four Peaks in the last ten years. For that alone I
would like to thank you. This milestone in human history could
not have been accomplished without your continued patronage,
support and desire to not conform to the level of mediocrity
available before. You are the reason I am still here, and you
will continue to be the reason people like Arthur, Jim, Andy
and Randy want to put out a product that all of Arizona can be
proud of. Kudos to all of you!
Coming soon: My official
wrap up of 2008-2018 in three paragraphs is only 3652 or so
days away! |
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| Get Your Tickets While They Last for Upcoming Gourmet
Beer Dinner at The Grill & Tap!
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If
you haven't bought your tickets for the swiftly approaching
July 15th beer dinner yet, you'd better act fast! Seriously,
it's coming up and who knows when you're going to have another
chance to experience something like this? We don't adhere to
some special schedule for these things - we just put them
together when Head Chef Arthur Craft gets particularly
inspired, to give the man a creative outlet for practicing his
- er - craft.
We're talking excellent beer paired with
super-delicious once-in-a-lifetime cuisine and served in a
comfortably air-conditioned establishment, possibly enjoyed in
the company of close friends or - at the very least - friendly
strangers. We're talking guaranteed FUN, on a Tuesday night in
July. A brewer or three will be there to talk about the beers
and answer questions, so the night will also be EDUCATIONAL!
How DO we do it? What you can expect from the
menu:
Reception, 7:00 p.m.
*Refreshing
Sunbru Kolsch*
First Course
* Ahi Poke Salad
*
Traditional Ahi Poke layered between crisp wonton
skins, served over micro & mizuna greens tossed in a
ginger & Maui onion vinaigrette with roasted red peppers,
European cucumber, & heirloom tomato.
paired
with: Hefeweizen
Second Course
*
Buffalo Short Rib *
Braised and then grilled buffalo
short rib in a Kilt Lifter and vegetable demi glace with Yukon
Gold potatoes, topped with a sunny side up quail egg, and
served over a spicy cranberry & tepary bean
relish.
paired with: Kilt
Lifter
Third Course
* Veal Tenderloin
*
Achiote rubbed veal tenderloin topped with Black Mesa
Ranch goat cheese fritters, a roasted tomatillo lime sauce,
and a chipotle veal reduction, served with spicy barley cakes
and eggplant napoleon.
paired with:
Hopsquatch
Fourth Course
* Peach
Ale Ice Cream Sandwich *
Slow churned Peach Ale ice
cream stuffed between baked ginger and cinnamon cookies,
drizzled with a caramel dipping sauce.
paired
with: Arizona Peach Ale
Space is limited, and while the tickets are now
available at both locations - they're gonna go fast! To
reserve a spot, you can stop by Four Peaks Grill & Tap in
Scottsdale, come into the Tempe Brewery or contact
steve@fourpeaks.com. These dinners sell out every time. Get on
it! |
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Price:
$60 per person (includes gratuity) |
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| Hey - Thanks for Casking! |
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IN TEMPE THIS WEEK
IPA: The India
Pale Ale was one of England's best mistakes, the result of
adding extra hops to preserve ale when they shipped rations to
occupying troops in India. Our version - a pleasantly bitter,
medium- to light-bodied dry ale has a fantastic hop aroma and
is extra graceful when pulled from a British-style beer
engine. 6.9 % Alc./Vol.
IN SCOTTSDALE THIS WEEK
Hop Knot:
Four different kinds of American hops are woven into this
award-winning IPA, then mellowed only slightly with pure
American malt. Few ales enjoy a cask as much as this one. 6.0%
Alc./Vol.
ANOTHER thing to remember is the fact that
Four Peaks Grill & Tap has a KILLER reverse happy hour
from 10 p.m. to 1 a.m. with $3 you-call-its, $3 pints and $3
house wines. So when you're finished working that second job
to pay for the gas you put in your car, head over to The Grill
& Tap for a refreshingly inexpensive nightcap.
As
always, the Hopsquatch barleywine is still on tap for
all you Four Peaks Grill & Tap-goers and hoppity-hop
lovers. A large beer not for the faint of palate, it weighs in
at about 12 percent alcohol by
volume.
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$5 for
a 20-oz Imperial Pint of pure cask-conditioned love
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| By
our alculations... |
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We
love words (obviously) as much as we love our beer. So we
subscribe to Urban
Dictionary's Urban Word of the Day, a delightful way to
expand (or contract, depending upon how you want to look at
it) one's vocabulary. We thought the Urban Word of the Day for
Monday, June 30th was particularly apropos considering the
rise in beer costs the brewers addressed in last week's
blog.
Alculate: To calculate how cost effective
an alcoholic beverage is. Otherwise known as the cost per shot
(or pint, in our case) ratio.
Example given by
Urban Word of the Day:
Ben - I am so drunk off
the two Fuzzy Navels I consumed in the last 10
hours.
Neal - I just alculated that you are a sober
loser. |
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| It's 4th of July, Everybody! |
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Well, not today - but Friday. Happy Independence Day!! So,
what are you doing? Any big or special plans? Whatever you
decide to do, you'll probably need beer.
You can stop
by the brewery or the Grill & Tap and drink beer there -
we'll be open our usual hours - or just pick up a growler or
two. (New Growlers are $14, while refills are $9 - and we have
new GROWLER KOOZIES for about $27! CRAZY!)
If that's
inconvenient for you, or if you're at high risk of getting
glued to a barstool and scrapping your plans should you visit
one of our locations, you can also go to just about any
grocery or liquor store and pick up a six-pack of 8th Street
or Kilt Lifter to throw in the cooler and be on your
merry-making way.
Be safe, be responsible. If you've had just ONE beer -
especially if your tags are expired - definitely have someone
else drive... you know the drill.
Above all else, enjoy
your independence and support independents! |
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Hola!
Recently
overheard in passing at a (insert grocery store) checkout line:
Phoenix Transplant #1: Hot enough for ya?
Phoenix Transplant
#2: Yeah, but at least it's a DRY heat.
Are you freaking
kidding us?! It's a DRY heat - psht. Dry heat, schmry heat. Once
that thermometer gets above 105, it's just HEAT. And YES, we're
breaking down and talking about the heat. What else is there to talk
about right now? OK, a lot, but can YOU think of anything else with
your brain boiling inside your skull? Well, maybe the A/C in YOUR
car works and you didn't have to drive to work through a blast
furnace - but then again, you're not writing this introduction are
you?
This is not a rhetorical question: what do you do when
the A/C in your car breaks down during the doggingest dog days of a
Phoenix summer and the cost to repair it is really, well... almost
more than the car is worth? Drive with the windows up? You know your
car can be up to 200 degrees, and you might as well be tooling
around in a mobile oven? Children and pets die under those
circumstances, and there you are, with your foot on the gas,
accelerating angrily through rush hour traffic with your face
flushed and your basal body temp in the danger zone. Can't drive
with the windows up, so you gotta drive with them DOWN - which
conjures images of a shrunken Dennis Quaid braving the perils of a
hairdryer inside his little "InnerSpaceship"
for some reason.
Alright,
enough already. But don't you think it's kind of funny that Martin
Short should co-star in this movie about a shrunken human, and that
his last name is "Short," and that he's kind of pint-size
anyway?
You're
in for a treat or two with this week's Brewsletter. Timothy Neumann
reflects on what it's been like to see Four Peaks grow over the past
10 years from his special "behind-the-bar" vantage point, while the
Brewers give all us beer enthusiasts a bit of clarity on our
favorite subject. Though Karina, our Grill & Tap correspondent,
is taking a much-needed vacation, she will be back next week with
another report!
We suggest you have yourself a SunBru Kolsch
and read on...
| Brewers Blog V |
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Clarity. It's a wonderful thing. It can allow
one to see the big picture, it can stop arguments, end
confusion... and it can even make beer more appealing. OK,
different clarity but to us it's just as edifying. We're
obviously talking about clear - not hazy - beer. To us clarity
is a constant battle and something we're always trying to
improve upon because we feel haziness/cloudiness/turbidity is
something that takes away from the enjoyment of having a
beer.
And we really do have beer. People don't
simply swallow beer. In addition to tasting it, we smell it,
feel its coolness and body and, of course, we see it (we don't
really hear it, that's reserved for the ball game or the
concert or the sounds of the friends with whom we have it).
To a great many brewers, however, beer is just fine if
it's cloudy. To them it means it's truly hand-made and natural
or that it's somehow more healthful and pure. And some of
these brewers have convinced a great many drinkers that this
is true. Our opinion? Some of these brewers are just lazy, and
these drinkers are being duped. Sorry, a little harsh, but to
us, these brewers are skipping an essential step in the
process: clarification, which brewers can accomplish in
a couple of ways. They can add "fining agents," which are
attracted to the haze-forming particles in beer to form larger
particles that, over time, drop out of solution; or they can
filter their beer, which is much more difficult to do right
but the method we choose.
Now, we do believe some
people actually prefer hazy beer. These people think it
somehow tastes better or it's more authentic. That's fine, to
each his own. Being traditionalists, though, this cloudy beer
phenomenon is a new development. If you study English and
European brewing history back to the introduction of clear
glass drinking vessels, it has been every brewer's desire to
present clear beer to this day.
OK, let's clarify clarity (he he). We're not talking
about beers that are meant to be cloudy like Hefe-weizens and
wit beers; they get a pass. Their cloudiness comes from the
distinctive yeast that provides much of their flavor and is a
marker of the style. We're also not necessarily talking about
something called chill-haze, which happens when beer is
chilled to too cold of a temperature. You'll know it is
chill-haze if it goes away as it warms up. But even chill-haze
is annoying to us because if we're worth a damn as brewers
then we can eliminate this too - which leads us back to
laziness. Achieving clarity is not easy but it is essential
and we worry when we are served beers in other establishments
that should, and, frankly, could be clear. We're
concerned about what else a brewery is skipping. Clarifying
beer is not a perfect science but we will continue to try
because it's important to us - and not because of what is
removed, but because of what is added.
What is removed when beer is clarified? Yeast mainly,
which can change the flavor of beer over time especially if it
lyses, or starts metabolizing itself. Protein is also removed
during clarification; too much protein can limit the flavor
and shelf life of beer. So, what's added to beer by removing
these things? This is harder to pin down but it's best
answered as, well, beauty. There is something special
and visually striking in the way light gets dispersed through
a glass of beer (we're beer geeks, remember). This can only
happen when beer is clear, with one notable exception: stout.
But even cloudy stout hinders what can be truly beautiful
blackness.
Have we ever kegged or bottled cloudy or hazy beer? We
can answer that by saying that we have sent beer out to the
trade that has been at the threshold of our standards,
especially beers like Hop Knot that we dry hop. Dry hopping
creates a special problem because when dry hopping beers you
are adding different types of haze-forming components, ones
that can defy filtration. We've also sent beer out that by all
eyes is totally clear but that later, with age, forms a haze.
Like we said, it's a constant battle.
So, you see,
clarity, like the beer foam that we mentioned in an earlier
blog, has to do with being a good brewer - which to us means
instilling quality through difficult processes and ensuring a
satisfying sensory experience for the customer that includes
not only taste, but other senses as
well. |
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| Dear Four Peaks |
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If
you ever had a question about Four Peaks, Four Peaks beers,
the brewing process, the brewers, the brewery, The Grill &
Tap, the sun, the moon, why the sky is blue - here's your
chance to ask it. Send all questions to brew@fourpeaks.com and
we'll do our best to give you answers in return. Here we
go...
Jason from Nashville writes:
My wife
and I live in Nashville, TN. We spent 2 days visiting friends
in Phoenix about a month ago, and we went to Four Peaks both
days. It was the end of a 12 day, 5700 mile (you read that
right) road trip. We visited 6 or 7 breweries and tried tons
of IPA in different states. Hop Knot OWNED them all. I was
absolutely crushed when I saw that it isn't one of the beers
that you guys bottle, cause I would have purchased at least 2
cases. Anyway, I signed up for the brewsletter hoping that one
of these days, I'd find out that you guys were bottling Hop
Knot, and that I could somehow get a case of it over to the
dirty south. Any chance of that happening in the near
future?
Well, Jason...
the answer to that
question is yes - and no. We've been working on the logo and
bottle labels for Hop Knot for quite some time now, so plans
are definitely in the works to bottle Hop Knot. As far as when
that will be, you probably have as good a shot at guessing the
date as we do. Now - getting it in the "dirty south" is a
whole other issue. Four Peaks is only distributed within the
State of Arizona so far, with little baby plans to start going
regional... someday. (Again, your guess is as good as ours as
to when all the ducks will get in their row to make this
happen.) Even farther away are plans to distribute nationally,
but you can imagine the story there. Another logical question
might be to ask whether or not we would send you a case when
we finally DO start bottling the Hop Knot, and to that we'd
have to say no because, alas, that would be illegal.
NOW - if your friends who live here and love Four Peaks Hop
Knot as much as you do decide to send you a six-pack some
glorious day down the road when it's finally packaged and
distributed, wellllll... |
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ˇATENCIóN! We have FRESH beer on tap NOW! Get it while the
gettin's good, folks. (Whatever THAT means, because the gettin's
always good at Four Peaks.) $3.75/pint regular, $3 happy hour at
both locations. We've got excellent food, and the North location is
fully air-conditioned. Did we mention that? Dinner and lunch
specials... pool table(s), darts, Golden Tee fore you... come and
see us, what else you got to do??
In honor of the Euro Champs - HASTA LUEGO! 
The Crew at Four Peaks
Four Peaks Brewing Company
phone: 480-303-9967
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