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The "Decorum" Issue
Definition (noun):
1. dignity: dignity or good taste that is appropriate to a specific occasion
2. appropriateness of artistic element: the compatibility of an element such as character, form, style, or plot in a literary or artistic work with the work as a whole
Ahh yes, decorum. This was something that one of the leaders at last night's pledge drive for KAET seemed to think Trevor, Terry and myself seemed to lack. This was brought to my attention after, I believe, the third intermission in the middle of the "Yanni" portion of the presentation. Sure, we were kind of horsing around and having some fun, we were volunteering; at the same time all three of us came close to or exceeded taking $1000 in pledges each, so thanks to all who called in! We're used to working a mile a minute at a Brewpub, so having us sit at a desk quietly is akin to giving Charles Manson a weekend pass and hoping he doesn't get into any trouble...it just isn't going to happen! We will get more into that later, first let me give you a run down of the activities we have planned coming up!
Hey there grilling aficionados! Last chance to get involved in the "Backyard BBQ Throwdown" at BBQ Island in Tempe this Saturday. We will be supplying all your Four Peaks favorites by way of the Four Peaks beer truck. I know there is a championship chef out there waiting to be discovered and chances are I have been serving you for years. Be it chicken, chili, burgers or kabobs, get your application in  and be that person to finally replace Emeril on the Food Network! For the love of God, they even gave that man a sitcom! Food, beer, prizes and bragging rights are all up for grabs, how can you pass it up! The application form can be found by clicking on the link in our "Upcoming Events" column on the right. This will be going on in the parking lot of BBQ Island at 8425 S. Emerald
Drive in south Tempe (next to the IKEA)...BE THERE.
Don't forget that we are involved in another Beer Dinner. This one will
be held at the Sheraton at Wild Horse Pass on Thursday, March 19th.
The reception is scheduled to begin at 6 pm and will be held in the Ko'Sin Restaurant, all details are currently being finalized so keep your eyes open next week! If you
are interested and would like more details or want to make sure you get
a reservation please feel free to call Ted Golden at (480) 250-0640 or
email him at ted@fourpeaks.com.
Well, in this weeks issue we tackle a little road trip up to Prescott with Mr. Mike Kruchko and we explore the menu at Casey Moore's in Tempe. The Brewers spend some time breaking down the essence of Hop Knot and I reflect on our experience at the KAET pledge drive. All in all it has been a very busy week and I apologize for the delay in the execution of this installment. Please find the following content all the justification you need to forgive my truancy. Let me begin the process of rebuilding your trust by letting you know that...
Our shenanigans are cheeky and fun!
Your Friends at The Four Peaks Brewery and Four Peaks Grill & Tap |
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1340 East 8th Street #104
Tempe, Arizona 85281
480.303.9967
480.303.9964 fax
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15730 North Pima Road
Suite D5-7
Scottsdale, Arizona 85260
480.991.1795
480.991.1796 fax
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Let's try something new this week. Much like Mike from North Scottsdale, I feel
like we should profile an account and close friend, albeit one that is a little
nearer to home, that we all have a fondness for  here at 4PBC...Casey Moore's
Oyster House. A lot could be said for
and about Casey's; it's a Tempe institution, a favorite place to go when you
went to ASU, and even about the hominess of the location (it was, after all, a
house converted into a bar). I, for one,
always remember it most fondly as the place all of the first generation Four
Peaks family used to hang out. Yup, back
in the day when Steve Lynch, the Sisters Kelly, Matt McCormack, a myriad of
coworkers who have since moved on, and I all used to live in what is called the
Farmer community; we would all find ourselves here almost any given night. Strangely enough, most of the people working
there are still the people I remember from those days!
Almost everyone is familiar with the location, 9th
and Ash just off University and Mill, and the dedicated regulars who frequent
the location most every night. I just think
a lot of folks forget just how good their food is and why it should be
considered more than just your late night watering hole. I chose to stop there on a casual Tuesday
afternoon with the Four Peaks Sales Guru Teddy G. and apprentice Dana H. for a
quick lunch. We all had water and sodas (a
first for me at Casey's, I won't lie) and we asked for the staff
recommendations. The Oysters on the Half
Shell (I've had them several times...always fantastic), Oysters  Rockefeller, the
Shrimp Cocktail and freshly prepared Potato Skins were all listed as favorites,
and we decided on the Skins and Shrimp Cocktail. Both were outstanding, the skins were huge
and the shrimp even larger (excuse the oxymoron).
Both of these ended up being a perfect lead in to the Tempe
Cheese Steak Sandwich (sub chicken) and the Spinach Berry Salad, our
recommended entrées. Now the Cheese
Steak was very good, don't get me wrong, I made sure there was nothing left,
but the salad was quite the surprise.
Not to be sexist, but often times I overlook the salad section under the
false pretense that it is geared more towards the "Uterine-American" segment of
our population, but I was wrong. The
Spinach and Berry Salad was probably the best received dish of that day, once
again there was no beer or liquor involved people! Everything we had was lovingly prepared by
 Lincoln Sharpe (who may be far removed from his teen years but has never been
closer to Ozzy Osborne!) with the deft and skill of the seasoned professional
that he is, and for that we thank you!
I could go on for quite a while about all the good times that
we've shared with them over the years, but a good portion of the local
population has just as many of their own stories! Just remember, Casey Moore's Oyster House is renowned just as much for its food as it is for its nightlife. Stop in during the day or night and
rediscover what a treasure they really are!
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CASK-CONDITIONED AND SEASONALS
IN SCOTTSDALE THIS WEEK
Raj I.P.A.: Our traditional style India Pale Ale now ready for you to consume. IN TEMPE THIS WEEK8th Street Ale: Our English Style Pale Ale. The cask ales these days are moving fast, we do have our Raj I.P.A. in a holding pattern in case the 8th St. goes too fast! SEASONAL DU JOUR
Belgian Black Ale: Truly delicious! We are serving it in a 10oz. brandy snifter and are not expecting it to last too much longer, so come in and have one soon! |
Thanks For Calling 8, What Is Your Donation?
To begin with there are, in my mind, four types of people
who choose to make a living in the bar/restaurant world.
1. Those who do not have the patience to live in a cubical-style
existence.
2. The animated folks/born performers who crave the attention
a captive audience gives them.
3. Unconventional sorts who are usually considered "odd"
by so-called normal folks (John Hostak for example)
4. Any combination of the first three.
This is something that the people at KAET should have been
informed of before we invaded their studios.
Don't get me wrong, we had a good time and I think they warmed up to us
after a little while as well, I just don't think they were prepared for T n' T
n' T (that's Terry and Trevor and Tim in  case you needed help there). Let me just give you an abbreviated breakdown of the events as they transpired.
12:05 pm: Due to a
scheduling conflict, Jim Scussel must relinquish the reigns as "Team Leader"
for the evening's pledge drive for KAET. I find out I will be the new leader of a volunteer contingent of
Four Peaks employees in Jim's stead for the "Craft Beer, The New Wine" program
that will be premiering this evening.
Starts day thinking I have 4 or 5 participants.
3:45 pm: Go home to
"pretty myself up" as I really didn't prepare myself to be seen by more than
4 people the entire day.
5:00 pm: Meet Terry
and Trevor at the bar and discovers no one else will be showing up... all three
decide to have a few beers.
5:20 pm: Reluctantly
depart a promising "beer buzz" to hang out and answer phones.
5:35 pm: Check in as "Tim
Neuman"," Frank" and "Kenny Powers" (main character in the new HBO series "Eastbound
And Down" if you're wondering...woooo!) and come to the realization I will have
to be the "straight man" in tonight's performance... feelings of both terror and exhilaration
fill me.
5:45 pm: Talk Terry
and Trevor out of leaving.
6:00 pm: Learn how to
answer phones. 
6:05 pm: Talk Terry
and Trevor out of leaving.
6:19 pm: First shift
answering the phones during the Lehrer News Hour goes relatively smooth. The second call I take comes from the brewery...no
donation, cheapskates!
6:35 pm: Get done
with our first shift manning the phones, talk Terry and Trevor out of leaving.
7:15 pm: Get back on
the phones to promote a "Yanni" performance.
Look over to see my cohorts holding hands on camera and flashing the
Four Peaks "tatter hats" intermittently.
Terry reaches over and knocks the pen out of Trevor's hand while he's
taking a donation...we all start to chuckle uncontrollably. Find the need to shuffle and align our pledge forms
on the table in the style of the evening news.
Informed by one of the donation leaders, "One word... decorum." I think to myself that it is way too late for
that. At the break she apologizes if she came off a bit brash. Talk Terry and
Trevor out of leaving.
7:50 pm: This round
finds us in the overflow area of the rotation and no calls were received. We will be there for the next rotation as
well; decide that's no fun so we run to a local bar to get a beer during the
break.
8:15 pm: Get back
from the bar, a kindly gentleman from maintenance recognizes us and lets us
back in, we sneak back to the overflow area, I don't think anyone missed us. 
8:45 pm: The
farewell installment for "Yanni" goes by with us in the front row. Terry and Trevor decide to flip pens and
flash the "tatter hats" once again; more paper shuffling ensues, keeping a
straight face near impossible. At the
break we are informed that we might get some angry calls because PBS may appear
to be advocating drinking. I rebut that there
is a brewery full of people watching right now and we have a Brewsletter
readership of over 3000 that have been informed of the show over the past few weeks, all of
which will probably be watching. Her
eyes light up and we get no further hassle over our demeanor.
9:00 pm-10:30 pm:
Finally, the reason we are here, the debut of "Craft Beer, The New Wine." We are able to watch the first 15 minutes
before having to man the phones. The
people collecting the forms and the other volunteers enjoy us, the folks behind
the scenes, not so much. We take several
calls during the first break and shatter the total taken for the "Yanni"
performance. We work out a deal to be
shown on the phones for the remainder of our time there. Upon seeing the shameless plugging of Dogfish
Head during the breaks, we feel the need to be a bit more outrageous and begin
to mime hand movements denoting both the Prince song "I Would Die For You" as
well as the exaggerated mannerisms of coworkers. By 10:30 we were ready for a beer, checked
out and got back to the brewery.
In retrospect, I think we represented the personality of
Four Peaks pretty well, alas, that was secondary to the outstanding performance of Mr. Andy Ingram. He provided a very thorough tour of the brewing process in the limited time he was allotted. We would like to thank KAET for the wonderful job they did in portraying the Craft Beer industry as well as Four Peaks. If you missed the special it will be airing again at 12:30 Friday morning and 9:30 Saturday evening!
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UPCOMING EVENTS
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Saturday, March 7th: First Annual Tempe Barbecue Festival hosted by BBQ Island, beers by Four Peaks! Entry form and info HERETuesday, March 17th: St Patrick's Day... don't act so surprised, it falls on the same day every year. Food and beverage specials all day! Thursday, March 19th: The Sheraton at Wild Horse Pass is hosting a Beer Dinner featuring the beers of Four Peaks! Contact Ted Golden at (480) 250-0640 for more details! Sunday, March 29th: Ferguson "Fergie" Jenkins autograph signing at Nello's in Tempe (N.E. corner of McClintock and Southern) from 5pm until 7pm.
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The Brewers Blog
We've prattled on for a while now about balance in beer, but
we're not sure we've explained ourselves too well on this one. Should all beers be balanced? Unequivocally, yes. Should they all be balanced in the same way,
that is, in the same malt to hop proportions?
Well, no. And here's where we've
failed you, dear reader; we've not explained that each style has a preferred
balance. For example, balance in an 8th Street Ale can and should be in
different proportions than in a Hop Knot IPA.
In taxonomic terms, they're both in the genus "pale ale" but they're
different species. Wolves and  poodles
are on some level, the same, but in no circumstance do we expect them to act or
look exactly alike.
Which leads us to this week's "What the Hell Am I Tasting", featuring the aforementioned Hop Knot
IPA. So, what does balance mean in a
beer named HOP Knot? It means
that hops should, and will, be foremost, but it's still a beer; which means a
nice malt accompaniment and a minerally dryness from the Burtonized water. There are no soloists in brewing but there
can be featured artists.
See it. Hop Knot is noticeably lighter in color than
our other IPA, The Raj. The Raj, being
English and therefore stylistically older than Hop Knot, has tighter parameters
in terms of color range. Hop Knot, being
American, is not constrained by tradition.
And being of desert origin it begged for a light, inviting color. As always it should be brilliantly clear but
it has been known to haze up due to the structure and make-up of hop oils. Unavoidable when you're dealing with that
much hop.
Sniff it. AHHH.
Yes, sniff it again. It's OK, now
really pull one in. Can there be a
better smell than the bright mix of floral and citrusy hop aromas in an American
IPA? It's up there with fresh bread and
rain in the desert, for us. We've heard
other people (who will remain nameless) describe the aroma as "dank". In our innocence we had to look this up. It makes a lot of sense though, seeing as
though hops (cannabis lupulus) are of the same family as marijuana (cannabis
sativa). Hops, though, have better
aroma, just none of the fun stuff. We've
heard...
It's hard to pick out one strain of hop in the nose because
we use so many varieties in the Hop Knot, but in concert they're
beautiful. It's a different aroma than a
beer that just has one or two late aroma additions in the kettle. We also use our hopback, which is a way to
immobilize hops inline while transferring slightly cooled beer through it. This gives a different flavor than just
boiling them. We also dry-hop the Hop
Knot; this where we add hops directly to the fermenter after several days of
fermentation. The alcohol breaks down
the hop oils in a different way than heating them and it creates most of what
you are smelling.
Sip it. You'd expect a bracing bitterness after all
that hop aroma but it isn't that overpowering.
It's there, its just cleaner, not as oppressive as other highly hopped
beers. You'll notice a dryness at first
from the mineral additions and then a perceived sweetness from the alcohol. Then you get a noticeable malt background. It's not sweet. It's grainy without being grassy but it
grounds the hop flavors to some base. It
allows all those hop flavors (bitter, tannic, sweet) to play but not to get too
out of hand. Its nice, it works. It ties everything nicely together like a
ribbon around a huge present.
It's called balance.
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The Grill & Tap Dispatch
with Mike Kruchko
What was originally thought to be a weekend of sunshine, day
drinking and baseball for me and the wife (we're not married yet, but you get
the idea) somehow transformed into spending our time in a land that, to me, was
as foreign as say, Bangladesh. Ok, maybe that's a little bit of a stretch,
but hyperbole aside I did find myself in what is known in Arizona as "Everybody's Hometown". 
The city of
Prescott may
not sound like anything exciting to you, but for me it was at least a new
experience. See, I've lived in AZ now
for 13 years and during this time I have started to realize that there are many
places in this huge state other than the Valley and F-Town (also known as Flagstaff) that I have
failed to see. So, while I have enjoyed
a beer in many a bar in many a town, I may need to start branching out a little
and see what I've been missing out on.
That being said, it's Friday night and I've made my way into
a small bar located in what basically is a basement of a building
downtown. The sounds of live Rockabilly are
being supplied by The Rocketz, a band from L.A., and as the music fills every corner of
the bar, I've noticed that I am extremely lacking in the tattoo department to
be blending in with the regulars. Yet I
look across at the tap handles at Sundance's Place and see that old reassuring
Kilt Lifter logo to bring me right back to my comfort zone. At that moment I decided that my first night
in Prescott will be spent touring Whiskey Row
and seeing how many of the local establishments will be serving the only Arizona beer that
matters to most of us.
>From there, we make our way to Hooligan's Pub. Located upstairs in an old brick face
building the crowd inside is dancing to a band that is located on top of the
bar. I'm sure many of you have seen
this, but to me it had a very Vegas/Fremont
St. feel to it and I was digging watching the
locals tear up the dance floor. After
nestling in, I've noticed that miraculously my Kilt Lifter has now found a
buddy and I see some 12 year old Jameson nestling up next to my pint
glass. Heck, who am I to argue...it's
called Whiskey Row after all.
After our fair share of beverages at Hooligan's we slowly
and carefully "walk" our way right down the way to what is known as the Bird
Cage Saloon. At this point other than
more Kilt Lifter (and whiskey), stuffed birds and a Moose head (or maybe a big
deer, not quite sure) hanging from the wall, I'm starting to loose my ability
to paint a picture of what exactly was happening around us. I can say for sure that the people at the
Bird Cage were friendly beyond compare and they continued to show us the Prescott charm that was
definitely starting to grow on me. From
here, we unfortunately decided to call it a night. I blame my early exit on my Irish friend
Jamison, but never the less we had a great time.
My first night on the town at old Whiskey Row in Prescott may have been on
the quiet side, but I will make sure that I make my way back there more sooner than
later to continue my quest and see what I missed out on. After all, the air was clean and crisp, the
history downtown was evident, and the beer seemed to be around every corner, so
why wouldn't I make my way back? But,
before I leave I do want to take a second and thank Brighid, the owner of
Sundance's Place for throwing such a great party, as well as the wasted guy
from Bucky's Casino for allowing me to take all of his money in Poker after the
bars closed. There's nothing like coming
back from a weekend with more money than you went with!
You can contact us in
Scottsdale at 480-991-1795 or at Scottsdale@fourpeaks.com
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A Few Parting Words...
That's it for now and boy am I exhausted! Just remember, next week everything should be dialed in and running at normal speed. Have a great time this week because the weather is beautiful and whatever is blooming really masks the smell of the air pollution! Catch a couple of spring training games and stop at either Four Peaks location to decompress, we'll be waiting for you. Remember to pick up your Four Peaks "tatter hat" the next time you stop in. It's that now famous piece of headwear displayed at irregular intervals during the premiere of "Craft Beer, The New Wine" on KAET Tuesday night! Supplies are limited and going fast! This hat is the "must have" accessory for the summer and screams out, "That's right Ice... Man, I am dangerous."  Cheers!
It was a religious practice. Beer was produced by priests for 1000's of years...
-Anthony Canecchia
from "Craft Beer, The New Wine"
After Getting Their First Taste Of Fame On Television, The Owners Of Four Peaks Decide To Start A Jug Band...
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