She’s from Cape Cod (motto: “We be bogs”) so it’s no surprise that when Carissa Sweigart decided to homebrew she picked a beer ripe with cranberries.
Sweigart’s Cranberry Wit, a Belgian-style white wheat beer, was a winner last month in the Samuel Adams American Homebrew Competition. Sweigart, a national sales representative for Samuel Adams based in Colorado Springs, won the competition among employees. She was transferred to the company’s St. Louis office after brewing her victorious brew.
California homebrewers Alex Drobshoff (a traditional bock) and Mike McDole (a Double IPA) were winners in the consumers’ category, which drew 1,300 entries. The three winning beers, two bottles each, will be packaged in the company’s LongShot variety six-pack, due in April. McDole’s Double IPA, made using seven different hop varieties, actually won the 2007 competition but production was put off because of a hop shortage last year. The winners were announced at a news conference during the Great American Beer Festival in early October.
“I’m shaking right now,” Sweigart said after she clinked celebratory mugs with her boss, Jim Koch, owner and head brewer for Boston Beer Co., which makes Samuel Adams. “It’s the first beer I ever made by myself. It’s definitely a good feeling. Now, I’m just all about brewing.”
Sweigart, who grew up in Cape Cod, Mass., but now lives in Colorado Springs, made her winning beer in honor of her hometown. Made with wheat and barley malt, it’s touched with cranberries and laced with cinnamon, orange peel, coriander, grains of paradise and other spices. The brewery describes it as “bright, fruity and refreshing.”
Koch, one of the early, most public figures in the craft- brew industry who founded Boston Beer in 1984, created the homebrew competition in 2001, he said, “to keep alive a part of the company that is not so pubic, the roots of the Boston Beer Co.”
Wynkoop turns 20
It was a coven (or whatever a group of them is called) of brewers and bartenders at the 20th anniversary celebration of the Wynkoop Brewing Co. on Oct. 24. Former Wynkoop brewers Kyle Carstens, Tom Dargen, Tom Larson and Scott Turnnidge, who learned their trade from the late Russell Scherer, were among the couple of hundred revelers crammed into the Wynkoop’s second floor.
All were in awe that Andy Brown, the Wynkoop’s new head brewer, won gold medals for his two German-style beers at the recent Great American Beer Festival.
Five of my favorite Wyn- koop beertenders showed up too. Patty Wall-Louckin, Bill Doine, Al Courtney, Dave Schierling and Sharon Spears came back to spend time on the front side of the bar.
Mayor John Hickenlooper, one of the brewpub’s founding partners, made a fly-by appearance en route to some event that could not have been as happy an occasion. Barbara Macfarlane, Jerry Williams, Martha Williams and Mark Schiffler, all of whom were on the ground floor in 1988, stuck around all evening.
Beer Notes
Just like Peter Coors: Tayrn Walsh’s bid of $8,200 in the Volunteers of America auction won her the right to brew a batch of beer with brewer John Legnard at Blue Moon Brewing at Coors Field. She gets her own label and five and a half gallons of her brew to do with what she will. I would recommend drinking it. . . . Dale’s Pale Ale, made by Oskar Blues Brewery in Lyons, is one of six beers recommended by Men’s Journal magazine to order when on the road. . . . Thirty Colorado breweries will be featured at the second annual All Colorado Beer Festival on Friday and Saturday at Mr. Biggs Event Center in Colorado Springs. Hours are 5:30-10 p.m. Friday and noon-4:30 p.m. and 5:30-10 p.m. Saturday. Tickets, other information at 719-262-3232. . . . Quotable: “They who drink beer will think beer.” — Washington Irving.
Dick Kreck’s e-mail: rakreck@yahoo.com. Send mail to him c/o The Denver Post, 101 W. Colfax Ave., Suite 600, Denver, CO 80202.
