Philly Beer Week 1 month away

I've cut back my involvement in Philly Beer Week this year -- for family reasons, not business -- but I'm still in a few things. Like two events at the Grey Lodge: the Wheat Beer Breakfast on March 7 (9-1, pay as you go, a great prelim to the big Craft Beer Festival) and our Upstate Beer Tasting on March 8 (5-8, also pay as you go). (Scoats and I will be headed upstate to gather the beers that week, and wouldn't you love to be a fly in the car for that one?)

I'm also hosting another event right after the Wheat Beer Breakfast (so if you couldn't get (or didn't want) tickets to the Craft Beer Festival, this is perfect for you), also in the Northeast, but it's not official yet so, I can't talk about it (except to say that it's a German and German-style beer event at the Blue Ox Bistro featuring some great German food and goodies from right across the street at Rieker's Prime Meats (if you've never been there, you're crazy nuts), 2-5, also pay as you go (and the smoked beer and smoked meat is gonna rock).

Which is a great Team Superfleisch lead-in to the other event I'm participating in, The Klash of the Kaisers at Triumph Old City, a no-holds-barred pilsner competition and tasting. This is the best Philly Beer Week memorial to Triumph brewer and craft lager pioneer Jay Misson that we could think of, and the line-up will include a pilsner from Jay's hand-written recipe, brewed at Triumph by Patrick Jones and Flying Fish brewer Casey Hughes. Any kind of pilsner -- Bohemian, German, Frisian, imperial -- is welcome, and we'll have a "pro" judging in the afternoon and a people's choice in the evening; both straight-up "do you like this" judging, not "strict to style" fascism. Pay as you go, 6-9, Thursday March 12.

And that's about it for me this year. I'll probably see some of you at some other events, and I would urge you to check things out thoroughly this year: there are some that are very different and sure to be entertaining.

Now brewing: Pils Jay's Way

I see on Facebook that Patrick Jones and Flying Fish brewer Casey Hughes are currently brewing a special batch of pilsner at the Triumph brewpub in Old City Philadelphia. It's "Pils Jay's Way." After I wrote a eulogy for Jay Misson here on the blog, I met and corresponded with a lot of his friends. As often happens, I learned a lot about a good friend after he died. I hate that, but I loved it, too.

One of those friends of Jay was Peter Kruse, who interned with Jay at Gordon Biersch back in 1996. He got in touch with me through the blog, and wound up mailing me a copy of a handwritten recipe Jay had given him: "Pils -- Jay's Way." I got it into Patrick and Casey's hands, and today they're brewing it. It's got just a touch of smoked malt in it, and I'm very curious to see how it comes out. It should be ready for a pilsner night Triumph is putting on Thursday March 12th of Philly Beer Week, the "Klash of the Kaisers"; more about that here. (And more about today's brew here; thanks for the note, Felicia!)

Tough to be at home while this is going on, but all I'd do is watch and take pictures. Drinking it is what I'm good at.

Thanks to Peter, and Patrick and Casey. Cheers, Jay!

Memorials: work to be done

We need to get to work.

Beer writers need to get a Michael Jackson memorial scholarship put together. We have several ideas; let's settle on one and implement.

The loss of Jay Misson is still raw, but we should grab things now and create his brewing memorial. Jay taught a huge number of people how to brew (and how to work, and how to play, and how to live): why not a lager brewing scholarship? Probably under way, but if not...let's coalesce, people.

Jay Misson Memorial Toast at GB SF

I know most of the readers of this blog are in the eastern part of the U.S., but Jay's life touched people across the country, so when I got the following e-mail, well, sure I decided to put it up.

Dear Lew,

My name is John Tucci and I am the head brewer at Gordon Biersch San Francisco. I worked with Jay for several years at Gordon Biersch and remember him fondly.

I am planning a west coast get together at Gordon Biersch San Francisco in honor of Jay Misson. A bunch of us are getting together Saturday June 14th at 4pm to toast him and remember old times.

I'll be emailing the event details to all the friends in the area here I know that knew him, and will direct them to your blog for more info.

Gordon Biersch San Francisco
2 Harrison St. San Francisco, CA
June 14, 4:00 p.m.

Jay Misson

I just learned that Jay Misson, head brewer for the Triumph brewpubs, died this morning. I'm terribly saddened and diminished by this, as is the beer community in Philly and New Jersey.

The beer community may not realize just how diminished they are. Jay was a thread running back to the very beginning of craft brewing in this area, and typically, it was a lager thread. After learning homebrewing as a high school science project in 1978, Misson came home from college and answered an ad for a brewer at Vernon Valley, the pioneering brewery within Action Park waterpark in northern New Jersey. Here's what I wrote about that in an Ale Street News profile of Jay:

Misson started working for German brewmaster Stefan Muhs, who had managed to install a classically traditional German lager brewhouse in the Action Park waterpark in Vernon Valley, a strange marriage of teenage thrills and thoroughly sophisticated beer. "We were putting out half-liter swingtops of unfiltered, organic-ingredient lagers, brewed to strict Reinheitsgebot standards," Misson recalled. It was a 30 hectoliter brewhouse, with open wooden fermenters, wooden casks, and an open, tower-style wort chiller.

"Everything was done the hard way, the Reinheitsgebot way," Misson said with a wry grin. "It was a great place to learn, because you HAD to be clean, especially with that open chiller. We grew up all our yeast from slants, we even made our own culture medium, and we cultured lactic acid to acidify the malt."

I tasted those beers twice: once at an early Brickskeller tasting of American craft beers with Michael Jackson, who lavished praise on them, and once at Action Park in the late 1980s. Both times I was impressed, though the Action Park beers were served ice-cold, something Jay was never happy about.

Jay remained a lager chauvinist, and wound up at Gordon-Biersch, training brewers. That's where he met Patrick Jones, who he would bring along back to New Jersey to brew for Triumph, first in New Hope and now in Philly.

Jay was always quick to pour a beer, quick to rhapsodize about a German style, and quick to quash any talk of lager being in any way inferior to or less complex than ale. He also loved having a good time, a big man, outsized in humor, knowledge, and passion. As I said to his wife Kelly today (they married in October of 2005; Misson got a call at the wedding to let him know Triumph had won four GABF medals), Jay was just such a big guy, it was like he didn't fit into this life.

Kelly said he'd had a great day yesterday, caught an enormous bluefish. If he had some good lager beer with it, and been with her, I can't think of any way Jay would have enjoyed his last day on earth any better. Oh, damn, but I am going to miss the man. Lift many beers to him, because that's how he would have wanted it. But please...lagers:

I told Jay about something (Hyde Park Brewing's) John Eccles told me once. "Ales!" John said. "I could teach a chimp to make ales. You have to know what you’re doing to make lagers." I asked Misson if John had heard him say that (when Jay was training him at Mountain Valley brewpub).
"No, he didn’t get that quote from me," Misson laughed, a big laugh. Then he smiled. "But the attitude – yeah, that he got from me."

Attitude, and lagers. One more quote:

I was relaxing after the meal with head brewer Jay Misson and part-owner Brian Fitting; Fitting was telling me how they kept getting inquiries about bottling their beer. “They just don’t get it,” said Misson, waving a dismissive hand. “It’s a brewpub. We make beer here, people drink it here. That’s what we do. That’s all we do.”

Passionate to the last. Fare well, Jay, auf wiederseh'n.