Nebraska Beer - Craft Beer, Breweries, Homebrewing...

A few months back Nick and I were trying to think of some things to bring to you, the reader and drinker, that are unique and highlight our craft brewers and brewery's and bring people to their location. So we have come up with a few things you will start seeing and the first is collaboration brewing with every brewer in the state, if we can work it out. As you can imagine, scheduling with us and the brewers can be a unique challenge.

Sabco Brewing System

I decided to contact Paul and Tyson at Nebraska Brewing Company because their Tap 8 concept is exactly what we wanted and it fit the concept very well as a first attempt. We want these beers to be unique, I don't expect us to brew a Vienna lager or anything like that and that fit into the spirit of their Tap 8. As it turns out, it also works well because that is brewed on a pilot brew system and was easier to work into their schedule. NBC is doing very well right now, that is great, but that also means they are very busy and literally have no fermentor space in their schedule to keep their products on the shelves and in the bar. So even brewing on the 15gl Sabco system presented it's own challenges because at the same time they were brewing Cardinal in the main brewhouse. The unique situation was that we were using the same water from the HLT, so it had to be timed nearly perfectly early on. Also, we needed to be done by a certain time so they could get the sabco going on a yeast starter they were getting ready for EOS. Watching and helping where we could was amazing, we never felt rushed or in the way and we hit all our numbers, had lunch and only missed our final expected end time by a couple minutes, which is crazy to me considering the absolute chaos my brewdays can be.

That was the brew day but how about the beer. We chatted through email and Facebook on what kind of beer we were thinking of and what we wanted and threw out all kinds of ideas. We wanted something refreshing and unique, possibly using local ingredients. Those conversations moved to a saison because Tyson really wanted to try a saison yeast that he hadn't had the chance to try yet. I kept coming to flowers or flowery herbs as a possible addition and I wanted to bring some local honey to the equation as well. Tyson mentioned that he had Hibiscus in his backyard so we went with that idea, Rose hips were brought up as well. We decided on those two things and Tyson proceeded to test the coloring and flavor affects of varying levels of Hibiscus. We obviously weren't going to get enough from his yard so we did have to by some, it is the thought that counts. On brew day we tasted the hibiscus, it is a very acidic yet had a great fruit flavor that was very enjoyable and the aroma on the rose hips was amazing. We knew we were going to have an interesting beer and we only hope it turns out like we imagine. The one thing that is amazing is the color, it is purplish pink, it will be interesting to see what the final color is but this looked like Kool-aid going in the fermentor.

Look at that color

That was our brew day and the basics of what beer we made, so when can you get it and where? The specifics on that have yet to be determined, we know we are going to have a release party at the brewery and we know it will be available at the the Great Nebraska Beer Fest, so you will have a couple opportunities to give it a try.

We hope you like this idea and come out and share the beer with us and come out and visit these wonderful breweries we have in this state. We are working on our next brew and if you are a brewery and have the capacity and the time for this experimentally brewing we would love to come and brew, and ask Tyson, we clean really well.