What’s in a name part 2

 

I am always asked how you got the name Golden Cock Brewery.  I have also been asked, “What’s up with those nicknames-- Cupcake, Scone, Muffin?? “So here is the scoop. 

Like the name of the brewery, it just happened.  Most of our beer names just happen.  They tend to name themselves by their ingredients or the brewing process. There isn’t some devious plot to put excitement or fear in the public.  (But if it does that’s ok.)   It just happens.  Sort of organic in a way. There is beer involved though.  Like you didn’t see that coming?

A longtime ago in a galaxy far far away……. 

Several friends including Jeff and myself were spending a weekend camping together.  Now understand this was “car camping” not manly-man camping.  Did I mention our women folk were with us?  We had to be near bathrooms and civilization. 

 Coincidentally, this allowed us to be near our coolers which contained food and beer.  Car camping rocks.  During this adventure a camper at the site beside us constantly called his daughter, you guessed it, “Cupcake”.  It did not take long before all the guys on this trip started calling each other “Cupcake”.  Beer was involved.  It happens.  

Hey Cupcake get me a beer.  Hey Cupcake we need some more…  You see how the rest of the weekend went.   

So the use of “Cupcake” with every sentence among the guys stopped that weekend.  Except for Jeff and me.  It got to the point where our wives did not know who was talking to who.  So the next name was born.   

It happened one brew session when my daughter was confused about who was who.  She is a teenager confusion comes natural.  She said how can you both be “Cupcake”?  Then she suggested that I should be called “Muffin”.  As she put it:  Well, Dad, you have that muffin top thing going on”.   (She is still living.)  And that is how I (Scott) became “Muffin.”  Jeff remained “Cupcake”.  

Ok we are missing someone.  Matt.  Matt is our recipe guy.  The guy should be a “spice dog”.  He is hairy enough to be a drug dog but he is not into drugs; he is into flavor and spices.  Matt is a foodie and was into wine?  Until he met me.  At this time in Matt’s life he did not understand beer.  It was a sad life up until this time.   So I introduced Matt to the world of good/great beer and homebrew.  (My next post will explain how. You’re excited I can tell) Matt had no clue what beer was all about.  He wanted to know more.  He wanted to help us brew.  Fool.  He had no clue where this was going to take him.  Matt showed up to a brew session wanting to be part of the group.  Matt was eager to help, eager to learn, and eager to feed us.  Did I mention Matt was a foodie prior to brewing?  Guess what Matt brought to eat?  Have you not paid attention?  The man brought “homemade Scones”.  And they were good. 

So Jeff is “Cupcake”, Matt is “Scone” and I am “Muffin”.  Again the names just happen when we get together.   

Our heritage is that we are brothers.  Kindred spirits.   We take our history our passion and we make beer.  We take traditional styles and make them non-traditional.  This is where we got “Traditionally Non-Traditional”.  And that tag line just happened one day when we were talking about our beer. There are times where we just answer the same question, times when we say the same things, times when we know how each other feels.  Heritage-wise, Jeff‘s English, Matt’s Irish, I’m Scottish.  Our history connects us. Our creativity bonds us. 

The names Golden Cock Brewery, Cupcake, Scone, Muffin just happened.   We get together and creativity just happens.  We take our best traits and focus them.  We take our history, our heritage, our friendship and we make beer.  We make beer and we hope you will enjoy it.  We enjoy making it.  We hope to do it for a very long time. 

Cheers. 

Scott

Aka Muffin

The Importance of Process in Brewing

Team Golden Cock has been working hard on recipes and process over the past year or so. We heard the siren song of brewing for a living and knew what sort of beer styles we wanted to produce. It was actually pretty easy to craft our own recipes building on our previous brews and making use of some software. A few refinements aside, we pretty much have the recipes down.

So that should be that. Right?

Wrong.

It is just a matter of scaling up from 5-gallon brews to half-barrel to full barrel and on up. Yes?

No.

At a nuts-and-bolts level, to be commercially viable, the brewing process has three requirements: accuracy, consistency, and efficiency. You have to hit every parameter of the recipe (grain bill, mashing temp, pre-boil volume, OG/FG, etc.), every time you execute it, and with as little waste as possible in terms of materials, energy, labor, etc. Just those first two steps up from 5 gallons proved to be challenging. Think about the changes in the equipment for mashing and brewing. That changes the thermodynamics of both processes. The volume of water changes how long it takes to heat and cool water, grains, wort, everything. What about the mechanics of SAFELY moving vessels, platforms, ladders, and such in a 120-square-foot space? All those changes have to be accounted for, adjusted to, so that everyone is executing on their tasks at the right time, in the right place, brew session after brew session. There were a couple of rough brew sessions after we made major changes in the brewing process.

But we got better, and better still. Now we work like a well-oiled machine again on volumes of beer that are starting to approach commercially viable. Will there be new challenges when we scale up to multi-barrel volumes? Sure! The equipment will be very different from most of what we are using now. At that point, we’ll probably need some professional training because screwing up can cost serious money and cause serious problems. But we’ll get the new and improved proess down and get the beers flowing. Hopefully, to a bar or restaurant near you.

Beer! -- Cupcake

Golden Cock Brewery: What's In A Name?

What’s in a name?

Yeah, we’ve heard it before either through our personal life or business career. Perhaps your fifth grade teacher used the phrase in order to provide a meaningful example for sharpening impressionable minds. Even a major shipping conglomerate used, “What’s in a name,” as a basis for a recent Super Bowl Ad. Think about the agonizing days, weeks or months that soon-to-be parents spend debating and arguing over what to eventually call their unborn child.

A name defines us. It provides information, right or wrong, to others with whom we have had no previous interaction – verbally or physically. What’s the major difference between Bob, Bobby or Robert? The difference is the personal analysis that we place on that person. Bob is the nuclear-family father who lives two houses down from you and drives a Volvo. Robert is his father. Bobby is the son/grandson. Formulation of opinions and pre-conceived views, without evidence, is dangerous at the best of times. I have never met you and yet I know your name and I already have an impression of who you are. Is it any wonder considering the innumerable influences of culture on personal identification - real names, proper names, birth names, first names, middle names, last names, given names, full names, forenames, married names, maiden names, surnames, nicknames, etc.

Muddying the proverbial naming pool further, we humbly submit the influence of a business’s name on the business, itself. If a personal name is a representation of who and what you are, then a company’s title is paramount as it provides vital information to their respective demographic.

Think Staples.

Wonder what they sell?

Granted, other corporate names are rather amorphous. Contemplate for a moment the restaurant, Applebee’s. To my knowledge, they do not sell either apples or bees outright. They are not a roadside, organic fruit stand in the mountains of North Carolina selling recently harvested orchard apples and cold-spun bee labor. Yet, they are a multi-million dollar business which capitalizes on an aggressive ad campaign of fun, family, value and locale.

Good for them! Have at it!

So, finally, we get to who and what we are.

We are Golden Cock Brewery!

Yeah, go ahead, laugh it up. What a joke. Let indignation reign. Be offended. Outrage leads the masses. Think that a bunch of immature, post frat boys decided to attempt an ill-conceived foray into the burgeoning world of microbrews.

And yet, you would be both right and wrong. Golden Cock Brewery started as two people sitting in a garage over a batch of homebrew debating what to call their mutual endeavor. One looked up and saw a family heirloom passed between generations – an actual golden rooster weather vane. The Golden Cock concept was born. We witnessed and experienced growing pains as we slowly moved from beginner and novice partial mash brewers into the potentially scary world of all-grain brewing. We rapidly moved from infancy directly into our brewing adolescence and we struggled with eventual conclusions to our labor of love like any other teenager whose body coursed with a volatile cocktail of hormones. Many a colorful and off-color attempts at humor were uttered by us in regards to our identification as the loved ones in our lives shook their heads at our perceived immaturity. A multitude of successes and outright failures were apparent to those we asked to taste our experiments in brewing. We floundered in our direction.

And yet, we never stopped brewing. We never stopped learning. We never stopped communicating. We never stopped enjoying the actual brewing process and the camaraderie of “we happy few” who were lucky enough to form the bonds of friendship over something so trivial to others who had not experienced our pursuit of excellence. Others heard, “Golden Cock Brewery” and assumed an “Americanized” opinion. And honestly, we joked and created names for our beers much like frat boys after several trips to the proverbial keg. We made t-shirts which read, “Golden Cock Brewery. Nothing Goes Down Smoother than a Golden Cock.”

As the months and years of brewing passed quickly, an underlying notion acquired shape. We had a tendency to want to brew traditional style ales from Britain, Scotland and Ireland but we wanted to add our own unique twist to the combination of water, grains, yeast and hops. Our heritage, history and family pastimes are heavily influenced by islands of Britannia and Ireland. The business venture sprung forth with a healthy dose of maturity as our conception took shape. Don’t believe me? Simply perform an internet search for “Golden Cock, England” and you will see a major difference of attitude toward the potentially humorous, immature, or offensive word, Cock. The cock is a rooster. It is a majestic bird which is emblazoned on many a family, business, or sporting teams crest or emblem in England, Scotland and Ireland. We opted to not change our name, even under pressure from others we hold dear, but decided to emphasize the societal and cultural aspect of the British Isles and Ireland. Hence over a couple of pints one evening, the tag line for our business was born

Golden Cock Brewery

Traditionally Non-Traditional

With a nod to our heritage and history, we brew traditional style ales of England, Scotland and Ireland with an intensification born of creativity and inventiveness.

So, what’s in a name? What alters and influences our societal and cultural perception of a proper name? Opinions without observations keep us from experiencing a truly wonderful world of adventure and exploration.

We humbly invite you to that you take a magnificent journey of both convention and innovation with us.

Doing Ginger -- Again

As I was getting dressed today, I thought of a joke that was sent on my Yahoo group email.      

A man is sitting at home on the veranda with his wife and he says,

"I love you."

She sarcastically asks, "Is that you or the beer talking?"

He replies, "It's me............. talking to the beer."

I was ironing a shirt that I got from one of my daughter’s best friends that says, “I ‘heart’ beer.”  I realized that I do love beer.  Maybe not more than my wife?  Ok she will read this so I should say not more than my wife.  The point is I really care about beer. Ok I love it.

We were brewing an all grain English Ginger beer on the 26^th of March.  It was our first 15-gallon all-grain beer.  We did the recipe last year as an extract on the fly and loved the results. We named it Doing Ginger. (Let’s face it -- everyone loves Mary Ann, but everyone just wants to Do Ginger.)

We did 3 yeast starters because we were going into three 5-gallon carboys.  It was a challenging brew session due to the fact that even though we followed the brew software we were still short on sparge water!  WTF?  Our gravity turned out dead on with our adjustments.  Our final outcome will be determined upon the the opening of first bottle and tapping of Jeff’s keg.

Now here comes the fun part …

At 7:30 on Friday, as I was getting the brew room ready, my wife Julie came out and said, “You need to come inside now!”  I said, “Why?” thinking the dogs had left a treat, or the cat had brought her kill in the house. I found out water was coming though the tile in my kitchen. Hooray! Come to find out the dishwasher had been malfunctioning for several days.  Did this stop us? Hell No!  We just kept on putting towels down and kept on getting ready for the brew session.  I did cut off the water supply to the dishwasher.  Had to make it look like I knew what was going on.

On Monday the restoration company and the plumber told me to contact my insurance agent.  Yes at this point I am screwed.  Even if everything is paid for, my brew center will be disrupted until May.  Right now we have 15 gallons of Doing Ginger English Ale waiting to go from primary to secondary.  This will not happen until I can clean my kitchen.  Hopefully this will be the week of Monday, April 4th.  Once the fans are removed, I can clean the kitchen of all the debris that the fans and the destruction have caused.

We hope to go into secondary early this week.  We will bottle/keg when the beer is ready.

If this is like the last year, you will love Doing Ginger.  We did.

Muffin (aka Scott)

Brew Day!

Team Golden Cock flies without a net today!  First, we bottle our Irish Red Ale extract from the last session, then we bottle Streudel's latest batch, THEN we brew the all-grain Irish Red Ale.

Stay tuned!

Irish Red Extract Transfer

Well, Muffin transferred the Irish Red Ale Extract batch last (Sunday) night.  Sans the rest of us.  I wusssed out and decided not to drive 3 or more hours each way for all of an hour of work, including prep and clean up.  From his description, it looks like the the red ale is really going to be amber or copper, like all of the other "red" ales we sampled last week after brewing.  The specific gravity was 1.020, which is about right for the end of primary fermentation, and the flavor profile seems to be lining up with our tasting notes and expectations.

But where is the red ale?

Scone and Muffin scoured the shelves in some of the better Charflotte-area beer purveyors last week, and I did the same here in the Raleigh area over the past few days.  We can't seem to find any really red ales.  Which begs the question about whether there are so few red ales because no one wants them, or does no one want them because they are so hard to find?

If we manage not be such slackers this week, maybe we can get our tasting notes from brew night posted soon.

Our Hobby...Our Passion

Homebrewing is the hobby you can drink.

It is the hobby that doesn't leave a lot of extraneous stuff lying around. Sure, you may have shelves and bins full of equipment, but when the brew is done, drunk, and gone, there really isn't a whole lot left. There may be a few empty bottles (or if you are really lucky or skilled) a few empty kegs lying around. Those get recycled or re-used. Scone pointed this out last night after the clean-up was done. Homebrewing doesn't leave a lot of "stuff" behind. And that is a good thing.

Beer isn't meant to linger. Sure there are some brews that you can cellar and take out for vertical tastings. Most brew, commercial, craft, or otherwise, is meant to be enjoyed while fresh and delicious. Beer doesn't have sulfites. It might have a lot of hops. It might not. Unless you are shipping beer half way around the world by sailing vessel, beer produced at brewery A should arrive at bar/shelf B in a few days or a few weeks after it is done. Beer is brewed, fermented, contained, shipped, and enjoyed. Repeat as necessary, preferably often.

So, how much time and money can you save as a homebrewer? Slim to none, and Slim just left town. Seriously, you might break even if the volume and rate of brewing reach a certain level. Homebrewers enjoy brewing and the camaraderie. They enjoy making and sharing the beer they made. They enjoy the "big fish" stories -- the brew that got away. But most of us certainly aren't saving or making money.

We do it because we it are passionate about good beer.

What is the difference between homebrewers and craft brewers? Craft brewers have made their hobby and passion the avocation they hope others will drink and enjoy.

Did I mention that homebrewing is the hobby you can drink? I'm thirsty.

Jeff Riehm, a.k.a Cupcake

"Give a man a beer, waste an hour. Teach a man to brew, and waste a lifetime!" -- Bill Owen