Heise Brothers Brewing Company

08/12/2016

Ladies and gentleman, this is Brian, president and brewmaster of Heise Bros., checking in. For the last year I've been busy researching about the process and the economics of running a small brewery and restaurant. Now, with a good plan ready we're moving on to the next phase of our business: recipe development. Over the course of the next year I'll be brewing and testing and brewing and testing. If you're lucky, you just might get to try some of our test batches. Stay tuned!

05/16/2016

Today in beer news...Do you think we need something like this in Poplar Bluff? Let us know!

Come summer, it won't just be water flowing under the streets of the Belgian city of Bruges -- a two-mile pipeline exclusively for beer is under construction.

05/15/2016

We cracked open our cranberry meads from last summer, with good results. The bottles popped and overflowed like uncorked champagne, which is unsurprising since we used a champagne yeast in the recipe. Both meads were also very fizzy when poured and had a dry flavor like a champagne. If you recall, our experiment was to test the results of using a store-bought cranberry juice or winery grade cranberry extract. Ultimately, both came out very tasty, but there were some differences besides the color. We all agreed (except Brian, he's still in Japan and was unable to participate in the taste test) that the extract mead, the lighter one on the left in the photo, retained more of a cranberry character, and it was fizzier when poured. The juice-based mead (the darker one) was very slightly sweeter and had less of the characteristic cranberry bitterness. All in all, two very drinkable and tasty meads came out of this experiment.

We also started two new traditional mead batches today. Both batches use the same sweet white wine yeast, but we are testing the effects of traditional yeast nutrient (diammonium phosphate, or DAP) and a special organic nutrient blend reputed to super charge fermentation.

Finally, we also transferred last week's experimental batch into secondary fermentation. In that batch, we used a larger amount of DAP than we had before, and the week-long primary phase (ordinarily 1.5 to 2 weeks) is a clear indicator of its effects. It will still be a few weeks before secondary fermentation ends, then several months of aging, before we can determine the effects on the flavor.

05/10/2016

This is Shaun with an update on our mead-making experiments for the summer (we have a couple experiments to update on from last year, but I'll post on that later). For the next few months we will be focusing on traditional mead, the simplest mead recipe: honey, water, yeast.

Perhaps the most important factor in any fermented beverage is the yeast. What the yeast does to your other ingredients and how well it is able to do its job has a huge impact on the final flavor, character, and alcohol content of your product, and this will be our focus for the next few experimental batches. We will be testing different strains of yeast as well as different amounts and types of nutrient additives.

You may ask: "Why nutrient additives?" The answer is that honey, unlike the grains used in beer or the grapes (and other fruits) used in wine, lacks most of the nutrients (besides fermentable sugars) that the yeast needs to thrive and produce the best product. Using proper yeast nutrients means shorter fermentation times, greater resilience of the yeast, and less chance of starving yeast producing off flavors in the final product. We have found from experience that you can produce a reasonably tasty mead with little or no additive, but now we are going to try to push our yeasts to produce the best meads that they can.

Our first experiment is already under way, using a yeast strain we have used in the past with some success and a standard yeast nutrient at a slightly higher level than before. Next week we will start another traditional mead using a yeast reputed to produce tasty sweet meads.

05/10/2016

Beer news, ladies and gentleman! Can you believe it? Budweiser is really becoming "the taste of America."

Anheuser-Busch, which is owned by Belgian brewer InBev, has a new name for Budweiser: America.

05/01/2016

Hop Update. Some of the hops are really enjoying the Spring Season we are having. This is our second Spring growing hops and once again, the varieties showing the most growth are the Cascades and Chinooks. I am starting to believe they are better suited to our climate and Latitude, than the Willamettes and Mt. Hoods. So if you are thinking of growing hops as a cash crop on small acreage I would, based on my experience so far, plant Chinooks and Cascades for the best results. However, there may be other varieties that may do as well, I only sampled 5 varieties, there are actually 100's of varieties.

04/13/2016

Here we are again for another episode of Beer Tourism in Japan. Last weekend I decided to do a little research and went out to a place that's doing a similar style business as us: a brewpub/pizzeria. I trekked out to Hamamatsucho, a neighborhood of Tokyo, in search of Devilcraft, a pizzeria and beer bar that features four in-house beers and 16 guest beers on tap.

It seemed like quite a nice place, if a bit crowded together with the seating (this is pretty normal for Tokyo though. It sat around fifty people, but was only half full on a Sunday evening. Though ordinarily I like to go for the local craft, I decided I had to try an American beer for a change and went with Rampart Imperial IPA from New Belgium brewery in Fort Collins, Colorado. You all might be familiar with Fat Tire, their flagship brand, which is pretty commonly available in the US, even in SE Missouri.

The beer (pictured below) was every bit a quintessential imperial IPA: hoppy as heck, bitter, golden in color, and high in alcohol (8.5%). It was definitely good, but not my favorite IPA as I prefer mine with a lot more hop aroma and this one didn't have much, though it could be due to age from having been transported all the way over here. IPAs lose their floral character pretty fast.

The big disappointment of the night was the pizza, though. Not that it was bad -- in fact, it was delicious! The problem was I paid about $16 for a small pizza, and boy they weren't kidding when they said small! It was about the size of the palm of my hand. Ladies and gentlemen, I promise you when Heise Bros. opens its doors, you'll be able to buy a 16" pizza for that price. I have to say, the service was a little spotty too. I ordered a second beer of a different type and they brought me exactly the same one. After all that, I'm not sure if I'll be going back again.

As always, thanks for reading and I'll see you all next week!

03/20/2016

Spring time and our brewer is currently riding 2000 k across Japan sampling Japanese craft brews. It seems the Japanese have developed a taste for real beer. I will repost some of his posts on the beer he is finding and learning about . Just noticed the hop bines are popping up through the ground. This will be their second year, looking forward to making beer this fall with home grown Missouri hops.

01/31/2016

We just finished our monthly business meeting. We've got a lot of plans put together and a lot of exciting things coming up for Heise Bros. Brewing Co. We'll keep you all posted. Stay tuned!

11/30/2015

We of Heise Brothers Brewing Company have made it our goal to provide quality, locally produced craft beer to the Southeast Missouri area, working to bring back the traditional local small breweries that used to exist throughout Missouri a century ago. Having been honing our craft for the last several years, moving into the professional production range is certainly going to be a challenge. To help us meet this challenge, we have joined the Brewer's Association, a group that works nationally to promote the craft beer industry. As members, we will have access to the wisdom of countless experts in the field of small-scale beer production to ensure that when we open our doors, you our customers will have access not only to truly local product, but a product of the highest quality as well.

11/13/2015

Hop update: Just been out taking down the ropes, weeding, and relabeling the hop garden, getting ready for next year. As you know we had a very wet summer which is atypical for this area and I am sure it affected some of the hops we were trying to grow, because hops when over watered will develop root rot. The Sterlings both died during the wet season, while we got average growth out of the Cascades, Mt Hoods, Willomette and excellect growth from the Chinooks. We made some mistakes, when we planted the bines we did not have a soil test done,yet. It took the State of Missouri, almost two months to get it to us. I mixed the existing soil with some commercial top soil. When the test came back, it showed the existing soil to be perfect for hops, so by mixing another top soil with it I had not improved the soil but might have degraded it. We will now just use the existing soil for any further plantings. We did have an insect problem, but we identified the pest as a brown Japanese beetle, we had no real plan for them other than picking them off, but they were able to strip a plant over night. They did some damage. We now have a strategy for dealing with them in the coming year. I under fertilized this year, and missed the key time just before flowering. Also, we plan to raise the hop trillis height another three feet so the plants can continue to grow higher.
So we made mistakes and that is how you learn, next year will be better, but I am sure there will be other mistakes to be made. We will add at least 10 more plants, maybe 20 more, for the coming season and hope for normal weather conditions.
Have a very Beery Christmas everybody, from the guys and gal of Heise Brothers Brewing

09/06/2015

We had a bottling day today, bottling a Hefeweizen that we brewed a few weeks ago as well as the two experimental comparison batches of cranberry melomel. The Hefeweizen will condition for about two weeks, though we will pop open a bottle next week to see how it is progressing. The melomel will age for at least six months, though we may give it a taste before then.