Trail Magic: A walk through

Trail Magic is a beer that we've been brewing for a while now, both as home brewers and professionally. It was on tap at the Firefly in Lenox, and it's currently on tap at the Gypsy Joint in Great Barrington. Like all the beers that we brew, we strive to make it equal parts conceptual and delicious.

The concept comes from the AT tradition of planting a cooler of beer on a tucked-away spot along trail for weary through-hikers to find in an hour of need. This magically appearing cooler should lift their spirits and propel them on their journey from Georgia to Maine. Such encounters are known as “trail magic.” Well, we aspire to make Trail Magic happen. If you are hiking the AT next year expect to run into a cooler of this beer somewhere in the Berkshire stretch.

The beer is designed to mirror trail mix, the common trail snack. A mixture of nuts, dried fruits, and melt-in-your-mouth-not-in-your-hands M&M's is a pretty standard combination. We're trying to combine all of these flavors in a hoppy, refreshing American pale ale that you could drink in three thirsty gulps on the trail, or sit down for refined sips in order to enjoy all the intricate flavors.

To achieve this complex flavor profile we use a compliment of malts that mimic the desired flavors. We also use actual fruits, nuts, and chocolate. The nuttiness comes from British amber malt, as well as a sunflower seed extract that we made from real sunflower seeds. The fruitiness is derived from dark caramel malts that provide a dark fruit character, and ‘craisins’ added late in the boil (craisins are back-sweetened with refined sugar to make them taste more like naturally sweet raisins, and refined sugar is not something we want to introduce into secondary fermentation). We also add cocoa powder, which adds a unique bitterness, and oddly, more nuttiness.

Our website updates with current draft lines (http://glassbottombrewery.org/find), so if you keep checking in you’ll know when and where to find Trail Magic. Or stop by the brewery for a sample and a growler fill come 2014. Cheers.

Move over pumpkin beer

Glass bottom brewery is proud to offer a new style to the beer world: parsnip beer. This idea is something that Evan and I have been talking about for over a year now, and it constitutes glass bottom's first true farmer-brewer collaboration. The parsnips were grown in raised beds on Evan's property, and the beer was conceptualized by the minds that brought you TeaSB and Forest Farmer Brown.

The base beer style is a Belgian tripel, a light colored, high alcohol beer in which Belgian yeast provides much of the flavor. They usually offer a complement of spicy and fruity notes. The grain bill for our recipe calls for 100% pilsner malt, and the hops are kept mild.

The other half of the equation is a play on parsnip wine, one of the more flavorful country wines that certain adventurous people will brew in small batches in their kitchens. Evan has been brewing his own parsnip wine for years now. Parsnips are a root vegetable like a carrot. Their taste is a very unique spicy/earthy melange. We utilize the parsnips in the boil as a 30 minute steep. It was a bit like making soup.

Because country wines are often concoctions of just sugar and various flavor compounds and not at all the nutrient rich liquid that unfermented beer is, instructions often list an acidic citrus component - usually orange or lemon juice - to help fermentation along. Purely for the sake of tradition we added fresh ginger, grown in a greenhouse in New York State. The spicy and citrusy characteristics of fresh ginger will hopefully fit well into the tripel/parsnip theme.