Oktoberfest Continues this Weekend

Irish Weekend? What's that? It's German Weekend! The second of three in Fox Chase.

Saturday
Cloudy but clear is the hourly forecast for later today, so it looks like we will be outside this evening!

We will have live music by Groovers from 4pm to 8pm. This weekend's featured Oktoberfest beers are from Stoudts, Hacker-Pschorr, and Sly Fox. And we'll have the grill fired up. Come out and join us!

Sunday
We start off Sunday with a wheat beer brunch. Holly posted a great photo of truffled egg toast earlier this week (thanks Holly). The crepes and pancakes are both killer too. This is a brunch not to be missed. On tap should be Erdinger Weissbier Dark or Stoudts Heifer-n-Wheat and Brooklyner Weisse or Sly Fox Royal Weisse.

After brunch, we will have traditional accordion music by Don Bitterlich from 1 to 3pm. Then Guitar Gary plays from 3 to 5pm.

This Friday: 15 Victory Beers for 15 Vicotry Years

This Friday, we will be celebrating Victory's 15th anniversary with 15 Victory beers, which surprisingly isn't a hard thing to pull off. Victory will be taking over all 12 of our taps and we will have 3 more in bottles.

For the last 15 years Victory has been and remains one of the leading breweries in the USA. What better way to celebrate than with 15 different Victory beers to choose from?

The hard part wasn't getting 15 Victory beers at once; the hard part was figuring which to leave out. We'd love to have them all but we very finite space for bottles.

Line-up (subject to change)

Draft
01. Hop Devil
02. Prima Pils
03. Dark Lager
04. Headwaters Pale Ale
05. Helles Lager
06. Hop Wallop
07. Braumeister Pils Tettnang-Tettnang
08. Scarlet Fire
09. Limited Ale: Craft Brewers Conference Tripel
10. Limited Ale: Craft Brewers Conference Saison
11. Mad King Weiss
12. Festbier

Bottles
13. Storm King
14. Golden Monkey
15. Helios

Victory folks will be on the hand with contests and prizes for the victorious.

The big exciting news for Beer Geeks like me is the addition of two Victory Limited Ales brewed especially for the Craft Brewers Conference (a special triple and a special saison). Most of both batches are going out the conference, but we managed to score a keg of each. This beer just went into the kegs today (Wednesday) so it will be SUPER FRESH when we tap it.

This Week at Hop Angel

Tuesday
On Tuesday, Quizzo Lord Ryan returns to our main room. Ryan puts on a very entertaining Quizzo. Loads of prizes, including sweat shirts, hats, fleeces, lift tickets, assorted beer glasses. The quizzing starts at 8:30pm.

Also that night in our other room, Fox Chase Review will be holding their monthly 2nd Tuesday Open Mic Poetry Night. If you have ears, they have poetry for you. If you have a poem, they have an open mic.


Friday
Yuengling Bock is Yuengling's spring seasonal. Spring still feels like wishful thinking, but it will probably be here before we know it. And if you don't believe me, Punxsutawney Phil says so too.

Spring may not yet be here come Friday, but Yuneling Bock will be on tap and it will be a keep the glass night. That's right, buy a .4 liter of Yuengling Bock, keep the glass. While supplies last. Starting at 6pm.


And next week, on Monday we will feature a four course gourmet Valentines Dinner for just $35. Please click the link for details.

Don Zverlein Comes Back Home

Pat and I believe in holding onto good people, so I am very happy to announce that Don Zverlein will be returning to the Brauhaus. Don started here with the Grunds when he was 16 years old and never really left. After working several accounting jobs on weekdays, Don came back full time to 7980 Oxford Ave a few years ago.

A few months ago, Mrs. Grund mentioned Don's history with the Brauhaus to us, and that he wanted to come back.

We are very happy to have Don back where he belongs. It's tradition that deserves to be respected, plus we are getting a rock solid crew member. And Don's a beer guy! Plus he can make a great martini. How many wins is that?

Welcome back Don! We look forward to many years of working together.

Messing with Logos

I found this cool image when researching the Weimar Republic. During the brief golden age of the Weimar Republic there was a massive cultural revival in Germany. This included innovative street theatre, a cabaret scene, jazz, architecture and film. This symbol is also the flag for the city of Frankfort. I liked the red background, the curved bottom that looks like a coat of arms, and I especially like the abstracted eagle.




Eagles have wings, and Angels have wings too. Which brought us to this. I tried to use the style of the wings for her hair.



That was a fine start, but the wings didn't look long enough, and the end wings looked too thick. Which brought us to here.



Getting there, but needed something like this other cool Wiemar Republic symbol.



Obviously what it needed was hops. I tried to create hops in the same style as the eagle above. And here is where we are now.



The lines in the bottom of the skirt were just there to fill in the large expanse of whiteness. I just replaced the meaningless lines with a 13.



We still need to clean it up some more. What do you think?

Meet Our Chef

We are very pleased to announce that the chef for Hop Angel Braushau will be Matthew Hartnett. Matt worked most recently at Slate, where he won praise for his roasted chicken and gourmet burgers.

Here's what Matt has to say about himself, "As for me I have a strong French back round specializing in cuisine of northeastern France with heavy German influence foods. Fusion has always been my way to express family ties , teachings from old Chefs of mine, Master Chef Olivier De Saint Martin and Chef Laurent Leseur and just plain old love for food. In my 14 years experience all and all I am still a line cook at heart just a knowledgeable one."

And as you can tell by the picture, he's a beer guy!

Patrick and I are very jazzed to have Matt on board.

Fri, 23 Jul 2010

This week, we got the keys.

Week one's jobs have included throwing out old beer, old food, and other old junk. The clean out of old junk is a big job and will run into next week easily.

We met on site with the LCB investigator, which went well. We will need their final approval but we should be most of the way there.

We met with draft beer system people to see about a new draft system. They don't really make draft systems with 13 or 14 spigots, so the magic number of 13 taps will have to be fudged with 12 taps plus a beer engine. On the plus side that means, we'll have a beer engine with something hoppy at all times.

We met with point of sale computer people too. Looks like there isn't too much that can be salvaged out of the old POS.

We hired a chef. More details about that in a future post.