An American Life in Istanbul

Well since I am out of Istanbul without a computer, I am just posting a short series of pictures of a rather well hidden church right on the busiest shopping street in Istanbul, probably in all of Turkey. Istiklal Caddesi is a pedestrian street leading up to Taksim square, lined with shops, bars, restaurants, and about everything else you can imagine. It’s one of my favorite places. I spend most Friday and Saturday nights in or around Taksim, and it wasn’t until very recently I noticed this well hidden church.

This is the entrance to the church. Past the gate, there is a small set of stairs leading down to the church’s front door. The entrance is completely flush with the other buildings flanking the street making it very hard to spot.

These are the stairs leading past the entrance and down to the front door.

Although not much, this is the inside of the church. They had roman catholic and two other religions’ services on the schedule while I was here.

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You all remember this picture from my earlier post Back in Turkey:

Well at a friend’s birthday I brought the beers and we had a tasting. Most of the tasters were a mix of impressed, intrigued and shocked at the wide range of tastes. Most Turkish beer is made in the same way as the traditional German lagers, as are most of the imports that are available here. Drinking IPA’s, ales, stouts or fruity wheat beers is just not possible here. Therefore most of the tasters had never had beer like this. Anyway here are the pictures.

From the left it’s Erman myself and Izzy sitting behind the five beers.

Besides the beer tasting, it was after all Ali Emre’s birthday, so we grilled some chicken and beef. From the left is Ant, Adnan, Erman and Izzy all trying to get the grill going. It took quite a long time but they were eventually successful.

Thick, dark chocolaty Yeti Imperial Stout from Colorado. This and one of the IPAs were the favorite two beers. I personally don’t like it. but it seemed about half the guys liked it, half of them hated it. There was no real middle ground on this one

Ant and Izzy displaying their two favorite beers. An IPA and a normal ale. The bitter hoppy taste in these two beers happens to be what I like in beer as well.

Izzy’s beer rating system. He hated the stout.

Doruk with his favorite beer. A lot of friends have said he looks a lot like Jack Black.

Playing Ninetendo Wii.

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These are some pictures of the tulips sculptures that have sprouted up around the city. Most of them are around Taksim or Nisantasi, two of the more affluent neighborhoods in Istanbul. A few months ago it was lots of cows. They have since disappeared and now we have tulip sculptures. It’s nice to see outdoor public art around the city.

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Now that I have more free time I decided I should make the most of it. I have signed myself up to take the GREs and the GMAT so that I can apply to graduate programs. I am also half heartedly looking for a new job, and I am planning some trips within Turkey. This week however, I decided to do something that very few have ever done. I toured the Taps Brewery in Gebze, Istanbul.

I have known the head brewer there for sometime and have been to the Taps restarant on several occasions. The brewery was started as a restaurant with in house brewing in 2001 by an American Brewer named William Kemper. He later moved the brewing to a microbrewery outside of Istanbul and about a year ago turned the reins over to his assistant (my friend), the California born Mark Harvey Kenney, or just Harvey. Harvey has been running the brewery ever since with his Kenyan assistant Daniel. Yesterday, I made the trip all the way to the far stretches of the Asian side of the city with Harvey to spend a day at work with him.

As far as I know, the taps brewery is the only real microbrewery in Turkey. They currently produce, Dunkel, Kolsch, Pilsner, Red Ale, Strong Ale, Stout, Vienna Lager, Golden Ale and Hefeweizen. They also have one beer that has not been released to the general public yet: Taps IPA! Taps is by far the best beer made in Turkey. When I am in the store I buy their bottles if I see them and I go to the restaurant occasionally. However the music in the restaurant (which closed on Friday) is so awful and so loud, that I go there very rarely, and only at Harvey’s invitation. For those of you that are living in Turkey who haven’t had Taps beer, you really must try it. It is very good and better than all the Turkish made and foreign imported beer available in Turkey.

For your viewing pleasure here are the pictures and explanations from my day at Turkey’s one and only craft brewery.

That’s me on site at the brewery. I am sitting on the platform between the three tanks where the raw ingredients are mixed and cooked together to form the wort, which later gets mixed with yeast and stored for fermentation. Each of the tanks is stainless steel with temperature sensors that are connected to the master control system for the brewery. Each tank has a hollow shell that is filled with steam to help regulate the temperature. Although a very high-tech and highly automated brewery, careful attention must be paid by the brewer and his assistant.

It doesn’t look like much, and it seems like this kind of system would be standard, but apparently it’s not. Harvey’s assistant, Daniel, who worked in a brewery in England said a lot of the breweries there don’t have any of this advanced computer technology to control the processes. From this computer you can monitor every tank in the whole brewery, you can control the steam flow in each segment of each tank, you can control the valves in the system and monitor flow rates at various parts of the system. I am sure there is more that you can do, but I wasn’t too interested in the computer.

Here are four views of the different tanks. I can’t describe to you in great deal what each one is used for but I can say that the top right one is the raw malt being brought in from the floor above, and mixed with hot water. The bottom right one is the cooked wort being drained into the storage tank for fermentation. I got to see the whole process start to finish and it was quite impressive.

These are condensed hops from Germany. They smelled great! Just like a heavily hopped beer. Somewhere in the brewery they had the American Cascade Hops, which give American craft beers their unique flavor. Harvey used them to make his IPA.

Harvey! That’s the storage room where kegs are kept until they are ready to be shipped. Since it’s a young brewery and there isn’t much of a beer industry in Turkey, they aren’t producing very high quantities yet. On a side note Harvey pointed out to me while we were having lunch at a restarant that he’s usually the only foreigner at that restaurant and he’s always the one wearing workman’s overalls. Everyone else had suits on.

There is something in the beer that bonds to something else in the beer and forms little chunks. This makes it easier to filter. I didn’t quite catch what chemical was going on, but it did look strange.

Harvey at work in the lab. Each batch has to be checked for alcohol content among other things. Harvey hasn’t been able to find distilled water for sale in Turkey so he also uses his lab to distill his own water.

Using a microscope, I got to count the yeast cell density in the finished product. It’s important to make sure there is enough yeast in the tank before leaving it to ferment. I think this batch was low, but I am not the expert. On a side note, you will notice my ring is a beer bottle opener.

Yeast being added to the beer inline on it’s way into the storage tank for fermentation. Since yeast is a living organism, you can take simply take yeast from one tank, and use it to ferment the next tank, and then the next tank and so on.

Beer on it’s way to the fermentation tanks.

This is the outlet for the carbon dioxide produced during fermentation. It keeps the pressure from building up too much.

Of course, if you work in a brewery, there is always time to grab a fresh beer straight from the fermentation tank! That’s me holding Turkey’s first every IPA (India pale ale). This is without a doubt my favorite beer. This one wasn’t perfect Harvey admitted, but I thought the taste was good. When it ferments a little more and the carbonation gets up to where it should be, I think it’s going to be a fantastic beer. For now, it’s still sitting in the tank, waiting.

Thank you Harvey for giving me the opportunity to go to work with you. It was great!

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For some reason Youtube is blocked as of today, again. No word yet as to why though… I’ll keep you updated.

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I recently got back from two weeks in the US. When I made the reservations I was planning to come back to my job. Since I am not working anymore, that was not the case. Instead I have been spending time with my friends planning my next step.

A lot of people asked the standard questions; was it fun? did you see your family? what did you do? where did you go? what did you miss most? One question in particular grabbed me. Someone asked me what I surprised me, or rather what grabbed me in the US that I had forgotten about, what was different from Turkey that I was now noticing after having been in Turkey for so long. I couldn’t think of anything that grabbed me about the US, but after two weeks in the US, I noticed something about Turkey: Istanbul is ugly.

I guess I never realized the extent of Turkey’s ugliness. After having visited various cities in the US, it really hit me when I got back. Once you get away from the really old parts of the city, all the building are really cheaply built, with bad architecture, cracks, peeling paint, tons of air conditioners hanging out of windows, tons of satellite dishes and antennas, the windows aren’t clean. It’s as if no one pays to upkeep the multitude of oddly colored shoddy buildings. On top of that, it’s dirty and nothing is green. Here’s a few pictures (I know this kind of comparison isn’t exactly fair, but you have to see for yourself how ugly it is when you get to the parts built in the last 20 years).

Istanbul (left) and Philadelphia (right). I went to Phily to visit my brother who is doing a masters degree at UPenn.

Istanbul (left) and Baltimore (right). I didn’t go to Baltimore, but I did go to another small town in Maryland where I visited my aunt, and her family.

In addition to having a good time I brought back some things that I felt were missing here in Turkey. I meant to get grill seasoning and good BBQ sauce but I forgot those. I did however bring a magazine listing cars for sale and apartments for rent (in Pittsburgh), which I gave to Alper. He is always asking me about how much things cost in the US so I figure those to magazines would answer many of his questions better than I could. I also brough back Beer:

From the left: Sawtooth ale from the Left Hand brewing company in Colorado, blackberry wheat ale from Long Trail brewing company in Vermont, Ruination India Pale Ale from the Stone Brewery in California, Hoptical Illusion from the Blue Point brewing company in Long Island New York (near where I am from), and the Yeti Imperial Stout from the Great Divide brewing company in Colorado. I only had limited space so I tried to grab a decent selection. Apparently, according to the only brewer I know in Istanbul, Harvey (he’s from California), the reason beer here sucks is because Efes - the leading beer distributor - won’t let anyone import, and the water here is not right for beer. There are too many unwanted salts and things in the water. He says he’s going to start using reverse osmosis to take everything out of the water, and then add what he wants, to mimic good beer brewing water. He said an IPA is on the way!

Girl Scout cookies! Of course. I can’t believe I never though of this before. My little cousin Olivia does the girl scout cookie fund raiser so my Aunt Beth (her mother) reserved a few boxes for me. I thought the best use would be to bring them to Istanbul and share them with my Turkish friends. I am planning to open them this weekend. In the US, there are boy scouts, and girl scouts. To raise money, the girl scouts have been selling the same cookies for years and years and years. They are very good, and very popular. Kind of expensive but it’s for a good cause right? It helps support the creation of strong, independent women with good leadership abilities. I used to buy a bunch of these when I was in university for $3.50 per box. I would buy some for my friends who would buy them at value. When they would run out, they would always come looking for more, either drunk or hungover. I would charge extortionist prices which they would begrudgingly pay. I think I sold one box for over 10 dollars one time.

I also brought back with me a bunch of out of print games that I want to play with some of my friends here. I unfortunately left them with Izzy so I don’t have a picture.

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Yesterday was international labor day, a day that celebrates the rights and achievements of workers around the world. In most places peaceful demonstrations are held during labor day. Yesterday here in Istanbul, it was a full out battle, with the police finishing way a head. There was teargas, fire houses, and beatings a plenty throughout the day. The labor parties head quarters was stormed by police and tear gassed, a hospital was tear gassed, numerous groups of demonstrators scattered through the city were gassed and beaten. Demonstrators wanted to hold demonstrations in the city’s historic Taksim square. However 20,000 police barricaded the square and refused to let demonstrators near the square. Entire areas of Istanbul ended up getting tear gassed to clear out protesters. Although I personally did not get there in time to witness any of the fighting (the governor ordered most of the strategic teargassing early in the morning, including the hospital), I did witness the huge police force. I would have my own shots and videos from Taksim square, but while I was on my way there (walking was the only way to get anywhere nearby), something very urgent came up and I had to run. So here are some of my pictures, and some other people’s pictures/videos that I pulled off of YouTube.

A random video I found on YouTube

Another random video I found on YouTube

Here are some pictures I took myself. I noticed the reporters, police and protesters all had gas masks.

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