Since moving to Seattle, one of the (many) Vermont things that I miss is constant access to the craft meads of Groennfell and Havoc. And while there will always be the specialest of special places in my heart for Valkyrie’s, when we really break it down, Root of All Evil has always been our go-to. Which is probably why I made my own clone twist on it four times.1234 It’s also why it’s (one of) the first meads I made since moving out here.
After a four-and-a-half month1 (forced) hiatus, I got myself brewing again.2 I needed to get at least one brew day in before I went back to work, after all.
New state? New space? New water? New homebrew supply store? Throw caution to the wind. Set your sights on an Imperial Stout and see what happens. Go big or go home, right? And this gives us Primogeniture:
While I’m still settling into my new Seattle home, I’ve tried to keep my brewing chops sharp through… let’s call it academic research. In other words, even though I’m dying to get my first Seattle brew under my belt, I haven’t figured out all of the ins-and-outs to getting there so I have settle for reading articles and watching HomebrewCon videos. Anyway — more to the point of the title here: one of the things I realized along the way is that Hazy (“New England”) style IPAs seem to be a perfect storm for diacetyl.
[Epistemic status: most statements backed up with citations, but some claims are speculative.]
Continue reading →Wherein I write about this beer belatedly, and with some distance. But with some distance (both temporal and geographic), it seems like I’d better write about this one for the sake of completeness, lest my trans-continental move-related homebrewing hiatus cause everyone to think I’ve disappeared. In any event, here’s a little story about the Mashers Scotch Ale that I pretty much just fermented a few gallons of.
Seventeen years in Vermont. My tasting notes don’t go back far enough to give me a beer for every year. But between my memories and the notes that I do have, there’s enough to work with to give it a 10 list.
Our original plan was never to stay. We came for Amy’s graduate school, with every expectation that we would be gone in four or five years so she could chase a post-doc and then a tenure-track role after that.
But that’s not how things shook out, and all the subsequent decisions — large and small — accreted into a 17 year stint that looked like it might keep us here for good.
But that’s not how things shook out either.
With spring’s warm weather on the way, I was looking forward to a crisp pale beer to enjoy after mowed lawns and spread mulch and balmy garage brew days. Last spring’s big hit was that cream ale Uncle Rico, but with three more years of brewing and about two years of judging under my belt, I felt like it was finally time to take another crack at a Kölsch. Thus, the triumphant return of Sorry Karl.
I went even bigger than last year — with 17 entries across beers, ciders, and meads in the 2019 Greg Noonan Memorial Homebrew Competition. Had an excellent showing overall, as well as the added privilege of getting to judge in two categories (i.e., Saison; Smoked and Wood-Aged Beer).
Oof — where to begin with this one? With the delicious end product and the against-all-odds happy ending? Or with the nothing-is-going-right process that got us there.
Either way, Expensive Chaos is a New England-style IPA with Belma, El Dorado, and Sabro:
An Altbier was on the list of styles to brew, but it wasn’t high on that list. But then a friend from the Mashers threw down the collaboration gauntlet for NHC. “What should we brew?” We settled on Altbier, each made a recipe, compared notes, mixed and matched, and… Alt, Jung, Es Ist Alles Gut was born.
