Moderna dose #1
¶ by Rob Friesel
Just commemorating the moment. Dose № 1 of Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine went into my arm at 10:26am this morning.
Homebrew #106: First Avenue Crow
¶ by Rob FrieselIt was cherry season in Washington, and our household had been eating the crap out of some Rainier cherries. When it occurred to me that I hadn’t worked with whole cherries in a mead1 before, there was only one thing to do. Fire up the ol’ mead making machine that is me, get a few pounds of fruit, and make an as-inspired-by version of Psychopomp and call it First Avenue Crow.2
- Or a beer, for that matter. [↩]
- The crow part is an obvious (??) callback to the Psychopomp can design. The “First Avenue” part comes from the fact that First Avenue in Phinney Ridge was simply overrun with them in the summer of 2020 and we got dive-bombed, followed, or otherwise harassed by those corvids on more than one occasion. [↩]
Homebrew #105: Horst
¶ by Rob FrieselSeems fitting that while we have a wildfire-smoke-hazy / practically opaque sky here in Seattle, that I should do the write-up for one of my clearest-ever beers — a Munich Helles that I’m calling Horst:
Homebrew #102: Hoarder Intervention #4
¶ by Rob FrieselWherein I had ingredients leftover from other brew days and (shrugs) the “it’ll be beer-ish” philosophy takes over. Hoarder Intervention #4:
Homebrew #104: Prosody (Barbe Rouge)
¶ by Rob FrieselIt’s been 24 brew days since the last Prosody Project beer. All of 2019 went by without one — and half of 2020. But when I heard that Yakima Valley Hops had Barbe Rouge for sale, I got nostalgic for a favorite back-home-in-the-802 beer: Burlington Beer’s Barbe Rouge Single Hop IPA. There was no better time to dust off the ol’ recipe and fire things up for Prosody (Barbe Rouge):
Homebrew #100: Evil Clone (Mk. VI)
¶ by Rob FrieselIt was time to make more ginger mead. Even with Groennfell and Havoc shipping to Washington state now… there’s just something about having a pint of your own homebrewed stuff, right? Thus, the sixth batch of Evil Clone.
Homebrew #101: Lazy Rabbit
¶ by Rob FrieselWith summer coming, it seemed I should brew some kind of easy-drinking sessionable beer. Something simple. Like an American Wheat that I could use as a glorified starter for an up-coming Wheatwine. Thus was Lazy Rabbit formulated.
Homebrew #99: Dubious Provenance
¶ by Rob FrieselOh yeah… my first brew of the great Coronavirus SARS CoV-2 COVID-19 Quarantine Shelter-in-Place Lockdown of 2020. This was a beer that I had queued up before all the Washington state “Stay Home, Stay Safe” stuff went into effect but… then there was the whole matter with my kegerator needing a re-build to deal with the CO₂ leak and… Well, shit happens — right?
In any case, despite my 2020 goal to brew 6+ new-to-me styles, you also need to keep some reliable palate pleasers around. As a New England IPA, Dubious Provenance was just such a beer.
Homebrew #98: Zondag Meisje
¶ by Rob FrieselIn service of my 2020 goal to brew a few more new-to-me styles, I decided on a Belgian Blond early on in the year’s brew planning. It’s a style I don’t know too well, but I’ve historically enjoyed Leffe and… why not take a swing at it? And so one Sunday afternoon, Zondag Meisje1 was born:
- Blondie’s got that song “Sunday Girl” and I brewed it on a Sunday so… “What’s Flemish for Sunday Girl??” [↩]
Homebrew #97: Murphy the Lucky Dog
¶ by Rob FrieselTwo motivations at work here. The first, and probably more predictable of them: St. Patrick’s Day was imminent, and I wanted an Irish Stout on draft for the occasion. And the second? I wanted to round out the BJCP’s Category 15 beers.1 Thus was Murphy the Lucky Dog2 devised:
- Having previously done 15A and 15C… [↩]
- The name here is a whole side story in and of itself. The “Murphy” part is clearly (clearly?) a reference to Murphy’s Irish Stout which was a favorite of ours back at St. Mary’s, Guinness being an acceptable substitute &c. But somewhere in the early 2000s, while out to lunch (dinner?) with my wife at a local diner, I noticed this paper placemat with an advertisement for the local animal shelter and some of the animals up for adoption. Anyway, there was a photo of this dog “Murphy” and I tore the photo off the placemat and stuck it in my pocket and then nicely cut him out and laminated him. And I carried him around in my wallet for years. I never met the real Murphy, but I imagine he found a good home. Godspeed, Muphy — you lucky dog. [↩]