Following our successful introductory session, our BJCP study group re-convened two weeks later 1 to cover Category 1: Standard American Beer.
After a quick round of group business, we launched right into the structured evaluations.
oblique text grammar
introvert agile stand-ups
malnutrition jokes
And this is where I notice that I didn’t do one of these for April 2017. And perhaps we’re experiencing the last gasp of the Search Term Haiku?
“Search Term Haiku” is a series wherein I examine this site’s log files and construct one or more haiku poems from search terms and phrases that led visitors to the site. Where possible, I attempt to keep the search phrases intact. However, as these are haiku poems, I do need to follow the rules.
I’ve decided to become a BJCP judge.
In other words, I’ve decided to learn about the 34 beer categories (and their many sub-styles) recognized by the BJCP, about structured evaluations, about brewing ingredients and process and technique, about off-flavors and contaminants. I’ve decided to subject my palate to so-neutral-they’re-flavorless American Light Lagers and the sometimes-pleasantly-sometimes-punishingly sour Belgian beers like Oud Bruins and Lambics. I decided earlier this year that getting the judging certification was something I wanted to do, a goal I’d set myself for the year.
But once I went to register for the exam, I discovered that (1) the only physically nearby session for 2017 was already full, and also (2) that there was a lot more work that went into the study than I’d anticipated. Lucky for me, members of the local homebrew club were already organizing a study group in preparation for the local exam in 2018. I signed up right away.
What I hope to do here, with this series of blog posts, is to review the materials and study group notes, 1 and also to capture bits about the process that might be useful for other people with other study groups out there. Continue reading →
Given my promising results last year 1, I decided to go ahead and enter the 2017 Greg Noonan Memorial Homebrew Competition (organized by the Green Mountain Mashers) again. I entered three beers 2 and though not all of them came home with ribbons, I’d say I did alright…
Though loved, the original Let the Wookiee Win probably didn’t get a fair shake. Readers familiar with that tale will remember that it was my first kegged beer, and suffered from just about every first-timer mistake I could manage. I wanted to give another crack at this one, perhaps without accidentally spraying it all over myself, or over-carbonating it, or running out of CO₂, or… (You get the picture!) Therefore, Let the Wookiee Win (Mk. II), my black rye IPA fermented with saison yeast:
You and Her have just moved into a new home. A townhouse or a condo; fairly narrow, but enough room for your belongings and looks to be fairly comfortable. Having just moved in, there are still boxes everywhere, most of them half-open. You imagine it will be a couple days before you’d even pretend to be “fully moved in” but you’ve both decided to call it a wrap for the night. It’s getting late and you need your sleep. The bedroom still isn’t set up, so you head down to the basement to unfold the sleeper sofa and tuck yourselves in.
Not long after your head hits the pillow, you have an ill-feeling. You glance down at the floor. You flip back the corner of the rug. The basement is rapidly filling with water. You wake Her in a panic. She begins picking things off the floor, trying to bail the water as it rushes in river-like. You run upstairs, looking for the source of the flooding. None of the faucets are running. The toilet isn’t overflowing. But the water runs down the walls and down the stairs. You run up even further, all the way to the loft. Glancing up, you see cracks, water and light streaming through. Like the house is coming apart at the seams. Why so much water? Where is it coming from? And you realize you’d never had an inspection on this house. But where was all that water coming from?
You’ve moved into a new house. You hate moving. (Does anyone enjoy it?) All the packing and unpacking. Rearranging furniture, and knowing it will be rearranged again in another month. Discovering the million little flaws that you hadn’t when you first toured the place, or had it inspected. But here you are, having again moved and working with your partner to get this place set up.
You’re working on your bedroom first. Uncoiling bubble wrap from around bed posts, and trying to fit the frame back together again. You want to find the right place for the bed, to situate it so you can wake up each morning and look out that picture window onto the beautiful scene. But it’s already evening and you can’t get a good look out that window. You know what’s out there though. And you keep pivoting the frame, trying to find a “right” way for it to occupy the room. But so many configurations don’t work at all. You thought the room was big enough to put it any way you wanted, but it’s like the geometry keeps changing. Like the room wants the bed to fit a certain way. And the boxes keep getting in the way. Perhaps you should unpack those first after all? Get them out of here?
But so many of these boxes are empty. And there’s trinkets and junk strewn all over the floor. You don’t recognize half of it. Is it even yours? Did the previous owner of the house just up-end their own boxes on their way out? And where did all this toilet paper come from? It’s on rolls, but it’s also still wrapped and half the size it ought to be.
You notice a tiny door, more like a ventilation grate, that connects your room to the next one over. Through the slatted door, you can see your sons playing in the next room over. Their playing nicely and you don’t want to disturb them. But you’re also bothered by this door. Why didn’t you see it before? Your partner seems fine with it, even thinks it’s a little endearing.
You exit the room to the hallway that connects to that next room. You peek in. That room seems enormous. Much deeper than the master bedroom, and with rooms behind it. You follow the hallway to the next room, this one seeming impossibly wide, and already fully furnished with three mismatched beds. At the end of the hall is still another room. This last room is also fully furnished, and again with mismatched beds and antique dressers. You glance up and it has no ceiling, just an expanse of twilight sky. You enter the room. At the far end, you notice it has no closets. Instead it has two doors that go into the same bathroom. You pass through the bathroom into another hallway, and at the end of the hallway is a fire escape door. Nudging it open, you walk out into the lobby of what could be a hotel or a mall, complete with a sign post for a D.C. Metro station.
The door snaps shut behind you. Your sons follow close behind you, the door locking behind them as well. You bang on the door. People in the lobby are staring at you and mumbling to themselves. There are signs next to you about the historic nature of the home on the other side of that door. Your partner eventually opens that locked door and you all slip back into the house.
For the past few months, I’d been idly kicking around the idea of doing a series of single hop pale ale experiments. I slapped together a few formulations, but there was no over-arching theme other than the fact that each one only used a single hop type. After thinking it over, I deleted all of the formulations (about a half-dozen) and started over. I kept the list of hops, but I went back to the drawing board and sketched out a simple grist that could provide a flavorful backdrop to a number of different hops. Satisfied with how it looked on paper, I moved ahead with the first one: Prosody (El Dorado)
You wander into the a gym. It’s sparsely populated, but not empty. No one is looking specifically at you, but some of them look up, sidelong. From a distance each piece of equipment looks familiar. Weightlifting machines and treadmills. But as you get closer, they take on bizarre shapes. Not impossible shapes, but peculiar, unconventional. Closer still and they’re yet more anomalous. One even seems to float inches off the ground. You cannot fathom how to operate them. You’re embarrassed. You’ve been to this gym so many times. You even have memories of using the equipment here. Soon you’re engaged with an apparatus, and obviously incorrectly, and you can no longer extricate yourself from its tangle.
hair on my eye (dream)
headless jasmine phantom test
galaxy drama
“Search Term Haiku” is a series wherein I examine this site’s log files and construct one or more haiku poems from search terms and phrases that led visitors to the site. Where possible, I attempt to keep the search phrases intact. However, as these are haiku poems, I do need to follow the rules.
