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:

Wherein I had ingredients leftover from other brew days and (shrugs) the “it’ll be beer-ish” philosophy takes over. Hoarder Intervention #4:
It’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):
It 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.
With 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.
Oh 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 COâ‚‚ 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.
In 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 Meisje 1 was born:
Two 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 Dog 2 devised:
It had been too long. Mk. VIII was… summer of 2018!? Did all of 2019 slip by without a single batch of Honestatis? I suppose it’s possible — we were busy last year. But as 2019 closed out and I looked ahead to 2020, I committed to two seemingly opposed brew goals. The first? Brew at least six new-to-me styles. And the second? Start the year off strong with the triumphant return of Honestatis, the beer I’ve brewed more than any other:
Long-time readers know that most of my meads are “beer-strength” and carbonated — craft meads, to borrow a phrase. Oh sure, there was that pyment, and that 2017 batch that got split up several ways but … craft meads tend to be my wheelhouse. But this honey was special, so Ned isn’t a craft meads but something more … traditional. 1
Long time readers of this blog will know from the name what’s in store here. When I call a beer “Hoarder Intervention”, it’s because it’s a “junk drawer” beer — as in: me cleaning out whatever junk is leftover. “What the hell can I do with this?” But whereas #1 and #2 required some supplementation from the local HBS, Hoarder Intervention #3 was brewed simply with what I had on-hand.