found drama

get oblique

Homebrew #104: Prosody (Barbe Rouge)

by Rob Friesel

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):

Continue reading →

Homebrew #99: Dubious Provenance

by Rob Friesel

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.

Continue reading →

Homebrew #98: Zondag Meisje

by Rob Friesel

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:

Continue reading →
  1. 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 Friesel

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:

Murphy the Lucky Dog, an (attempted) Irish Stout
Continue reading →
  1. Having previously done 15A and 15C[]
  2. 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.[]

Homebrew #96: Honestatis (Mk. IX)

by Rob Friesel

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:

Continue reading →

Homebrew #90: Ned

by Rob Friesel

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

Ned, a still standard-strength traditional mead
Continue reading →
  1. Glossing over the fact that “traditional” is a super loaded word, especially when it comes to mead. But let’s just move past that, OK?[]

Homebrew #95: Hoarder Intervention #3

by Rob Friesel

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.

Continue reading →