Winter. What a bummer! It's a shame that up here in the Northeast each year begins on such a dissonant note. I want a BEEP or a BOP or even a BOPE, but all I'm getting is BLARP and BLECH! I begin every year in a state of suspended animation - a cold-induced coma from which only the thaw of spring can awaken me.
This year, in an attempt to combat the listlessness that conquers me every winter, I will be working out and eating right, playing a bunch of video games, cooking and enjoying the plethora of homebrew quietly aging in my closest. If spring, summer and fall are for brewing than winter is most definitely for drinking and for thinking.
At first Doug and I thought that we might be able to somehow brew right on through the winter months. We're tough, we're thought. We can stand a half-day in the elements. We can do it. But, the reality is that we cannot do it, nor do we particularly want to. Just look at that picture of my backyard. Brrrrr!
This year, in an attempt to combat the listlessness that conquers me every winter, I will be working out and eating right, playing a bunch of video games, cooking and enjoying the plethora of homebrew quietly aging in my closest. If spring, summer and fall are for brewing than winter is most definitely for drinking and for thinking.
At first Doug and I thought that we might be able to somehow brew right on through the winter months. We're tough, we're thought. We can stand a half-day in the elements. We can do it. But, the reality is that we cannot do it, nor do we particularly want to. Just look at that picture of my backyard. Brrrrr!
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| My Backyard, all frozen! |
What was once a perfectly functional and extremely convenient backyard brewery is now nothing but a bunch of snow banks and icy patches.
Other than obsessively checking the weather forecast for the odd winter Saturday or Sunday above 50 degrees, there is nothing much to do but wait for the warm spring breezes of April to usher out the cold, snowy, coma-inducing darkness of winter and replace it with the new covenant of spring. With spring comes new adventures in brewing and the unqualified promise of progress.
What draws us to brewing - what compels us to brew over and over again - are the incremental gains we make with each new batch of beer - progress that can be quantified. Advances in technique, recipes and process, not to mention simple repetition all lead to a better product. Over time, all that progress leads to mastery, and mastery is what we desire.
In past blog posts I have been rather critical of our all-grain output, but the truth is that most of the beer we have made has been good. With the exception of our first Belgian Red Ale, which fell victim to unintelligent hop usage and, sadly, for one reason or another didn't carbonate well, and our Stout, which didn't ferment due to sub-optimal fermentation temperatures, our all-grain output has been just fine.
We're not looking to make our best beer today or tomorrow, but rather to just make beer, and as we make beer to make gains as brewers.
To be sure, we are anxious to brew again. We are pining and antsy and eager, and at times we are almost crawling out of our skin, but we are also wise enough to know that downtime is an integral part of the process. If nothing else, it affords us the opportunity to assimilate our past experiences, to study and to gain further wisdom.
Peanuts cartoonist, Charles M. Schulz, once said, “Sometimes I lie awake at night, and ask, 'Where have I gone wrong?' Then a voice says to me, 'This is going to take more than one night.'” This quote illustrates very clearly that which I am having trouble writing. There is more to the process of brewing than brewing, but unless you step back and devote an adequate amount of time to figuring out what else there is you'll always have what you've always had.
When we began this adventure we had willpower, lofty dreams and determination. Along the way we have picked up a good amount of knowledge and practical experience, but we are far from having mastered the art of brewing. This winter I will ask, 'What can we do to improve? How can we become more efficiant? Where are we going wrong?' Luckily, our forced time off offers us more than one day to comtemplate these questions and to do our best to seek out the answers.
We will, as John Burroughs suggested in his 1910 essay, The Snow-Walkers, develop the tendinous part of our mind - the bone and sinew built in winter - to which we will add tissue and blood in warmer months.
Stay Warm,
mb
email me here:
Primary - Nothing
Secondary - Nothing
Kegs - Sweet Stout, Belgian Red 2, Toasted Ale
Bottles - Sweet Stout, Belgian Red 1, Belgian Red 2, Toasted Ale, Wheat Beer #8
Other than obsessively checking the weather forecast for the odd winter Saturday or Sunday above 50 degrees, there is nothing much to do but wait for the warm spring breezes of April to usher out the cold, snowy, coma-inducing darkness of winter and replace it with the new covenant of spring. With spring comes new adventures in brewing and the unqualified promise of progress.
What draws us to brewing - what compels us to brew over and over again - are the incremental gains we make with each new batch of beer - progress that can be quantified. Advances in technique, recipes and process, not to mention simple repetition all lead to a better product. Over time, all that progress leads to mastery, and mastery is what we desire.
In past blog posts I have been rather critical of our all-grain output, but the truth is that most of the beer we have made has been good. With the exception of our first Belgian Red Ale, which fell victim to unintelligent hop usage and, sadly, for one reason or another didn't carbonate well, and our Stout, which didn't ferment due to sub-optimal fermentation temperatures, our all-grain output has been just fine.
We're not looking to make our best beer today or tomorrow, but rather to just make beer, and as we make beer to make gains as brewers.
To be sure, we are anxious to brew again. We are pining and antsy and eager, and at times we are almost crawling out of our skin, but we are also wise enough to know that downtime is an integral part of the process. If nothing else, it affords us the opportunity to assimilate our past experiences, to study and to gain further wisdom.
Peanuts cartoonist, Charles M. Schulz, once said, “Sometimes I lie awake at night, and ask, 'Where have I gone wrong?' Then a voice says to me, 'This is going to take more than one night.'” This quote illustrates very clearly that which I am having trouble writing. There is more to the process of brewing than brewing, but unless you step back and devote an adequate amount of time to figuring out what else there is you'll always have what you've always had.
When we began this adventure we had willpower, lofty dreams and determination. Along the way we have picked up a good amount of knowledge and practical experience, but we are far from having mastered the art of brewing. This winter I will ask, 'What can we do to improve? How can we become more efficiant? Where are we going wrong?' Luckily, our forced time off offers us more than one day to comtemplate these questions and to do our best to seek out the answers.
We will, as John Burroughs suggested in his 1910 essay, The Snow-Walkers, develop the tendinous part of our mind - the bone and sinew built in winter - to which we will add tissue and blood in warmer months.
Stay Warm,
mb
email me here:
Primary - Nothing
Secondary - Nothing
Kegs - Sweet Stout, Belgian Red 2, Toasted Ale
Bottles - Sweet Stout, Belgian Red 1, Belgian Red 2, Toasted Ale, Wheat Beer #8
