Fat Tuesday with Fett Vater (Fat Daddy) Homebrewligan Extraordinaire!

Good morning beer fans and a Happy Mardi Gras to you!  I'm currently sipping on one of my own beer-gone-bad concoctions, it's my Lavender Saison, a recipe from Austin Home Brew Supply that I decided to "doll up" with an infused tea from all of the fresh organic lavender plants that I had in full bloom at the time.  The result:  a beer that pulls back the memory of having your mouth washed out with soap....only with a high alcohol content, which barely makes up for the burps that follow.  My fix, which is actually one of my favorite breakfast drinks now, is to juice a Texas Ruby Red grapefruit and top it off with the aforementioned disaster.  It's bright, fresh and goes with any of your more delectable breakfast foods.  I had a 3 minute poached egg atop one slice of dark brown rye, toasted with cream cheese, thinly sliced red onion, lox, capers and fresh squeezed lemon.  Perfection, if I do say so myself.  Which brings up something I've been milling over...breakfast beers?  What is your favorite?  I was going to share this concept with some my co-workers when I got shut down by their opinion that a breakfast beer was dark and brewed with coffee.  I held my tongue, but I'll speak my mind here.  Don't mess with coffee in the morning.  I like mine strong and organic with full-on 1/2 and 1/2.  I like a coffee porter in the afternoon when I'm getting pooped.  But I like coffee in the morning, to be just that...coffee.  Feel free to share your thoughts!  There is no wrong answer.  Beer-good.

Anyway...back to the present blog.  It's been way too long since I sat down to bang out a few musings  on brewing and quite a bit has happened since last I did.  Namely, I began working at the home brew store here in Austin and have brewed many a beer since and have slowly been using my whole paychecks to purchase the pieces to convert my chest freezer into a keezer.  The affable fellow I'm writing about today is the reason I got hired, is the source for inspiration and help with the keezer and one of my newest favorite people in town.  Adam writes the blog for us at Austin Home Brew Supply and has been brewing for 9 years.  

The thing about home brewers that I love is the absolute uniqueness of their process and their being.  The more I get to know them the more it is absolutely impossible to categorize them...not that I would aim to do so, but it's like the adage about brewing itself: if you ask 10 homebrewers a question, expect 10 or more different answers.

Adam knows so much about beer it's insane.  Yet, he admittedly says that when it comes to brewing, he mostly does it off the cuff...and that's what I wanted to observe.

Adam and Django on the deck, straining da beer.

I showed up around 1 in the afternoon and he had everything sanitized and the propane set up on the back deck. We popped open a few beerz and got started, while listening to Megan Lynch (new to me and man what a voice) and talking about well, everything.

Adam's first homebrew was a Shiner Bock clone, something I can hardly imagine him drinking now,  the reason being, he knew the taste and wanted to judge his home brewing accordingly.  He sez it was drinkable.  I've yet to brew a bock so what do I know?   He brews a few times a month and picks something up new from the grocery store each week...which is one of the great things about beer culture right now...so many new beers to explore and love!  Yes, I'll have another, thanks!

I'm going backward in time with these photos,  sparging on the left and the glorious wort on the right.

By the time we got to this stage though, I was keeping up with Adam on the beers and as strong of liver that I am, I forgot to take notes or anything...doi.

Sure, I'll have another beer.

Adam and I are both parents and we swap war stories occasionally and he keeps us in stitches at work with tales of his youngest, Danger Boy.  When I asked Adam the obligatory question all home brewers wanna know...do you have a disaster brew story?  Adam had more than one...this alone might deter the average novice, but not Adam.  He learned the hard way the value of proper sterilization and had to replace all of his plastic tubing.  Another time he used the chloramine rich city tap water, creating a lovely old band aid off flavor.  Ew.   But the best story, the one I'm sure I'll never-ever hear again involves Danger Boy.  I get a kick out the antics of Danger boy...things horrifically scary like when he opened up the gas line on the propane tank and let it all drain out, or when he sliced open the outdoor hose and turned the water on...there wasn't an explosion and Adam caught the water before flooding under the house...but the attack on beer is too much, and, should be a warning to all folks who have imps and tricksters as spawn.  Danger Boy simply popped off the air lock and poured catfood into the precious beer, spoiling it for homebrewligans and felines everywhere.  Hide your beer, place it out of reach, do whatever is necessary!  Still, Adam brews.  Why yes, I'd like just one more!  

I had a fantastic time, laughed so much and drank so much I hardly remembered to ask all the questions I'd come with, but this last moment cracked me up most because of the shear joy of being squirted unexpectedly!  We both got it in the face!

There will be more Adam blogs to come...I love his beer, and I love his Home Brewery name...Fett Vater, Fat Daddy or Big Daddy...which fits in perfectly on this most hedonistic of silly holidays!  Thank you for the fun and for letting me hang out and learn more about brew and more about you!

Adam and the Mrs. at Flying Saucer

Adam is a sci-fi fan and loves to give his beers names that spin off of his favorite stories and characters.  The first beer I had of his was C3PA, and on this day he brewed an El Dorado hop-heavy IPA...I'm still waiting to hear the name he'll bless it with!  Adam blogs at Austin Home Brew Supply and does customer support.  He and Melissa live in Round Rock, both have theatre backgrounds and are currently engaged in raising some very interesting and talented kiddos.  They're such a great couple!  

Happy home brewing and...

Cheers! 

~Cheryl

Much ado about Brew!

I've been getting an overload of information about home brewing and beer in general lately; it's been difficult to decide what to blog about.

There are so many festivals and festivities that it's hard for this old beer braud to keep up...let me try to explain.  From what I can tell, this home brewing hobby is probably the most time consuming, science plus artisan exploration, that I'm quite sure I'll never get bored.  When I moved to Austin 17 years ago this past August, I moved here from a horrid divorce in Dallas, where I left my ex-husband of 7 years, a Frenchman. During our marriage we shared a bottle or two of wine nearly every night.  When I took my first teaching job I met a lovely young lady who invited me to be part of the "Austin Lady Winos" club.  Every other Thursday we met at a member's house, with wine assignment and our own fancy goblet.  A little over a year into this fabulous club of nearly 80 women, I began to notice my absence at work on Fridays and it wasn't a mere wine hangover, but serious sickness.  I went to the doctor and was told that I had developed an allergy to wine, probably the sulfites within the bottles.  So, I quit the group and went back to margaritas and other cocktails.  Still not a fan of the watery slosh most prevalent at picnics and parties.

Enter love of my life, a beer enthusiast and soon to be home brewer.  Now some 14 years later I'm finding myself an empty nester and someone in need of going out to leave the hubby home alone to finish his dissertation without distraction.  It is absolutely impossible to not have a beer related event, happy hour, anniversary, release party, club meeting etc. every single night of the week.

This old gal is beat.

Would I trade it for a more somber evening by the TV  (we don't own one) or with a great book...well maybe the great book with a beer in hand, but then that would spoil the point of developing my palate and learning from the phenomenal group of learned beer aficionados here in Austin, Texas.

Here's this weeks agenda:  Monday night attending the Black Star Coop's member's extravaganza I was beside myself to meet fellow home brewers and home brew celebrities who I found out used to live on my street...the Dewberrys.  The Dewberrys have won the Black Star Home Brew contest, an honor that bestows upon the recipient the pleasure of having the brewery name and make that beer to sell on tap!  Dan is also the techy in charge of a group that I have recently joined and tonight, will attend my first Happy Hour/release party event!  Dan's been a member of the Austin Zealots for over a decade and he and his lovely wife Jolene have graciously accepted my invitation to interview them and hang out with them during their next brew day!  And to think, I almost didn't go!

Last night I attended a new group for me as well, something I stumbled upon while cruising my Facebook wall from the group Bitch Beer.  Reading their book this summer turned me onto our current 52 in 52 challenge.  The group is Beer Necessities, a ladies "Meet Up" something I, being a solo dork most of the time, had never heard of.  The meeting was a ladies beer forum at Craft Pride, again, a new place for me to attend on the stylish and popular Rainey Street area of downtown.  I was the oldest person there, I'm sure of it.  Friday night is Bitch Beer's "Time of the Month" Happy Hour at Hi-Hat.  Followed Saturday afternoon at Fiesta Gardens, the yearly Texas Craft Beer Festival, featuring all 55 craft breweries in Texas.  Of course we have tickets.

See what I mean?  

The thing is that, at each and every one of these events, I learn something new...something that I need to test out on my next batch and it's making me nervous about the outcome of my 25 gallons that are fermenting...now.  I almost want to toss it all out and start again...but wait...it's beer!  No can do.

All this time, I've been looking at other beer blogs and seeing the snazzy looks of the younger generation's technical capabilities and their already-done up to the minute useful information such as every single event at every single bar/brewery/brew pub in the Central Texas area.  Which leaves me wondering...what do I have to offer?  And, let's face it...if you don't ask yourself this question as a writer/artist...blogger(?) then you are most likely just intellectually masturbating out into the blogosphere...unnecessarily so.

That being said, what I am hoping to accomplish with this modest blog, is nearly the same thing I did with my other blogging endeavors...use this tool as a journal to document my adventures and discoveries while sharing with folks a bit of what going out on a limb, meeting new folks out and about town and inviting oneself into the homes and minds of homebrewers here and now, in what has become, my home town.

I can't wait to meet the Austin Zealots (Zymurgic Enthusiasts of Austin Loosely Organized Through Suds!)

Happy Home Brewing

&

Cheers!!!

~Cheryl