Goldfish #5 Out of the Bowl

If I were writing a soap opera this is the part of my life that would get the best ratings. I began work at a TV station for nearly no money, played in a band and was one of two eligible guys in a group of twenty news women. While I would love to entertain all the bored house wives out there, I will save the good stuff for my deathbed memoirs.
The reality, when the buzz of year one on my own wore off, was broke, no longer in a band and engaged. Certainly the bright spot in this cold shower was Andee. If there is ever a story of love sneaking up from behind this was it. We had known each other for years and worked one desk away for seven months then one day we were crazy for each other. With the exception of a rough spot here and there it has been that way for thirteen years. And while she would have probably never signed on to what was to come if she had known, she didn't.
I first saw Andee (Andrea Wattelet) from a Freshman dorm window. I was watching football in the community tv room when we heard a bunch of girls yelling outside. "Someone tell those bitches to shut up!" one gentlemen suggested.
"No way," another replied. "One of them is hot."
That was enough to get everyone to the window. It turned out the hot one was my future wife.
We ended up declaring the same major and got to know each other briefly during a couple shared classes. We had a couple mutual friends but never got to know each other all that well until we both ended up working at the local ABC affiliate. The job was basically announcing every "hot deal" a local store came up with but we did get our pictures taken with a philandering Soap Star and party with some drunken sitcom folks who would have rather been dead.
After a couple weeks of dating we decided we wanted to spend the rest of our lives together wherever one of us found some other job.

Goldfish #4 "Finally Legal"

My parents and I had some pretty good luck with our extract batches and I developed a taste for quality beer. But it was now back to college in Kirksville where my appreciation for crappy beer, pool, darts and the ladies moved into the front seat. By this time I had also celebrated my 21st birthday, and while I loved the home-brewed beer it was now awfully tempting to take the quick 8 pack of Rhinelander off the Hy-Vee shelf.
It is around this time in my life that I would have fallen hopelessly into the "Sex, Bad Beer & Rock and Roll" phase of my life if a band shake-up hadn't resulted in my friend Brad joining my college band as the drummer.
I first met Brad Freshman year of college. He happened to be in my English class. The only thing I remembered about the class was that it sucked and there was a guy in the class that claimed to play drums (probably in a mandatory essay on hobbies.)
Later that year we decided we needed a new drummer in the band and I said I knew a guy we should ask. I had never spoken a word to Brad during the class, but I was sure if I looked him up he would play with us. I couldn't have been more right. I walked over to his dorm room one Friday night and introduced myself. He remembered I was in his class and invited me in. We talked about music for about five minutes and he said he would be happy to bring his drums up from home and join the group. At least I think that's what he must have said before offering me half of a gallon jug of his finest wine.
Brad turned out to be a great addition to our band but even better for my future career. It turned out Brad's brother was a crazy homebrewer with automatic temperature gauges and everything. Within a year of first speaking with each other Brad and I had turned part of our rental house into a brewery. Our other roommate Ryan, who hadn't discovered beer yet, wasn't thrilled but didn't complain too much when the house smelled of boiling hops or shards of glass exploded everywhere in summer. We still stuck to extract malt brewing but we experimented like crazy.
By the end of my time at Northeast Missouri State University in May of 1996 I was sure my music career was about to take off, brewing was still a hobby and in the meantime I would make commercials at the local television station.

Goldfish #3 "The Early Brews"

Our first attempt was an IPA. It was all extract and all magic. I had no idea what all the pitfalls of brewing might be at that time, but I had very little to worry about. I had a clean-freak for a mother and a physics major for a father so my first brewery team was pretty stacked. Our risk of infection or missing a temperature by more than .00000005 of a degree was fairly low.
Our first brew day was a joy. We spent the day working on making sure the batch didn't boil over and discussing how many of these I would get to drink when they were done. As a 19 year-old idiot I wasn't even sure I would like it or I would have argued for a higher limit.
As fun as my first brew day was my life didn't really change course until the next day. The five gallons of heaven were closed in my chilly closet to ferment. Given that it was winter and my parents love low utility bills, my closet was a cozy 60F, but by the end of 24 hours an amazing scent began to bubble out of the airlock.
I am not a poet so this paragraph is hard to write effectively, but the aroma coming from that closet by day two was shear pleasure. A cool drink of water on a summer day. A deep breath on a mountain. A long walk on the beach .... and so on. Garbage. This was the meaning of life seeping from the top of what looked like a paint bucket.

"My God!" I thought. What will this stuff taste like if it smells this good. Surely nothing I have had from a can or keg ever smelled like this.
Of course I would later find out that it was mostly CO2 I was inhaling, but it was awefully fresh and nice.
The next two weeks were torture. Not only was my Christmas break rolling by at an alarming rate, this beer was taking forever. We did everything just as the instructions said. WAIT.
My parents even made me come back home one week after getting back to school in order to bottle it so it wouldn't be even one week off the prescribed schedule.
The bottling was significantly less fun than brewing as any homebrewer will attest. You work all day cleaning things only to taste beer that isn't yet a shadow of what it will be. This part dampened my enthusiasm a bit, but I was still anxious to see what the finished product would be like.
Finally the day came for the testing. I found that I liked beer, and I loved brewing. I can still remember the taste of the first batch of beer, but not nearly like the scent of each brewing step. Our IPA was nothing like American craft brewers produce today, but it was rich with a noticeable hop aroma and flavor.
My parents and I went on to brew several batches. I cherish each brew sheet, which still make up the opening pages of a binder that contains every batch I have brewed. More than the brewing was the gap it bridged for us. Our homebrewing was the excuse for my dad to buy cases of Rolling Rock (back when they had pop off tops) which we "had" to drink so we would have empty bottles. At that time buying empty bottles was more expensive than buying them with beer already in them. What a shame. It helped us get from the kid-parent relationship to the adult-adult relationship that only lucky families happen into.

Goldfish #2 Starting out

I can look back now and remember the exact day I became interested in brewing. I remember sitting in Brent Buckner's Biology class one afternoon in Science Hall. We were studying one-celled organisms and he began talking about yeast. Professor Buckner was a long-haired energetic fellow with a passion for genetics and beer. As I had hair down to my back by then, he was instantly one of my favorites.
At the end of the lesson he mentioned that brewing beer was a great way to learn about yeast and offered to provide anyone interested a copy of a home brewing catalog. I remember almost every single detail of this encounter except why I decided to stay. I could barely get a Natural Light down. Why in God's name did I want to brew beer myself? As the rest of the class filtered out of the room there was just three of us left. Me, Buckner and a young blonde girl who had a crush on the professor and was surely in desperate need of some extra credit.
"I just love science," she gushed. "I would really like to learn how to brew beer."
Prof. Buckner reluctantly handed her a copy of the William's Brewing Catalog. I'm sure he realized he would have been better off setting fire to it.
Finally she batted her lashes and hugged her useless catalog as she left the room.
"You want to give brewing a try?" Prof. Buckner asked me.
"I've really never thought about it until now, but it sounds fun. Maybe I could brew some over Christmas break," I replied.
The good professor went on to give me a brief overview of the process and even suggested which kit I would be best off with on the first try.
It didn't take long before I had the order form on the back cover filled out and ready to mail off. Hopefully all the ingredients would be home before Christmas. (God bless the internet!)
Fortunately for me I was making a quick trip home that weekend. I told my parents all about my plan to make five gallons of beer.
They were both on the case in a matter of minutes. (I have pretty cool parents.)
"What are you going to make it in?" my mother asked, obviously a bit concerned about the condition of her immaculate kitchen. "I think we better order the whole kit and get a big pot."
So they chipped in for the kit and I bought the ingredients. Dad and I headed to the hardware store for a canning pot leaving us with nothing to do but wait.
Finally the UPS man arrived with the much-anticipated shipment. The ingredients might as well have been a care package from Mars.
I had never even been on a brewery tour at this point. It was late 1993 and there weren't many brewpubs or home brew shops just yet. There were a couple bags of thick goo and another couple bags that looked like guinea pig pellets.
I don't recall the time line, but I'm sure we didn't wait long to make use of our new equipment and ingredients.

Goldfish in the Shark Tank #1

It is funny to look back to childhood and remember all the funny predictions adults made about your future endeavors. I remember all kinds of them from early on. Mom always thought I would be an architect. This was mostly based on a love of blocks as a five-year-old. Grandma thought I would be a professional golfer. She never saw me play, but it was fun to think about. Everyone in grade school seemed to think I was destined for greatness.
For some strange reason the optimism came to a grinding halt during high school and beyond. Apparently an obsession with girls, speeding tickets and detention doesn't spur the same whimsical thoughts in the older generations. But despite watching my hair grow much faster than my brain my family still held out hope. My poor father sat quietly as he watched my ears get pierced, my cars get wrecked and my life's focus become pizza spinning and playing drums. I did always manage to keep a job and while I'm sure things weren't going according to his plan at least I wasn't costing him money. To his eternal credit he smiled and welcomed me at the front desk of the division of the US Attorney's office he was in charge of. Leather biker jacket, waist-length hair and all. My family was so nice about underachieving I was completely shocked when my decision not to go to college met with resistance.
What could possibly be wrong with living in a small apartment and working at the mall pizza joint. (Still one of my favorite jobs.)
"Please take the ACT one more time," my mother pleaded.
"Don't worry Mom. I'll take some classes at the Community College. I'll be fine." I assured her.
I can only imagine this promise meant very little to her. She had already watched her son go from the 3rd ranked student in his class to the bottom 25% in one year.
"I'll let you take the van to Colorado for your ski trip if you try one more time." She begged.
"Fine."
"I'll show her." I thought.
So the night before the Saturday morning test I stayed up until 2am drinking all the NightTrain I could get my hands on. Surely a good hang over would make the four-hour test fly by.
Not the case.
I remember nothing of the morning of my second ACT except that I must have put my name on some else's exam. I only know the second part because two months later I got my results back and a full scholarship to any school in the state.
Never argue with your mother. They have weird powers.

So off to school I went. I was headed to Northeast Missouri State University (currently Truman State.) I came to this decision because of its fine academic reputation and the fact that my high school girlfriend would be attending. It turned out to be a great school that I and both my younger sisters attended, but I can take very little credit for that good decision.
It dawns on me now that very few of the good decisions in my life up to this point were mine. Better to be lucky they say.
This is probably also a good time to note that I was not a very big fan of beer at this point in my life. Since much of the rest of this story revolves around it in one way or the other it is notable that I only drank cheap beer because I would get laughed at for drinking wine. How many hippy,bug-driving rock drummers crush a wine goblet over their head after the show? By the end of my first year of college I suppose I had gotten used to it, but that is about it.
Sure, I was often the guy collecting the three dollars at the keg at various parties, but I always made a point to slam the first few draws to get past my dislike for whatever fine beverage was being tapped.
The first year of college came and went. There were classes, parties and regular trips back home. Grades were pretty good so far and I had chosen my future calling. Music.
There was only one problem with my chosen calling. I wasn't particularly good at music. I could play every instrument just well enough to get on stage, but not the kind of talent that "Behind the Music" stories are made of. I was still years away from being self aware about my musical shortcomings when my real passion crept in with very little notice.

Beer is for Fun

As a brewer, occasional writer and constant reader it is sometimes hard to keep a focus. There are certainly some things that are very easy to focus on. One must pay the bills and keep things rolling in the right direction. But the type of focus I am talking about is the "Why" of the beer business.
Most of us brewers start out home brewing. It is a hobby that combines all kinds of skills. It is 9 parts attention to detail and one part creativity. The challenge is closest to that in golf. Everyone can hit a good shot sometimes, but it takes a great deal more talent to do it regularly and the challenges are always just a bit different. It is this need for attention and detail that sometimes blur the real "Why" of beer.
Turn professional in this business and you get to add taxes and paperwork and there is even less time to smell the hops.
All this makes it necessary to sit down from time to time and make sure the "Why" is defined. In our case we are lucky enough to have an historic brewing site to take care of and hopefully over the years improve. Any history buff might think that is enough of a reason by itself, but there is more to it.
The bottom line is that beer is fun. Just look at this photo. No one by the camera is telling a joke or mooning the crowd. People are just drinking different beers and having a great time. Sampling all kinds of different flavors tells you a bit about yourself. "I don't usually like that type," is a common comment at a tasting. A person can literally find new ways to enjoy themselves through beer and tastings.
Some folks take the tasting more seriously creating rating systems and entire new languages to try to describe beer and its flavors. There is nothing wrong with this as long as the task itself is enjoyable to the person performing it. I often taste a new beer and try to pick out all the ingredients and methods used, but in the end either I liked it or I didn't. In most cases its just a matter of what occasion a beer is best suited for.
There will always be a certain joy in getting to do something everyday that I used to have to spend spare time doing, but the real reason for brewing is providing the entertainment. We are definitely not saving lives over here but making lives more fun to live seems like a worthy pursuit.

Contemplating Stout

As an owner of an Irish pub I have a unique take on stout. When other bars in the neighborhood are selling one stout to a die-hard, we are tapping several kegs a night. Not just on a snowy winter evening, but every weekend of the year.
I have to admit that I have not made it to Ireland myself, but all the stories lead me to believe that aside from the American lager invasion, the Irish still chug stout like it's water.
With this background it was impossible for the Guinness 250th Anniversary Stout to go untried.
I picked it up this evening and it started me thinking about stout in general even before I opened a single bottle.
Historically, stout is exactly what its name suggests. Brewers with very little control over their malting and temperatures occasionally overdid a porter. I'm sure this was sometimes intentional and often an accident. Stout porter could be higher in alcohol, color, bitterness or all of the above. This wild definition is still all that exists today. The only extra help one gets from the brewer today is the word "Imperial" if it is extremely high in alcohol.
This lack of information makes it hard to decide when to make one of these part of your day. There are a couple things that can help you decide. Alcohol content is one. A day at the beach and a 9% beer are probably not the perfect pairing unless you have a crush on the lifeguard and figure getting blasted and nearly drowning will help get attention. Summer is not usually the big time for stouts, but their durable character makes it something to think about. These beers are much less likely to get crappy if left in the back of the car for a couple days and often taste better a bit warmer if that should happen by accident.
Guinness also likes to point out that their stout is actually much lower in calories than one might expect. If you have ever tasted other stouts this claim isn't really that surprising. Aside from some dark malt there isn't much to American draught Guinness. It is currently manufactured in Canada which should be a clue.
Guinness is not the only stout made to last a whole evening. Many stouts on the market are lower in alcohol than pales and other light ales. You can even choose from coffee and espresso stouts that can help ward off drowsiness depending on how they are made.
As for the Guinness 250th Anniversary stout.
Stick to Extra Stout!