Fat Boy Deluxe

Tuesday night I met up with M&M at his place in Princeton for a quick pre-game Wachusett IPA. After he was done yelling at the Red Sox, we drove down to Shrewksbury (no idea how you pronounce that). There’s a cool little place called Deja Brew, a BOP much like Shenandoah Brewing only they don’t have a side brewery or bar/restaurant action going on. We weren’t there to brew anything, but they did have a nice 6 kettle copper clad system, buckets of grain and barrels of malt extract. The grounds were super clean and I wouldn’t hesitate to brew on their system.

No, we showed up to attend a homebrew club meeting for the WIZARDS (Worchester Incorporated Zymurgists Advancing Real Draughts). It’s not super close or convenient for me, but it is fairly close to Mike. I’ve always been a big proponent of homebrew clubs, so I felt it important to introduce Mike to the club atmosphere. Every club is different, but there’s almost always something you can learn and take away from the other members. The meeting had about 15 in attendance and there was a really great presentation by JoAnne who is the Sales and Marketing manager for White Labs. With only 15 people, there wasn’t a whole lot of homebrew around, but JoAnne brought several big boy bottles of Avery (Salvation, The Reverend, and Hog Heaven) and then another 4 bottles of Smuttynose Big A IPA…delicious. The homebrewers contributed a couple of milds, a brown ale, something I assume was a cider (but the guy was a little off and didn’t want to explain what it was), a Belgian Golden (good, but not as good as the Salvation, ha), and a really great fresh hop pale ale. I brought a bomber of my Imperial Stout, but I seriously have no idea which batch it was from or how old it is (it’s probably my second or third batch would make it less than a year old, but you never know).

Beers were consumed a couple ounces at a time and fun was had by all. Big bonus that the club has a shoe box full of small tasting glassware, no plastic cups! Anyway, they seemed like a pretty cool club and I don’t think Mike will mind going back for more of their meetings. At the very least, it got us both back on the brewing tip. It’s hard for me to brew since I don’t have a pot that can hold a gallon of liquid or more. Mike however has a full size pot and is going to borrow a turkey fryer from a friend so we can brew something up this weekend. I looked in the freezer and I’ve got 3 ounces of Palisade and 3 ounces of Glacier hops. Both are hops I’ve never used, so it might be fun to try and pull of a single hop beer. We’ll see…I gotta come up with a recipe before Saturday so we can still get the ingredients. Pale Ale, IPA, RyePA (all single hopped) or maybe go another route and do some continuous hopping with the Palisades, Glacier, and the pound of Warrior or Amarillo I have? Damn, I should set up a poll, ha.