Tag Archive | pooh
April 3, 2016  

Rough Draft Recipes: Unauthorized Disney Edition

By the time this is published, I will be on a plane for a week-long Disney vacation with the family. The little ones will spend the week basking in the glow of fireworks, the thrill of rides and the utter fabulousness of a certain snow queen, while my wife and I will count the footsteps from the Dole Whip kiosk to wherever we can occasionally find a decent beer on draft. They’re there. Trust me. They aren’t easy to find, but they’re there.

Okay, I’m bending the truth a little. Not about the beers (they really are there if you know where to look), but about Momma and Daddy’s lack of enthusiasm for the whole Disney thing. Actually my wife is totally into it, and I am definitely not too proud to sing a rousing chorus of “Yo Ho (A Pirate’s Life for Me)” while sailing out of the darkness of Pirates of the Caribbean. Of course Disney now owns the Star Wars universe, and Jawas and stormtroopers will litter the landscape more than strollers. And, as my closest friends know, I absolutely love the wordplay and hilariously maladjusted cast of characters in the Winnie the Pooh series … so yeah, I’ll be as happy as a bear in a honey-tree with the whole Disney thing.

My kids are similarly obsessed. Both of them are very big on Mickey. More to my own taste, though, my son is fascinated with Star Wars (he loves the Dark Side and runs around saying “I’m Kywoh Ren!” – should I be concerned?). My baby daughter learned the word “Pooh” before pretty much any other word, and she means the bear, not … the other thing.

In honor of my family’s unanimous love for these stories and characters, in fact, I decided a few weeks ago to design beers to commemorate both Winnie the Pooh and Kywoh – er, Kylo – Ren. So without further ado, below are the first drafts of the recipes I’ve come up with.

Warning: minor spoilers in the notes below for Star Wars: The Force Awakens, which is landing on home video this week. Watch it, then read this.

Kylo Ren beer: Dark Awakening Black IPA

  • 13 lbs 8 oz American pale malt
  • 12 oz Dehusked Carafa III
  • 8 oz Chocolate Malt
  • 6.25 AAU of Mosaic hops at 60 minutes
  • 7 AAU of Galaxy hops at 60 minutes
  • 12.25 AAU of Mosaic hops at flameout
  • 14 AAU of Galaxy hops at flameout
  • 1 oz of Mosaic hops for dry hopping
  • 1 oz of Galaxy hops for dry hopping
  • American ale yeast (Fermentis SafAle US-05)

OG 1.071, IBU 75.8, SRM 37, ABV 7%.

Notes on ingredients:

Grain – American pale malt because it’s an American IPA. Dehusked Carafa III is a standard dark malt for the style that adds color without astringency. Chocolate malt is a little unorthodox, and will add a bit more body and roast flavor than typical for the style, but the roasty notes should add a welcome roughness around the edges, just like that unstable young man in black and that fuzzy-looking lightsaber he carries.

Hops – Mosaic and Galaxy are both fantastic hops and delicious in IPA. Mosaic is trendy and still a little bit new on the scene, but you can’t argue objectively with its capabilities. (Hello, Kylo.) And Galaxy … well, you know. Far, far away and all that. There are a lot of hops, but I want it bitter. Bitter like an emo kid who thinks the best way to get back at his parents is to take over the galaxy.

Winnie the Pooh beer: Silly Old Bear Hunny Wheat

  • 6 lbs Maris Otter
  • 1 lb 8 oz Flaked Wheat
  • 4 oz Crystal 15
  • 5.4 AAU of East Kent Goldings at 60 minutes
  • 1.8 AAU of East Kent Goldings at 15 minutes
  • 2 lbs Honey at 5 minutes
  • English ale yeast (Fermentis SafAle S-04)

OG 1.047, IBU 27, SRM 4, ABV 5.4%.

Notes on ingredients:

Grain – Maris Otter because it’s as English and traditional as A. A. Milne and Christopher Robin. Flaked wheat to stuff the beer with velvety smoothness. Crystal 15 to add a touch of honey sweetness. And of course, honey in the kettle near the end of the boil when it’s “Time for something sweet!”

Hops – Not the focus of this beer, so just a little bit of East Kent Goldings for enough hop bitterness and character to balance the sweet, fruity crispness of fermented honey. The bitterness is on the high end of the spectrum for American wheat and on the low end of the spectrum for an English ordinary bitter.

If you’d like to offer any tips or suggestions while I’m away on vacation – or even brew one of these before I get around to it – please share your thoughts here. Soon after I get back from the Most Magical Place on Earth, I’ll try my hand at brewing one or both of these myself.

Until then, cheers from myBrewHome to yours.

March 6, 2016  

Welcome to myBrewHome!

If this is your first visit, welcome! Pour yourself a beer and take a look around. Let me know if you like what you see or if you have questions about anything.

If this is not your first visit, you may notice that the name and look of the site have recently changed. So, still pour yourself a beer and look around, but rest assured that everything that was here before is still here. All posts from 2015 and earlier are still in the archives, along with the Brewing Glossary and the Recipes section that I hope to be updating soon. But I’ve changed the name of the site to reflect its new direction and focus.

What do I mean by new direction and focus? Well, my previous mission for this site – formerly titled Last of the Zyme Lords – was to merge my love of homebrewing and craft beer with the my love for writing and the geekier things in life, such as fantasy and science fiction. That mission kept this site alive for a long time, but I put it on hiatus early in 2015 when the birth of my second child started an avalanche of life changes in a very short time. I was never sure if I would come back to writing regularly on this site.

So here’s the good news: I’m back, and the site is back. And I’m still interested in all the same geeky stuff I was interested in before. In fact, if you’re interested in such things, check out The Prancing Pony Podcast, a podcast about J. R. R. Tolkien I co-host that launched in February.

But now that my life has changed, my priorities have changed, and so has my attitude towards brewing. Brewing and beer are not just another geeky pursuit for me anymore. I no longer brew just to pursue the excellence of a technically perfect (or as close as possible within my means) glass of beer, or to come up with recipes and names that reflect my love of Tolkien, Doctor Who, or Japanese horror movies.

Again, I still love all of those things, but they’re not my only inspiration as a brewer anymore.

As my family has grown, we’ve moved into a new house that was built with homebrewing in mind. Homebrew is a part of every event I host to see friends that I don’t see nearly enough anymore now that family life keeps me busy. I’ve brewed for baby showers, births and birthdays. My cellar is stocked with big beers brewed in commemoration of family milestones. I’ve explained it all on the page “Why ‘myBrewHome’?”

So we’re still having lots of fun over here, but our focus has expanded a bit. I’m happy to report that my kids are turning into geeks as big as I am. But at this point, I’m just as likely to brew a beer inspired by my son’s fascination with Kylo Ren or my baby daughter’s obsession with Winnie the Pooh as I am to brew a beer inspired by hobbits, Godzilla or John Landis films.

In fact, a Kylo Ren Black IPA or a Pooh Bear Hunny Braggot sounds delicious right about now. To the recipe creator!

Stay tuned, and I’ll be back very soon with more brew talk. Until then, cheers from myBrewHome to yours.