mthhurley
BoM December 2011
Many of you know, there are a number of home brewers on the forum here with a passion for making good beer. I personally started about 3 years ago and love the hobby and hope that this thread generates more interest in the hobby, those of us involved in what you are about to read about would be happy to help and guide you as you learn.
This past fall, an idea was born when Eric showed me a picture of some BOTL bottle caps that he had. Immediately, my mind jumped to "Let's make a BOTL home brew!" Eric was all-in from the start but where I was challenged is coming up with a recipe. You see, most of what I personally have done (except for a couple brews) is to "clone" some other beer out there that I love and want 5 gallons of in my house but don't want to pay for it. I've not developed a lot of recipes from scratch. But I knew that Adam (smokinghole) was working full time in a brew pub (aka "living the dream") so I pulled him into the project.
We decided that for this first round of beer, we would make an IPA. They are easy and fast to pull together. Adam had his own personal recipe of his "house" beer that we decided to go with.
What we wanted to do was to both brew the same recipe, share the beer and see what the differences were. Homebrewing is a lot like cooking. Two people can have the exact same ingredients and come up with very different end-product, so we thought it would be fun to see how each others turned out.
The next thing we decided to do was bring in a third brewer, JRL, because we needed more geographic distribution and saw that he was an active brewer. We are not a licensed brewery by any means. So we cannot distribute or sell this beer. We are home brewers making a fun beer to hand out to friends. I really don't need the ATF sniffing around my basement looking at my homebrew because my vinotemp full of sticks is down there too.
All three of us brewed the beer within a couple weeks of each other. Between us, we have a mix and match of 12 and 22oz bottles and probably about 50 of them. Eric sent us the bottle caps and even did the graphics for the label. Jere (Kockroach) came up with the very appropriate name, BOTL O'Beer. Each label is slightly different, the recipe is solely Adam's but the brewer is different depending on whose batch it is.
Each of our processes are a little different. Adam has very hard tap water, so he uses RO water instead that he treats with minerals who also dry-hopped his version of this. We are all-grain brewers and that will make sense to those that know how homebrewing works. All of these things will impact the end-flavor of the beer.
The intent here is to try and keep this going with other beers that we collaborate on, as you'll see the label says "Volume one".
If anyone is interested in seeing if there may be a bottle or two near you, please PM either myself, smokinghole or JRL.
Also, if anyone makes a $50 donation directly to BOTL, not only will you be supporting this site, but you may make it onto Santa's good list and get some sort of stocking stuffer.
All that now being said, myself, Adam and Jeremy would like introduce you to the BOTL O'Beer Volume I. An American IPA
This past fall, an idea was born when Eric showed me a picture of some BOTL bottle caps that he had. Immediately, my mind jumped to "Let's make a BOTL home brew!" Eric was all-in from the start but where I was challenged is coming up with a recipe. You see, most of what I personally have done (except for a couple brews) is to "clone" some other beer out there that I love and want 5 gallons of in my house but don't want to pay for it. I've not developed a lot of recipes from scratch. But I knew that Adam (smokinghole) was working full time in a brew pub (aka "living the dream") so I pulled him into the project.
We decided that for this first round of beer, we would make an IPA. They are easy and fast to pull together. Adam had his own personal recipe of his "house" beer that we decided to go with.
What we wanted to do was to both brew the same recipe, share the beer and see what the differences were. Homebrewing is a lot like cooking. Two people can have the exact same ingredients and come up with very different end-product, so we thought it would be fun to see how each others turned out.
The next thing we decided to do was bring in a third brewer, JRL, because we needed more geographic distribution and saw that he was an active brewer. We are not a licensed brewery by any means. So we cannot distribute or sell this beer. We are home brewers making a fun beer to hand out to friends. I really don't need the ATF sniffing around my basement looking at my homebrew because my vinotemp full of sticks is down there too.
All three of us brewed the beer within a couple weeks of each other. Between us, we have a mix and match of 12 and 22oz bottles and probably about 50 of them. Eric sent us the bottle caps and even did the graphics for the label. Jere (Kockroach) came up with the very appropriate name, BOTL O'Beer. Each label is slightly different, the recipe is solely Adam's but the brewer is different depending on whose batch it is.
Each of our processes are a little different. Adam has very hard tap water, so he uses RO water instead that he treats with minerals who also dry-hopped his version of this. We are all-grain brewers and that will make sense to those that know how homebrewing works. All of these things will impact the end-flavor of the beer.
The intent here is to try and keep this going with other beers that we collaborate on, as you'll see the label says "Volume one".
If anyone is interested in seeing if there may be a bottle or two near you, please PM either myself, smokinghole or JRL.
Also, if anyone makes a $50 donation directly to BOTL, not only will you be supporting this site, but you may make it onto Santa's good list and get some sort of stocking stuffer.
All that now being said, myself, Adam and Jeremy would like introduce you to the BOTL O'Beer Volume I. An American IPA
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