On Monday, I was at Brooklyn Brewery for Hopfest, a benefit for a group called BK Farmyards that does backyard (notably MY backyard) and schoolyard farming in Brooklyn. Brooklyn Brewery had 10 or so beers on tap, all you can drink. There were a few others as well, Bronx Brewery comes to mind, and food too. The theme was backyard hop growing, something that was proposed to me since she knows I homebrew. In the meantime, Yakima hop grower John Segal was giving away his sample hops and I have enough for a brew batch or two. His father developed the Cascade hop.
Today, my wife and I were picking up my daughter from camp in upstate NY, and she suggested we go to Cooperstown as a side trip, but when we checked into it we realized it was induction weekend (Ron Santo, Barry Larkin) and we figured (rightly it turns out) that the Baseball Hall of Fame would be mobbed. So instead we headed out to Ommegang Brewery and tasted 6 of their Belgian style ales. It was a fun tour as it is a small operation, and he described the process pretty as much the way homebrewers approach it, just on a medium size scale. They use only one kind of yeast but they don't sell it. Also, as it turns out, they are wholly owned now by Duvel, the Belgian brewer that the original owner was trying to emulate here in the states.
So a good week for beer drinking, but still too hot to brew myself.
Today, my wife and I were picking up my daughter from camp in upstate NY, and she suggested we go to Cooperstown as a side trip, but when we checked into it we realized it was induction weekend (Ron Santo, Barry Larkin) and we figured (rightly it turns out) that the Baseball Hall of Fame would be mobbed. So instead we headed out to Ommegang Brewery and tasted 6 of their Belgian style ales. It was a fun tour as it is a small operation, and he described the process pretty as much the way homebrewers approach it, just on a medium size scale. They use only one kind of yeast but they don't sell it. Also, as it turns out, they are wholly owned now by Duvel, the Belgian brewer that the original owner was trying to emulate here in the states.
So a good week for beer drinking, but still too hot to brew myself.
