Short Batch - Brett & I

Brett and I (first sampled late '07)
"Brett and I" is a beer brewed in homage to the great Down East humorists Marshall Dodge and Robert Bryan (with Tim Sample getting the honorable mention.) If you haven't listened to the "Bert and I" tapes, go ahead and call LL Bean for your copy. They'll give you a good idea of the daily insanity of living in Northern New England. Of course that begs the question of exactly what I'm doing here. But, oh well, it's a great place to drink beer at least. And Brett and I is hopefully a great beer to drink while talking socialism over the back fence with your neighbor Enoch.

Brett and I is obviously brewed with Brettanomyces. We used Brettanomyces claussenii and in our case we used it for secondary conditioning. The original beer was a Belgian strong ale brewed with the Chimay yeast cropped from The Gnome. Still gave us that nice fruity character and still hasn't dropped bright. We ended up kegging the beer after six months of conditioning, but the brett character is still developing. It gives off an interested pineapple aroma and flavor, which I hope will continue to evolve.

Malt:
Weyermann Pilsner Malt
Munich
Wheat
Acidulated Malt

OG - 16° p
TG - 3.5° p*

*This will drop as the brett continues doing its thing.

Hops:
IBU 35

Bittering - Magnum
Flavoring - Liberty
Flavoring - Saaz
Aroma - Santiam

Really Old Brown Dog - First Edition

7/26/07 - Really Old Brown Dog - As many of you know by now, our friend Olive Francis, the Old Brown Dog, passed this winter. The original photo for our brown ale label was taken when Olive was quite young and so last fall Peter and Joanne had some new pictures commissioned. The photos were taken out on one of Olive's favorite beaches and with her favorite easy chair. The desire to use one of these images for a new Big Beer was the inspiration for our Really Old Brown Dog Ale. Usually the style of beer is decided before Joanne works on the label design, but in this case the tail was wagging the dog. Since the name was already decided we figured that something in the Old Ale / Double Brown Ale realm would be interesting. The one definite ingredient I wanted to play with was Brown Malt. I've always really liked the fudge brownie character derived from it. I feel we slightly overdid the addition, as that flavor tends to dominate the beer. For the most part though I was quite pleased with this beer as a nice tribute to our faithful friend and Head Squirrel Wrangler.

Malt:
Pilsner Malt
Pale Ale Malt
Crystal 60L
Brown Malt
Special B

OG - 18° p
TG - 4.5° p; ABV - 7.0%

Hops:
IBU 40

Bittering - Liberty
Flavoring & Aroma - Crystal