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If ever there was a recipe for a better Brew Day, I don’t know what it is. Had a couple of friends over (could have had more–you know who you are!), BBQ’ed some chicken, brewed up a batch of stout (to become Blackberry Stout, when all is said & done), and generally had a good time. The weather has been decent, so we spent the day outside. The yard is dirtscaped (no grass to speak of), and it’s a tad hot with no shade out there, but we all endured–copious amounts of homebrew helped, especially the wit. I’d say that a good time was had by all.
Next month will quite possibly be my last brew day until late September or early October–I’ll be off on a business trip for about two months. Much experimentation and tasting will be in order while I’m out. I’ll try to manage a brew in early July, but there’s no telling. Hopefully, I can have the majority of the HERMs system put together by then.
My Lady Wife assisted with a tasting/judging at Sapphire Joust yesterday; she’s now even more eager to bring general A&S standards to the brewing community. We (they?) have been a bit lax, or so it seems to me. I mean, the reason I didn’t enter the most recent Kingdom Brewer is that I don’t/didn’t have anything that I would enter into an SCA event–even though a couple of my brews at the time were fantastic–just not documentable. Between that and the cognitive dissonance with the standards for containers, I’m not keen on doing SCA brewing competitions, generally. Maybe in future; we’ll see.