Ramping up to HQ Beercade’s Pinball Expansion | The Beeronaut

I visited the new Pinball arcade at Chicago's Headquarters Beercade. Cause ever since I was a young boy, I've played that silver ball… Oh, there's beer, too.

Naked Lady Label Munich Dark Lager

I tried out a kit beer with 5 gallons of pre-hopped wort, so instead of elaborately describing what I put into it, I put something more interesting on the bottle. Actually, the kit came with dried ale yeast, so I used actual lager yeast instead and cleared a space in my beer fridge to properly lager the brew at 42°F. I also slipped half a cup of molasses in to boost the gravity just a little bit.

After my near-entanglement with the KI^<>^<> Army of Litigants, I decided not to just swipe some possibly copyrighted art or photo. Finally, those art classes in college paid off! I drew this myself during the one class when we actually had a model. So this art is all ©Mark McDermott (and the model probably has grandkids by now). Brewed December, 2002, bottle-conditioned and designed February, 2003.

Sorry if this may be seen as inappropriate, but I figure you see a lot worse than this decaled to the rear windows of pickup trucks, like those smirky Calvin & Hobbes rip-offs with pants down, peeing on logos for other trucks.

Kraputnik Soviet People's Stout

Why “Kraputnik?” Because so many things just went Kraput. While in my airlocked primary fermentation bucket, it kicked up such a head that pieces of hop leaves got caught in the airlock, causing the lid to blow off (a not uncommon occurrence in homebrewing). A few days after I managed to successfully tame the froth-over, the sewer drain in my basement brewery backed up, leaving a 3-ft. wide pool of fragrant gray water. I quickly moved my fermenter upstairs. The rest of the procedure was incident-free, except that when bottling, I broke a bottle for the first time. Then in July, while letting it age, the beer “swelled up” in the heat and one bottle exploded.

The label was designed in imitation of the poster art of the Soviet Union, with great care taken to match those drab poster colors, complete with an aged paper background (if I could only have gotten that old coated paper with the sulfury smell). Verbiage was courtesy of the Translation feature of Sherlock in Macintosh OS X! Odd thing: when I submitted the phrase “Drinkers of the World, Unite! You have nothing to lose but your sobriety!”, it couldn’t provide a Russian word for “sobriety.” Here’s a .txt file of the recipe.

This label design was an “Editor’s Choice” in BYO Magazine’ 2003 Homebrew Label Contest.

Who Wants to Drink a Green Chile Beer? #2: Scream of Wheat!

My second chile beer (those who grow chiles prefer spelling it with an “e”) is based on an American Wheat recipe, which better complements the peppery heat. I also used freshly roasted chiles straight from my garden. Brewed in July, 2002.

To make your own Chile beer, take any whole dried Chile pod and a mass-market beer with a screw-top bottle; open the beer, put about a 2-inch piece of the Chile in it, close, and let sit a day or two. Really improves the taste of those bland mega-brews, don’t it!

Scream of Wheat won a 2nd place ribbon at the Chicago Beer Society’s 2002 Spooky Brew Review competition!

Bizarroatmeal Stout #2

Here’s the latest version of my oddball Cinnamon Oatmeal Stout (see below!). Cinnamon taste really stood out, but my fellow beer brewers seem to think it’s okay. In fact, it very nearly placed in the aforementioned Spooky Brew Review. So with a little tinkering, I could have a contender, after all! Designed and brewed in May, 2002. Here’s a .txt file with the recipe.

Bizarro is ^TM and ©DC Comics,
Inc. No endorsement by DC Comics should be implied!

Frehley I.P.A. #2

Here’s the second go ‘round on this brew. Since some homebrewers use oak chips to simulate the flavor of barrel aging, I did the same, and this is the result! Even hoppier, too. Brewed in March, 2002. Here’s a .txt file of the recipe

This beer won a 2nd place ribbon at the Brewers on the Bluff homebrew club’s 2002 Brewer’s Dream competition! Check it out for yourself!

Who Wants to Drink a Chili Beer? #1: Roast Poblano Blammo!

With this beer, I embarked on my mission... to boldly brew what no home brewer in these parts has brewed before! I want to replicate the tasty Green Chili Beer I enjoyed at Eske’s Brewpub in Taos, New Mexico in 2000 (a very wonderful place to enjoy a beer). This first try is way off, since Eske’s is a partial wheat beer and this is a basic brown ale. And while they prefer the native Green New Mexico (Sandia) chilis, I used the Poblanos (Anchos) I roasted and froze last fall. But I still think this is pretty warm and kicky, not harsh like that bottled Cave Creek chili beer in the stores. I was reckless enough that I put some of it in small bottles to enter in March’s Drunk Monk homebrew competition in Warrenville. Didn’t get a very high rating: The judges complained the chili flavor was too hot. So, my watchword now is: “I could kick your ass... but not today!” Designed and brewed in January, 2002. Recipe.

Frehley IPA Beer

My first true homebrew!

After both of Chicago’s two brew on premises closed down, I joined Brewers of South Suburbia, got the basic equipment, and started doing my own homebrew from scratch! This is my first brew, so in the cooperative spirit of homebrew, I replaced my parody “Government Warning” with the actual recipe. I also thought the pun would be obvious, but it was new to my homebrew store supplier. The obvious subject for such a pun, though, involved a trademarked image, so I have been obliged to alter it. Designed and brewed in December, 2001.

Wyetoukay

Our little tribute to the millennium bug--It wasn’t really meant that way, but we kinda botched the brewing and forced the Brew-on-premise to make more to fill out our batch. But it was a most hearty brew, with a recipe based on Goose Island’s 10th Anniversary Beast. Designed and brewed in November, 1999.

Wedding Bell Bride-Ale

We wanted to thank all our relatives and friends for coming to celebrate out happy day by serving a brewed-on-premise beer at our reception. Only problem was, we held the party at a room of St. Irenaeus’ elementary school, which didn’t have a license to serve alcohol. So we handed out the bottles (as well as a tasty root beer from the trunk of my car in the parking lot. Boy, that sounds illegal! Good thing Barb’s cousin the cop was there!

Class of ‘77 Altbier

What better way to celebrate my upcoming 20th High School reunion than by coming with commemorative beer! My original subject, one of the iconic people to a high school student in that year, was certainly a better idea than my class picture of me in my Apricot orange leisure suit! Unfortunately, the original image also happened to be a trademark, so I was advised by its subject’s lawyers to remove it. Designed in June, 1997.

Bizarroatmeal Stout

Named for those crazy, backward inhabitants of the weird square planet in the Superman comics (see my Pop Culture Reference page), I made up this tasty brew for Mensa’s HalloweeM party in 1996!

Bizarro is TM and ©DC Comics, Inc.
No endorsement by DC Comics should be implied!

Quasimodo Quaff

My second beer, and first attempt at a lager, was labeled to parody the incessant commercial tie-ins with any and all Disney cartoons. As it tuned out, during brewing some bacteria got into the beer. Interesting taste, but it gushed out of the bottle whenever I tried to open it. Designed and brewed in May, 1996.

Red Dingo Scotch Ale

My very first brew! I picked a name to parody all the “Red” animal names coming out (Red Dog, Red Wolf, etc.) and picked a brew to match. When I did my usual cursory artistic research, I found that dingoes are, in fact, red! Brewed in July, 1995.