As many of you know, homebrewing beer is one of my hobbies, and a few months ago, I won a homebrew contest at 75th Street Brewery. The prize was the opportunity to make a batch of my winning recipe on their massive equipment – 200+ gallons of beer!
My beer (“Triple Sugar Tripel”) will be tapped on December 29, and, to celebrate the event, my wife and I are hosting a party starting at 5:00 in the back room at 75th Street Brewery. We will provide appetizers, and the brewery has agreed to donate to the Central City School Fund 50 cents for each glass of beer they sell that night. Additionally, I will have a donation jar there for those who choose to make a final year-end donation to the Fund. 100% of the donations will go to the schools.
The Central City School Fund supports Catholic elementary education in Kansas City’s poorest neighborhoods. In these trying economic times, it is difficult for many families to pay for Catholic education, and the problem is even worse for the families in the old Northeast and Westside sections of Kansas City. Despite the challenges of poverty and crime faced in their daily lives, the families of the CCSF realize the importance of Catholic education for their children, and every family that has children attending the Central City Schools makes a financial contribution (as much as they can afford) toward their children’s tuition. Very few families, however, are able to afford to send their children to our schools without financial assistance, and the Central City School Fund helps bridge the gap between poor families’ meager income and the cost of a high-quality Catholic education.
As for the beer, I haven't sampled it yet, and we made a few significant changes to my 10 gallon recipe in the process of scaling it up to 200+ gallons, so I'm relying a bit on guesswork to predict how it will taste. The last time I saw this beer it was nothing more than sweet, tea colored water being pumped from the boiling kettle through the chiller and into a fermentation vessel where it would meet up with the special Belgian yeast that does all the work.
I expect that this beer will be the color of medium-strong tea, with a subdued but long-lasting head. The aroma will probably be honey mixed with just a suggestion of hops. The flavor will be sweet, with a strong note of honey flavor, followed by all the esters thrown off by the 75th Street Brewery's Belgian strain of yeast. Those esters will add a fruity, spicy taste to the beer, which I hope will combine with the honey to create a sweet, warming beer that will stand up to rich holiday meals and accompany traditional holiday desserts. At 9% alcohol, it will be a strong sipping beer. My hope is that the sweetness will make it appealing to those who think all craft beer is dark, hoppy and bitter, while the Belgian complexity of the beer will appeal to the beer snobs. While I’m calling it a Belgian Tripel, which is a type of beer originated by Belgian monks, it is my own take on the style, because those ales focus more on the yeast characteristics than on the sugar, and it's a little dark for the style.
Enough beer geek talk! I hope you are able to stop by 75th Street Brewery on Monday, December 29th after 5:00, to toast the end of a memorable year, and support the children and families of the Central City School Fund. Please forward this invitation to anyone you think will be interested in supporting the Central City School Fund or drinking good beer – the more the merrier!
1 comment:
What the heck, since you started dating twitter you don't have time to spend with blogger anymore?
Just teasin hun, I hope you and hubby have a great holiday!
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