March 9, 2009

Porch Sippin'

We had just lost an hour to Daylight Savings, but true to its name there seemed to be lots of spring-like daylight on offer this weekend. Since the 2JB Originale had spent just about a week finishing up in the bottles, we'd already planned to sample the brew...and then Nahum asked if I might be interested in sitting out on the front porch to have some beer.

Would I? In the words of the country's most famous Alaskan: You betcha!

I walked across the street, and Nahum was already out with two bottles and a bag of chips.




We popped the tops, settled back into the wooden chairs, raised a hearty "L'chaim" and tipped 'em back.



The verdict, all at once, was that our first shot at an original recipe was right on the money. Floral & a bit citrusy, with lots of layered hops flavors, just a touch of sweetness and a long, smooth aftertaste. Balanced flavor, nice color, just enough of an aroma to tease the taste. Really just a pleasure to drink. And as the just-saved late-day daylight kept the afternoon going, we mused that this was a beer we both really, really liked. And other people would, too. Heck, they might even buy it. From us.



Don't tell the wives, but we spent a solid 15 minutes thinking aloud about how 2JB could be the real thing. That we could go from being guys who made beer to being beer makers. Of course, there are a ton of obstacles (not the least of which being that neither of us is eager to toss aside the jobs we like for something like this...at least not right now) and it's not something we're seriously considering for the immediate future.



But the future is long. It could still happen. To keep things moving in the right direction, we've decided to make another batch or two of the same Originale recipe and see if we have the ability to stay consistent batch to batch (we've yet to make the same thing twice, so we honestly have no idea). And we'll keep our 2JB pipe dreams humming quietly in the background...but mostly just keep on enjoying the brewing and the brews and look forward to more days where we can just sit out on the porch tipping back our very own beer.

2 comments:

Ivan said...

Just caught up on the blog. Awesome stuff.

I am living vicariously through your beer adventures.

Please let us know when the 2JB beer goes up for sale!

Anonymous said...

Note the following, from Men's Health

"Hops help cut the sweetness in a beer, delivering a crisp citrus-and-pine kick to the back of your tongue. But the cone-shaped hops flower is more than just a flavor savior. Researchers have shown that it's also a significant source of cholesterol-lowering, cancer-fighting, and virus-killing compounds called polyphenols. What's more, "Just one 12-ounce beer a day decreased fibrinogen, a clotting factor, and increased albumin, which is very important for protein metabolism," says Shela Gorinstein, Ph.D., a researcher at Jerusalem's Hebrew University and the author of a 2007 study on the bioactivity of beer."

NAK--1J