Thursday, October 29, 2009

Belgian Prankster Label in Zymurgy


On a whim, I sent one of our labels into Zymurgy magazine, and it got printed in the November/December issue! Many thanks to Gabe Patti for doing the original watercolor, which we scanned into the label.

In case you're wondering what the hell this is all about, this beer is named after a character in The Order Of Odd-Fish, by James Kennedy, which is one whacked out book. After reading it, Meg and I both decided we needed a beer called The Belgian Prankster. We then met James while he was doing a reading at The Hop Leaf, and turns out he's not only a beer fan, but loved the idea of a beer brewed for one of his characters. After laboring over the recipe for awhile, we came up with an interesting ale that pays homage to our Latino Chicago neighborhood by incorporating 1.5lbs of Pilloncillo sugar. We used Mosher's Belgian Pale Ale recipe as a starting point, but by the time we were done with it, the numbers tossed it more into the Belgian Specialty Ale category. I think we're still figuring a few things out, but after 2 batches we thing we're onto something good. It's one of those beers we miss after not having it for awhile.

I will say it was interesting to take a character from a book (and an evil one at that), and figure out what sort of beer he might be. It put a whole new perspective on the beer-as-art thing by putting us into a new mindset when working on a beer. It was a ton of fun, why not try brewing a beer for one of your favorite fiction characters?

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