Fittingly enough, this whole thing started while brewing beer. A couple of years ago, our friend, Matt, decided to brew beer at Shenandoah Brewing for his birthday. This was the first time I met Casey and Dan. Even though they look absolutely nothing alike, I mixed up their names for about 5 months after that. Anyway, Matt and I being teachers, we named our brown ale After School Special. Well it was supposed to be "speciale" (pronounced spesh-ale) but his girlfriend didn't hear us right and wrote down After School Special on the label.
I was new to craft beer at the time. I thought Dogfish Head was the be-all and end-all of craft beer.
Fast forward a while to our next brew, also at Shenandoah. We decided to make a barleywine and call it Brains. The name had something to do with the beer being ready around Halloween and possibly having a zombie on the label. I don't remember exactly why, because we'd been drinking. I'll just go ahead and say that's why it was called that. It was decent. Our visions of slight fruit undertones were undermined by intense peach flavoring that made it age poorly. But we were proud nontheless.
A while after that (a year or so) we again decided to brew, but homebrewing is cheaper. The kitchen has been the scene for our concoctions the last few months. We're continuing to evolve our technique, style and skill. This year we have brewed two follow-up beers: Brains 2.0 and 2.1. We also just finished brewing our first hefeweisen (tentatively called Theros). We're competing in three homebrew competitions in the coming months and are about to journey into the world of lagers.
This is our story.
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