This is the first label that we made for our beer. We created this recipe especially for our wedding. The artwork was hand painted by Rachel's birth mother, Dallas Josephy, and scanned in to our computer. The name has a double meaning. First, it is the name of the village where we held the ceremony (in Alice's Church). Second, it is the name of one of our cats, Housatonic Peanut Butter Fudge. This is an amber ale flavored with apple juice, honey and a touch of cinnamon.

This was our first attempt at a mead. We didn't want to tie up our carboy for several months, so we bought a 2.8 gallon carboy as a spare to experiment in with this batch. Boy, are we sorry we don't have more of this now! We placed first in the 1998 AHA regional competition. That means that we have had to send three more precious bottles to the nationals! By the way, don't let anyone tell you that WYEAST sweet mead yeast doesn't work well. It is delicious in this. Following someone else's advice, we tried using champagne yeast in a cherry mead. YUCK!

As you can see, our fascination with our cats has carried over into our brewing. The label contains a picture of Guthrie curled up with JellyBean. This is an American-style brown ale.

We named this beer after the day that we bottled the first batch on. Yes, that is a picture of Alice's Church. This was our first beer to use dry hopping, the practice of putting hops in the secondary ferment. Unfortunately, they clogged the filling tip when we were almost done bottling. Several bottles wound up with chunks of hops in them.

This beer is named after our tomcat, JellyBean Seeger Harrison. It's made with Vermont maple syrup. We scored a bronze certificate in the 1997 AHA competition with a previous batch. We used the feedback to improve the recipe and place third in the regionals in 1998. This beer is also went on to the nationals!

We were living in a small apartment in Astoria with four cats. We didn't have anywhere to lager! We brew our beer in the kitchen closet! We therefore had to resort to using California Common yeast to brew this doppelbock. It's named in honor of our "twin" tabbies, Taliesin Brooklyn Brown and Asparagus Lenono Guthrie.

Is it a pyment? Is it a melomel? Is it a cyser? Yes, it's a sangria mead! Larry came up with the idea for this original creation and Rachel helped formulate the recipe. The name is Spanish for "The Queen Bee's Sangria." The picture on label features all of the six different fruits that we used in this mead. The violets in the upper-left corner are meant to represent the honey. This is a sweet mead, and the honey comes through wonderfully. The only problem was deciding which category to enter this in for homebrew competitions!

We were planning to name this one "Tomcat Trappist." If we had, you'd see a picture of Jellybean on the label. As Larry began designing the label, however, he thought of this now-obvious pun. Rachel loved it. We chose this picture of Taliesin because her expression makes it look like she's staring at dinner. (She may also be the only one of our cats to have actually caught a mouse. Tali was already three and a half years old when we adopted her. The others were all kittens. Despite what they would like you to think, none of them currently has to hunt for food!)

This isn't a genuine Trappist, of course--neither of us are Belgian monks!

Rachel wanted to participate in AHA's Big Brew when Larry got back from his April 1999 trip to El Salvador, so she ordered the ingredients for the extract & steeped grain recipe of Celebrator Milk Stout. Unfortunately, the recipe did not include any directions, and this was the first time that we used oatmeal, flaked barley, and lactose. We therefore had to guess. In retrospect, it seems that using light extract-as called for in AHA's recipe-was not a good ideas because-as the label indicates-this is no stout! If we ever try this recipe again, we'll use dark malt extract and more roast barley!

By the way, Larry got the name wrong. It was supposed to be "Collaborator." Oh well, the recipe didn't work right anyway!

Larry wanted to try making a nice, simple pale ale for a change. Rachel, however, encountered a "groaning ale" recipe that was indexed pale ales. This is a beer that was brewed in colonial times for expectant mothers. Given that her brother, Seth, and his wife, Marianne, had just adopted a 9-month-old Russian boy, Rachel wanted to make one and name it after him.

The result is Sam's Strong Ale. We call it that because it is. With lots of malt, plus brown sugar, molasses, and several pounds of honey, the alcohol level of this beer rivales a strong ale or a barley wine. The use of non-malt sugars gives it less thickness than a barley wine, however. It is also not bitter enough to be a barley wine.

We had much better luck with this year's recipe! The dry hopping also turned out very nicely--not only does it taste great, there are no hops particles in the bottles! There wasn't even a single clog during bottling. This recipe will be worth doing again.

We've been meaning to do a braggot (a mead that also contains malt) for awhile. Adopting our half-breed doggy provided an excellent excuse to do so. Unfortunately, however, there are very few sample recipes available in beer books and Zymurgy. Worse yet, we didn't like any that we found. We therefore modified a recipe for a bitter. The crytal malt gives it a nice red color and a hint of sweetness-something that is hard to achieve in a sparkling mead without using forced cabonation. We kept the hops light, so as not to overpower the honey. It turned out great--we're definitely going to enter this one in the AHA competition.

This is the first label to feature all of our beasts. Rachel generally likes stouts more than Larry does, though an Imperial Stout we did earlier did come out nicely. The Big Brew Milk Stout of a few years ago was not really up to style, despite the AHA recipe. This time, we tried an oatmeal stout, which Larry generally likes better than dry stouts. One problem is that the recipes for oatmeal stouts don't really give good instructions on using the oatmeal. We tried adding it in a grain bag, like we did with the chocolate malt, crystal malt, and roasted barley in this recipe. Unfortunately, this caused it to clump up into a ball in which the majority of oatmeal actually remained bone dry. After the rest of the grain was done steeping, we broke up the oatmeal and let it steep for another thirty minutes or so. It came out pretty nicely. (This label from the second batch includes Strummer).

This is the first batch for which we have designed two labels. The one on the left has a picture of Guthrie as a kitten, while the one on the right features Guthrie at age seven. This is also our first straight mead. We wanted it to be sweet and still. We were about to bottle it when we notice that it was still bubbling and a mysterious ring of yeast had formed around the bottom of the carboy-despite the use of top fermenting yeast! (This also happened with Bridget's Braggot.) We waited and waited, while our poor wheat beer had to remain in the primary! We finally got fed up and bottled over two months after we brewed it.

This beer was based on the Turtle Wheat recipe in Hombrewer's Companion. We couldn't resist the pun of using a photo of our "tortoise" Hoosie.

We made this beer with eight pounds of raspberries. Unfortunately, the airlock got clogged while we were out Brooklyn Brewery! We had to spend several hours cleaning it off the ceiling in our kitchen closet in Astoria. It got clogged and exploded a second time. Did we learn our lesson!

This label features a charcoal drawing of Bridget and Strummer at Bear Mountain, NY. Larry especially loves saisons.

We brewed this beer to give away to everyone involved in the 2002 production of Rachel's musical, Belles of the Mill. Given the working class themes and the Irish characters, an Extra Special Bitter was especially appropriate. Rachel could not drink it herself, however, since she was pregnant with Aidan.

This was one of the first beers we brewed after Aidan was born. The photo is from Maymont Park in Richmond, Virginia. It was ironic, of course, that we made an "old" ale in celebration of our newborn! By the way, we did not save any!

Once again, we cheated and used California Common yeast for a lager. This actually came out more like a shwartzbier. Aidan was singing Old MacDonald a lot at this point, so we decided to call it a "Bock-Bock" Bock. The label features Aidan acting like a chicken.

During our time in Richmond, we made a Hull Street Strawberry Wheat using hefeweizen yeast and berries we picked ourselves. We can't locate the label, however. In 2005, we picked some strawberries in Chester, NJ and made a wheat beer using belgian wheat yeast. The label features Teddy Bear, Hoosie's brother. We took him from Larry's parents when his mother became ill.