forever a craftsman

Just like with photography, Dad was brewing beer before it was easy. Back when you had to physically make the thing, build entire rooms dedicated to creating perfect conditions. Monitor temperatures and sunlight juuuust right. Before the digital camera, the iPhone, the Picobrew*. You had to be committed. You had to keep notes. You had to have sources. He was doing calculus without a calculator. You get my drift.

Dad was talented.

One of my first memories of my dad was watching him bottle his beers in his little kitchen next to the soccer fields where I’d wow my coaches with the moves he taught me years later. This was the early nineties. He started home brewing in the eighties. The eighties!

Dad was passionate about craft beer before anyone knew what that was. He convinced the Dayton Daily News in the early aughts to let him write a weekly column on craft beer and brewing, alongside his gorgeous photos of delicious drafts. It was a shining period in DDN history, but the column was eventually canceled. They just didn’t think people cared - or would ever care - about craft beer.

Joke’s on them, folks. Joke’s on them.

I found a trove of Dad’s recipes today. One hundred and nineteen of them.

Here they are.

May Dad’s beer live on in your Picobrews or closets or wherever you make your own delicious beers. Open source! Brew away.

A few notes:

Dad’s final beer was the Hazy Rona, brewed 7/12/2020. “A pale, hoppy, full bodied specialty IPA”
Right after the pandemic hit, on 3/28/2020, Dad brewed the WEI Pandemic Lager. Style: Doppelbock. His only descriptor on this one: “I’ll Be Bock”.

A gift from Jim Witmer. Merry Christmas.

*All of which he embraced