The Thirsty Hopster

I’ve put off writing up my homebrewing experiences for a while now because I’m so much more comfortable talking about the taste of beer and the experience of being at beer events than I am about the science of brewing beer, and because I have this irrationally strong desire for the names of my brews to make sense alongside the name of my brewery.  This was a problem for a while since none of the brewery names suggested ‘went with’ any of the brew names.  Thus, I was forced to exercise a little creative myself (danger!), resulting in:

Grains of Wrath IPA, the first brew from The Monkeyhouse: Ales & Lagers.  And congrats to Tim Anderson who came up with the brewery name!  I’ll put your beer in the post as soon as I’ve tasted it and can vouch that it’s non-disastrous.

Why these names?  

Brewery: As Tim noted when he posted his suggestion for The Monkeyhouse, I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE Kurt Vonnegut and his writing (”Welcome to the Monkey House” is a collection of short stories by Vonnegut), and, separately, I love monkeys.  What better way to pay tribute to two of my non-beer interests?  Plus, I love the idea of one day actually having a venue for my brewery and saying to people as they come in, “Welcome to The Monkeyhouse!!!”

Brew: The idea here is to name the beers after my other favorite books, though I could see this being expanded to favorite authors, characters from favorite books, etc., becoming a pan-literary theme.  Though Haruki Murakami and David Foster Wallace might be taking top billing right now in my brain in terms of favorite authors, both write books that are wacky, post-modern, and fanciful enough that I’m saving them for experimental specialty brews.  Steinbeck seemed like a good choice for me because he’s a California classic, just like American IPAs.  His work is realistic, and usually gives a raw, honest portrait of the common people.  I thought this fit well with a style that feature simple flavors brought to life by the craft of the brew, rather than fancy stylistic innovations.  Plus, the Dust Bowl as depicted in Grapes of Wrath seems to fit well with adjectives like “bitter” and “dry” that would well-describe an IPA.   To be honest, I prefer Cannery Row when you get right down to it, but it might be hard to avoid giving the beer fishy associations if I went with that book for the title.  Too much agonizing over a beer name? Nah…

A couple notes on names not chosen:

Brew names

• Thirsty’s First: I live the rhyme-iness of this.  It’s catchy. But what if I keep honing the recipe? Then it wouldn’t really be the ‘first’ anymore. 
• Hop On: Simple, would go well with some kind of train graphic, I like trains: all points in favor of this name.  I liked it except for the issue of ‘fitting’ with the brewery name.  If my brewery were train- or transportation-themed, maybe.
• I Hop Therefore I Am: So clever! I almost went with this, but again, the issue of the theme.
• Snow Eater: Yup, I do like to east snow, though not half as much as I like to drink beer, but I’m not sure this is a defining character of my identity that I want to enshrine in the name of my first beer
• Hooch: I love the idea of moonshine and being a moonshine producer, but for the sake of clarity, I wanted to avoid both the terms moonshine & hooch since I believe they usually refer to distilled beverages, like a whiskey, and often made from corn
• Alpenglow, Fuzzy Vision, & Sunset: I loved the pictures, and Rich’s new pics of CA poppies even more.  They’re likely to show up on future labels, but again there was the issue of thematic consistency.

Brewery Names:

• Not Your Average Jones Beer: Liked where this was going but it’s quite a mouthful, and there is already Jones Soda Company out there
• [Censored]: Given the new literary theme maybe “Censored” itself can make an appearance one day, but the original suggestion from Ben, which honestly I generally expect from Kippers more than Ben, would wipe out any potential for me to share this brew with my co-workers, much less my grandma.  Think of the elderly, Ben, no need to give them heart attacks.