Welcome Back

Welcome back, you strange weirdos. We took a little leave of absence, but we haven't forgotten about you. I'm sure you've been wondering what happened to us; if we died, if we stopped drinking, if we lost our passion for beer. I assure you, none of this is true. We're still alive and still loving beer more than life. Beer is life.

So, what have we been up to?

We both started helping out at a local brewery and that consumed a lot of our time. We also moved from a shit-hole apartment into a house down the street from my best friend.

So, let's give you a little more in-depth of what we did on our little break from this.

We worked beer festivals. Legit, a ton of beer festivals. We attended one more recently as general public, and it felt weird.


The first Winter Beer Fest we worked was the first big festival the brewery was at. We were the newcomers and were received with hesitation by the general public. We won them over with our beer and shenanigans. There was one point of the night where I started making people sing for their beer.  Jennie had shorter hair and gave a guy 'you're pissing me off' face.

We developed a beer.
 A 5% session IPA with lemongrass and chamomile. We had taken 2nd place in a local home brew competition the year before with it. Seeing our little baby brewed professionally is something else. Our recipe was tweaked a little, to give it more body, but still true to the original. It's funny, because the brewery is known for it's big, pushing Ohio legal limits at the times beer, then we had this 5% at the Grandview Summer Session festival. It ended up being 4.1/5 on Beer Advocate and 3.9/5 on Untappd, which I'm good with for something experimental.

 (Picture is from an article on the Pat's Pints blog)


We were part of history.
The first Six One Pour event (showcasing Columbus, Ohio breweries during Columbus Beer Week) has 2 different surprises. Collaboration brews with different breweries in town and a "largest tap handle" competition. We won the competition, but Guinness records failed to recognize the category, those bastards. It was a son of a bitch to pour from and the section you're looking at was only a third of the completed tap handle (roughly 30 feet tall, but for safety of the packed venue, we only poured with the one section). It's not a dick, it's a tap handle.

 (photos from Twitter)

Jennie Brewed a Beer!
As part of International Women's Day, last year the amazing ladies from Lineage, Weasel Boy and Jennie brewed a wheat beer with spices and lemon peel. Here is a poster from it:

We met a brewing icon
Our adventures took us to a beer festival in Cleveland, the first time the brewery had been out of Central Ohio. While we were working it, I was involved in a conversation with a young home brewer who wants to make full flavored, lower ABV beers. I told him that Pete Slosberg, founder of the iconic Pete's Wicked Ale, was doing something similar. No less than 15 minutes later, Jennie was having a conversation with a gentleman about meeting brewing icons and not realizing it. He said he had met Ken Grossman and it didn't click with him at the moment. He had a sampling of the beer and went about his way. Right afterward is when it clicked, that was fucking Pete Slosberg. He was up in the area doing a collaboration beer with Hoppin' Frog, a 10% version of his original Pete's Wicked Brown Ale. There will be a beer review on the Wicked Re-Pete as well as an interview with Pete Slosberg upcoming.

I met another brewing icon
Greg Koch, some dude from a tiny brewery (maybe you've heard of them- Stone Brewing? Something like that at least) was in Columbus to release the Pataskala Red IPA, a beer where the proceeds went to help save the music program at the high school he went to years before. He was pretty cool. Jennie unfortunately wasn't able to make it, as she was working the tap room.

We were part of the brewery's expansion
This work is no joke. When you're already pulling 60+ hours a week and you keep looking at how much work is left to do, it seems like an never ending uphill battle. You persist, you power through.

We met Frank Turner.
You remember that music guy we interviewed a couple years ago? Yeah? He remembered that too. That's right, our musical favorite happened to be playing a small gig here in Columbus (the CD102.5 Big Room), Jennie happened to be lucky enough to win tickets. We happened to get an awesome picture with him afterward.

 (Photo from CD102.5's website)

Jennie Brewed Another Beer!
Once again, Jennie teamed with awesome ladies; this time from Lineage, Weasel Boy and Seventh Son. This year was a grissette, a style we're not too familiar with. There will be an upcoming post about this. Here is the poster from that release:

So that's what we've we've been up to. What the fuck have you been up to? We'd like to hear from you. Reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, and Instagram. You can also follow us on Untappd with our names of @jenniek and @guitaristshad.

We have big plans upcoming, so stay tuned.

As always,
-Nathan and Jennie-