Halloween 2010

The Halloween season was a record setter this year.  The party, themed "2010 A Space Idiocy", brought 42 friends over for a fun filled night.  We saw some new faces, and missed some old friends who were unable to make it this year.
The invitation this year went without the list of rules that it usually has, and boy were we sorry for that!  A couple of cross dressing aliens were in atttendance.  Frank N. Furter from the planet of Transexual, and Java the Slut from who knows where.
Others in attendance were several Star Wars & Star Trek characters, a couple of Arthur Dents, killer clowns, time travelers, a space cowboy, flying saucer & our hostess, a 4 eyed, 1 horned flying purple people beater.
Tom was thrilled to finally win the costume contest with the most outrageous, shocking costume he has yet to come up with.  Theresa, a killer clown from outer space shared the award for woman's costume.
Pam took the best food with her shrunken Nabu mushrooms and Chris got the best alien food for her alien eyeballs.




The Tin Whisker was never empty, and with the addition of Jeff's new traveling tap hooked up to his Borg Bitter, it was usually filled to capacity.  It was the first room to fill up and the last room to empty as the evening wound down.

During the "Beer Connoisseurs" portion of the evening, Larry brought out the newest edition of Sam Adams Utopias and Terry opened a bottle of Coffee Petron tequilla as a counter point.











Halloween night set a new record for Trick or Treaters.  In a compressed 2 hour session this year, we had 383 people come up to the porch.  The smoke bubbles were a big hit as usual.  Some kids even forgot about getting any candy once they got to the porch.
Nancy once again helped with traffic control on the starirway.  The biggest herd that came up for the night was a crowd of 27 that somehow arrived all at once.
We only had 2 criers who were a bit overwhelmed by it all.  Our favorite costume of the evening was a real retro Pac Man Ghost.

2010 Indiana Brewer's Cup

This year's Indiana Brewer's Cup awards brought yet another shock.  My Oktoberfest, calle Marzen Dotes and Dozy Dotes too 1st place in its catagory.  Even though my "year of fame" for winning Best of Show last year has drawn to a close.  I can rest comfortably in knowing that as long as I keep brewing new styles of beer, I will always have a chance to place in this competition.
This year's ribbon winner, like the last two year's winners were all first time batches.  I guess its all just beginner's luck.  So now the question arrises, what to do for next year?

Tapping of Susie's Sweet Stout at the Half Moon

Thursday, May 20th was the tapping of the award winning Susie's Sweet Stout at the Half Moon restaurant & Brewery.  It was the featured beer of the evening and was paired up with a dinner designed to go with it by chef John Comancho. 
He chose Galumpkis, a traditional Polish dish of stuffed cabbage rolls, Au Gratin potatos & green beans.  Then to top off the meal, a piece of their decadent Chocolate Porter Cake that matched perfectly with the stout.  It was all very good!
The Half Moon sent out a very flattering Email to their Mug Club members announcing the event. 
It read;
Suzie's Sweet Stout
Suzie's Sweet Stout is an oatmeal/milk stout created by Howard County Homebrewer Larry Barnhart. It won Best In Show at the Indiana State Fair Brewer's Cup Homebrew Competition. We had Larry come in and brew his recipe at our brewery to show our appreciation and support for the local craft beer/homebrew culture. We are celebrating American Craft Beer Week this week, with the release of this delicious craft beer collaboration from Half Moon brewer John Templet and homebrewer extraordinaire Larry Barnhart.
We started to gather friends and put the booth to the test as we attempted to see how many people it could hold.  We maxed it out at nine, but throughout the evening we had a total of 11 people in it.  Those in attendance at our booth were;
Nancy, Lee, Jim & Connie, Mike, Joe, Jon, Ken & Mary Ann.
The Howard County Homebrew Club was well represented too, but had to fill another table.
Jeff & Jean, Brent & Tammy, Matt & Andrew were all spotted there.
Others seen that evening were Yves & Chris, Fran & Mike, Blake, Gary & Babs.
Thanks to everyone who came out to help celebrate the final weeks of my one year of fame as state champion homebrewer.

For a glimpse into the making of this beer, Erik Markov has posted a video of the brew day on the Howard County Homebrew Club website.  http://www.hchomebrew.com/

A Most Amazing Evening

Susie & I got to have one of the most exciting nights we've ever had.  Thanks to the generosity of Caroline and Howard Kaufman, we were given access to the inner sanctum of the Verizon Music Center on the night of Jimmy Buffett's concert.

Caroline is a daughter of Nancy, our good friend and neighbor.  She is married to the man who has HK Productions and represents an amazing number of some of the most famous names in music.

We arrived several hours early to enjoy the festivities that take place in the parking lot of every Buffett concert.  Apparently the bean bag tossing game called corn hole has become the official sport of parrotheads.  A very slight sprinkle began to fall, but did nothing to dampen the spirits of the crowd.

At 6:30, we met Nancy inside the main gate and she ushered us inside the very well protected backstage area. We were greeted there by Caroline who gave us a quick tour of the patio party area and into the dressing rooms.   We were instructed that while in the hallway we were to be very quiet as Mr. Buffett likes to have it quiet while he prepares for the show.  He also likes to ride his Lemond Spinning bike that we got a glimpse of as we passed his room.

Caroline took us to Howard's room where we received a warm greeting and offered anything we wanted to eat from the tables or drinks that the personal attendent would get for us.  After a few nervous minutes, I finally got up to get some snow crab claws that were excellent and ordered a margarita.  Susie had a glass of wine that apparently was VERY expensive!

Caroline then gave us a tour of the backstage area, where we could see the stagehands preparing everything on stage before we went out to our seats in the 4th row center of the stage.  She told us she would come back for us at intermission.

The concert was fantastic as usual, and its nice to know that the "elite" that sit in the pavillion seats don't behave any differently than the "lawn" people.  Just before the break, Caroline appeared and took us behind stage again and lead us to an off-stage area where we could see the band from stage level.  Her sister-in-law took some pictures of us with the band behind us.

It was back to the dressing room where, being a bit more at ease, we had some gourmet hotdogs and another margarita.  We were also given a bag of concert gear that including a personalized autographed shirt from Jimmy.  We then went back to the seats as the show began again and watched the rest of the concert. 

 

It was a most amazing experience.  We are "lawn" people at heart and not used to this kind of royal treatment.  Not just sitting right up to the stage, but being able to see the inner workings of of a concert like this was unbelievably cool.  Truely an experience of a lifetime!

2010 National Homebrew Competition

The first round of the 2010 NHC is over, and much to my surprise, my Dr. Pavlov's Salivator took 1st place in the bock catagory.  It was first among 15 other entries, and scored a 37 out of 50 possible points.  This makes it eligible to move on the the national finals in Minneapolis in June.
The winner there is crowned Homebrewer of the Year.
For the complete listing of the first round winners from the Great Lakes region copy and paste the address below in your web browser.
http://www.homebrewersassociation.org/attachments/0000/4168/Great_Lakes_2010_First_Round_Winners_For_Web.pdf

Susie's Sweet Stout Double Brew

In getting ready to finish up my 1 year of fame, I brewed up the double batch of Susie's Sweet Stout.  This is the 2 kegs worth of 2009's Best of Show that will be the featured beer at the 2010 Indiana Brewer's Cup award dinner.

I've never done two brews in one day before, so this was something new for me.  My equipment is set up to do single 5 gallon batches of beer.  But because I'm using the yeast built up from a batch of Thistle Dew Scottish ale I made last week, I had to get both batches done in relatively short order.

I took detailed notes in the brewing of the Thistle Dew.  Things like how long does it take to heat 4 gallons of water to 170 degrees, and how long does it take to drain 6 1/2 gallons of sweet wort from the mash tun.  I was then able to put together a time line of when to start the second batch while still working the first without ending up with two critical events happening simultaniously.

I sent out an invitation to the Howard County Homebrew Club to join in on the event.  4 members came by to share the day.  Jeff G. was first to arrive with a couple of his own beers.  Eric M. began his Homebrew Tour as he is looking to document the different methods of brewing the members of the club uses.  Jon S., who donated the use of some of his equipment to help out in the heating of muliple pots of water, stopped by to have a beer.  Matt D. drove up and unloaded his brewing equipment to do up a batch of his own beer.  He also brought a keg of beer to share as well.

Then the non-brewers began to show up.  5 other friends & neighbors came over to enjoy the beautiful spring day, and have some wonderful homebrew and brats that were grilled by Jeff in the back yard.
Eric filmed the process throughout the day, and everything went quite smoothly with onle one minor spill that he caught on tape as the transfer hose of the first batch went astray spraying beer all over the floor of the kitchen.  Eric showed signs of a mild panic like he'd never seen anything like this before, which he hadn't.  I kept my cool, having seen this kind of thing before and got it quickly under control and began the clean-up.
The transfer of batch #2 went much smoother and with the insertion of the airlock, my brewing was done.  Now all that was left was the clean-up.  Interestingly enough, it was also about the time everyone decided it was time to leave too.  It was a good day, and though I don't think I'll be doing another double brew anytime soon, I enjoyed the company for my Big Brew Day.

Barnhart Barista & Group Therapy WIns Best of Kokomo

In an intense, concentrated effort to take on all the coffee shops in Kokomo, the BBaGT mounted an voting blitz for the Best Coffee Shop in Kokomo.  In the Kokomo Tribune's annual Best of Kokomo awards for 2009, Larry & Susie gathered the forces of the coffee group, bicycle club, homebrew club and anyone else they could think of to vote the Barnhart Barista & Group Therapy  Kokomo's best.
The Tribune switched the voting to an on-line format this year from the old fill out the form & mail it in.  This made voting much easier, and allowed out-of-towners to vote as well.  We had votes coming in from Fort Wayne, Indianapolis and even Wisconsin and Michigan.
We were up against some pretty stiff competition.  The perenial winner Starbucks had been entered twice as two different locations.  And the Coffee Junkeez is everywhere you look in Kokomo.  But we were not to be denied.
After being announced the winner, we found out that we were quite the topic of conversation at the Tribune.  There was a lot of speculation as to who we were, with the most popular guess being a group of doctors who gather for coffee somewhere.
We would like to thank everyone who voted for us, and who contributed to the ad for the plaque.