Drink Craft Beer Collaboration
Beer? You love it. Coffee? Imperative. Brunch? A perfect excuse to drink before noon without feeling like Charles Bukowski. Notch has combined all three in the first ever collaboration beer with Drink Craft Beer! The guys from Drink Craft Beer (Jeff and Devon) were having a few pints with me and asked if I’d be [...]
Black Bitter – cask only series #3
The cask only series returns with Notch Black Bitter. Black Bitter? Yes, Black Bitter. It’s an odd (we love odd), yet intriguing little beer from Notch, born of my long desire to make a hoppy mild. But Black Bitter was a better reflection of the recipe, and it has a cool alliteration. Other than that, [...]
The Bitter Truth – #2 in the cask series
Not everything falls into place every time. Notch Bitter was one of those experiences. So rather than writing an informational post with a few ramblings that ends with something innocuous, here’s the hard reality of brewing in too many places with too many variables and not enough time, resources or money. After a summer vacation, [...]
Name the casks.
And the winners are… This is only the first 12, and the remaining 8 will be shown at the next cask filling. It’s a long story, and I’ll tell it when I release the next Notch cask beer series in about 3 weeks. Writing on a cone shape in a circle pattern proved harder than [...]
Notch Cask Series – #1: Dark Mild
May kicks off Notch’s cask only series, where a one-off batch is brewed for cask only. May is also CAMRA’s Mild Month, and while this is a British thing, Notch will be participating stateside by releasing the Notch Dark Mild. This is something I’ve wanted to brew for a while, but would never release in [...]
Hop Session and the Dustbin of History
When we sold Tremont Ale, I didn’t hang onto much memorabilia. I try to live lean, and packing away a bunch of crap for nostalgia value was not on my mind at the time. Most items were sent to the dustbin. However, I did keep two medals from the 1997 Chicago Real Ale Festival, and their place on a [...]