Counting Down the Holidays With Beer... (and Mead and Booze!)
Advent Calendar 2024
For the last few years, our South Bay neighbors from the Long Beach Homebrewers have been running a homebrew Advent Calendar with boxes of shared beer sent out to their participants. Thinking "that sounds like a great idea!" we decided to try our own hand at it for the first time this year!
The idea is pretty simple - bottle a case of your finest product and get back a mixed case.They don't need to be holiday themed (and in fact the overwhelming majority of our entries were not!)
Each day from December 1st to the 24th gets the same bottle and we all have fun trying them out! I prepped the calendar to give some sense of order and planning. Simple things like - trying not to put high octane beverages on a school night, making little theme runs, etc.
Cullen prepared a fun variant of his Hashiell artwork (see Tiffany's photo above) for a glass that Tiffany made sure each participant got. (see all the photos below) She also made sure we had gift wrapped boxes for all of our beer participants.
22 participants added 24 beverages to the box Thanks to Roger Taylor and Rives Borland for filling in 2 missing slots that happened late in the game. Thanks to Ilan for holding an impromptu late bottling day to demonstrate that it's never too late to share beer for the box! (Special thanks to the boxing crew of Bob and Karen Dexter, Jenna Bonney, Tiffany Ashrafi and Drew)
It's always fun to have an excuse to brew and show off your wares! And we encouraged anonymous feedback. On the whole, it felt like we pulled off a pretty good flight of beers!
- First Place - Roger Taylor and his Pomegranate Mead. (go figure!)
- Second Place - Adrian Febre's Smoked Session Mild
- Third Place - Sean Johnson and his Sour Santa Berliner Weisse
- Honorable Mention - My Persimmon Pudding Cordial
Thank you to everyone who provided feedback - Scot Beidelman (24 scores), Drew (23), Adrian (22), Phil (18) and Ryan Griswold (17).
We'll be bringing this back for 2025, so prepare yourselves!
Also, in the spirit of the holidays - we asked everyone for a song to enjoy while enjoying their drink! It was assembled as a YouTube playlist!
The Beverages
All photos from the grounds of Casa Verde.
December 1st - Roger Taylor - Apple Pie Cyser
December 2nd - Ryan Griswold - Wet Hopped West Coast Pale Ale
December 3rd - Scot Beidelman - Belgian Session Hazy IPA
December 4th - Rives Borland (Project Barley) - 7th Inning Stretch Brown
December 5th - Jamie Crawford - Christmas Wit
December 6th - Masa Kitano - Hazy Sh*t IPA
December 7th - Rick Morales - Belgian Dark Strong
December 8th - Rives Borland (Project Barley) - "Double the Trouble" English Rye Stout
December 9th - Adrian Febre - Session Smoked Porter
December 10th - Jeff Mathiowetz - Smoked Helles
December 11th - Kathy & Matt Fairbrother - Cascading Pumpkin Ale
December 12th - Bob Dexter - Saison Ete
December 13th - John Aitchison - GSM Pyment
December 14th - Robb Stewart - MishMash Brown
December 15th - Sam Probst - Sour Fruited Cobbler Braggot
December 16th - Phil Giovanelli - California Common
December 17th - Geoff Robertson - Chocolate Porter
December 18th - Ilan Grossberg - Dortmund Adambier
December 19th - Sean Johnson - Sour Santa Berliner Weiss
December 20th - Roger Taylor - Pomegranate Mead
December 21st - Tiffany Ashrafi - Cyrus the Great Persian Ice Cream Golden
December 22nd - Daniel Stahl - Maple and Smoked Honey Mead
December 23rd - Scott Donahue - "Not Janet's" Brown Ale
