So I guess I’d better make this week a brewery themed question (although I do have another i-pod based question for next week!)

On my recent Thanksgiving trip out of town I had the pleasure of visiting a museum that had a nice display about the city’s brewing heritage. The city in question had 2 significant breweries (now sadly no longer with us) one of which began brewing in the late 1800s and the other that began brewing in the early 1900s. One of those breweries had reason to change its name on a number of occasions (including during Prohibition) but returned to the original brewery name or re-introduced its original brands name until its demise. What I want to know is, what was the original name of the brewery, where was it located and why did it change its name?

Please take note : This week please e-mail answers to me at steve.oliverale@gmail.com  , one attempt per person please, judge’s decision is final. Just to make a change all correct answers will be entered into a random draw. I’ve got to admit, I haven’t got a clue what the prize will be yet but I’m sure it will involve drinking beer!

The new yeast is working nicely. Tuesday’s Blonde Ale is down to 1.016 and Wednesday’s Best Bitter is at 1.028. Yeast from the Blonde was used to pitch yesterday’s Irish Red (OG 1.058) which is down to 1.034 overnight. Today Justin is brewing an Ironman so our 7 barrel fermentation room will be full. It smells wonderful in there, with all of those volatiles coming off the open fermentations. I’m going to put the 3 Lions off until Monday as I want to make sure that we’ve got a really good pitch volume ready for it. It’s getting cold in the brewery so if the brew is under-pitched we’ll end up getting a long lag phase as the wort will cool excessively overnight slowing the yeast down even more. This is even more important for the 3 Lions due to it’s high starting gravity (1.075). If it doesn’t get off to a good start we’ll be in for a long and troublesome fermentation. Coincidentally, that frees up my Sunday for a trip to the Dogfish/Sierra Life & Limb brunch at Pizzeria Paradiso in D.C. Result! (Honestly, it was coincidence).

Next week will also see the Scottish Ale brew day. I’m going for a slightly bigger beer this year, around the 1.070 mark but obviously to get that malt sweetness you’d expect from the style we’ll be finishing at around 1.020 (and yes, I know that even that may be considered too low! ). The malt grist consists of English Optic Malt, Dark Crystal, Roasted Barley, a touch of Smoked and Peated malts and wheat. Hops will be Challenger and Kent Goldings. Also in the next couple of weeks I’ll be brewing a new Stout, probably around the 8% abv mark with cacao nibs in the fermentation, something big and bold to get us through a cold January!