I have come into Bailey’s after a few weeks away–happy holidays everyone!–and nothing stood out until I saw Caldera‘s Oatmeal Stout.
I am jealous of this beer. I shouldn’t be, because I am not a professional brewer and I do not have the same kind of expertise or equipment. But that jealousy exists, a dense little voice that is shaking tiny fists at the brewing gods.
The stout has a dense nose, like a cappuccino bean covered in chocolate and the oatmeal offers this beer a nice smoothness on my palate. It’s tasty and wonderful and….
And I made a stout that was not as good.
I’ll talk about that more in a few days but what it will boil down to is that I have come very, very close and missed the mark. Caldera’s beer? Dead on.
Now, after a year of improvement in my brewing it is a little frustrating to miss the mark. Especially to miss it by such a small (but critical) detail.
However we celebrate the new year for a reason; to demarcate transitions, improvements, failures, to give ourselves an opportunity to amend what was broken, hold up trophies for what was good and say goodbye to the rest.
I hope everyone had a happy new year.
