Wingnut Brewing

For all you fans of the original logo, hold onto those bottles, because they might be worth something on Antiques Road Show some day. That’s right, we’ve got a new logo – something that brings us into the 21st Century!!

Major thanks to Terry Keenan and Keenan Creative Forces for the great work.

And yes, that means we may just have swag available some time soon.

The idea for our 2020 Christmas Beer came as we were bottling last year’s Coquito Porter. After celebrating the Puerto Rican heritage of Phil’s wife Mindy with the 2019 bottle we decided that a Russian Imperial Stout to celebrate Jake’s family heritage would be appropriate.

Unlike Papa Noel, there is no traditional St. Nick character in Russian culture. When the Soviets banished religious holidays and festivals the celebration of the new year became the greatest celebration of the year. And for the centerpiece of that celebration they adopted the character of Ded Moroz (pronounced “DZED more-OSS”), or Father Frost as it is translated. It was decided that he would be the namesake of our 2020 brew.

With a new brewing system installed for 2020 we wanted to do a test batch of the beer to see if we wanted to tweak anything for the holiday release, so on Mother’s Day we got together for some socially distanced brewing and made a batch of “Mutha Russia” in honor of the day. We couldn’t have been happier with how it came out and got raves from those who tasted it, so we set about making a double batch for bottling (you can find the brew story here).

We hope you love this beer as much as we do. It’s been a long, difficult year. At 9.7% ABV hopefully Ded Moroz will guide us to a happy and health 2021, and maybe help us forget parts of 2020.

On Mother’s Day 2020 we brewed a Russian Imperial Stout in the new brew pot system in Phil’s garage hoping it would work for this year’s holiday brew. It came out great! And now that we had a 20 gallon brewing system we knew we could make a double batch for even more beer to give to friends (and drink ourselves, of course).

So Phil set about doing the work to figure out what was required for a double recipe and in mid-September we got together for a day of brewing.

We soon learned that we started from the wrong end of things, which was the idea that we’d have about 11 gallons of brew for the fermenters, which would be no problem for a 20 gallon system. Then we looked at the grain bill and quickly realized that there was no way we would be able to get all that in the pot with the necessary water. It was decided that we’d divide the batch in half and do a pair of mashes and then combine the results for the boil.

The first batch seemed to contain most or all of the darker malts, so it was as dark as Jake’s soul. The second batch looked more like a dark amber ale.

Thankfully when combined they came together as expected, and in the end all of our measurements matched almost exactly with our test batch. We credit our new brewery mascot and the fact that we didn’t start drinking until we got to the boil stage when we celebrated with last year’s holiday brew, because it takes beer to make beer.

Christmas in Phil’s house isn’t Christmas until the first batch of Mindy’s Coquito is made. Coquito is a traditional Puerto Rican Christmas drink that can best be described as a coconut eggnog with an extra rum kick. After having made a “Sasquatch” version of our Mindy Porter using oak chips soaked in Social Still’s Sasquatch Bourbon we decided we would try aging it on chips soaked in coconut rum to see if it worked. It did – and the base of our Coquito Porter was born.

It was decided that we’d use a touch of lactose in the final brew, which turned out to be the last one we did in the old kitchen homebrew set-up. Everything came out perfectly and all we had to do was wait to bottle.

And we waited.

Almost too long.

When it finally got bottled we realized we only had a week to get it labeled and out to our friends and family. Jake went home and hit Photoshop to come up with a Puerto Rican themed design and Descanso de Papa Noel (“Santa’s Rest”) was christened.

UPDATE: When brewing the 2020 holiday beer in September we opened a bottle of this and it still drinks great. So if you haven’t opened yours yet, DO IT!!

A classic Dunkel (dark) Lager was chosen for the first official Wingnut Brewing release. Something simple that will appeal to most people who say they drink beer when they really mean they drink Anheiser-Busch products.

For the label we found a classic Christmas illustration that shows either the world’s smallest Santa or a collection of particularly huge house pets.

We all start somewhere.