Randall Jr for the Homebrewer

When you homebrew, you end up with a lot of great beer. What you do with that beer depends upon how many beer-drinking friends you have and time to share it with them. One solution is to bottle and give away your beer or cellar what you do not personally consume. But once you have experienced the joys of kegging, all those hours of recapturing, storing and sanitizing 12 or 22 ounce bottles seem so needless.

Drinking a maibock is great. It is a beer style you do not find at every nano, or packing the shelves at Total Wine. But five gallons of maibock is a lot of beer to drink. And it can become tedious, not in the physical sense of pouring and raising the pints, but in having SO MUCH of one style around for so long.

When I go out for beer, or buy beer at the bottle shops, I get a taster tray, or buy one bottle of many different kinds of beer. I am a variety guy, so in a sense homebrewing is a hobby that is kind of overkill for me. I believe I have stumbled on a solution though. It is the Randall Jr sold by Dogfish Head Brewing out of Milton, Delaware.

Dogfish Head owner Sam Calagione, has made his niche among the craft beer elite as an innovator, creator of strange brews, off-centered as he describes it. This is taking a familiar style and tweaking it; making it hoppier, less hoppy, adding adjuncts to perk up your senses and expand your sensations.

I have seen randalls on tap lines at commercial brewpubs and taphouses for several years. I just could not see spending nearly $400 for an inline system for my set up not to mention the logistics involved. So I started looking for a randall that a homebrewer might find more practical. Surprise, surprise (or maybe no surprise at all) the Dogfish Head website has a Randall Jr for sale. This lets you pop in a few tasty ingredients into a 16 ounce container and basically customize a pint of your favorite homebrew - one glass at a time.

So far I have altered my My Bark (maibock) with stuff out of our home garden:

a) blackberries and mint,

b) lemon balm,

c) blueberries, raspberries and extra hops.

I have altered my HNB (honey nut brown) with:

a) apples and cinnamon

b) lavender

c) cascade hop cones I had in my freezer.

My daughter, the chef, stopped by and I showed her what I was up to. She gave me a dozen or so possible combinations of ingredients to try out.I have a feeling I am going to be going through these kegs in no time. Now I am thinking about what to make for my next homebrew in terms of what I can do with it post-carbonation. If you make something awful, toss it. You are not tossing out very much of your great beer.

When my wife saw what I was up to, she looked at the Randall Jr and said, "It's a tea strainer. I just got one at a garage sale for $1.00. I gave it to a gal at work." Then she proceeded to show me the French Press that has been collecting dust in the upper cupboard for years. It has a 36 ounce capacity for those creations I make that I really like.

I am a kid again. It is great.