My grandfather was a pretty remarkable guy, and two things that made him remarkable were his focus on family and his tightfisted budgeting. Despite earning the paltry pay of a school-teacher, he managed to scrape together enough savings to take his family on vacation 14 times. When I say family I mean all the immediate extensions: his 4 children, their siblings, his grandchildren, even his great-grandchildren--a group which has grown to number 33 individuals, and who live in places all over the western coast. And when I say vacations I mean trips ranging from in-state jaunts to international expeditions--Hawaii to Costa Rica to Africa. In fact, he had such a masterful handle on money that he managed to set up a fund that lived beyond him--he passed away more than half a decade ago, and his fund has taken us on three trips since then.
Alas, despite the man's masterful money-managing, all things must come to an end. With enough in the bank to fund one last trip, we gathered this summer in Tahoe for the final hurrah. Looking for a way to show my gratitude to my grandfather, and my reverence for his memory, I decided to brew a batch of the beer I named after him, to use it for a toast.
Some ideas, no matter how inspired they sound, can become challenging to carry out. This toast turned out to be one of those ideas. Following is an abbreviated timeline of the events that culminated in the planned toast.
EARLY MARCH, 2012 - Details released regarding final reunion.
MARCH 12 - A batch of Fenton Smith's Sparring Spud Stout is brewed.
MARCH 20 - Transferred to secondary.
APRIL 16 - Bottled.
MAY 7 - Tastings of batch begin.
JUNE 4 - Selected bottles put in the fridge for cold-lagering. (Perhaps not a typical procedure for ales, but I think a few weeks in the fridge helps the yeast to settle out--doesn't matter too much for stouts, but I attribute the clarity of my other beers to this).
JUNE 21 - Bottles packed in the cooler and iced, along with several dozen bottles of my American Summer Wheat Ale (a modification on my Witch's Wheat recipe, which I've been meaning to post here but haven't ever gotten around to doing).
JUNE 22 - Drive from the Parkside in San Francisco to Squaw Valley in Tahoe. Initial plans to toast on this starting night of the reunion are foiled because of delayed arrival of certain family members. By the time they show up, other family members (those having young children) have already gone to bed.
JUNE 23 - Plans to toast on the second day of the reunion never materialize because we never get all 33 people together in the same room at the same time until dinner, and the place we eat won't allow outside drinks. By this point I start to realize that gathering my family is like herding cats.
JUNE 24, morning - Seeing an opportunity for a captive audience, I decide to bring the beers on a boat we've hired for a tour of the lake. Toasting on a boat offers special significance, too, because my grandfather was an officer in the Navy. So the beers are loaded into a car and driven to the south side of the lake (over an hour away from Squaw Valley, and across state lines into Nevada). But when we get to the dock, the boat captain won't allow us to bring the beers aboard. Anti-homebrew prejudice?
JUNE 24, afternoon - Only one chance remains for the toast: a barbecue in Tahoe City. So I pack the beers into a car again and bring them along. By this point the beers have traveled more than 300 miles by car, experienced an elevation change of more than 6200 feet (from sea level to Tahoe level), and they're sloshing around in the cooler because the ice has mostly melted.
JUNE 24, app. 5:30 pm - Unfortunately, when we get to the site of the barbecue there's a concert going on, with several hundred people and dozens of local police. Can the toast be made in such circumstances? How will the police react? I start pondering potential outcomes.
JUNE 24, app. 5:32 pm - Fuck it. I start popping tops and pouring glasses. My girlfriend gathers the drinking-age family members around and makes sure they've got a Fenton Smith Stout in hand.
JUNE 24, app. 5:35 pm - Slainte!
