As you all know I work for Shmaltz Brewing Company repping in lower Manhattan and Queens with parts of Brooklyn too. Well, on Sundays I work at our World's Smallest Brewery down at Coney Island next to the side show. I love spending my Sundays down there. it is so nostalgic and despite its outward appearance, really has a rich culture and heritage to share.
With just starting up this Brewery (one gallon batches at a time) it has been difficult to get a guest brewer down to Coney on Sundays. We always have our Brewers in there on Friday and Saturday. I got to the point where I was getting fed up with sitting at Coney selling Merch and talking about the brewery and the brewing process. Hell, I figured I had a pretty good handle on it, and although I had never tried my hand at whole grain brewing, now was the time. I planned it out to do an IPA and headed down to Coney to check out our Hop situation. In the fridge we did not have the Simcoe hops I was hoping for so I decided it would still go over well if I used Cascade since the two have many similar qualities. We were all set with Amarillo and the grains we needed so we were off! My two friends Anthony and Eric came down to help and hang out (this place has become a popular hang out spot).
We started brewing and measuring and hoping we were doing everything right. Next was to settle on a name for this adventure. We peered around the shop and out into the streets filled with summer vacationers. We wanted to use I. P. A. for something so the ideas were flowing, however they weren't good. Due to our uncertainty about our final product I eventually decided with the approval of the dudes "Coney I.sland P.otentially A.wesome IPA" . Previous to this decision the 'a' was actually for awful, but with a little pep talk with the optimism of Anthony I was able to agree that indeed it would be awesome.
We finished up, pitched the yeast and took some photos. Then into the cooler at a steady temp and hope that there were enough sugars for fermentation to take place. Our OG was 1030 at this point... not too shabby for a first go.
We have a beer brewing fridge in our garage. Our first batch went a-okay. It was a wheat beer so hard to mess up. We just bought stuff to make something my fiance called a mix between a barley wine... and something else. Hope it isn't awful! I'm so JEALOUS that you live in NYC and work at a brewery.
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