Desert Penguin Origins

A penguin was driving through the desert...

In June of 2005, Paul and I went with a big group of friends from work to brew some home brew at Flying Barrel in Frederick MD. They have a brew on premise option where you pick a recipe, use their equipment to brew 5 gallons of beer, let it ferment in Frederick, then go back two weeks later to bottle. Paul and I teamed up to brew a red ale similar to Killian's Irish Red.

Paul bought some label paper and we designed a label for our first home brew collaboration. We picked the name "Desert Penguin" based on the very funny joke about a Penguin trying to beat the desert heat in a grocery store while his car was being fixed by a local mechanic.

In 2006, Paul also went to Flying Barrel with his mom and made a Belgian white. At some point, Amy had taken her dad to Flying Barrel and made a fairly good milk stout. In general, our brews didn't turn out too badly, but they clearly weren't world class craft home brews.  :)

We haven't brewed beer for years, but we've spent that time tasting and enjoying some pretty fine beer. Paul started listening to the BeerSmith podcast with no intent to get back into brewing, just for general beer knowledge and enjoyment. But, one podcast talked about small 1 gallon batches and the spark was lit! The one gallon batches are much more manageable for an in home brew setup and allows you to experiment with more recipes without having to drink 2 cases of less than ideal home brew.

So, we decided to get back into it on an easy, small-batch scale. We feel like we have the knowledge about good beers and what we like to aide us in setting tastier targets for our brewing. We'll be shooting much higher than Killian's!

Prost!
-Amy