Let's get Topical, Topical...I wanna get Topicaaaaal!

Brewmaster Marshall and I consider ourselves men about town... Sure, we're busy bees with all the normal goings on but we're nothing if we don't keep up with pop culture. Whether we're attending super fly dj parties in Billyburg or getting in touch with the 'normals' at the Jimmy V basketball classic at MSG, we're dope mother f-ers. That's why I keep my finger on the pulse of the city...you know, make sure it feels ok, send it funny text messages like "where r u, iz in ur kizchn, eatsin ur pad tie!" or just staring at it longingly through the window with some sweet night vision goggles I picked up on eBay. You know, cause we're cool and junk.

And everyone in the know makes sure to check their NYAM Bits O' Buzz column cause that's where the hottest of the hot get their info. Needless to say, I was pretty cheesed off when I saw that Tila Tequila made it back into the headlines but our awesome Poppin' Bottles party didn't get any coverage! Tila's gone from MySpace hottie to boob tube superstar to Shawn Merriman lawsuit maker to virtual obscurity, but she's back and she's gettin hitched. Anyways, we here at the East Village Brewing Company wish her and her new partner-to-be all the best - we're just bitter we got snubbed AGAIN by the free commuter news dailies. The good news however is that EVBC breaks open its first batch of Stuy Town Nut Brown this evening, 8pm at EVBC HQ!! Even if it's not news that's fit to print, its surely worth blogging about!

Nearly as exciting? I think B.M. and I will be entering this Saturday's 'Best Dance Crew' open calls and we need a few pop-n-lockers to help round out the team. I can do a pretty sick head spin, and I was an underprivileged youth who found that through dancing I could save my embattled community center from the sinister grasp of some local business developers. Marshall can literally do two flips in the air from the second position while wearing his sweet Air Force Ones that he scammed off the back of a truck. We'll probably need a couple sassy ladies and at least one break dancing Asian dude to pull this off. Jinwoo, looking in your direction buddy...

So come one, come all - EVBC Poppin Bottles Party/Dance Crew Tryouts, Tonight at 8pm!

Congress declares B-Day 2009 National Holiday, Brewmaster Eric immediately puts on gym shorts and opens beer

“What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly.” Richard Bach

EVBC faithful, yea, though we brew through the valley of the shadow of over-priming, I will fear no yeast, for my Tastemasters are with me. My secondary fermenter and fermtech autosiphon, they comfort you.

FINALLY! As foretold by the prophecies (read: previous blog posts), B-day is upon us. Now, per the countless throngs of brew-thirsty brew-menites who have asked if Brewmasters Marshall and Eric will be bringing their post-apocalyptic suds to various Halloween shindigs this upcoming weekend, the Brewmasters sadly must deny your prayers. Not for lack of care, friends, nay...but for lack of beer! Today darlings is indeed Brewmaggedon - the destruction of various malts, hops and potentially digital cameras should Brewmaster Eric get too close to the wort, but one must take a larger view. The Brewmaster knows that once the process is begun...iiiiiit'll actually be about six weeks before you loyal Tastemasters get any beer...but soon you will learn to stop worrying and love the brew!

Hear me out on this before you rush off to the package store, screaming "Betrayal! A pox on your mash tun!", remember that we're in this together my friends! Along the way you'll be rewarded for follow-ship with membership in the brew-minati, physical wealth (I'm quite close to having buttons all made up) and of course, first crack at the Stuy Town Brown Ale in just a few short weeks. Remember why this journey began...Brewmaggon is the casting off of the mass brew shackles!

We brew-thusiasts can no longer sit back and allow mass brew infiltration, mass brew indoctrination, mass brew subversion and the international mass brew conspiracy to sap and impurity all of our precious bodily fluids. Maybe it's the buckets and buckets of Stuytown-puddle-collected rain water talking here, but I think this first batch might be the best batch of beer ever. B.M. and I have planned to meet in a few short minutes to set up shop, get a delicious egg sandwich, then begin some good ol' fashioned morning drinking while getting the first run of EVBC's Stuy Town Brown Ale started! Rejoice!

Beginnings

"A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step." Lao Tzu

Indeed, Brewmaster Marshall and I found ourselves on the same page yesterday evening, having both recently flirted with the idea of undertaking a home brewing hobby. Unbeknownst to me until later that same evening, my younger brother, generally concerned with my lack of direction in life and ever the more "together" one of us, had concluded with his fiance that I am in fact well suited for a career in brew-mastery. A well timed "check out this link" message from Brewmaster M (don't call him B.M. for short, he hates that) sparked a fervent discussion amongst us newly minted brew-thusiasts and off we went!

Thus began the great journey of the East Village Brewing Company!

In auspicious times such as these, I am quite prone to over-indulgence...hence the "let's buy a keg bottling system" conversation. But I'm reminded of some ageless nuggets of wisdom that teach us all that even the grandest journeys start small...Lao Tzu's timeless contribution above, albeit oft-overquoted, can once again signpost the start of our trip down brewery lane. In order to punch up the post, I even googled some other "beginnings" quotes to make myself sound smarter. Here are some winners:

"There are two mistakes one can make along the road to truth...not going all the way, and not starting." Buddha, although this sounds more like something I would've tried to use on Philosophy majors my Sophomore year of college to try and score.

"Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end." Seneca, but this was actually more disappointing than uplifting when it hit me that Semisonic tricked me into learning Roman history when I was just trying to rock. Clever bastards.

"What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. Then end is where we start from." T.S. Elliot, although unless you're high as a kite this really doesn't make any sense. All the homebrew in the world can't fix this debacle.

I suppose for all my faux-intellectual ranting, the real challenge of this journey will be not so much discerning the meaning of beginnings, but in pushing myself to follow-through to the end. So often I find myself discussing some "great idea" with my friends but usually life ends up in the way and I get drunk and move on, looking for some other hobby to help pass the time. The simple logic that home brewing bestows upon its devotees is that in the end, if you follow-through you get drunk anyways. Finally - the kind of hobby I can get behind! B.M. and I will be setting down to purchase our home brewing kit this evening, I've even set aside some space in my room to set up the gear. We've taken the single step - now its time to go all the way. And hell, if nothing else, it sure beats stamp collecting.

Destiny

I asked Eric today if he wanted to start brewing beer with me in one of our apartments, and he said he was just looking up home brewing kits this weekend. We knew it was our destiny from that point on.

We bounced around a few ideas and came up with the idea of East Village Brewing Company or EVBC. We might get tattoos of this tomorrow, schedule depending.

But before we get the slick, matching tattoos, we're going to need to get a home brewing kit. We settled on one from Homebrewers Outpost that will service our needs for the first go at it. There was some debate as to whether we should go whole hog, and buy the kit with the keg and keep it in a kegerator. However, as delicious and tempting as that sounded, rationale prevailed, so we'll start with a small operation.

We'll keep you up to date with the process of our experiences brewing for the first time, and we hope to share our first batch with many of you in the East Village!