"Hans Thomas Ale" - Wedding Beer

This story starts off with a good friend of mine getting married and I thought it would be nice for a wedding gift, to make him a batch of beer based around one of his favorite beers. It's amazing I still thought about doing this, even after he moved down to San Antonio, TX - which is home to one my most hated professional sports teams.....The San Antonio Spurs. I figured this would be "cease-fire" gift and we could forget that fact that he actually lives in that city.

So I asked him what his favorite beer was, to which he responded - Blue Moon, so Rich helped me pick out a Witbier recipe from Northern Brewer and I placed the order. I wanted to take it a step further and come up with a customized label for him based off of Blue Moon's label design and keep it as a surprise until we actually got down to San Antonio, TX the week before the wedding.

With the batch making roughly 50 beers, I also made a limited edition "Swollen Face" edition, based off a picture from when one of the groomsmen (Valdie) got stung by a bee and his face blew up like a blimp. We got a copy of the picture a couple years ago and I'm really glad I hung on to it so I could use it for this special occasion.

"Hans Thomas Ale" on the right; "Swollen Face" Limited Edition on the left

We had a pretty good group around for a mid-week brewing day, and my buddy Nick Davis who's been staying at my place while he's been working in Brookings,  helped out in all 3 stages (brewing, transferring, racking and bottling) so I just wanted to give him a shout out (also gave him some props on bottom right of the label).

Brewing Day (with Nick and Joey)

Bottling Day (with Nick)

Then the week before the wedding came, myself with 2 other groomsmen (Blake and Valdie) decided it was a good idea to take a big road trip and drive down there the Monday prior to the wedding. One thing that did make it somewhat fun on the way down, was that we decided to make scheduled stops along the way in certain cities to break it up, each of us was given 2 cities to plan an activity for and the end of our driving shift. My two cities were Topeka, KS and Forth Worth, TX., however since it was going to be around 4am for my stop in Fort Worth, we moved it up to Thackerville, OK (because there is a large casino there right off the interstate - WinStar).

Road Trip to San Antonio

So for my first stop in Topeka, after several strenuous hours of searching on the internet, I chose to visit the Blind Tiger Brewery, which was the first brewery in the city and is the largest brewery in Kansas.

Interesting story behind the name which I learned from their website:

"The Blind Tiger Brewery was named after the Prohibition-era custom of displaying stuffed tigers to alert patrons to speakeasies or the availability of alcohol."

I wish I would've taken more pictures because this place had plaques all over the walls from winning all sorts of awards at all these different events. So I went with the Top Gun and Tiger Bite IPA - I'm a big IPA/hop kind of guy, and both of these were REALLY good! It was also around supper time so we ordered some food, and we all went with different variations of the smoked rib beef tips (or something like that). These things were sooooo good and I don't know much about beer and food pairings, but it really tasted good with IPA's. I was a little disappointed that the weather didn't cooperate, I was hoping to hang out on their really nice patio area, but the rain prevented that from happening. After talking some college football with the local folk at the bar, it was time to get back on the road and continue the road trip.

Rib-Beef Tips

Top Gun IPA

The only other brewery that we stopped at on the way down was compliments of Mr. Valdie Magstadt. This one was the River Side Brewery in Wichita, KS. My first beer was the Tornado Alley IPA (which was fitting considering the large tsunami that we just drove through), this was a really hoppy beer that I thoroughly enjoyed, then after that I decided to take a break from IPA's and went with the Old Town Brown Ale, and this was nice beer to take me down from all the hoppiness I've been having.

Great quote on the wall

Tornado Alley IPA

We ended up sharing pictures from the storm of the century that we went through and how the interstate closed down with the bartender, and she took my phone around the bar to show this picture to everyone else that was seated around the bar. It should be noted that since this storm, we have now added Kansas to the axis of evil.

That is actually the median overflowing with water from the north bound lanes on the interstate.

Having a beer after going through the Tsunami in the stupid state of Kansas

So we rolled into San Antonio Tuesday morning after a grueling night of driving, didn't even unpack and crashed for about a 5 hour nap.

Finally Arrived....21 hours later

I did show Tony the beer bottle labels once he got back from work and we decided to try one before heading out for the night. I've been really nervous this whole time that the beer would turn out good, there were a lot of people that knew I had made this beer and was bringing it down, so I was just hoping that everyone liked it. We cracked open a bottle and I heard the really good sound of carbonation so that is one concerned I could cross off, then we poured it into a tall glass to pass around, and everyone said that it tasted good and most importantly Meredith* like it!! HUGE RELIEF! (*special shout-out to Meredith for putting up with 10 different people their place and being really cool about it, couldn't have been better).

Over the course of the next couple days as everyone flew in (instead of driving.....cheaters) we kept opening more and I never heard a negative response, I'm not sure if everyone was just being nice and said it was good, but after tasting it myself I was pleased. I wish the orange peels and coriander that was used during the brewing process stood out more, it kind of blended in, but I was still happy with how clear the beer turned out and the overall taste. If you ever end up coming over and having one, it's even on Untappd and you can check-in to it!

Overall I had a great time with friends making the beer, bottling it, transporting it and drinking it, so thank you to everyone involved in any/all steps of the process.

Tony "Hans" Thomas (left) and Valdie "Swollen Face" (right) posing with the limited edition bottle.

Thank you Tony and Meredith for getting married otherwise none of this would have even happened!