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BUZZ Member Profiles

Joe Lynn

1. Where do you live?
Downingtown, PA

2. What is your "brewery" name? 
I never got that creative.

3. Year you started brewing
1991 (or somewhere thereabouts... when you get to be my age the years run together).

4. Are you BJCP certified? 
Yes, Certified ('cause I'm too damn lazy to study for the retake of the test & raise my score. What ever happened to that proposal to substitute experience points for book-learnin' anyway)?

5. Favorite, most knowledgeable styles 
Stout, 'cause it's dark, bitter, lip-smackin' good & ready to go in less than 2 weeks. Having done extensive research drinking Guinness, Murphy and Beamish. I felt I was well-prepared to start brewing this. I make a batch every year, but never exactly the same recipe.

6. Most Interesting Batch Made 
Probably my Cranberry Lambic: This was inspired by the Samuel Adams Cranberry Lambic, which was definitely NOT a lambic by any stretch of the imagination. I decided to try to do it right, in the quest for a beer so sour it would make your throat pucker. It sat in primary for about 10 months, then I dumped in 6 lbs. of whole, fresh cranberries & let it sit for another year before bottling. (No I never racked to secondary, that would have wasted all that white fuzz growing on top).

7. Greatest Brewing Moment 
Having the first glass of the dry stout I brew each winter, wondering why I don't just make it year-round.

8. Worst Brewing Moment 
This just happened in January 2005. I always brew 2 batches at the same time, staggering them slightly: Dough in one mash, then dough in the second, etc. This leaves quite a lot of clean-up since I have two dirty mash tuns, two kettles, two buckets I ground grain it, etc. I brewed a Classic American Pilsner & a Dry Stout (my second of the season). The CAP was already in the fermenter & I started siphoning the Stout from the brew kettle into a second carboy. I decided to get a jump on the cleanup & went to the garage. I disconnected the propane tanks from the burners, gathered the buckets & hot liquor tanks, etc. After about 5 minutes, I walked back into the house to find that my siphon hose had "jumped" out of the carboy & was now dangling in mid-air, spewing that precious black liquid onto the floor of the laundry room. I grabbed it and put it back into the carboy. Just then my daughter yelled up from the basement , "Dad, the pipes are leaking down here." The wort had found it's way down the supply pipes from the laundry room and was raining into the basement, soaking the carpet & anything else in its path. Needless to say, my usual cleanup was extra-long that day. But the worst part was that I lost about 1.5 gallons of potentially award-winning stout :-(

9. Words to live by 
"Live life, don't just live by other's pithy sayings." - J. Lynn (Jan 2005)

10. Something "non-brewing" 
Other hobbies/interests include:
- Driving/fixing/restoring my 1959 Triumph TR3.
- My on-again, off-again attempt to teach myself to play the uilleann pipes (currently off-again).
- Working on my family genealogy (currently on-again).
- Training my dogs in obedience: Shannon ( Bearded Collie who used to be well trained before she went deaf & stopped listening to everything except clapping hands), Riley, (Golden Retriever who is not very well trained at all, but is cute and lovable and gets away with it because he seems so much better than:) Elle (Australian Cattle Dog/Border Collie mix, pure unadulterated evil, the Devil's spawn, living proof that perpetual motion is indeed possible).