12x12 Woodstock Inn Variety Pack

Beers included: Pig's Ear Brown Ale, Lost River, Peachy Wheat Ale and 4000 Footer IPA

Purchase date: 6 September 2025

Purchase price: $16.99

Brewers choice is always fun.

Initial Impressions

Woodstock Inn is the first one of my former accounts to be reviewed in this series. When I worked for Muntons, Woodstock Inn was a steady, if not particularly huge customer. They'd buy a pallet of torrefied wheat per month, and specialty malts including 40L Crystal and Chocolate Malt a little less frequently.

I was excited to find this sampler when I was up in New Hampshire for Jamboree. Having the flagship Pig's Ear Brown Ale included also gave me a great commercial beer for my side-by-side with my Long Leash Brown Ale 

Brew Day and Tasting Notes: Long Leash/North Shore Brewers 2025 Q3 British Brown Ale

When British Brown Ale was drawn as the style for our club's quarterly style and in-club competition, this was an opportunity for another Hombrew Con 2022 rebrew. Whereas Maximillian Lager was brewed for the Muntons booth in the exhibition hall, Long Leash was brewed for my seminar on English Ales. 

Long Leash was one of four batches I brewed for my talk. A new recipe at the time, I developed it to demonstrate my beliefs in recipe development for English ales. A well-crafted English ale should be a base-malt driven beer. Even my English Porter recipe is 87% base malt.

To test my theory I took the porter recipe, replacde the Chocolate Malt with Brown Malt, replaced Wheat Malt with Crystal malt, and replaced the small amount of Extra Dark Crystal in the porter with Chocolate Malt in the brown ale.

12x12 Paulaner Oktoberfest Marzen

Beers Included:  Paulaner Oktoberfest Marzen

Purchase Date: 10 October 2025

Purchase Price: $16.99

Only way to drink a Marzen

Initial Impressions

Like many Americans, my first exposure to the Oktoberfest, or more accurately the Marzen style of beer was domestic craft-brewed examples such as Samuel Adams. It wasn't until the early 2010s when a store I frequented brought in imported examples that I was able to try the beers that are actually servied at Octoberfest. Paulaner was my first favorite. 

No solutions, only tradeoffs… getting back in shape, again

If there has been one silver lining that came from crashing out of the beer industry, no longer traveling and going back to the 9-5 insurance grind, it’s been being able to fall into a routine and get back in the gym for the first time years. 

Memorial Day Murph, 2025. I’ve made a ton of progress even since then

I’ve been back at the gym pretty regularly for over a year now. I’ve definitely gotten stronger and better conditioned. Pounds and inches have been a bit harder to drop. The past couple of months I’ve made an effort to be even more consistent with my workouts, trying to get 7,000 steps in a day, intermittent fasting, drinking at least 80 ounces of water per day, and yes, drinking less beer.