A Cold One Dedicated to Our Little One

September 29, 2008

It is a tradition to hand out cigars after the birth of your baby. Why am I not doing this?  I hope this does not take my license to be a man away but I don’t care for cigars. And I really don’t like the bubblegum cigars. The gum is almost as bad as the ones that used to come in packets of football cards. The taste is the same but football card gum broke into shards once you bit into them, damaging card collectors’ mouths hindering their capacity to talk to girls. I do like the fake Hershey bar but it lacks a personal touch. As a substitute for all these things we decided to hand out a homebrew.

What style of beer would we do? We went through a lot of discussion  before we settled on the perfect beer style. We talked about brewing a beer with a vague baby reference (Milk Stout), a beer that ages well (Barley Wine), or one that appeals to the masses (American Wheat). It might have been while I was drinking a Dark Horse Perkulator, one of my favorite beers when it dawned on us a doppelbock. Of course there was only one obvious name to give a doppelbock especially made for this occasion…  Impregnator.

Some of you get it and I’m sure others may need an explation. It is tradition that the name of a doppelbock  style beer end with an ATOR. How did this start? According to the BJCP, the doppebock originated in Munich and was brewed by the monks of St. Francis of Paula and they named it Salvator (savior). The beer was brewed as a substitute for bread during Lent. It became popular once released to the general public and a tradition of ending all doppelbocks with the suffix ATOR soon followed. It either started as a tribute to the original Paulaner Salvator or to capitalize on the popularity of that beer.

The labels for our doppelbock were designed by our soon-to-be Sister-in-Law Kendra Becher. On the front we have Magdalene’s birth weight at the bottom where the volume of a normal beer would be listed. The back label contains the rest of her birth information. Along with a real cool bar code that is shows her actual birth date.

Although this is a limited release, our plan for the beer is to hand them out to the craft beer drinkers amongst our family and friends. We plan on saving a bottle for her first birthday and also saved one to crack open when she turns 21 (or whatever the  legal drinking age may be in the future.)

Cheers to Magdalene (Maggie) Clare Nash!

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