Brewing a local favorite

Sunday afternoon, I achieved my goal of being equally excited about my third batch of beer as I was about my first 2.

All my girlfriend and I really did was brew according to the instructions in the kit, which was (supposed to be) less complicated than the spontaneous cocoa powder addition from Batch #2, but the excitement for this third batch had less to do with what we were doing while brewing and more to do with what we were brewing. Namely, a kit from my LHBS (Wine & Hop Shop) for
Vintage Brewing Company's Scaredy Cat Stout.

Pardon the clip art, graphic design is a work in progress for me

Vintage is a local bar that decided to jump into the world of brewing after taking over a location on the West Side where there used to be a brewpub called J.T. Whitney's. Scaredy Cat is their hoppy Oatmeal (though I'd call it American) Stout.

I work in the printing department that prints all of Vintage's beer menus and posters, so I've gotten the chance to meet many of the company's employees, including brewmaster Scott Manning. In my many visits to Vintage, Scaredy Cat has become a pretty edit: very regular purchase of mine. When I saw the kit in Wine & Hop I knew that I needed to brew it.

The description on the box says that it's a great beer to "keep you warm during cold winter nights", so it's probably not a lot of people's first choice to brew in early June, but my (wonderful) girlfriend got it for me as a birthday present and I'm always down to drink some Scaredy Cat.

Adding to the excitement of brewing one of my favorite brews was the realization that with my first batch of homebrew that didn't come from Midwest Supplies came an entirely different set of supplies and instructions...and a little bit of frustration.

While Wine & Hop has been a great source for information and has really helped me along the way in my brewing, their kit for Scaredy Cat seems to need a little more proofreading. While their process seems to have made a few tweaks to the one used by Midwest in the interest of making better beer (pouring water over the muslin bag after steeping to avoid tannins from squeezing out the bag), this particular kit told us to boil for 45 or 60 minutes, depending on the which paragraph you were reading, and to use various quantities of water that are inconsistent except that they all add up to a near certain boilover.

But in the end, Brew Day #3 went reasonably well. I'm a bit worried that we kept the boil too low in our efforts to prevent a boilover, but I guess we'll find out in a couple weeks. Also, while lifting the pot off of the burner every time the bubbles started shooting too high gave me a nice workout, I think I'm going to stick to buying Wine & Hop's products but using Midwest's process for my brews for the time being.

Have you had the opportunity to brew your local favorite? Let's hear about it in the comments!