Anglo Imperial Lager (A.I.L.)

I have mostly been a self-taught brewer. I was 100% self-taught for the first year or so of homebrewing as I didn't know any other brewers. So I learned from my copy of How to Brew by John Palmer and a couple DVDs I bought from this website called basicbrewingradio.com. They had a podcast, which was a lot bigger deal then in 2006 as it is today.

I have listened to almost every weekly episode since they began in 2005, writing in to the host (James) on a couple occasions to comment on a previous episode. In one case, he asked if I wanted to join an episode as a guest. It was a fun time and a little surreal being a part of a podcast I had been listening to for almost 15 years at that point. But I must have said something right because he invited me back on a handful more times before we decided to collaborate on a beer.

James had been doing a series of episodes on how homebrewers and probrewers design recipes. He knows I like the esoteric so he asked me to pick something weird, or maybe combine two styles. I pitched the idea of using a random number generator to pick the style parameters of the beer (ABV, IBU, etc) because I am a nerd.

We ran the RNG "live" (the September 27, 2023 episode on https://www.basicbrewing.com/index.php?page=radio). The Fates decided I needed to brew an English beer that was a lager, very bitter, and with a high ABV. Such a style does not exist, so I guess we invented one. And then I brewed it.  James provided the name. I'll be sending some his way and I imagine we'll talk about it on-air. Stay tuned.