Introduction

Welcome to the Fifth Floor Brewery blog. This is an attempt to catalogue the beers we have brewed, the beers we're going to brew, things that go right, things that go wrong, and anything else to do with our beer that amuses me as we go along.

It's called the Fifth Floor Brewery because we needed a name and we live on the fifth floor. In Amsterdam, yes the one in the Netherlands, and no we're not Dutch, but I'm trying to learn it, as well as enjoying a lot of Dutch beers and sometimes missing British ones. Everything is done in our kitchen, except the planning, which is mostly done on the sofa, and the fermentation which normally happens in the spare bedroom. We're not professionals, and this is fine.

'We' are Chris, a computer programmer, and Sherm, an engineer. Chris is the force for light and sunshine in beer form, and mostly prefers to brew golden ales, IPAs and things with sieve-clogging quantities of hops in them. Sherm favours darkness, in the form of porters and stouts, and one day dreams of making something that tastes like alcoholic dandelion and burdock. We both like each other's beers too, though, so this generally works out.

It's arguably ridiculous for me to write about, and you to read about, beer you're probably never going to taste. But hopefully there's some value in it anyway, and you could always come round some time?