I’ll return to the topic of that barrel shortly. First, though, who’s behind Nomad? Basically it’s Mitch Einhorn, cofounder of Twisted Spoke and owner of Lush. He’s not a brewer himself, but with his background as a chef and his knowledge of beer, wine, and spirits, he’s able to work with a brewer to get what he wants. For this go-round he used six barrels from the Stitzel-Weller distillery, five filled with that imperial brown ale and the sixth with a hoppy stout. (Batch numbers correspond to barrels.) I’m not at liberty to name the brewery that helped Einhorn out, due to a tangle of contractual arrangements involving corporations whose identities I’d inadvertently make clear if I tried to explain further. My bottle of Nomad says “Lincoln Park Brewery, Inc.” on the label, and if you google that phrase, I think you’ll pick up what I’m putting down.
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Einhorn wasn’t willing to share much about the recipe for the imperial brown ale that filled five of those barrels, unless you count a story about carrying the spent grain from the mash around the block to a Dumpster one garbage can at a time. “Was it really necessary to use 3,000 pounds of grain?” he remembers asking nobody in particular.
Fortunately I can wrap up by posting metal (as is my wont) without doing a lot of explaining—three well-known bands have recorded songs called “Nomad” or “The Nomad.” Iron Maiden cut “The Nomad” for 2000’s Brave New World, and though it’s perhaps not their finest moment, it’s still Maiden.
