Tall Stack Short Stack
October 14, 2021
Fall in New England is filled with plenty of fierce competition— from playoffs at Fenway to Sundays in Foxboro and early games at the Garden— but the region’s biggest competition takes place at our brewery: The Harpoon Owner’s Cup. Each year, the Harpoon employee owners face off in an intense homebrew battle— developing recipes and duking it out with teams on our 5-gallon homebrew kit. After ample taste-testing and voting from peers, a champion team is crowned. This year the title went to Senior Lead Packaging Operator, Jason Campbell, and Senior Brewer, Mike “Hollywood” Kelly. Keep reading below for the story of how Jason and Mike came up with their winning recipe for Tall Stack Short Stack!
Every morning before their shifts begin, Jason goes over to Mike’s apartment where Mike whips up a couple stacks of his famous “Hollywood” pancakes— of course with all the fixings. The two eat up, laughing like gregarious woodsmen, before cleaning the syrup from their beards and heading to the brewery for work. One morning, in a moment of shared epiphany, the two dropped their forks, gazed up from their plates and into each other’s eyes and in unison shouted “We should brew a pancake stout for this year’s Owner’s Cup!” Almost immediately, “Jitterbug” by Wham! came on in the distance and their lives merged into a single 80’s-style montage, shifting back and forth between scenes of them cracking eggs, heating butter in skillets, mashing in some dehusked German chocolate malts, and booping each other’s noses with whipped cream. Finally, the music faded, and Mike and Jason found themselves relaxing against the side of a fermenter, covered in flour and with pints in hand. “This is going to be the best homebrew ever!” they both proclaimed. The rest of the Harpoon employee owners agreed and voted them to the top spot, earning them a 4-pack release this October— Employee Ownership Month!
