Happy Total Eclipse Day 2017! What an amazing morning; here in Bend we weren’t quite in totality of the eclipse but we had something like 99.6% of it, and we avoided fighting the crowds and watched the eclipse from our backyard. Of course me being me, I had to enjoy several eclipse-themed beers while the eclipse was happening.

I started early with a Chromosphere Blonde Ale from Ecliptic Brewing, but when totality hit (or 99.6% of it hit here in Bend, based on the 10:21am time directly north in Madras) I made sure to have a bottle of homebrew open—my beer of the week, Path of Totality SMaSH Pale Ale, the very first homebrew crafted by my friend and fellow beer blogger/writer Mark Lindner.

He brewed this beer specifically for the eclipse, using 100% local Lamonta pale ale malt from Mecca Grade Estate Malt (located in Madras, they were at the heart of totality) and Sterling hops. I have to say, for a first homebrew this beer was quite good. Balanced towards the malt with a sweet presence, it has a tempering hop presence that is herbal and lightly spicy and not terribly bitter. As a “morning beer” to accompany the celestial event it drank really well.

Cheers Mark! And cheers to everyone else who toasted the eclipse this morning!

(I swear I’m not flipping anyone off; it was just the weird way I was holding the glass that I noticed later)