Scintillating video that I shot with my iPhone at SAVOR 2010. Some of the language may not be safe for work depending on where you work, so make sure to turn it up super loud.

Brewfests, Craft Beer, Pairings, Tasting Add Comment »

Eep! The IPA is almost gone! Quick! Take some notes!

Appearance: Bright, golden, crystal clear amber. Lots of fluffy, white head. Sustained, rapid effervescence.

Nose: Grapefruit, orange, tart citrus in general. Slightly dry.

Taste: Very citrusy, mostly grapefruit. Earthy and piney. Fairly bitter, buffered by a hint of caramel sweetness. Finishes bitter, in that way that begs another sip.

Mouthfeel: Light-to-medium. Crisp and dry. Barest hint of tongue-coating. A lot of CO2 bite. Foamy, foamy, and foamy.

Overall: We almost ran out of our IPA before realizing we needed to do a tasting writeup. It’s a bit addicting, see, even though a good two-thirds of our bottles turned out to be foamy gushers.

We aren’t entirely sure what happened with the carbonation, but our brother-in-law thinks some kind of bacterial contamination could be to blame. There’s supposed to be a strain that doesn’t change the flavor but does excrete a lot of CO2. That’s as good an explanation as any.

Once the assault of carbonation settles down, this is one of the best IPAs we’ve ever tasted. We love the way the subtle sweetness plays against the citrus to give an almost lemony tart sensation… which, I’m just now realizing, might actually be the result of infection. In any case, we think we succeeded in showcasing the Simcoe hop, so that’s a win.

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Whu— Oh, hey. Hey! Hey, wow, how’s it going? Yeah, I’ve been meaning to blog, it’s just been— I’ve been so busy with… work and… stuff. Well, hey, you look like you’re doing well! Ha ha…

I’m just gonna get to talking about this beer now, yeah?

Appearance: Light-to-golden amber. Very clear. Fluffy, bone white head. Lots of effervescence.

Nose: Tart berries. Cloves. Faintly alcoholic.

Taste: A perfect mix of sweet and tart. Hop bitterness takes a back seat to the tartness. Cloves, oranges, berries. Noticeable alcohol could stand to be masked a bit more, but doesn’t detract significantly.

Mouthfeel: Light to medium body, yet somehow slightly viscous, especially as it warms up. Coats the tongue. A little bit of an alcohol sting.

Overall: Not utterly hefeweizen-like, but there is just enough clove to at least suggest that it might have been a hefe in another life, maybe one that was born in Germany but raised in Belgium. The raisins are not as overt as we would have liked, but we love the tartness from the cranberries, which is assertive without completely drowning out the orange. The dryness could also prove to make this a great gateway beer for wine aficionados.

In a word, Hefe the ORC is totallyfreakingexcellentnoseriouslyguysholycrap. It’s results like this that make brewing such a fun hobby. It’s barely the hefeweizen we advertised it to be, but that’s fine, because Hefe the ORC has so much weirdness and complexity that we stopped caring what arbitrary style it fits into long ago. It’s simply a delicious and fragrant beer, and we could not be happier with it.

Homebrewing, Our Brew Days, Tasting 1 Comment »

The Bee Sting came out Jim dandy booyah, which is why our supply of it is not lasting very long, so let us get to the tasting notes:

1.045 OG; 4.9% ABV; 45 IBU

Appearance: Bright amber, mostly clear, just slightly hazy. Foamy white head that settles into a thin sheet of bubbles.

Nose: Sharply citrusy, with grapefruit being the most prominent, complimented by a hint of orange, pine, and resin. Slight alcohol aroma.

Taste: Bitter and very citrusy with the same grapefruit, orange, and pine as the nose. Slight alcohol dryness. Smooth honey sweetness. Peppery heat is vaguely insinuated.

Mouthfeel: Light-to-medium bodied and smooth. Moderate-to-high carbonation. Crisp and refreshing. Leaves the tongue dry.

Overall: Mel writes: “I am so proud of this beer. It has gotten some of the highest remarks from those who have tried it—we’ve been told several times by friends and coworkers that this is the type of beer they expect to be able to order in a pub. I’m really pleased that I could take my crazy concept of a “bee sting”, deconstruct it, and then reconstruct it in a beer recipe—AND IT WORKED!!! This beer is both complex, yet extremely refreshing, and seems to be a real crowd pleaser.”

Yeah, damn, Mel really knocked it out of the park with this recipe. I’d like to try this again later with more seeds of paradise so the pepper heat asserts itself more, but other than that, this is the picture of delicious in my book.

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So I decided to take a walk on the tame side, and write a recipe for a beer that didn’t have 18 adjuncts, 5 varieties of hops, and a tribal good luck dance. I went easy this time, and this is where it got us:

1.040 OG; 1.012 FG; 3.7% ABV; 30 IBU

Appearance: Slightly hazy golden orange with a foamy white head.

Nose: Slight grass and citrus, some fruity sweetness; overall very subtle and inviting.

Taste: Very balanced and refreshing. Some caramel and fruit sweetness mixed with citrusy hop bitterness. Toasty.

Mouthfeel: Very smooth, medium bodied. Leaves the tongue fairly dry.

Overall: Extremely refreshing while still having a nice malt heft to it. We’re both really happy with how the kölsch came out, and enjoy the subtly and the interplay between the sweetness and bitterness.

I’m glad I scaled things down a bit and just tried to conform to a style. Ray thinks we nailed it, but I have slight reservations after comparing with a bottle of Reissdorf Kölsch, which is supposed to be a standard example of the style and is much lighter colored and crisper than ours. Our version is probably darker because we use malt extract (an all-grain version probably would have been lighter), and I think lagering the beer for a month or two would have also put us closer to the reference beer. Nonetheless, I know Ray has been enjoying it, and Steph and Tim paid it high compliments this past weekend. Can’t beat that!

I just realized we didn’t take a picture of the kölsch, and both of us are already half-way through our pints. Hopefully you’ll forgive me and I can post a picture later … maybe an action shot!

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Our Hoppy Dubbel experiment proved to be another case of the end result not matching the original vision, while still being successful in its own right. We were going for a hoppier and slightly lighter version of the classic Belgian style dubbel, but came out with what I would probably call a Belgian amber ale.

1.046 OG; 1.006 FG; 5.3% ABV; 23 IBU

Appearance: Brownish, reddish orange; very clear. Foamy, off white head.

Nose: Fresh and floral, with a hint of fruit and a nice balance of caramel malt.

Taste: Very balanced. Slight hop bitterness with subtle spicy hop flavors, complemented by hints of caramel. A subtle chocolatey finish emerges as the beer warms up.

Mouthfeel: Medium bodied, dry, and very clean. Leaves a tingling on the side of the tongue that says, “Yeah, drink some more.”

Overall: “Wildly refreshing,” as Mel put it. This is definitely a very satisfying quaff, and we can’t deny that hit our goal of making a hoppier and lighter dubbel. There is nothing but success in this beer.

Nevertheless, I feel like we took it too far from the base style. The use of saison yeast in particular was a big mistake. There are almost no fruity esters or residual sweetness whatsoever, which, yeah, we should have expected that. There is some chocolate there, but not enough. Same goes for caramel. Next time, I’d like to see a darker, smoother beer. We’d probably double the doses of chocolate and caramel malts, and switch to a Trappist yeast strain.

Regardless, Mel is correct in her adamance that we made a good beer here. It’s delicious and refreshing, perfect for springtime. The only complaint I have is that there isn’t enough “dubbel” there, and that’s easy to fix.

Our Brew Days, Tasting 1 Comment »

We’ve been meaning to do the tasting session for our Dry Irish Stout for a while, and time was running out because the beer has been something of a hit — we went through quite a few bottles serving it to family at our engagement party. I don’t imagine we have many more than seven or eight bottles left by now.

So, to the task at hand:

1.034 OG; 1.016 FG; 2.4% ABV; 31 IBU

Appearance: Pitch black. Fluffy, blackish-brown head.

Nose: Sharply roasty and nutty, backed by a fruity sweetness.

Taste: Very roasty. Hints of chocolate. Assertive coffee notes. A lingering black bitterness, balanced by caramel and fruit.

Mouthfeel: Light-to-medium body. Smooth in the mouth, yet dry after swallowing.

Overall: A great surprise. Satisfying and thirst quenching. The big coffee notes and the subtle fruity ester and caramel flavors really blend together well. It reminds me of Kona, actually.

I really felt like I was flying blind when I wrote this recipe, especially grain-wise. Neither of us knew a whole lot about roasted barley and malts, so I’m glad it didn’t turn out that I overdid it with them.

Do any of you out there have attenuation issues with your stouts and porters? ‘Cause this was two in a row that under-attenuated. We were shooting for 75% and ended up a little more than 50%. Maybe this was a good thing, though; according to one of our brew buddies, when she and her husband have made dry stout and gotten it to attenuate all the way, it’s tasted much too dry when carbonated instead of being kegged on nitro, whereas ours tastes great despite not having finished. Just thought I’d ask.

Our Brew Days, Tasting 2 Comments »

Ah. My first attempt at recipe writing. I wanted something bold, something rich, something dessert-like. But before I pick it apart myself, let’s look at our tasting notes:

1.057 OG; 1.020 FG; 4.9% ABV; 38 IBU (obviously the beer is a bit more bitter because IBU refer to alpha acid bitterness, and the cocoa added its own bitterness)

Appearance: Practically black with a latte colored, thick head. Decent head retention.

Nose: Hint of raspberry, unfortunately it’s a tad too artificial. Some alcohol. Woody bitterness.

Taste: The raspberry blooms in the middle of the sip — still too artificial. Roasty and woody bitterness. Hint of chocolate masked by the bitterness, which lingers.

Mouthfeel: Smooth, coats the tongue.

Overall: The flavors we’re going for are there, but a lot of it gets lost in the bitterness of the cocoa powder. Needs a bit more [real] raspberry flavor. Not great, but good, and easy to improve.

I’d like to work with this recipe again, or at least one similar to it. On the second round, I would use raspberries, not extract — for me, there is just something a bit too artificial about the extract punching your taste and olfactory senses in their nads. We also misread the recipe and used way too much cocoa. In my notes, I should have explicitly written that we needed to use 8 oz of cocoa by volume, but we used 8 oz of cocoa by weight. Trust me, that made a big difference in the finishing bitter.

Nevertheless, I’m happy I got the chance to be wildly experimentative with my first brew. Quite honestly, I think it’s humbled me and taught me that mastering classic, solid styles might be a better idea first, which we kept in mind when we brewed my second recipe this month. I’m excited. I kept it very clean, very balanced, and no crazy ingredients. Stay tuned!

Our Brew Days, Tasting 1 Comment »

We were on the moon, all right? Hey! Apple Ale! Boy this sure is yummy! Let’s see how we did!

1.061 OG; 1.012 FG; 6.5% ABV; 19 IBU

Appearance: Thick, fluffy, off white head. Reddish brown and almost opaque.

Nose: Apple apple apple. Crisp, tart, and cidery, with just a little bit of caramel maltiness.

Taste: Apple apple apple and malt malt malt. The hop bitterness perfectly balances the sweetness of the caramel malts and the tartness of the apples.

Mouthfeel: Dry, crisp, and refreshing. Medium bodied. Syrupy, but without clinging to the tongue.

Overall: Though it never forgets that it is indeed a beer, our Winter Red Apple Ale is seriously appley, which it had better be — It’s 2/5 cider and infused with five pounds of apples, after all.

Unfortunately, the spices didn’t come through as much as we’d hoped. I can spot the nutmeg if I’m looking for it, but the cinnamon, ginger, and coriander aren’t prominent enough. Maybe we’ll make a spice extract next time or steep the spices in the secondary fermenter, since the boiling tactic obviously didn’t work out.

Even without all of the spices, though, the big blast of apple and caramel really snaps the tastebuds to attention. It’s fun and playful, and if our respective families’ testimonies can be trusted, it’s also an excellent gateway beer. We’re calling this a winner.

Our Brew Days, Tasting 2 Comments »

We decided that our Goldings Shower IPA isn’t really an IPA after all. As far as what style it actually is, though, we really don’t know what to say. It’s definitely an English style, but which one? It’s got the hoppiness of an IPA, but it’s also got the stronger malt character of a brown ale, and the fruitiness of an ESB.

It can’t decide which style it wants to be. It has an identity crisis. And so, we’ve changed the name of Goldings Shower IPA to “Identity Crisis Ale”.

Given that, let us proceed.

1.063 OG; 1.016 FG; 6.3% ABV; 51 IBU

Appearance: Hazy golden brown. Creamy beige head.

Nose: Sweet with a floral brightness. Pronounced fruity esters.

Taste: Sweet and fruity. Moderate hop bitterness. Subtle biscuity notes. Fruit and bitterness linger on the palate.

Mouthfeel: Medium bodied. Unexpectedly dry and crisp, even slightly astringent. A slight nip of hop bitterness encourages the next sip without being a palate killer.

Overall: I’m glad we had a few before we passed final judgment. The more I drink it, the more I like it. There is very little intensity here, but it’s an English style; it’s not supposed to be intense. It’s very balanced and smooth, which is one of the reasons why I like English beer so much. They’re always good for a session.

That said, I wish we had been more aggressive with our late hop additions. We had 2 oz of Kent Goldings for flavor, and 2 oz for aroma. I’d like to double that. The bitterness is perfect where it is, though.

Another problem is that the fruity esters are too prominent. That’s our bathroom’s fault, really. It’s a warm room, and warm fermentations produce esters. I know Burton yeast is supposed to make a fruity beer, but this almost seems like too much. The hops gets lost in it. If we’d known enough to wrap the fermenter in a wet towel to keep the temperature down a few degrees, we’d have done it, and I think we’d have been able to perceive more hop character because of it.

Ultimately, we’re happy with it! It’s not just what we were expecting. We’ll be trying this again in the future.

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