Sampling a Friend's Homebrew

A few weeks ago, a colleague and friend of mine (and perhaps a reader of this blog?) gave me one of his homebrews to sample. Thanks, MP! I just now got a chance to taste it. I am embarrassed to say that I can’t remember what style he told me it was. I think that he said it was a Dunkel, and its color certainly supports this. He warned me that it was over-carbonated, so I opened it carefully, expecting a geyser. This did not happen; in fact, I found the beer poured smoothly and contained the right amount of CO2. On my first drink I noted that “sharp” taste that I usually associate with extract homebrew. This is certainly not an unpleasant taste, but a pronounced sharpness down the center of the tongue. The aroma is very malty, and the malt flavor was more pronounced as I got about halfway through the glass. In fact, this beer tasted better and better the closer I got to the bottom of the mug. I wish that I would have poured a bit more vigorously to knock out more CO2, because the flatter the beer got the more the malt presence came to the front.

For some final thoughts - this is a very “clean” beer. There are no noticeable off-flavors which speaks great things about MP’s brewing process. I could definitely drink a few more.

Thanks for the sample. I will return the precious Corona bottle, and repay the kindness with a bottle from my own collection. All I have in bottles right now, though, is a really big Belgian Ale (about 8% A.B.V.) that I have been aging for about 2 years now. So, I hope MP likes "big" beers.

Porter - Fermenting Vigorously!!!

Although I have had fermentations so vigorous that they clogged the airlock and made a messy explosion, this one is a pretty aggressive fermentaion. I pitched this wort on top of a pretty thick cake of Nottingham yeast.

Brewday - "In Stock" Porter

It was a pretty crazy brewing session, but the wort turned out great. First of all, I had no plans to brew today since I had a basketball game scheduled over lunchtime today. However, the game didn't make, so I scrambled to get a brew finished before my son's b-day party this evening. I posted this recipe a few blog posts ago, and you can see how it worked out here in Promash (the brewing software I use to formulate recipes and calculate efficiency).

Note that I did switch up the recipe a bit. I opted to use a few extra pounds of pale malt along with a pound of pilsen malt (only because I was too lazy to open the new bag of pale malt that I bought recently). I took out the Munich malt, because I want to save as much of that as possible for a few brews I am planning.

My gravity came to 1.054 giving me an efficiency of 68%, but I collected about an extra half-gallon of wort. This should make my efficiency a few points higher, but I'm okay with anything close to 70%. The wort looked, smelled, and tasted awesome!

I pitched onto the yeast cake from my recently fermented "Come-Back Victory" Pale Ale, so this things should start vigorous fermentation within an hour of racking it into the primary fermenter. I suspect it will be fermented out to 1.008(ish) within 48 hours.

When racking the Pale Ale out of primary and into the keg, I tasted a bit of it. This beer will be ready soon, but it will be nothing special. The original gravity was very low and it fermented down to 1.006, so it is a very thin beer with little mouthfeel. Some carbonation will help this problem a bit, though. It is very hoppy - enough so, that I will probably consider it out of balance with the malt background (which is non-existent). In fact, I may save this keg until mid to late summer, because it may be a great beer to drink after a game of frisbee golf in the oppressive heat of late July.

Destihl Restaurant and Brew Works

Last night, me and the wife had a night out alone, so we decided to go to the Destihl Restaurant and Brew Works in Normal, Illinois. Overall, the experience was a good one. The atmosphere is quite contemporary and the food is respectably good.

The beer, however, is exceptional. While they were out of a few selections (the Munchner Dunkel and the Dopplebock, to be specific) and they did not have a selection on the beer engine behind the bar, their selection was pretty extensive. I tasted small samples of a bourbon barrel barley wine and an espresso stout. Both of these beers were loaded with flavor. It was the Roggenbier, though, that really caught my attention.

First of all, the only Roggenbiers I have ever tasted are homebrewed versions, and I've never really been impressed with any of them. This one at Destihl's, in my opinion, was tremendous. Quite frankly, I think that my most recent obsession will be brewing a really good Roggenbier, so even though I just bought a new 50 lb. bag of Pale Malt, I have to find a source for malted rye.

Here is the link to Destihl

All Grain Brewing Introduction

Some time ago, my brother (who is an extract brewer) asked me some questions about All Grain brewing. At first, I was going to take a few pictures of my process to give him some idea of the equipment he would need. The project turned into this really cheesy video. Since then, I have mentioned it to a few of you who read this blog, so I thought you might like to see it. Don't make too much fun of the scrolling star-wars text.

Enjoy