Merry Christmas!! (...in July)

It's Christmas in July, so bust out the Christmas songs, Winter Ales, Spode china, and make the roux!

It has become a tradition to make gumbo on Christmas Eve, and I couldn't go a whole year with getting gumbo only once, so we worked out a compromise where Elise will make another batch on July 24th. We were planning on using okra this time around to compare it to the last batch in which we used file powder to thicken the gumbo. Unfortunately we were unable to find it at the grocery store, so we might try it at Christmas; either way, it is still amazingly delicious. Elise made the gumbo while listening to Christmas internet radio (which we were lucky that it was still available) and we ate off the of Spode china and I sipped on our spiced winter ale after dinner. To cap the night off we watched Elf before bed. Just like Christmas.....except we were in shorts and t-shirts.

Saturday we successfully brewed our Belgian Pale ale, which looking at the calendar, will be the last Belgian brew of the year. This time I changed the recipe slightly by making it a little lighter in color by using a different combination of Caramel malts (10L and 40L instead of only 60L). I also wanted it to be a Belgian beer, not just an American Pale ale with Belgian yeast, so I used Saaz hops at the end of the boil to impart some spicy/earthy notes instead of the citrus-y American hops.



We also bottled the Black 'N Mild and the Two Hearted Ale clone this weekend. I am a little worried about the THA clone as it smelt a little of bubblegum which I think might be a result of fermentation not being complete when I took it out of the fermentation fridge and it sat in our 78F garage. Hopefully, when it is chilled it will dissapear. We also took 1 gallon of the THA and put a small amount of oak to it. For the First Snow, there was ~2 inches of oak/gallon of beer, which resulted in a prominent oak flavor. For this, we wanted to go a lot more sublte with the oak, so we did ~0.5 inches/gallon and tied a string around the oak to be able to remove the spiral when the time comes. This one should be interesting.

Once Cooper arrives we'll likely cut down on the brewing, and looking at the calendar we only have 4 brews planned for the rest of the year. If this holds, we'll brew the 2 more batches than we did in 2010 (21 vs 19).