Tasting: Schwarzbier

Appearance: at first glance, it looks black, but when held up to the the light the beer is a deep brown and is actually quite clear. There is an off-white colored head that dissipates into a thin layer but lasts through the rest of the beer 

Aroma: sweet, dark malts; a hint of roast, no hops. The majority is likely coming from the high amount of dark Munich malt is this one

Taste:  very smooth from start to finish. The sweetness from the dark malts is very enjoyable and is well balanced by just a hint of roast. Its not "sugar" sweet, but instead, more of a deep dark-bready flavor. For such a dark beer, the roast is very minimal and if I weren't looking for it, I probably wouldn't notice it. The carbonation is right on and there are enough bubbles to cleanse the palate between bites of food 

Overall: the smoothness if this brew combined with the moderately-low alcohol makes this a great session beer. I think the 3 months of lagering have helped the smoothness, and I wouldn't change anything about this beer. It has been pairing well with everything from cookies to BBQ and is turning out to be a lot more versatile than I originally thought it would be. Elise and I are both really enjoying it (even in the summer) and I should probably make another pretty soon for the late-fall/winter. Maybe next time we'll use a proper lager yeast and compare the difference with the Cali-"lager" (aka steam beer) yeast.

Next post I'll review the Panda Watch Pale Ale

Until then, 

#TeamDietrich

Black IPA on Deck

Just finished kegging the Black IPA and added the 3 ounces of dry hop: 2 oz Simcoe, 1 oz Centennial.  The re-used yeast did a good job and this one clocks in at 6.9% alcohol. The uncarbonated sample tasted pretty good. Very smooth, a good level of roastiness, but not as bitter as I imagined. We'll see how bitter it is when it is carbonated and cold, but I am looking forward to tasting this one in a couple of weeks.

The make sure we get the most out of the dry hop (and because we finally have a full kegerator) I am not going to start fully carbonating this batch yet. This time I will give the dry hops about 4 days at room temp to infuse into the beer. Hopefully this will allow for more character into the beer early on as compared to the Panda Watch Pale Ale in which the dry hops were added right before it was put into the fridge at 38. The colder it is, the longer the hop oils will take to diffuse throughout the beer. By giving a few days at room temp, hopefully we'll jump start that process and have more aroma when we start drinking it.

No future brews planned yet, but it will have to be something light in color as we have 3 beers of the darker persuasion on right now (Schwarz, Black IPA, and Dubbel). Maybe another pale ale, or we'll try our hand at a Witbier. We'll see.

Black IPA and Free-range Eggs

Today we were able to squeeze in a brew before Elise's parents head back to Tampa. We've got mostly malty on tap with the black lager and the Dubbel, so we decided to make an IPA. We haven't made our black IPA in a while, so we thought we would stay with the "dark" persuasion and make it a black IPA. 

This is a clone of Stone's Sublimely Self Righteous which is made with Chinook, Simcoe, and Amarillo hops. We are able to get Chinook and Simcoe, but Amarillo hops are unavailable so we subbed Centennial. I ordered more hops online than I thought, so we used an extra ounce of Centennial at the end of the boil and will add an another ounce of Simcoe to the dry hop. 

I have been having some issues with efficiency and final volume since moving to NC. Our efficiency has been a little lower and I have been ending up with a little less than 5 gallons in the fermenter. I decided to try to start with a little higher boil volume an just accept that the efficiency will be a little lower for now. During the boil I was worried I would have too much volume so I turned up the burner towards the end. I did boil more off, but over did it a bit, and finished with a tad under 5 gallons. 

We will reuse the yeast from the pale ale and expect to drink this one in about 3 weeks. It's a higher gravity beer and will be a little over 7%, so hopefully Elise will be a little more tolerant of higher alcohol beers by then (after a 9 month drinking hiatus). 

Every time we brew, I never know what to do with the spent grain. I hate being wasteful and throwing stuff away, but I never have a good use for the grain. We could make dog treats, but that only uses a cup (out of 10-12 pounds). I had read somewhere that the grain is good chicken feed, and so I decided to put an add on Craigslist seeing if any chicken farmers in the area could use the grain. I had someone respond in less than 10 minutes and made plans to hand the grains off. In return, the chicken farmer left us a half-dozen free-range eggs! I have never had a fresh egg before, so tomorrow will be an interesting breakfast when Elise makes me a biscuit egg sandwich.