With a down night tonight, I thought I would give an update about how some of the beers we have made this summer are tasting.
Red Ale: First off, for only $20, we weren't expecting this beer to be a "wow" beer, and it's not, but that doesn't mean that it isn't any good. At the beginning of August the malt presence in the beer was really starting to come forward as the hop flavors mellowed with age. Now, it is much of the same, some caramel flavors, and then if you concentrate really hard, you can pick up the small amount of chocolate that was used to make the red color. Overall, I think this is a pretty good, easy drinking beer, that should serve well during the Fall season as well.
Belgian Wit: This was supposed to be a larger (8 gallon) batch, but still figuring out the difference in boiling rates during the summer (its now up to 2 gallons lost in 1 hour of boiling) coupled with the longer 90 minute boil time, we only ended up with about 7 gallons. Because the volume was less, the gravity came out higher than anticipated and maybe be the reason the beer was not as ready as soon as we thought it should be. Belgian Wits have very similar grain bills as German Hefeweizens, just with a different yeast. Our Wit was 26% white wheat malt and 14% flaked wheat and you can definitely pick up those flavors in the beer. The odd thing about the beer though, was while it was still young we were not picking up any of the normal Belgian yeast characteristics. Instead, it was tasting like a Hefeweizen, wheaty and crisp, but without the clove/banana flavors typical of most hefe's. As the beer has aged though, the yeast flavors are starting to come through like they should and it is turning out to be a pretty good attempt at our first Belgian Wit. I should also mention that normal wits have spices added, and ours was no different. We added 1.5 oz of coriander seed, however, I neglected to find out that you are supposed to add crushed coriander, and we just added the whole seeds themselves. As a result we have not been able to pick up any of the spice characteristics yet; but that is any easy fix for next time. Overall, it was a good beer for summer (now that it has had time age), and we will definitely makes adjustments and brew it again for next spring.
Brown Ale: This is turning out to be a very very good beer. Early on, you could really taste the alcohol presence over the malt backbone. Although 6.4% isn't that high, you could definitely notice in. Now that it has aged, that alcohol has faded, and what is left is a chocolately, sweet, dark beer that is very good, and perfect for the shorter days of Fall. There are also hints of what I like to describe as "ice cream cone" flavor in this beer that I have only noticed of late. If anyone has had the white ice cream cones that come in a box from the grocery store, there is a slight flavor that reminds me of the smell of opening a box of those cones. A commercial example of a beer that I think has similar flavors is Rogue Hazelnut Brown Nectar. We didn't add any hazelnut to the beer (...this time, probably next time though) there are some similar flavors between our two beers. Originally, we were attempting to recreate Brooklyn Brewery's Brown Ale, which has a very nice hop presence both in the nose and the flavor. Ours, while only at ~35 IBUs, could use another 1-1.5 oz of hops if we want to make it like Brooklyn's, but I am liking it the way it is right now.
American Pale Ale: This was a split batch (the other half received Belgian yeast) that was meant to be a pale that was a little (by our standards) less bitter and lower in alcohol. The latter turned out to be true, 5.5%, but as of late the beer is starting to have a surprisingly bitter nature about it. In our customary, way too early, 1 week after bottling tasting, the 1 oz of dry-hopped Cascade was the dominating aroma. The beer was still to young, but it smelled really nice. Since then, the nose has faded somewhat, although there is still some hop aromas left, and the bitterness of the beer is starting to come through. We have talked about making some "core" beers that we will try to have on hand most of the year, and this will be one of those styles; we are also thinking IPA, Belgian Pale, brown, and possible a porter or stout. So this recipe was a good starting off point, but it served the Belgian style much better.
Belgian Pale Ale: This so far has to be the best beer we have made this summer. The yeast did a really good job, and there is the nice characteristic Belgian "funk" to the beer, but it is not overwhelming. Its is not too hopppy which is ideal in any beer that has Belgian yeast on it, and the malt complements that very well. We used a little bit of melanoiden malt in this batch and I think that it served its purpose much better in the Beglian Pale than it did in the American Pale. I think that the color of this beer, 10 SRM is perfectly suited for a Belgian, but we are starting to think that we want our American pales/IPAs to be a little bit lighter than we have been making them. I would say, that this will be the first time Elise wrote a recipe that will not change at all the next time we brew it. Unfortunately, we are starting to run out of the Beglian and only have about 1 case left, so we need to brew some more so there isn't a long lag time between running out and drinking the new ones.
IPA: We are somewhat disappointed with this beer so far. We have come to realize that our grain bills on our hoppy beers have been too complex. As a result, the malt flavor are dominating, instead of complementing, the hop profile in the beer. There is 10% crystal, and 7% carapils malt in this beer, and I think that the next time we make an IPA we will keep the base malt the same (a combination between pale 2-row and vienna malt) and halve the specialty grains. I like our hop scheduling, it was a mix between Centennial and Cascade with some extra Northern Brewer thrown in there because we had some extra hops laying around. Next time, because we wont have the Northern Brewer, we will use either Columbus or Chinook. This beer was supposed to have over 100 IBUs in it, and while it might be that high, we think that the malts are not letting the hops shine through. IPAs are not so much about balance anymore, and although some balance is necessary, American versions are supposed to be dominated in flavor and aroma by American hops. Our neighbor has had the beer (he liked it) and said it reminded him of Stone's Arrogant Bastard. I guess if I tried this beer and was told it was an Extra Pale Ale or a hoppy English Bitter I would have thought it was better; but calling it an IPA right now only does justice to the alcohol percentage at 7.5%. The beer does taste good, and it is getting better with age and us knowing that this probably isn't an "IPA."
Most of the rest of the beer we have brewed have been higher in alcohol and brewed with the intention of sitting for a good period of time before trying; but of course we have tried a couple too soon.
Double IPA: We brewed this 8.5%, 130 IBU beer for Elise's birthday in July. We have tried two bottles (one of them last week) and so far it is pretty strong. It is certainly a strong beer, and it tastes much stronger than 8.5%. It was not carbonated, so the hop flavors are harder to pick up. Right now though, the beer is tasting like a Barley Wine. It is strong, and with the high hopping rate, the sweetness is cut down making a nicely balanced brew. Hopefully, in the next month or two the beer will carbonate and we will be able to taste the 8 oz's of hops in the beer.
Belgian Dubbel: I have only had two bottles of this beer so far and the last one was about 2 weeks ago. The first thing I noticed was that, again like the Belgian Wit, the yeast characteristics were not coming through. I suspsect that since we were using the same yeast all summer that we might have stressed it too much and it was not performing as it should. Hopefully, as it ages the yeast characteristics will come foward yielding a more traditional Dubbel. The malt flavor was very good when I had the sample and it was very smooth tasting. It will be interesting to taste this beer again within the next 4-6 weeks.
First Snow: This was brewed on July 31st and still has not been bottled. I have been lazy, and it has been sitting in the fridge in the garage conditioning for the last 2.5 weeks. Hopefully, with the long weekend coming up, we will get that thing bottled so it can carbonate in time to be opened the first time it snows in Denver.
Christmas Ale: This has been the most interesting fermentation we have had yet. We pitched Beglian yeast on this batch, and normally, Belgian yeast form a very thick, large, sticky yeast layer on top the beer while it is fermenting. This time however, I don't know if the beer got too hot or what, but about 1 day after fermentation had started, it slowed and when I opened the lid, I saw no yeast on top, and the ring that the yeast leaves on the sides of the bucket was only about 1 inch high. I also smelled a sour/vinegary like aroma coming from the bucket and worried that we had an infected batch. I decided to just let it go for another few days and see what happened, and when I took a gravity reading, the yeast had done about 50% of the work it should have done in that same time, but at least when I tasted the sample I did not notice anything out of the ordinary that would indicate an infection. Hopefully, over the next couple of weeks, the yeast that is left will do work on the remaining sugars and drop the gravity down to a more manageable level. If that does not happen, we have two choices. First, we can just pitch more new yeast into the beer with the hope that those yeast will be able to eat the rest of the sugar the first crew left behind. Second, we could pitch a bacteria commonly used to make sour ales, Brettanomyces, into the bucket and let those guys go for about 4-6 months. People have made really really good beers with brett, but also some less than stellar beers. This would be a very risky thing to do with 5 gallons. We might do a little bit of option 1 and 2, and take 1-2 gallons off the beer and pitch some brett and just let that go as an experiment. Hopefully, we won't have to do anything and this beer will turn out as good as we had hoped.
Now that school has started, the brewing will go down, but hopefully not to the standstill that it did last Spring semester. We are also going to get a temperature control gadget for the fridge in the garage so we can just "set it and forget it" when we brew making it a lot easier. We will also be able to make lagers, as they require fermentation temperatures of around 45-55 F (which is much less than the ~62-67 that ales require) and have discussed doing a German Maibock that if we brew soon enough will be ready for the Spring time.
