Obituary: Biere de Marrs

Sad day. We drank the last of the Biere de Marrs, our Biere de Garde that was secondaried on Brett B. There beer did not seem to change that much over the course of it's life, but it was very good to start out with. It was a fairly light beer, but it had a nice sweetness and a nice crisp citrusy, funky, twang thanks to the Brett. It was nicely carbonated and it went very well with a lot of different foods ranging from burritos to pasta to roasted dishes. Overall, I enjoyed this beer very much and will definitely make it again in the future.




Elise received a book on Exposure settings for our camera and as such, has already been taking some cool pictures. The photo below is the Raspberry Imperial Stout (delicious combination with brownies) and I thought I would add the picture becuase I thought it was a neat photo.


More posts to come, I need to take pictures of the super cool oxygenation system as well as the stir plate I am building. Several beers are also planned during my time off: Anniversary Barleywine '12, Belgian Dubbel, and with our neighbor we are going to make a Black IPA and another Double Pale Ale.

Aaaaaaand, we're back

Cooper's settling into a routine and so are we. Thankfully, we stockpiled some brews before he was born because now that 2 people are drinking, things are moving off the shelves a little faster. I'm officially on break from rotations, and should be able to update the blog more now.



We've brewed 2 beers since Cooper's arrival. After the success of the Hoptober pale ale being out best hoppy beer we've ever made, we thought we'd follow that up with an attempt at an IPA. We did a 10 gallon batch with or neighbor a few weeks ago. Hopefully this beer will be a hop monster because after we drop hop, there will be a total of 1 lb of hops in the whole batch. Similar to the Hoptober pale ale, we used amarillo again, but intead of cascade, we paired it with Elise's favorite, centennial. Since both Dave and myself have little ones at home, we got up early on a Saturday and started brewing at 530am to make sure we didnt eat up a chunk of the day and were able to help. It was a cold morning with a light snow, but the snow helped cool the beer down very quickly after the boil was complete. We dry hopped the beer earlier this week and plan on bottling it on January 2nd; we'll wait the customary 1 week for the first tasting, but we are very excited. We've drank all but 6 of the Hoptober pale ales and Elise is having to ration them out to make them last as that is the only hoppy beer we have on hand right now. I'll post some reviews of the IPA when I get a chance.




Today, another cold day (18 when I started) is my first day off for Christmas break, and what better way to spend it than brewing? We're making a beer that I've wanted to make for about 6 months now, but due to scheduling and other factors, we havent been able to make it until now. It is a Rye Saison made with 2 lbs of rye malt to impart a spicy/sharp malt character as well as a small amount of super dark Carafa III and turbinado sugar to make the beer a nice brown color. The yeast we are using is WY3711, French Saison yeast. Saison yeasts are much different than normal ales yeasts as they like temperatures well above 70 (some people push them into the high 80s) and they are also very attenuative. The beer should start around 1047 and finish around 1003. Hopefully the yeast will also impart its nice spicy, floral flavors and make for a very drinkable, dark, spicy brew.