Normally I'd be brewing this weekend, but as it's my wife's birthday on Thursday I'll skip it. However, for my next batches (about 3 weeks from now) I'll make a gingerbread ale and a milk stout. The gingerbread ale contains candied ginger, cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg for that delicious gingerbread taste - right, you don't actually add gingerbread to this. The milk stout will be fairly standard: English pale malt, caramel 60 malt, chocolate malt and roasted barley. Aside from the hops I'll also add some nutmeg and of course milk sugar, which will give it that rich mouth feel.
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...when you have a cold? Last Friday we tried the chocolate maple porter and the pumpkin dubbel. As green beer they were terrific, so my expectations were quite high for the pair. According to my wife I have full marks for both and I'll go with that version. When I smelled and tasted the pumpkin dubbel I could only taste something chemical. Not quite sure what it was, but it wasn't all that great. Then again, my nose is so clogged I can only get the boldest of flavors and scents. At least I got the chocolate flavor out of the porter! Still, it was a sad moment when I realized that I couldn't make out either the pumpkin or the spices in the dubbel. Fortunately, in a few more days I should be rid of this annoying cold and then I can actually enjoy drinking the beer again! For now I'll stick to water and coffee. On a side note, the chocolate maple porter had a very nice tan colored head. We did bottle the peanut butter porter today as well and had a few samples of the green beer. I can tell I'm getting better because I could definitely taste the peanut butter and then a lingering flavor of coffee. The mouth feel was almost silky! I can already tell that this one will be quite terrific. It's like a liquefied peanut butter cup! On today's menu I had planned 2 stouts: a coffee and donut stout, dubbed Death By Breakfast, and a clone of Founder's Kentucky Breakfast Stout (KBS). I started with the former and the recipe's grain bill was about 2 lbs 14 oz, only when I actually weighed the milled grains it was 4 lbs 2 oz. I have absolutely no idea what they gave me, which means that my recipe was worthless... Well, I know what grains they gave me, but obviously not the quantities. This is the second time it happens. Due to the increase I decided to double the volume to 2 gallons. It's not like the 1 gallon would have been accurate anyway. It's a stout all right, but even if it was the best one in the world I wouldn't be able to recreate it. Thanks LHBS! Anyway, it should be interesting. It had additions of ground coffee (Allegro Espresso Sierna) and coconut flakes. The KBS has Belgian bittersweet chocolate (from Trader Joe's - it's imported Callebaut), ground coffee (Allegro Espresso Sierna from Whole Foods) and unsweetened cocoa nibs. It smelled delicious, but the wort was a bit astringent. This would be from the added coffee grounds. Fortunately the fermentation and bottle conditioning will mellow that out completely. I now have 6 fermentors going downstairs and I'm running out of them. The KBS will need to sit in the fermentor for 2 weeks and then I'm going to add oak cubes soaked in bourbon for another 3 weeks of fermentation. Then comes the hardest part of brewing: the waiting game. The bottle conditioning will take about 5-6 months. I plan on not opening any bottles until May 1st, 2015. That's almost excruciating! Fortunately, we'll have other porters and stouts to try. This is what I have so far for the labels: Totally not brewing-related, but it's too beautiful to pass up. This is an area in our neighborhood which is practically showing every shade of fall color out there! The Pan-African flag? Well, you'd be right, but that's not quite what I had in mind. Red Fall's definitely here! We visited Greenfield Village today and aside from there being carved jack o' lanterns every 2-3 feet, the place was just beautiful with the deciduous trees showing their fall colors. I was also quite surprised that the Cotswold cottage's garden was still filled with dozens of different blooming flowers. Green Okay, what's so green about the below picture? Why, the beer of course! It's freshly bottled pumpkin dubbel and a chocolate maple porter. These will condition in bottles for (at least) the next 2 weeks. As always, we had a little sample of what was left in the bottling bucket and we're very pleased with the result. We're actually drinking the last of the New Holland Ichabod pumpkin ales as I write this and if you recall from a previous post we were quite disappointed that there was no pumpkin flavor (or even pumpkin spices). It's definitely the opposite for the pumpkin dubbel, there was a very nicely defined pumpkin taste to it, with some of the cinnamon and cloves appearing later on. The chocolate maple porter was also very nice. I have a feeling that this one will only get better as it conditions in the bottles. There was a clear chocolate/coffee flavor. Both beers are around 8% ABV. After cleaning all the tubing, airlocks, fermenters and bottling equipment (my favorite activity), I labeled them all so they could go back in the basement at a nice 66 F. Black See, we do like New Holland Brewing Co, we just don't care much for their pumpkin beer (maybe I should reiterate that a few more times so it'll really sink in). The Dragon's Milk Bourbon Barrel Stout is an entirely different game though. At 11% ABV you want to take your time with this one, or you'll feel the dragon's bite. I drank mine at around 50 F. Drinking it colder than that will reduce the flavor. The slightly tan head quickly receded as you can tell from the below picture. The stout itself is a deep rich brown, nearly black and it releases a very nice toasty coffee aroma. Aged in bourbon barrels I didn't taste as much bourbon as e.g. Perrin Brewing's bourbon barrel aged milk stout. Still, this was a joy that lasted me all of Friday night. Autumn equals stout time (although I'd never say no to a stout at any point during the year) and Nicki had found several interesting ones at Whole Foods. I then went to Champane's where they were $1-2 cheaper. Score! One of these was Old Rasputin, a Russian Imperial Stout (or RIS) from North Coast Brewing Co. With 9% ABV it's a sipper (then again, I sip all stouts, porters and RIS) and we took our time sampling and enjoying it last night. A shade shy of black, it's a beauty indeed. A leather-tan head sits on top of a nearly viscous-looking beer. The retention of the head was quite long as well. The flavor is amazing: it starts off as a bitter, Belgian dark chocolate bar, which is quickly overturned into burned oak with some hints of a fantastic espresso, like the one I had in Rennes (France) all these years ago. And then it hits you: the hops just bloom in your mouth. This RIS definitely has a higher IBU, but thanks to the full body and mouthfeel I found it very pleasant. The hops also added a citrus flavor, one I've come to associate only with hops, to the mix. Rasputin, you old scoundrel, you've won over our hearts. Fortunately we have another 2 bottles! |
The Alchemist
A Belgian living in Michigan interested in all things fermenting (and food in general). Brewing
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