Recent Beer'ing

In the past few months or so we (Mike and Matthew, my cousins, and I) have made three beers that turned out stellar.  Well maybe shades of stellar, and one that turned out just plain weak.  The chocolate oatmeal stout was awesome, really one of the top two beers I have ever made.  That beer I did as a partial grain, and it just goes to show that extract brewing does not have quite the same effect as all grain.  A little local recognition for my brews, we had a brewer from Boulevard on site during our annual holiday party at Travois, and he was impressed with the stout and decided to take a few home with him.  I feel like that was a real test for me, having somebody other than family and friends tell me what they think of my beer.   

Next, Matthew, Mike and I put together a honey amber ale with some leftover ingredients that Mike had laying around.  That also turned out awesome!  We added a pound of honey to the boil and that really sent the alcohol content high.  We tasted it a few times between fermentation and bottling, it tasted really sweet, almost too sweet.  We thought maybe a pound of honey was too much, but the two weeks it spent carbonating in the bottles was the perfect amount of time to mellow out the sweetness and give it a perfect sweet malty flavor.  I was really impressed with how well it turned out for just using some ingredients that were laying around.

And the third beer?  Well you already know about that fail, so no need to dwell on that fallen soldier anymore.

Up next we hope to do a repeat of the honey amber, and have a dry hopped IPA just in time for the warm KC summer.

Chocolate Love Day/ Beer of the Week

If you’re from Kansas City and you love chocolate and beer, you are likely familiar with Christopher Elbow and The Boulevard Brewing Company, respectively.  If you’re in Boulder think Chocolove and Avery, or if you’re in Red Lodge, think Kings Cupboard and Red Lodge Ales.   Fancy chocolate and good beer.  So what do you get when you put them both together in one bottle?

 

In Red Lodge you get the Chocolate Stout, which is by far one of my favorite beers ever, especially when it’s served on nitro in Sam’s Tap Room.  In Boulder you get, well, I have no idea because I haven’t heard of any good beer-chocolate combos there.  But it would be a good idea.  You get where I’m going with this.

In KC anyways, Christopher Elbow and Boulevard are the best at what they do, so when they decided to team up and make a chocolate beer, it would be an understatement to say it was one of the most talked about beers in Kansas City.  You didn’t have to be a beer snob to know about it either.  The newspapers and blogs of Kansas City were all over this beer.  The exact release date was not known until about a three days before it was released, which only made the hype that much greater.  The well-stocked KC liquor stores were only getting about four cases each, and if you were not on a list days before the stuff went on sale, you were SOL.  Well, not totally, but it would have been tough.  So now, on this St. Valentine’s Day evening, your best bet of getting some of this sweet stuff is to take your lovely date to one of the few restaurants or bars that got the Chocolate Ale on tap.  For more info on where to actually get this chocolate nectar of the beer gods, check out this blog.  It's a great blog and the guy who writes it does a great job of relaying KC beer world happenings.

OK, now for my actual review of the beer.  When most people would think of a chocolate beer, they’d probably picture a stout, porter or something malty and dark.  Not this beer.  Chocolate Ale is a wonderful light bronze color, nothing like a stout or a porter.  Think of a pale ale, add a stupid amount of chocolate and get rid of the hops.  Most chocolate beers have just a hint of chocolate, and it mainly comes from the roasted malt anyways, but once again, not this beer.

 

This beer is all chocolate.  If you heated it up, you could toss some marshmallows on top and call it hot cocoa.  Frozen it would be a chocolate milkshake.  Totally chocolate forward, chocolate nose, chocolate middle and chocolate finish.  But somehow it’s not too chocolaty.  It’s just right.  If you do have the chance to taste this beer, sit back and sip slowly.  I have three left and would love to share some.   Come by, and we’ll pop one of these gems open.

*UPDATE*

It's now being sold on ebay for $75 a bottle, wow!  It's damn good but, thats a bit high.

FAIL!!

Well, I have officially had my first failure batch.  Last week it came time to bottle the IPA that was my first try at all-grain brewing.  I thought everything was going well… not so much.  Brew day went smoothly with no problems.  I mashed in my kettle and was able to keep the temperature around 150° pretty easily, not dropping too much in an hour.  I took the starting gravity, and it came in right on the mark at 1.050, right where I needed it to be to give me about 6% ABV.  Perfect start.

Then it happened.  I cooled the wort and put it in the carboy, then topped it off to five gallons, adding maybe a gallon of tap water.  That was the problem.  Where with other brews (extract brewing), this was a normal step in the process, I should have just left it alone and not added any more water to this all-grain batch.  Unfortunately, I didn’t think anything of it at the time.  The beer sat through primary fermentation with no noticeable issues.

 Then came time to add the dry hops.  So I decided to taste it just to see how things were going.  The smell was awesome - full of hops and a perfectly citrus nose.  The color was way too light though, and I should have known something was wrong right there.  Then I tasted it, and knew something was wrong.  It was far too weak to be anything close to beer.  Being hopeful, I decided to continue with dry hopping it and letting it condition for another 10 days or so. 

Then it was time for bottling.  I tasted it again, and Meg tasted it, and my cousins tasted it, and we all agreed that it was just too weak (euphemism for terrible) to bottle.  Bottling can be quite a hassle all on its own, so I was not about to spend more time on this watery beer.  So…. down the drain it went (video to come soon, once I figure out how to post a video). 

Anyways, this fail was just a minor setback and is clearly not going to keep me from making more beer.  I promptly went out and got the proper hardware to build myself a real mash tun, or at least real enough for me.  I made it out of a 10 gallon Igloo water cooler, and it rocks.  Ever wonder what that is or how to make one?  I learned here: http://www.homebrewtalk.com/wiki/index.php/Converting_a_cooler_to_a_mash_tun

 More all-grain brewing to come!  Next up is an Irish lager just in time for St. Patty’s. 


OK so I figured out how to post a video, neat!